The Creatures Known as Humanity

a Gintama fanfiction by SamuraiSwords

All I can see around me is light, and I’ve never seen light so bright.

I’ve never deserved to stand in such light. All my existence, all the time I’ve walked on this wretched Earth and looked up at those cursed stars, the most I’ve deserved is a darkness that reflects me, a darkness as empty as my soul. And that darkness is all I’ve ever known, that night that mirrors the void inside me, that terrible, eternal night.

But now there is light to chase it away.

It’s all around me.

It’s all I can see.

It’s everywhere…and it won’t stop shining…so brightly…

I raise my bloodied hands to my face, the hands that are responsible for so much death and destruction. That’s all I know how to do. Kill. Destroy. Rip lives away. Hurt those who hurt me. That is all I’ve ever done with my never-ending existence.

My never-ending existence…

My existence that persisted and beat on for so long, no matter how many times I died…

Is it finally ending?

The blood on my hands smiles at me, and I realize it’s my own. The crimson all over me reeks of Altana, of immortality, the terrible stench I’ve been choking on since the beginning of forever, and my body is trembling, shaking. It won’t stop trembling. It won’t stop shaking. My blood won’t stop streaming out in red rivers. I used to heal in an instant, but I can heal no longer – my broken body makes that much clear.

I can’t help but be impressed.

Even after I spilled their blood all over the Earth, even after I broke them, they spilled my blood. They broke me. Even after I wiped out the very ground beneath their feet, they continued to stand. Even after I broke their swords, they continued to fight. Even after I brought them to the end, they believed in the beginning.

It seems I underestimated the creatures known as humanity.

My gory hand tightens into a fist, though there is nothing in this void of light for me to punch. Damn humanity! Damn them all! Curse them for what they did. Curse them for the fear, for the pain, for the suffering. Curse them for living while I could only exist. Curse them for refusing to die while all I wanted was for me, for them, for everything to die. Curse them all…
For everything.

The light is getting blurry now – is this it? Those awful creatures…they really did it, then.
They really managed to kill me. The light… I can’t make it out… It’s all a blur…

A raindrop splashes onto my skin.

Then a thousand more.

The light is shrouded by water, and running down my face is a stream. That’s strange.

I didn’t think…

My eyes…

Could make rain…

How do I stop this rain? Why has it come? I can’t see through this stream, this river, this blinding sea. The harder I try to stop it, the harder it falls. And…what is this feeling inside me? How can I, after everything I’ve done, after all I’ve suffered through, feel anything? I was sure I was numb. I was sure I was empty. I was sure I was a void of nothing.

So why…

Why am I feeling an emotion so human?

Why…is there rain…?

Something reaches out, and I can’t see it through that rain, but I think it might be a hand…because it wipes the raindrops away, old and new, no matter how fast they fall. It can’t stop the stream, and I don’t know why, but it tries…and tries…and tries…

It doesn’t give up on me.

“Utsuro,” a voice says, soft and gentle like the angels I can never know. “You don’t have to suffer anymore.”

I can’t see the owner of the voice through that rain, that damned rain, but it has to be Death himself at long last. I can’t imagine who else would meet me here in this void of light.
“Have you come to take me to hell?” I ask, and my voice trembles like my broken body, brittle as ancient bones.

I receive no reply, but Death keeps brushing away the raindrops, and they keep falling. An eternity passes, perhaps two or three, and I have never seen that much rain. I don’t think it will ever stop.

And that’s unfortunate…

Because after waiting so long for Death, I’d like to see his face…

Just so I know this is real. Just so I know that this wretched existence, this soulless walk through eternity, has finally come to an end.

“It’s all right,” Death says. “You’ve been lost for quite some time.”

He pulls me close, and I don’t know why – isn’t Death’s purpose to escort me to hell? Why is he, the one to end it all, the one to finally show me kindness, kindness that I don’t even deserve? And why is he, a creature as far from human as they come, showing me a gesture so human? I’ve never been embraced once, and of all to hold me close, it’s Death…

Wait…

The rain has ceased enough for me to see, albeit not clearly, and I wonder if that has anything to do with the foreign gesture. I also wonder who is holding me.

Because these are not the robes of a reaper.

In fact, they’re familiar robes. If I think back…I don’t like thinking back, but if I do…I remember them being on this broken immortal body of mine. I remember looking at the man wearing them, the mere fragment who took over this body, the fragment that was a smile…

“Why?” I whisper. “After everything I did…”

He only smiles that smile I could never smile, a smile full of love that could warm a thousand hearts, and if things turned out differently, maybe it could warm mine too. But my heart, cold and still in my chest, remains as frozen in death as it was in life, as cold in the end as it was in the beginning, as cold as the creatures known as humanity made it.

But as cold as it is, it isn’t enough to stop the rain from falling again.

Thousands of raindrops fall from the empty clouds that are my eyes, falling even as everything becomes nothing and that void of light fades. I still don’t know why it rained. I still don’t know why he came. I still don’t know anything…

But I don’t have to know.

The light is gone.

There is only darkness.

Only silence.

How eternal is this darkness, this silence? Has it all finally, finally come to an end? Is this the beautifully sweet death I’ve been begging for? Is this–

My chest rises.

My chest falls.

My cold, cold heart beats.

I scream. I shout. I stand in more rain.

What a burden, what a curse, what a horrible thing a heartbeat is.

They broke me. They spilled my blood. They stood against me. They brought me down. But it seems that even they, with strength enough to take my own, could not bring an end to the immortal Utsuro.