Work Text:
Bless
Hijikata knew something was wrong from the moment he had entered the apartment. Scratch that, he knew it from the moment he had rapped loudly on Gintoki's door for one minute straight and no one had slung inanimate objects in his direction. There was silence, which would normally would indicate that the household owners were not present. It would, if the apartment wasn't so eerily deserted – everything had been left in a freeze-frame, like the inhabitants had been sucked out of this realm without warning. Hijikata stepped inside the building, calling insults in hopes of rising the sugar addicted perm from wherever he hid. He paused in between removing his shoes as he noticed that all three pairs of the residences' shoes were neatly piled to one side. They should be here … but the uneasy, dragging silence save for the creaking of old wood under his feet whispered otherwise.
The churning of his gut, his battle hardened instinct, didn’t agree with what his eyes were telling him. It was too quiet. Creepily so, making every draft of air, every creak of the floorboards resonate with his quickening heart rate. Upon entering the living room, it was also empty, cushions splayed haphazardly across the sofa and not in the usual neat fashion that Shinpachi liked to rearrange them into. The lights were still on and a little desk fan span at the end of its reach beside the sofa. In the kitchen there was some sort of pastry half rolled on the side, flour pattered across the surface beside a small dish of strawberry jam. Whatever cooking someone had been doing had abruptly ended, terminated by a necessity to attend to something more important.
They could have just gone out. Hijikata thought, trying to calm the pessimistic thundering of blood in his ears. Without their shoes. It's them, so anything could happen.
It was them so anything could happen.
His thoughts really weren't aiding his jagged nerves. Still, he called out once more to check they weren't hiding from him or something equally ridiculous. He was cut short, however, by a clattering and shouting sounding from downstairs. He was on his way to investigate pretty much instantly, casting only a quick glance into Gintoki's bedroom to find it was empty. And sporting a suspiciously slept in sort of style. Slept in until recently.
Everything was unusual, nothing normal, and Hijikata was wondering whether to worry about the yorozuya, or worry about society for whatever they were up to.
It soon crashed down onto the former, as Hijikata entered Otose's snack bar to an environment where chaos seemed to reign high.
The first thing his eyes were drawn to was the staggering silver form of Gintoki, surrounded by a barrage of women holding him upright as his legs seemed to collapse from under him. They formed a frame of support for him, Otose grasping one arm, Kagura circling his hip and even Catherine was pushing his back upright. Hijikata realised quickly that Gintoki wasn't drunk, as much as his appearance suggested that. He was staggering to keep his feet on the ground and his arms kept reaching out to grasp something. Gintoki's back was to Hijikata, but he could see his head rolling forward in a daze. The faces of those around him were pictures of shock and panic. Otose spared only a fraction of time to look Hijikata's way, before helping to lower Gintoki's heavy form to the floor.
“GET OVER HERE AND HELP.” She commanded, and despite the fact she wasn't looking at him, Hijikata knew who she was ordering about. He passed Shinpachi, who seemed to be on the phone, and took some of Gintoki's weight to support him to the ground. He managed to catch a glimpse of his face.
Something was most definitely wrong. And not healthy.
His eyes were open, blinking slowly as though trying to grasp what was going on, a look of muted confusion furrowing his brow. He was now fully laid out on the floor, Tama raising his legs onto the lowest rung of a bar stool as Otose and the others fussed around him. He wasn't wearing his white yukata, just his black signature under-shirt and trousers along with bare feet.
“Gin-chan! What's wrong?”
“Gintoki, can you hear us?”
“Sa-kah-tah-san!”
“What's going on?” Hijikata demanded information as his policing side began to take over. He was lacking key knowledge and that had always been something he hated. Maybe it was innate, maybe he had become this way after years of dealing with crimes and incidents. Either way, the lack of explanation he had for the fallen, limp body of such a strong, broad shouldered samurai set his stomach curling. That and the sense of dread consuming and clouding his thoughts.
“He looked like he was in pain,” Kagura explained, tugging pathetically on Gintoki's sleeve. Now that the atmosphere had stagnated, he could hear the whispering gasps of Gintoki's erratic breathing. “And when we asked him, he began to stumble around like he was drunk.”
“Gintoki,” Otose tried again, waving a hand in front of the man's hazy eyes and receiving only a squint of concentration from him. His eyes didn't follow the hand, they looked past it wearily. He was trying though, trying to hold onto consciousness and reality.
“We managed to get him downstairs but he's only gotten worse. I've called an ambulance.” Shinpachi continued Kagura's explanation, re-entering the scene and kneeling beside Gintoki.
“St-...d ba...k” came the choked wheeze from Gintoki. His chest rose sharply as he dragged in a shaky breath. “...ack.”
“What?” Hijikata noticed something peeking out from underneath Gintoki's clothes - an unusual black spiral crawling up Gintoki's chest that could just be seen in his open collar. Immediately, he pulled down the material to expose a pulsating chain of dark purple letters. Some sort of curse or- “Enmi!” He gasped.
He'd done enough reading about the war and had experienced enough of it personally to recognise the mark of the curse. It crawled threateningly up Gintoki's chest, glowing like it was on fire and with every throb, Gintoki seemed to wince. He was whiter than his hair, which was also notably not silver. The blue hue to it had drained out and his mop of permy silver hair was instead spider wisps of threads sticking to a clammy forehead.
“Get back,” Hijikata commanded, forming a physical barricade between Gintoki and his friends. No one moved. Otose was the only one who spared him a questioning look. “It's a curse. Get back.” Hijikata commanded once more, but it was clear from the glare Kagura sent him that this was not going to happen, not when Gintoki was writhing in pain on the floor beside them. Hijikata gritted his teeth. “Otose-san. Get the kids back or they'll catch it.” Finally, common sense clicked into place and the adults of the group shuffled away, pulling a very reluctant Kagura with them.
Not a moment later, Hijikata was ripping away Gintoki's shirt to see the extent of the curse. He wasn't well versed in this sort of thing, but the pulsating mass of vines didn't look good. Suddenly he felt sick, light-headed and utterly useless. He had taken over from Otose in commanding the situation and yet what could he possibly do? Gintoki seemed to be tipping steadily into deep water, wheezing fragments of oxygen past a closed throat and scraping the floor with his fingernails.
“You must have known you had this, stupid idiot.” He cursed, pulling his radio from the inside pocket on his jacket and barking down the line for a response. “Someone respond. This is an emergency.”
“What's wrong with Gin-chan?” Kagura's voice had dampened into a quiet whine as she pulled on Gintoki's sleeve from a distance.
“-kata. Hijikata-san?” The radio buzzed in.
“Sougo. This in an emergency. Find me all the information you can about Enmi.”
“Why? Have my curses work-ah, have you been cursed?”
“Hurry up! Yorozuya's in danger.”
“On it.” Sougo responded and the line quieted again.
“Curse? What's this about?” Otose demanded. She rested the back of her hand across Gintoki's forehead and instantly searched for something to warm him up. Tama scampered off to gather blankets and Hijikata felt Gintoki's cheek too. There seemed to be no heat in his skin. A slight shiver occasionally racked his body, but it was a weak and feeble attempt at heating up. He was soon wrapped tightly in Hijikata's jacket, followed by several blankets that had been behind the bar for drunken customers. Customers like Gintoki yesterday, when Hijikata had shared a drink with him in the calmness of normality.
Hijikata explained the curse as best he could, leaving out the data spinning round his head – terminal. No cure. Less than one month to live.
Gintoki Sakata was two steps away from the River Styx. Hijikata's mouth was dry at the thought. How long had he known this idiot? Too long; not long enough. Someone who rarely took anything seriously and constantly searched for ways to wind him up was struggling to breathe. Was he going to die? Would that be it? The same guy who had snowboarded on the shogun and rode the commander of the Shinsengumi like an F1 car kept glancing his way with hazy eyes, confused. Hijikata tried to look reassuring, whatever the hell that looked like, but instead his face scrunched into a frown and he chewed his lip to stop that from showing. Just as they’d stopped arguing, this happened. Yesterday, they’d shared laughter and it had been fun and relaxing and Hijikata had even admitted he liked the guy (at least to himself) because Gintoki had been smiling broadly and tapping his shoulder playfully and …
He must have known.
There's no way anyone could have the curse and not know. You were drained of energy when you contracted Enmi. A sort of numbness started at your fingertips and drained down into every extremity. Then your organs began to stutter to a halt; people were known to cough up blood, have trouble breathing, experience heart palpitations and there was just no way he hadn't known. A surge of anger electrocuted Hijikata – Yorozuya had known and he'd done nothing about it. He'd played the strong man and carried on going and the worst thing was, he'd played the role so well that no one had noticed. His pain had been hidden behind a composed exterior, an opaque barrier. That was just the Yorozuya he knew. A man who was extremely open and readable but there was a huge barricade between this exterior and the things that really mattered that slept inside him.
Things that slept inside him like this curse.
Kagura was beginning to mumble now, sniffing back tears and reaching out once again to make contact with Gintoki. Gintoki's eyes were closing, then fluttering, then closing. Hijikata shook him probably more roughly than strictly healthy, shouting at him to stay conscious. His kids needed him. Shinpachi was biting his lip and his eyes were squeezed shut. This didn't look good at all – he didn't need to be a medical expert to see that.
The ambulance arrived before Sougo's report, but neither turned out to be very helpful when Gintoki was bordering on dying. The medics had no idea what to do. There was just so much wrong. Should they warm him up? Give him oxygen? Would antibiotics help? How did you even get rid of a virus like this? They rushed him to hospital but they were just as clueless as the rest of them.
Gintoki hadn't lasted the night. Hijikata had stayed with the small group until the early hours of the morning where they received the news huddled in the corridor outside his emergency room. There had been a lot of shouting, of crying and even some doors were broken as a grief-stricken Kagura fought to go see him. She didn't believe it. Otose was stunned into silence and even though she tried not to show it on her face, holding the kids close to her, when their faces were hidden in her chest Hijikata saw her pain. It was stark and maternal, her white face and … she looked as though she had lost her son. Hijikata couldn't stay for much longer. He bowed deeply in front of the emergency room, he felt he had to even though he didn't know why, then swiftly left. When Kondou turned up later, he met his eyes with an empathetic grimace because it must have been written all over his face. Sougo looked at him and the slow realisation was painful to watch. His lips parted and he whispered something. He ran through the ward and Hijikata didn't- couldn't follow. Kondou stayed by his side and he hadn't realised how much he needed someone here right now until a hand smoothed the small of his back comfortingly and a small hiss broke through his gritted teeth.
It was a hard night to swallow, but the following few weeks were the worst.