this is so long (mostly post-joui war/pre-series ginzura with some takasugi at the end)

i think gintoki wouldve called off their “relationship” a few months prior just bc he was breaking down from his guilt bc of that and from the war and death. katsura tries to take it well. he drowns himself in The Cause (which i guess mightve become a coping mechanism for him from then on into present canon). after the war ends he tries not to wonder where gintoki is, tries to distract himself with other things (takasugi does, too — same things, different reasons, but thats another story). it doesnt work every time, but thats how it goes.

gintoki probably lost his/shoyous notebook (whatever its called) during this time, idk if he really spilled noodles on it (tbh i think he was lying about that part) but i think, since he never really got over shoyous death, carrying it around was another part of the burden he was carrying during the war and it scared him, that he couldnt keep his promise. maybe he got careless and lost it “by accident”. maybe he tossed it off into a river/off a cliff in his grief and guilt and then immediately started regretting it but it was too late to get it back. later on he thinks it was for the best, probably.

(basically i think gintoki avoids things. bad things, guilt, sadness, he runs away from all of it. he thinks if hes there to hold onto everyone and everything he cares about, bad things wont happen to them. but they do, and its not his fault bc thats just how the world is, but he takes all of it on himself and then he collapses, and then he runs from the mess. it doesnt take him until he meets otose and the rest of the yorozuya that he thinks maybe thats not a great way to do things.)

gintoki is probably in complete denial about how alone he is now. hes got some people to care about but its not as much as before and he doesnt know how to deal with it, so he doesnt think about it. he also doesnt know what to do with himself. founding the yorozuya probably just started as a series of odd jobs to preoccupy himself with so he doesnt think about stuff he doesnt want to think about. im not too sure what he does during this time, besides carrying on. it gets pretty monotonous. he probably doesnt even know what he’s doing.

i dont think gintoki knew how much he needed someone who knew him until he actually meets up with katsura again, like i think he knew about what zura was doing in edo before that point but he hadnt actually tried to find him (maybe its still guilt). but when they meet its like something just clicks inside him and even though he and zura have changed since the war, they havent changed and its so comforting, even if its just for a second before zura tries to rope him into committing terrorist acts. way to ruin the moment.

misc thoughts on gintoki + katsura + takasugi:

gintoki walks away from things. he walks away especially from deaths and lives he couldnt save, but he carries with him the burden of that bond, that lesson, those promises, and tries to live with them in the present. katsura takes the whole past with him and runs towards the future, maybe a little too hard, too fast, and gintoki pulls him back, slows him down just a little, enough so that he doesnt run headlong into a lightpost, seriously watch where youre going zura. takasugi stays rooted in the past, looks ahead at both their retreating backs, and hates them both so much he imagines they light on fire.