So the shadows can dance. [Gintama]
GINTAMA and all characters/ideas/concepts/places therein are not mine, although the writing certainly is.
Title: So the shadows can dance.
Characters/Pairing(s): Gintoki, Shinpachi
Rating: G
Summary: The beast Shiroyasha is back.
Warnings? N/A
Notes: The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for May 15, 2009.
So the shadows can dance.
He sleeps less and less these days. In the initial year after the old hag took him in, he NEVER slept, only passed out when he was too tired to go on; the months after that added an hour each until they capped at ten, then he started sleeping like a total slob (or so Kagura likes to tell him). As life in Kabuki-cho gets more and more interesting, however, he finds himself needing less downtime. That wouldn’t make any sense for someone else. He’s a survivor of the Amanto war, though. Once you were out on the battlefield, sleep was your worst enemy.
So he’s up before sunrise now, up right after any place worth going to has already closed for the night and all of the places that common folks went to weren’t even open yet. He could deal with that. He had volumes of Shonen Jump to read, kids to bully, an alien dog to walk, an office to loaf about and pretend to look dignified in. It’s the other things that he can’t take: the restlessness and the itch, the way his sword doesn’t feel heavy anymore. There’s a twitch in his hands now, when he’s holding something other than his weapon. His eyes rove over crowds and streets, pinpointing exits and entry points, cataloging threats and things of strategic interest before he can stop himself. Old battle instincts, things he thought he had buried. They’re traces of the white demon rising up from the memories written within his bones, coming around to scratch at the door to his mind.
“Gin-san.”
“Ah?”
“You look like you’re planning on killing someone with that.”
There’s no deadpan like Shimura Shinpachi’s deadpan: the boy’s eyeing him now (or more accurately, eyeing the kitchen knife he had been holding) with the sort of look a mother would get after her son’s gone and run into a glass door for the umpteenth time. Sakata Gintoki rubs his nose and stops flicking the knife with his wrist and spinning it over his knuckles. He lowers it back down to the chopping board.
“Just cutting the vegetables.”
“Right.”
He isn’t afraid of facing off against the next damned fool who’s out to destroy the town, or ruin the Capital, or just plain out plans on making his life or the Yoruzuya Gin-chan’s life difficult. He’s afraid of what fighting them is going to force him to do. He’s afraid of seeing how winning over them will change him next.
Title: So the shadows can dance.
Characters/Pairing(s): Gintoki, Shinpachi
Rating: G
Summary: The beast Shiroyasha is back.
Warnings? N/A
Notes: The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for May 15, 2009.
So the shadows can dance.
He sleeps less and less these days. In the initial year after the old hag took him in, he NEVER slept, only passed out when he was too tired to go on; the months after that added an hour each until they capped at ten, then he started sleeping like a total slob (or so Kagura likes to tell him). As life in Kabuki-cho gets more and more interesting, however, he finds himself needing less downtime. That wouldn’t make any sense for someone else. He’s a survivor of the Amanto war, though. Once you were out on the battlefield, sleep was your worst enemy.
So he’s up before sunrise now, up right after any place worth going to has already closed for the night and all of the places that common folks went to weren’t even open yet. He could deal with that. He had volumes of Shonen Jump to read, kids to bully, an alien dog to walk, an office to loaf about and pretend to look dignified in. It’s the other things that he can’t take: the restlessness and the itch, the way his sword doesn’t feel heavy anymore. There’s a twitch in his hands now, when he’s holding something other than his weapon. His eyes rove over crowds and streets, pinpointing exits and entry points, cataloging threats and things of strategic interest before he can stop himself. Old battle instincts, things he thought he had buried. They’re traces of the white demon rising up from the memories written within his bones, coming around to scratch at the door to his mind.
“Gin-san.”
“Ah?”
“You look like you’re planning on killing someone with that.”
There’s no deadpan like Shimura Shinpachi’s deadpan: the boy’s eyeing him now (or more accurately, eyeing the kitchen knife he had been holding) with the sort of look a mother would get after her son’s gone and run into a glass door for the umpteenth time. Sakata Gintoki rubs his nose and stops flicking the knife with his wrist and spinning it over his knuckles. He lowers it back down to the chopping board.
“Just cutting the vegetables.”
“Right.”
He isn’t afraid of facing off against the next damned fool who’s out to destroy the town, or ruin the Capital, or just plain out plans on making his life or the Yoruzuya Gin-chan’s life difficult. He’s afraid of what fighting them is going to force him to do. He’s afraid of seeing how winning over them will change him next.