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

Chapter 47 {Takasugi Shinsuke}

It was after when she knew of her friend's death. The funeral had ended at early noon. The people of the village slowly scatter out the black and white canopy, which had been hastily built up at where her friend's house used to stand. The scorched remains were piled to an edge of the expanse, a mountain of ruin adding more gloom to the atmosphere.

From the back of the village, I searched for her among the receding crowd, looking for a distinct white yukata amidst black. When she finally emerged from the canopy, her face was drawn in deep exhaustion and pain. I waited for her to approach. But then a man came into her way.

The man, from the way he's differently dressed and regarding of the guards stationed by the funeral place, must be the leader of this village. Undeterred by Y/N's obvious refusal to speak with him, he handed her a certain thing in his palm. I watched as Y/N stared at it, something dawning within her when she took it.

The moment ended with the man pulling her into his embrace. They were at a distance away, their words long vanished along the chatters of others before they could reach me. The shuffles of nature only reaching my ears, the man tightened his grasp because of something she said. She didn't return any gesture of equal affection, yet neither did she stop him.

I left the expanse.

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

"This is for the best, isn't it?" I say, looking up at her.

She's being kept within a cylindrical glass tank, one of the certain things that prevents their departure immediately last night, containing several chemical components to sustain her body. Her plain white robe and dark locks move gently all about her in the liquid current, but her eyes remain shut and her arms and legs still.

Only silence answers my question.

I move closer to her, somehow convinced that her consciousness isn't so far away from the floating form I'm staring at now. She isn't lost.

"You did well. You protected well. Leave the rest to me," I murmur to the dimness, to her. "A battlefield isn't a place that's befitting you. You fight your own battle and I will fight mine. And then..." The words fade into silence when I think I catch a twitch of movement of her lips. But I don't get to make sure if it's true when the door opens and someone comes in.

"Commander," Suguru speaks behind me. "This." I turn around, and see that he's offering me the platinum necklace and a piece of hair ornament on his palm. "I thought if you would want to keep them."

I tell him, "You should give those to her parents. She can have them back once she wakes."

The doctor glances up at me once, then after a pause, he nods. "Certainly."

When he exits the room resumes its previous stillness. The shade of night lightened slightly through the window. Dawn shouldn't have a long way to come. I glance behind me.

"I will return."

Now our ways separate, our battle isn't of the same. Whether we will return, it will be after this. If we will meet again, it'll too be for another cause. And when we do, it will be a time more different than this. Either way...

I turn away and leave the room.

It's a farewell all the same.