Chapter Text
Air wasn’t coming easily for Suguru. Every breath was pained, almost exasperated- likely due to a collapsed or punctured lung. His gait was staggered, crippled from the crushing blows of a small war between sorcerers, both too talented to let the other off easy. Both too stubborn and willed in their oaths to what they’ve chosen to protect. Only one who truly underestimated the other when it came to the sheer purpose of an existence.
Blood soaked fingers tightly hugged ripped flesh where the joint connecting his bicep to his shoulder used to exist. As a matter of fact, Suguru was only now noticing how much blood he was losing, but not by the amount flooding down over his palm, nor by the trail he’d been leaving with every awkward footstep. It was the amount of weight he put into the wall that set off SOS signals to his brain, letting him know his injuries were just as bad as his breaths were making them seem.
Each rapid inhale was now coupled with a grit of his teeth. A large, still intact, shoulder dragged along the old stone walls of a Jujutsu High alleyway. Of course that wasn’t helping him make any progress in escaping any hellfire that may have followed his trail. It was a little too calm, a little too quiet for him to not be followed. Yet, Suguru could only focus on that eerie feeling so much before he tripped over his dragging leg and his bare back scraped along the cold, brittle wall.
“Fuck,” came out more as a complaint than a nod to the pain, which he was feeling an excruciating amount of. Suguru’s chin nodded forward and his eyes squeezed to deal with the fire burning in all of his muscles.
The cogs in his mind were slowing but not of his own volition. It was forced. His body was failing him. Any internal organ that had been pumping surely was doing less of that now in their weakened state, and Suguru had to accept that he was dying. Here. Alone.
At this god forsaken school that he’d left behind ten years ago. The same place he’d just visited to see the new youth swarming and cohorts of the new classes enjoying each other’s company. It wasn’t so long ago, days at most, that he’d stopped by to check out the wielder of the freshest curse to hit the scene and declare war for the new era of sorcery. His ideals, those of the right way, the only way, to end the existence of curses once and for all.
In fact, the taste of iron on his tongue was a bitter reminder of what he’d just fought for. The future, their future. One where meager humans didn’t reproduce in masses. One where sorcerers alone reigned and eradicated the evils of this world. Suguru knew it wasn’t the favored ideal among the populace, of course it couldn’t be. The jujutsu sorcerers were too feeble to take such action, like dogs on a short leash to humanity. One where they had bark and bite, protected the home but harbored little control of the world revolving around them due to humanity’s recklessness as a whole. Suguru could’ve saved them all, at least he tried to.
The cough that left his chest interrupted his thoughts, gargling in the back of his throat before he could hack up a blot clot of sorts onto the sidewalk he was now hunched over. The burning sensation coupled with the stone-made scratches down his back made him slump further while attempting to keep himself upright.
He mumbled to himself, low and rasp, “If only I had Rika, I wouldn’t have to collect all these curses…”
At least his family wasn’t here to witness him like this. The girls and his team still in the middle of the city fighting a battle of distraction while he completed, or at least tried to complete, his plan.
“Next time. Next time, she’ll be mine!”
A bloody wet smirk danced across his lips. That last bit of energy he possessed seared through his core. If hope was a curse itself, Suguru was sure to harbor it among the other demons that danced in the pit of his stomach and amongst the cells in his bloodstream.
He took two more broken steps to the end of the alleyway, eyes focused on an exit from whatever adrenaline still lingered. Suguru needed to get out of here. But the sound of gravel on pavement had him stopped short of the threshold.
“You finally made it…”
Suguru kept his head low but his eyes found enough traction to look up through blood stained eyelashes.
“…Satoru.”
There he stood, unscathed and bold. Suguru’s best friend and companion of years past. His deep black sorcerer suit almost had a purplish and blue hue to it in the early evening as the sun threatened to set on both of them here and now. His white hair was loose and handsomely tousled, it swept over his right eye so that only the left radiance of a crystal blue iris was exposed.
The muscles on his face were barely flexed. A tone of seriousness- perhaps, disappointment, etched itself into the pale man’s skin.
Suguru gripped at his shoulder harder, both to continue fruitlessly numbing the pain and to stop more blood loss from his overworking heart and organs. It blinded his vision all for a second before he needed to brace himself against the wall to maintain composure. The strength he had carried up until this moment was finally failing him, sure enough leaving every knob on his spine and the sharp angles of his shoulder blades to scratch along that grit of stone as he slid to the ground slowly, painfully. The sound was akin to a skid as his flesh worked down it, the skin on his exposed back ripping with every inch until he hit the cement floor. Suguru tore his eyes away from Satoru at the moment, biting down the pain and choosing to look at the pebbles by his feet before speaking.
“So, you’ll be the one to take me down, huh? How’s my family?”
“They all got away.” Satoru finally spoke. The smallest sigh of relief left Suguru’s chest, followed by a grit of molars in the back of his mouth. Satoru’s expression remained schooled in distaste before he continued. “Kyoto was your doing too, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, unlike you I’m a kind person.” A soft echo of words. Suguru finally moved his eyes off the small coupling of rocks near his torn blood stained feet, side-glancing at the man who remained standing. “You sent those two here knowing I’d defeat them… just so you could trigger Okkotsu’s growth.”
For some reason, Satoru’s lips moved into a softened smile. “It’s called trust. People with beliefs like yours won’t kill a young sorcerer without reason.”
The tone alone made the corners of Suguru’s mouth widen and stretch. His typically white teeth, specifically the tips of his canines, displayed bright red strokes of blood clinging onto the enamel amidst the contrast of split skin on his lip and dark dirt covering his cheeks and ears. His eyes squeezed shut as he laughed, mostly to himself. “Trust, huh?” A flashback ripped its way through his frontal lobe, him and Satoru laughing, smiling together. It was a pure sight. A familiar feeling suffocating in distance and time. “I didn’t realize you still felt any connection with me.”
A silence befell them both. As Suguru’s expression calmed, he searched Satoru’s own for answers. A blank canvas was all he was given. Perhaps, it’s all he deserved. Those dark cloudy eyes of Suguru’s looked up to the sky. Maybe for help. Maybe for repentance. Or maybe, in their hazy state, he’d really lost too much blood. The words he’d been able to relay were finally being restricted by the liquids filling his lungs, his throat. He coughed again. Retched this time. It was choking him from his esophagus and up to his trachea. Filling like a test tube in a science lab, a reaction from a poorly conducted chemical experiment. He heaved and hunched over himself, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth and staining more of his teeth as it cascaded over his tongue. The taste and smell were becoming lost on his senses, as if this was his new forever norm.
He had no idea that Satoru had been staring upon him. He couldn’t see the new expression on his face. Had no inkling of awareness of how Satoru’s entire demeanor had shifted in that moment. Suguru wasn’t- couldn’t even be aware of what he himself looked like as he sat on the ground, a husk of a man who’s cursed energy was slipping away from his very core by the second.
His destroyed robes that left his chest and missing arm fully exposed. His hair soaked in his own blood and sweat laid loose across his shoulders and back. The dirt under his fingernails. The way his right knee and leg laid crooked against the concrete, surely ripped and twisted ligaments snarled and screamed below the surface of gashed and dirtied skin. Suguru’s eyes. They were slowly becoming lifeless voids, black holes among the early eve’s yellow and orange hues reflecting on his blood-beaten face.
Satoru would recognize him no matter how he looked, good or evil. And right now he looked… “Any last words?”
Like he was dying.
“Hey,” Satoru spoke out again, only after the briefest of pause. His face remained stoic, hiding emotions that were absolutely vibrating underneath his porcelain skin, but his brow twitched. It wanted to worry itself lower. It wanted to react to the somber feeling pulling at his perfectly intact arteries and healthy blood vessels. A small flame was stoking in the deepest part of his stomach. The one where typically he could store a little extra ice cream, the exact spot which craved a bite of cold mochi on a hot summer day. It was empty, perhaps the second that passed had scorched it. That charred feeling sent signals from his gut all the way into his stomach acids and churned the organ’s muscles all at once. An unfamiliar taste of bile crept into the floor of his mouth. He felt like he was going to throw up. The best he could do to quell it was to speak boldly, as if none of it was affecting him. “Suguru.”
Satoru waited. Then swallowed. Loud.
A wisp of wind passed between him and the corridor of the alley. It swept his white hair and exposed his previously covered right eye. Unfortunately, he didn’t need it to see what had changed in their atmosphere, and Suguru’s positioning.
That sharp, natural lightly tanned, chin of Suguru’s tilted off axis in just the slightest. The bear-like grip that he’d held on the joint of his shoulder had loosened. A single rolling drop of blood dripped from his forehead and onto his tattered clothing. Like a calm ocean wave far from shore, water lapping over itself in the abyss of its own testament, the emotion hit Satoru dangerously slowly before he realized he was nose deep, forcefully inhaling bitter salt water and losing the grip of sand beneath his feet while trying to stay afloat.
Mentally, he had a choice. Physically, he acted on impulse.
Satoru took a single stride, almost a leap, into Suguru’s space. His hand fit right over top of Suguru’s own that had fallen to the maroon soaked concrete. He lifted it to cup over the raw flesh of shoulder again and squeezed.
“Fuck, c’mon,” he rasped out over a cry that had crawled into the back of his larynx without warrant.
Suguru was unresponsive despite a weak flow of air passing his lips. Satoru had lifted the fingers of his unoccupied hand to check for it.
Everything unimpressed and impassive about Satoru’s face 60 seconds ago had all but crumbled into urgency and distress. Utterly shattered would’ve been a good descriptor for his state of consciousness, his state of being. Satoru lifted away bloodied bangs to get a clearer view of Suguru’s eyes. For what reason? He didn’t know. He guessed he just had to know. And it terrified him.
In a swift action he leaned back and drank in the horror of which Suguru’s health had become. He refused to let go of the meat and bone of Suguru’s fingers that covered over the gaping bloody collection of ligaments and muscle where the arm had been torn off. So, to draw his transport circle, he awkwardly wiggled himself around the near-lifeless body to encapsulate both of them within its magical bounds. In a swift motion, Satoru pulled the slumped body into his chest and clasped his pale knuckles together as best as he could.
In a fraction of a second, the concrete beneath them rippled. Darkness surrounded them. A space devoid of all energy. Satoru held on to the body, fingers braced against the knobs on Suguru’s spine to keep him close.
Until they hit a plate of linoleum and impacted it with a crush deeper into the flooring upon their arrival to the destination.
Papers and note cards, file folders and graphing sheets fluttered around Satoru and the man held deep into his chest. As the materials gracefully fell to the ground, Satoru looked upward to a shocked, albeit probably mortified, and now empty handed Shoko Ieiri.
“PLEASE!”
Satoru couldn’t even think before the words fell out of his gaping mouth. Little pools were gathering in the corners of his exposed crystalline eyes, each threatening to spill over like an infinity pool. He couldn’t even blink, didn’t want to. He just stared at her, his eyes growing wider- more horrified and begging with every passing millisecond.
“Wha-“
“He doesn’t have time!” Satoru cried out, as if that would make Shoko understand the predicament he’d found himself in. A predicament that, nonetheless, he created. The hand holding the shoulder remained while his other finally peeled itself away from the position it held on Suguru’s scratched raw and blood covered spine.
He swept his arm lower to fit under Suguru, repositioning his entire body in order to pick the black haired man and himself off the ground in unision. He stood quickly and astutely, taller than Shoko now. If he was trying to intimidate her with his stance and height, it was a failure. For she frowned heavily, brows knit in a mix of anger and urgency as she moved of her own volition toward a door only a few long strides away, yanking it open, and pointing into it.
“Thank you!” Satoru moved almost as quickly, attempting to keep his feet under him and not trip on his own contradictory thoughts that Shoko was surely sharing with him at this very moment.
Upon entry, his eyes guided him to a long table, meant for who-knows-what Shoko does when she obtains cadavers and chaotic specimens. It’s surrounded by machines and tubes, thin lines leading to hanging bags with ugly colored liquids displayed through clear plastic. The smell of sterilization in the room alone made Satoru cringe.
The placement of the body onto the table was swift yet gentle despite his rush. Satoru was sure he’d be sleeping for awhile after this due to the expended cursed energy from not only the battle today, but the transportations he’d committed for his students and now himself with another full grown male.
“Move,” Shoko demanded as she pushed by him to get closer to the table where Suguru laid. Clearly knocking Satoru off balance with her movement, the aggressive stance she held only a second ago dissipated so that she could focus. Satoru could swear he saw the gears in her head turning before she interrupted with a very fixated, “What the fuck, Gojo.”
A statement. Definitely not a question.
“Are you fucking insane? You brought him here?” Actual questions this time. Her brown eyes were like daggers as they gazed upon the body below her. Satoru watched, speechless. He wanted to believe he’d done the right thing. Of course, he wanted to kill Suguru. He wanted retribution for failing to do so all those years ago. He needed to prove it to himself, told himself if ever faced with the decision, he would do what was right, what was required. But no one ever prepares you for the moment to act. And… Satoru failed. “Gojo.”
It wasn’t the words but the rattle of bags, plastic being ripped and paper being torn. The wheels of carts moving around him being pushed into place and Shoko’s careful hands working needles into veins and a ventilator over Suguru’s mouth all within the span of what seemed like seconds. “I-“
“I can’t believe you!” Shoko finished the statement for him. She flipped some switches and brought the room to life with light as the machines purred and the bags dripped into their respective needle inserts. She turned away to fiddle in a cabinet, pulling out tools and towels, bags of clotting filament, and other items of medical purpose that Satoru couldn't determine.
“Can you… save him…?” Satoru asked sheepishly, a little too loud for his liking, though. The bile in his throat piled further, almost floating to coat his vocal cords and strip them of their existence. It wanted to pull him right back into that ocean he’d so narrowly escaped. The swallow that followed scratched all the way down until the pit of his stomach flipped again, seasick over the turmoil of growing emotions.
A screeching blare of beeping akin to a curse-imbued blade tore through Satoru's ear drums and crawled over his skin like a thousand millipedes. The monitor on the screen displayed simple lines with no hills or peaks or valleys.
Shoko moved in a flash, knocking over some of the equipment she’d just placed in order to reach the defibrillators on the wall. The wires clanged against each other before she pushed them square into Suguru’s chest. With a charged pop they activated and the man underneath moved with the pressure, little particles of electricity made Satoru’s body hair stand on end.
She repeated it. Suction, crack, pop.
Satoru felt nothing. A void. Simple darkness. Something surely only his opponents would find when he used his infinity sorcery against them. He stood helplessly as his best friend, his one and only, Suguru, died- cold and beaten- torn limb and all, right in front of him. Satoru hadn’t even realized how harshly his short fingernails were puncturing into the flesh of his own Suguru-stained palms, until the machine’s beeping slowed and a peak of a green line made its way across the screen. And then a valley. And then another peak.
“Gojo, I need you to leave. I’m going to do my best but you owe me even if he dies for good.” She threatened. It was harsh, unusual for her carefree nature and indifferent self.
Satoru didn’t respond. His blue eyes had shed those watery pools onto his perfectly high reddened cheeks. Little droplets left streaks down his skin as they trickled and rounded off at his chin, where they had no choice but to drop onto the cold linoleum floors which surely were clean and disinfected before he had brought Suguru in here.
A hand pushed at his shoulder and his feet responded in the same direction, devoid of their own will.
“I can’t have you over my shoulder like this, please, Gojo. Go sit outside. There’s a window if you really want to watch, okay? You can’t help me in here, not like you are right now.” The words were swift. Quick enough to encourage Satoru to keep moving through the threshold and out into the hall. Where all he could focus on was the view and sound of that door closing in his face as Shoko shut it, locking him out and away from this primal duty he had committed himself to in order to protect Suguru.
Sure, he could break through it from a crushing blow mixed with his cursed energy. With just enough stamina remaining and the sure height of his adrenaline, he was positive he could break a mountain in two from where he stood.
But as he watched Shoko’s eyes go soft in pity before turning away and heading back to the table, he knew he could do nothing of the sort.
Satoru resigned himself to moving toward the large landscape-like window. To be honest, he really couldn’t see much with the way Shoko busied herself around the table. He was too far, eyes too watery and glassy to get a good picture even with his six-eye advantage. The only help they offered him in this moment was the tracing of her hands over tools and the movements of knives, gauze, and stitches that cut, stuffed, and sewed in places that Suguru likely couldn’t feel. Shoko had already begun removing clothing and cutting away at skin to access deeper areas of trauma influence.
Satoru finally had to look away when he caught a glimpse of Shoko knifing a long ‘X’ across Suguru’s chest and peeling back skin. The sight was too harsh to bear. He’d defeated curses and demons alike for years- had their guts on display and their brains ripped apart at the mercy of his own hands. But this time, with Suguru…
He slumped to the floor. Shaky hands gripped in his hair and tears seemingly pulled from endless wells within his sinuses, leaking down his cheeks once more. The saltiness ran along his lips and he licked over them with his tongue.
He hated this.
Was killing Suguru better than seeing him on that cold table? Was letting him die far more humane than letting him be dissected like a frog?
Satoru couldn’t shake the thoughts. He pulled his knees to his chest and whined like a wounded animal in spite of himself. It’s not like anyone could hear him. Not at this hour, nor in this facility, as dusk had finally set upon his day and any human with normalcy had headed home at the proper hour.
Time had been passing at a painfully slow rate, the clock ticking on the opposite wall taunted him to the point he was ready to rip it off the threads and bolts holding it in place. Just to break it down into tiny pieces as punishment for doing its sole job adequately.
Yet Satoru waited. And waited. What seemed like months was only hours, and weeks were only minutes. Satoru looked up at that god forsaken clock again with no more tears left to cry from his tired, bloodshot eyes. He’s been here for 8 hours already. Simply waiting. On something, anything.
In most worlds, you figure no news is good news. But the length of time here only told Satoru that either Shoko was struggling to save him, or Suguru may actually be beyond saving and she can’t face Satoru yet for her own reasons. Both options, of course, are so far stretched from reality that Satoru can’t even tell the difference of what could be worse. In his mind, he’d already lost this fruitless effort. All for the Jujutsu society to find out what he’s done and condemn him to death all the same for aiding such a dastardly criminal.
The unhitching of the door lock had Satoru‘s glazed eyes coming into focus from where he’d been blankly staring at the clock. It was nearly 3am, and all he’d done was sit here and face the torture of his own mind and heart.
“Hey,” Shoko whispered softly as she cracked the door open slowly. Any other human would be groggy after an intense evening of work such as this, but Shoko seemed unphased. Hesitant, Satoru prepared himself for the worst as he looked up at her in utter defeat. “I’m done. If… you want to see him.”
Now that has Satoru clambering to his feet. He stood awkwardly once he found his footing and looked upon her like a child who’s favorite stuffed animal had been put through a wood chipper.
“He’s… well, sleeping is a nicer term for it.” She muttered out with a sorry laugh, the words still quiet like a lullaby. “You got lucky, he got lucky.” She stated more pointedly. Her dark chocolate eyes flashed something a little peculiar with the words, but Satoru knew what she meant without a question. He knew enough that the wicked war yesterday was something comparable to the war she’d fought alone for the last 8 hours in that locked room.
Satoru simply nodded his head in understanding. Too scared to say thank you or any semblance of the phrase.
Shoko tilted her head toward the room, an offer for Satoru to follow her inside. It was clean now. Blood wiped away from skin and floor alike. Patterns of stitching and staples were found littered over Suguru’s mostly naked form, except for a towel of sorts covering his hips and genitals. A very un-like Shoko move as the doctor that she was, but Satoru appreciated the gesture.
Suguru’s legs, and knee in particular, had been bandaged heavily. His once gaping arm joint had been sewn shut covered in heavy gauze and bandaging all the same. As well, there were a lines of repair where hair parted to show a newly glued laceration near his scalp. The worst of it was his chest. That ‘X’ that made Satoru hide away with his thoughts all those hours ago was huge and not nearly as clean as the other marks that would all surely scar.
A single chair was placed next to the table. Shoko nodded to it and said, “Sit.”
Satoru obeyed.
“Besides his arm, which is glaringly apparent…” She started matter-of-factly before settling herself by leaning back into a counter top that lined the wall of her impromptu operating room. Those same nimble fingers that stitched and carved were now carding her brown locks behind an ear. “...His lung had been punctured and his knee throttled so badly that it was cutting off a major artery. He has a torn rotator cuff and both the ACL and MCL in the same leg were practically shredded. A few broken ribs, but I think that at least one of them was probably my fault from the compressions…”
Shoko continued on, all the while Satoru’s head swam in a sea of letters and words and punctuation. Every syllable tried to wrap itself around a groove in his brain, it attempted to show him that Suguru’s injuries had been so severe that…
“He was practically a dead man walking. Well, I assume prior to you showing up here and ruining my entire evening.” Shoko sighed and rolled her eyes, rather playfully at that. “The blood loss is what really almost killed him, well, did kill him.” She kept talking as if the earlier words still weren’t enough to drive home the fact that Suguru shouldn’t have survived. But… She couldn’t really be mad at Satoru, could she? She would’ve done the same, right?
“I’m so mad at you Gojo. If it were me, I would’ve left him to die, you know, or at least ended it myself to stop his suffering.” She said just as quickly, making no mistake about her honesty in the situation. Her eyes never left those down-trodden and strained blues of Satoru’s.
Satoru gulped as quietly as he could as he sat in the cold chair, next to a semi-warm body that was breathing rhythmically to an attached beeping machine.
“They will find out.”
Shoko glared at him from across the room. Her gaze suddenly lifted from Satoru and fixated on Suguru.
“Geto has been a wanted sorcerer for almost 10 years. I loved him too, Gojo. Sometimes we just have to let those things go-“
“No,” was the only word that could suffice to interrupt the lecture he had subjected himself to from the moment he transported himself into this building. Satoru frowned, wrestling with his tongue in silence. He wanted to scold himself for the actions his heart had taken against his will tonight. But he knew that was a lie. He regretted none of it. No matter how the veins in his body were reacting against his will, and how the contents of his stomach had all but emptied itself due to the intense churning- Satoru held firm in whatever reckless action he took to get him to this moment before it all came pouring out in rolling, bloodshot tears all over again. “Shoko, he’s our friend!”
“Gojo! He’s a MURDERER!” The sound of the quick banter was shot dead in the room as her eyes pinned Satoru to the chair.
The heart monitor continued to beep quietly in the background along with the intake of air pushing into Suguru’s lungs from trails of tubes connecting to machinery.
Shoko ran a hand over her face and hiccuped back her own release of tears. Clearly Satoru hadn’t even considered the strain on her during those hours locked in this room. Well, he had, but not to this degree. He put Shoko in a position where she had to go against her own morals and values to save a man she had disdain for, even under all the warm memories of their past. And to top it all off, Satoru had to witness the typically care-free and sarcastic Shoko Ieiri rip into him with a fury of pain he knew was only reserved for the most wicked of her foes.
“You brought him here, to me, without even thinking! Because you knew I would help you. That wasn’t fair, Gojo. What the fuck?” She cried out, tears slipping past her fingers and rolling over her thin knuckles. She looked confused. Lost. As if Satoru himself had held a gun to her head and told her to fix this. He… may as well have. “It’s always about you, Gojo. You and your fucked up savior complex have always overridden reason, you’ve done whatever the fuck you wanted to since day one. At least Geto had a code, Geto had purpose. But you! You…” The sound of Shoko crying was so foreign that Satoru felt like he couldn’t even speak her language anymore. “You could never follow even the simplest of rules, right? Damn us all, at your own hands.”
At the root, Shoko was right. Satoru came here on pure instinct. An animalistic need to protect and salvage what could have been between Suguru and himself. However, he didn’t once consider how poorly her feelings, nor her entire being, would’ve been tangled into this. That was his fault.
“I’m sorry…” Satoru spoke quietly against his own tears, watching her face twist and move between disgust, disbelief, and possibly bewilderment. It hurt. He did this to her and it hurt so profoundly, he should’ve turned the metaphorical gun around in his direction and ended his own suffering.
But the calm beeping and hum from the machine running behind Suguru reminded him that this was reality. There was no gun, there was falsity.
Before he could speak again, Shoko was wiping her tears and sniffling up the remaining mucus. “I need to go home for a little while and feed my cat… recompose myself. You’re welcome to stay here with him.” Her eyes moved off of those icy blues and focused on the sleeping body again, then to the clock on the wall above it’s head. “I’ll be back in a few hours. You’re going to need to get him out of here before we open tomorrow.”
Unfortunately for both of them, tomorrow is already ‘today’ as the clock shows their time creeping near 3:30am.
Shoko cleared her throat as she made way to the door, pulling it open and stepping to exit through its threshold. “Gojo.” She paused without attempting to make eye contact. “He will live but you’re about to have your hands full caring for him until he’s able to be on his own. Don’t get too comfortable, you cannot undo what we’ve done here today.”
Her brown eyes stayed forward. Too taunted by those sky blue irises and pitch black pupils that were digging their way through her back with a thousand questions.
Shoko exited the room without another word, leaving Satoru with an environment shrouded in stale air, cold surfaces, and the subtle breathing that Suguru produced.
He turned in the chair, scooting it close enough that it bumped against the table.
“Suguru…” He whispered to the body, to the soul that slept under the tubes and wires and stitching, the nuts and bolts of whatever Shoko had inserted underneath the flesh to spare his very life. Satoru was almost hesitant to touch. His mind reeling on the concept that it was a bad idea but again, like the warmth of sunset and the cool of wind whipping his hair hours ago, his body acted without permission. A pale hand raised itself and settled on yellow bruised knuckles. Each crease and crevice could be felt underneath his pretty fingertips as he grazed over the back of Suguru’s only hand. The colors contrasted starkly with his own skin. Between the wiped-away blood and that subtle hue of tan that Suguru held since they were kids, it had Satoru’s throat closing on itself in disbelief that there was a warmth under his palm. A proof that Suguru, in fact, was alive.
His fingers continued their walk until they were lacing into Suguru’s own. They rested for a moment before squeezing ever so lightly enough to feel a pulse beneath them.
Satoru sighed.
“I’m… sorry.” For what, he couldn’t voice. He'd said it so many times tonight, in his head, out loud, but not nearly enough to repair the situation they'd both found themselves in. Suguru had surely brought this atrocity upon himself. Satoru knew that. The war in the city, the fight with Okkotsu and Rika. Satoru could keep telling himself that Suguru had only reaped what he had sowed. But it didn’t sit right with him. Maybe it was due to all of those memories in his chest. The visions that kept replaying in those hours while he waited for news from Shoko. Their adolescence. Their one and only Blue Spring. The smiles they shared. The shoulder slaps, fist bumps, and smirks from across the classroom. The warmth of their jokes and the spry of their energy. Satoru’s mind had drifted from those thoughts at his dismay and only replaced them with the view of Suguru turning his back to him in that crowded crosswalk. A disagreement to be settled with blood ended in Satoru’s heart playing coward and allowing the most-wanted Suguru Geto walk away unscathed. It haunted him for years. All for it to come back as he awaited news in the blood-stained hallway of Shoko’s office.
Satoru’s eyes moved from the view of their hands intertwined and found their way to Suguru’s face.
What most people imagine upon death is peace. A reprieve from the world around them and a victory against all odds to keep living in a very unjust world. But Suguru’s expression conveyed none of this to Satoru. He just looked… empty.
He looked beaten. Worn out.
Satoru wondered if he would’ve transferred himself instead of Panda and Inumaki that maybe he could’ve prevented this all together. No. “You cannot undo what we’ve done here today.”
Shoko, still, was right.
And to be honest, Satoru himself was tired. Inflicted only with internal pain and suffering.
He readjusted his positioning on the chair to scooch his butt back and slightly to the side. It leveraged his angle enough so that he could rest his cheek on top of their joined hands. His eyes remained transfixed on the face above him. Has Suguru always looked like this? Despite the rough marks of battle and stitching of wounds covering his body, there were features that Satoru was only now reminded of. A side of his best friend that he never really had the pleasure to experience. It was his aging.
Suguru’s jawline was sleek, more chiseled now- his lashes long and darker than Satoru remembered. Even though his skin tone was always a few hues tanner than Satoru’s, he tended to carry a bit of pink on his rounded cheeks- that wasn’t as apparent now, only in the slightest even as Suguru lay on this table post battle.
Suguru’s hair, unlike the rest of his body, was still rather dirty. Dried blood and bits of dust and gravel remained uncleaned past the new scar near his scalp and its inky length of black curtains. Satoru’s eyes traced it all, and then focused on a few particular strands. Suguru had really let it grow long since they’d last met. It made him think back to the first time he watched Suguru put it in a bun. To Satoru, it shouldn't have been a big deal. But as those strong fingers wound their way around a hair tie and spun a circle of black until it was tight against his head, Satoru couldn’t escape the involuntary thump his heart had produced. And it was lovely, really. No matter how tight Suguru ever got his bun, a few strands of his bangs always hung loose over his eye. Satoru wondered why it looked so beautiful. It made his heart squeeze with unfamiliarity. A feeling he stuffed low in his chest and promised to never address back then.
But. That was back then.
Satoru frowned and wondered how much Suguru would hate to see the disarray of his hair now that he’s thinking about it. He took the moment to himself to trace Suguru’s wrist for a hair tie but he imagined it was somewhere back at Jujutsu High and would eventually show up as evidence or be presented in some kind of museum as a historical piece. Being written off as something unholy possessed by one of the strongest sorcerers to ever live.
Satoru grunted, displeased, at the thought of it.
Crystal aqua eyes found themselves roaming again. Finally landing on the rising and falling of Suguru’s chest and the indescribable comfort it provided Satoru's loud and messy mind. Satoru watched quietly. The fingers that had searched for the hair tie had begun stroking a short length of Suguru's lower, undamaged, forearm. Up and down. Up... and down. Satoru squeezed the hand laced in his own once more, nuzzling his cheek over top of it.
The warm skin contact coupled with the view of Suguru's inhale and exhale quelled Satoru's thoughts. Finally allowing his worried eyes a moment to rest under heavy lids.
Satoru had relaxed for the first time in hours. And within the unspoken comfort Suguru provided, he drifted.