Gintama; Takasugi x reader (Finale) [Take Me With You]

Chapter 24 {Y/N}

It feels good, to have to only focus on one simple thing.

My hand around her neck.

All the thoughts go away, the hurt and pain dim to a hazy indistinguishable line. Though apparently, the bitterness still stays.

I tighten my grip, thinking that if I apply enough external force around her throat, my internal suffering would eventually unleash. The grief would unfurl like smoke blending into air and would soon disappear. Yet as I look at her, my last hope of peace is all but thwarted.

Her face blanches the lesser I allow air to pass her throat. Her eyes, the very ones that bare almost the same color as his and the ones in which only that person is reflected in, half shut and half open as unshed tears swim about her lashes. Half shut half open as if they're greedy to close the last image of that person from me.

I lift her high up until she tiptoes, her mass nothing but a small thing to ignore. Her kicks are as usual, barbarous and painful. But unlike the usual, my vision has been replaced by sights I never the least feel ashamed to let them mesmerize me.

The hands that persist mine to release her neck, I see them fall limply to her side, never again will they move. The eyes that bore hate for me, but love for him would no longer open, their color draining to dull gray. Her hair that shines in the light, beautiful as it stands out among us all, streaking with white and gray, and falling from her scalp. I see the life in her fade as she would slowly-

I toss her away with a jolt through me, like someone has shocked some sense into my head. Breathing hard, I try to crush all the perilous thoughts away and regain my little rightful sense.

I can't let the dark instincts overwhelm me. They are not mine. They should have been gone long ago.

"Get out," I growl to her as she coughs, and jab a finger to the door. "Right now." I return her stunned look with a clouded glare, confining my anger into a iron cage I'd allow to burst once I'm alone.

When the girl stumbles out of the room, it feels as if she has taken a part of my darkness with her. Kikyo hisses at her before the door to the room slams shut. The space renders quiet again, excluding the audible breathing I expel.

I let myself fall to the floor, my movement sudden to make my cat fling her eyes at me. I want to reach out for her, to check if her collision with the door just now has sprain some part of her body, but I can barely make my body move.

I shut my eyes off the sunlit room, but the darkness residing behind my lids takes me to the fantasied image of the night he left. The vision leads me there and leaves me alone, letting me to stand and watch as a shadow as she embraced his body and took the warmth that once only belonged to me.

A painful knot in my chest distorts the image and brings me back to reality. But the pain only lasts for a short minute, letting me know that I've been holding my breath all along. And then it is gone, reduced to a low hum. An odd sort of silence settles over my mind, covering my body like an invisible blanket of serenity.

I look to where the shamisen is being placed a distance from me, not so far away but still beyond my reach. Shinsuke once told me to play using my emotion as a bridge to connect the notes together. The deeper I feel the better the connection, he had said. But what he didn't tell me is what emotion should I play the music with.

And I wonder, mildly wondering and exhausted, that whether if one could play without wanting to put any emotion into the music at all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My eyes open to an empty space next to me. I long know, after two long days and two cold nights, that the occupant of the place beside me has probably found a new space to sleep, far far away from me. My mind long knows, but perhaps it's my body that keeps expecting the futility.