itsnotzura | TEXT&VOICE MESSAGE POST ❧ gargleblasted

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TEXT&VOICE MESSAGE POST ❧ gargleblasted

❝we can play charades when there is nothing to say❞

❝Testing, one, two, three. Testing, one, two, three. Testing, one, two...

...Elizabeth? Elizabeth! I don't think it's working.❞

[FUNCTIONS; TEXT&VOICE + NOTE&ACTION]

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Shut up. Don't even act like I haven't been reading it every week.

...He can rebuild more, even greater and better than anything he could have managed to build here.

As if the location matters. He would have a positive effect no matter where in the universe he was.

[there's another long silence, before Zura shakes his head]

...But he won't see them again. His sensei, his family.

[they both know the dead don't come back, not in Edo, and not in Konoha, either]

[how was it fair, that Naruto was only beginning to learn what having a mother and father was like, only to be snatched away?]

[until the cloth is spit right into the side of his head, of course]

[if there's one thing Gintoki can depend on, it's that unbalancing actions will always be paired with that point-blank, matter of fact tone]

Do you find me to be disloyal, then?

Somehow--

[a steaming bowl of noodles is set down on the counter in front of him with a dull thud, a jumbled and mumbled word from the cook accompanying it]

[he picks up a pair of chopsticks and snaps them cleanly in two, leaning that much more over the countertop]

--I doubt that'll keep him down for long.

[sluuurp]

Dishonest, more than anything. I'll be expecting those 5,000 credits back in my account by the end of the day.

[the twined fingers below the water tighten just this side of painfully -- his wig might be girly, but his grip certainly isn't]

[the thoughts well up in protest all at once (rebellion was a habit he just couldn't break, maybe); that enduring wasn't the same as being happy, that keeping up didn't mean growing up, that right hardly ever meant just]

[but the protests ring hypocritical and petulant even in his own mind -- and so the smaller man retreats into the silence that hadn't quite taken hold before]

[after a moment, he returns to his noodles, slurping (a little) more quietly than his permed companion]

[diiiigs a thumbnail into the fleshy part of his hand right under his thumb]

[the harshly set frown suddenly reverses into a oh, really, unnatural upwards tilt]

[and he tightens his grip until that digging finger cracks]

[ow ow ow ow ow ow--]

...ow ow ow ow ow! Knock it off, oi!

[that unnatural expression is gone, as if it'd never been there]

[and his voice is quiet again, as if the words sunk into the water instead of collided with tile]

I am asking you honestly.

[he flexes his fingers around Zura's, still not breaking the handhold despite him being a right bastard about abusing said handholds (wasn't his fault this asshole couldn't figure out how to relax for the life of him]

[and when he finally speaks again, his voice isn't as quiet as Zura's had been]

Our causes have never been the same. You can ask me all you want, till you're blue in your stupid face, but I can't tell you if you're being disloyal to something I don't know about. End of story.

[it's a bit clearer, a bit more distinct when he says, simply]

You know about Edo, Gintoki.

Of course I do. Doesn't change my answer any.

[just beyond thick, half-damp bangs, the other's eyes stay trained on Gintoki's face]

...What is your cause, here?

What sorta question is that?

To wait. Just like everyone else.

...I'm not waiting.

[Katsura has never heard of such a complete waste of time -- and in his opinion, the people of Edo should be more practical than that]

[then again, Gintoki had always been his own creature, regardless of location]

Neither is Shinpachi-dono. Nor was Tatsuma.

[it hadn't, in the end (and at quiet personal regret), been in the cards for Gintoki to join the first cause he attempted to enlist him into. this cause, however -- it's different, and Katsura won't let it go with at least as good of a fight as the one previously put up]

Yeah, well, we're all different, aren't we? All special individual flowers or some shit like that.

No. It is just you that waits, Gintoki.

[there's a gentle tug on the other's hand, unlike both the comfortable lacing of fingers and the bossy cracking of knuckles]

[it's a gesture that can only be felt as come with me]

[the hand remains where it is, solid and unmoving, weathering the tug as quietly and easily as weathering the current of water filtering through his (their) fingers]

I've been the only one waiting before. Ain't that big of a deal.

...Just because I'm not moving forward doesn't mean I'm staying in the past, either.

Is that supposed to be some cause for relief? With no anchors in past, present, or future, one is placeless.

[his shoulder tips closer, not consciously, pressing skin and old scars]

This ship is what's placeless. I have an anchor, and I'm waiting to get back to it. That's all.

[he presses back, not consciously, seeking skin and old scars]

And if you should return without Otose-dono? Shinpachi-dono? Leader?

[he doesn't add himself to the list, although whether it's because of denial of the obvious (the prickling brush of wet skin) or blatant self-evidence (the weight of old scars), is anybody's guess]

...Between the two, if forced to separate and choose... I am finding myself pressed to say precious people are more important than familiar street names.

[it hits hard, fast, and where he least expects it]

[he'd always simply assumed, since he, Zura and Shinpachi had shown up at the same time, that he'd go back with them as well; he'd almost forgotten, shoved it out of his mind -- the fact that the first time he'd been wormholed, the Shinpachi who greeted him back home was not the same Shinpachi he'd laughed and suffered with on the Thor]

[it was enough, back then, to drive him to extremes. He'd threatened innocents, put his own livelihood at stake, and put the people he cared most about in harms way in the name of finding out what happened to them.]

[and in the end, he'd not found out anything. He found out why they were wormholed, sure, and about different universes, whatever the hell that meant.]

[but he still had no idea if they'd end up in the same universe with him or not.]

[he doesn't wonder if Zura is expecting it to backfire; the man he's known since grade school has gotten more familiar in some ways and indiscernible in others, but they've always (always) known how to get the other to understand something that they couldn't exactly see in front of them]

[the whole point, he remembers fleetingly, of standing back to back on a battlefield]

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TEXT&VOICE MESSAGE POST ❧ gargleblasted

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