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

Chapter 33 {Y/N}

     A door of a dim room greets my fluttering eyes. It takes a minute for them to adjust, and when they do, many things rush to beg for attention, chasing sleepiness away.

I only stare at the door, noticing how it appears to be worn and old in the room with little light through the window, and how I know it would look like in bright luminance; clean white with faint leaf designs sprawled at the bottom.

A window is above me facing my back, and I know what I'd see if I peer outside: more buildings blocking the sunlight.

I watch as familiarity oozes out like water from a stream of every edge and every object in the room.

My room.

I blink a few more times, thinking maybe this is a trick played out in my favor in the moments of my last breaths. The more I blink, the blurrier my sight gets, but the image of my room, the reality, doesn't go away.

I gulp in a gasp when the truth sinks in, every memory of last night rewinding frame by frame beneath my closed eyes as tears outline them.

I'm still alive. Back, at home.

I stir underneath the sheets loosely tucked around me, finding myself in nostalgic clothes of my own, then accidentally fall on my back. I bite in a cry as pain shoots up from my wound and claw mindlessly at the mattress to pull myself back to my side. My back still throbs with overwhelming waves as if the wound is a living heart.

Trying to breathe to let the flashing pain past, the calm I'm able to bring to my mind is but short-lived.

So little things happened last night, and yet the burden falls over me like a rug of the dead bodies in the battleground. So little things, and I dearly hope it would mean little to me too.

     Do as you wish.

My throat closes tight at his voice, at the plain option that he had chosen as he walked away. A guilty knot forms in my chest at the look he gave me that time, one not carved from ice but molded with true emotion of hurt.

He must've known of my condition, though I care not how. He knew and yet still chose to walk away.

Maybe this is his way of showing me the inevitable cycle of choosing him. The inevitable tragedy that the suffering would never cease to befall either of us.

Maybe...

The sound of footstep climbing the stairs brings me back from my thoughts. I involuntarily reach up to my face, despite the sting the movement arises, and is surprised when my fingers find my dry cheek.

My eyes travel to the door as it's being slid aside, revealing the frame of the woman who has shielded me from burdens of the world for as long as I could remember. And now, after through all the times without her to help me keep standing, I realize that I would wish for no more than to run and embrace her with all of my remaining life, wanting to hide behind her brave shoulders and forget the dark-faces of living.

My mother steps into the room, in her hand holds a small basin with a clean towel draped over its rim. She smiles when she sees me awake, a gesture ever so gently that it alone coaxes childish tears to flood my eyes.

     "You're up early," she comments, approaching my mattress with feather light steps tracing over the ivory mat.

I nod slightly, throat tight, not expecting to see her so unfazed after how I came to her last night, bloodied and fainting. But again, she is my mother, a woman not easily fazed and unsettled by what she can only see.

She sits down next to where I'm lying, and sets down the basin of water. Then she brings her hand to my face, touching my forehead for signs of illness. My skin eases under her touch as if every particle in me is made up of tiny grains of magnetite sand, leaning and reaching for the mother magnet.