Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“What would you do if I became a curse?” 

Suguru looked up from where he was squinted at an equation, trying to decipher his correct work from the badly erased work. He really needed to get new stationery. 

“What?” 

Above him, Satoru rolled over, going from laying on his back to his side where he could look down past the edge of the bed to where his friend was on the floor working. His face was squished from where it rested on his arm, yet despite the almost comical half-expression, the rest of his face was serious. 

Suguru swallowed. Blue eyes blinked back at him languidly. 

They were in Suguru’s room, the sun just starting to touch the horizon through the window, casting the whole room in a golden glow. They had been there since late afternoon, Suguru trying to finish his homework as Satoru was of no help, laying on the bed splayed and pliant with his eyes closed, quiet as if he had been asleep. 

But he hadn’t been asleep so much was now apparent, he had been thinking. That in of itself made Suguru finally close the workbook, the math could wait for all he cared.  

“What would you do if I came back as a cursed spirit?” 

“What kind of question is that?” His voice sounded slightly strained as he spoke, his mind still off guard from the strange and sudden question. 

Satoru eyed him, azure irises tracking his face as if he was reading a difficult passage of a story. In a way, he was, Suguru had never been able to hide anything from him. 

“Not a question, more a hypothetical.” 

The sorcerer sat up, hand rubbing through his hair and down his face as he slid to the floor net to Suguru, scooting across it until they were shoulder to shoulder, sides pressed against one another casually. Suguru handed him the math work wordlessly, Satoru taking it and his pencil, opening to the page the other was having trouble on. 

“It is unlikely that I will die peacefully of old age or I don't know, pneumonia-” 

“You consider pneumonia peaceful?”

“The alternative is getting ripped apart by a curse so maybe I do.” Suguru rolled his eyes, sighing playfully. It helped him forget the hole that was forming in his stomach.

“You don’t get sick, Satoru.” 

“Ignore that for a moment, then.” 

Suguru watched Satoru’s hands as they moved, pencil nimbly held between his fingers as he skipped it down the page, checking and recalculating as he spoke softly in their small shared space.

“It is far more likely that we die very unpretty deaths than normal ones, sorcerers rarely get to die of old age, but we’re the strongest so maybe we’ll be the exception.” 

He sounded so sure when he said it, so confident like it was as easy as saying that the earth spun or the sky was blue. Suguru still pretended like it didn’t make the corner of his mouth twitch up. He failed.

Satoru caught it out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head, smiling as he tilted sightly until their foreheads knocked lightly together. He lingered for a moment too long before pulling away and returning to the work before him. 

Suguru skin was still warm from where they had touched, his cheeks also a little warmer than they had been a moment before. His smile melted as quickly as it came as the intimate atmosphere dissipated, Satoru’s face shifting back into one of seriousness. 

Suguru swallowed again. It felt as if there was a stone in his chest, weighing him down. 

“If we are the exception and don’t die a horrible death, Jujutsu Sorcerers have a higher chance of coming back as-” 

“Vengeful spirits.” Suguru finished the sentence. Satoru nodded quietly. 

“Yes. If our soul gets corrupted or someone curses us after death, we could come back.” 

“But that’s only if we die not by cursed energy.” 

“That’s why it would be the exception, Suguru.” 

Satoru rubbed the shitty eraser against the paper. It was smearing the graphite, the same as before. He let out a small sigh, a small spark of frustration clearly irking him as he looked up to Suguru again through those minuscule few inches between their faces. 

He met Suguru’s intense eyes with his own. Black against blue, the color of bruises and late twilight and butterflies and them. Satoru’s cerulean eyes softened. They became far too tender for someone who was supposed to be akin to a god. 

“What would you do if I come back like that?” He sounded completely serious, yet there was a note of nervousness in there. A little dot of uncharacteristic insecurity. 

Suguru tried to scoff but it fell flat. Even with it sounding not genuine, it was enough to make Satoru finally close the workbook, the teen not wanting to fight bad stationary either any longer. Instead, he just looked at Suguru. He looked at him with his full attention, with all his intensity, and waited. 

The stone sank further un Suguru’s chest. It felt suffocating like it was driving the air out of his lungs even as he tried to breathe more in. 

“You’re not going to come back.” Satoru didn’t let up, he didn’t let Suguru deflect or escape. 

“My ancestor did, Michizane Sugawara, remember him? One of the big three vengeful spirits. Maybe it’s in my blood, who knows, maybe I’ll come back to tear this all down.” He shrugged, nonchalantly. There was still something more under that mask, something fragile that Suguru was terrified of crushing in his hands before it could bloom. 

Suguru was silent. He looked away from Satoru to his hands in his lap, watching himself play with his fingers uncertainly all while he could still feel Satoru’s eyes on him. There may as well have been a thousand eyes rather than two on him for how it felt. The air was heavy between them and it only spiraled further.

Satoru nudged Suguru’s knee with his own, making the other look up again. He was smiling. It was a real smile even when his voice sounded slightly off, trying to lighten the stifling mood that had been created. 

“Hey, maybe you could absorb me and cast me out into battle like a Pokemon. You’d be the strongest then, you’d be able to beat anyone.” 

The worst had the opposite effect. Instead of lightening the mood, it made Suguru drop his gaze more. Something visceral in him twisted painfully. 

He would be the strongest then. Alone. 

His fingers began to pick at his cuticles, scratching at the scabs that were almost healed upon them. He didn’t get very far before there were hands, warm alive hands over him, holding him still. The feeling was enough to make something in him scream, something in him to beg to run far far away and never look back.

“I don’t want to talk about this, Satoru.” 

There might have been some hurt in Satoru’s eyes, some evidence that he had crashed the delicate bud that had been resting inside the other, but there was nothing that Suguru could see. Satoru looked fine. He was smiling and it didn’t look fake. 

“Okay.” Satoru squeezed their hands, running his thumbs over Suguru’s knuckles for a moment before he stood, dragging the other with him. He readjusted their hands so that the hold was more comfortable. 

His face was bright, back to normal as if nothing had happened. Suguru was grateful for it. 

“Let’s go to the stationary store. You need new pencils, yours are shit.” Suguru huffed, his insides calming slowly as the stone disappeared and he could breathe again properly. 

“Yeah.” He squeezed Satoru’s hand. He didn’t let go and neither did Satoru. They didn’t acknowledge it, they hadn’t for a long time and they wouldn’t for even longer. 

“How much do you bet I can get it half off for us?” Despite himself, Suguru snorted. 

“I’m not taking that bet, we both know the outcome of that. And don’t flirt with the clerk for fucking pencils, Satoru, I have enough money.” 

“But what if I can get us the really nice ones?” 

“They’re pencils.” 

“Yeah, but you deserve the nice pencils.” 

“Okay, if you are so insistent then you buy them.” 

“Absolutely not! Who would spend that much on pencils without a discount willingly?” 

He did pay for the pencils. 

They weren’t the nicest pencils in the store, but they were up there. Suguru had let Satoru pull away from him to fawn over colors and materials and lead sizing to his heart's content as he looked on with his arms crossed, face one of half exasperation and fondness. 

“Purple or blue, Suguru?” 

“I don’t care, Satoru.” The white-haired teen held them both up, closing one eye behind his shades despite it being now night, and nodded to himself. 

“This one.” Suguru didn’t know which one it was and he didn’t care. As long as Satoru was happy. 

Once the perfect pencils were chosen and placed on the counter, Suguru hadn’t even been able to reach for his wallet before Satoru was handing over his card to the staring clerk, nothing but a few curt polite words exchanged between the two. 

Satoru smiled brightly as he took the bag from the clerk and turned to Suguru finally, holding it out in a childish mixture of triumph and pride. Suguru couldn’t help but chuckle, taking the bag and peaking inside, finally seeing the chosen pencils for the first time clearly without distractions. Blue. He had chosen the blue. 

“Just like your eyes, huh?” 

“If you say so.” Satoru linked their hands together again, dragging them out into the lit streets again. 

Suguru let himself be dragged if only to make sure that he was the one to pay for their sugar-laden food at the twenty-four-hour convenience store. It was a testament to both their good moods that neither complained on the walk back through the cold, winter still nipping at them but they barely felt it. 

They shared a room that night, both sitting on the bed as some movie played on Satoru’s phone in front of them. The teen seemed enraptured with it and Suguru tried to pay attention but his attention was slipping as his head bobbed, eyes blinking lethargically as he dully tried to fight sleep. 

A hand nudged his head to the side and Suguru willingly leaned onto Satoru’s shoulder, slumping against his friend’s body as sleep threatened to overwhelm him, making the soft noise and light blurr to almost nothing around him as he drifted off. 

Before he could completely give in to sleep, however, he felt Satoru’s fingers gently trace over the fine bones in his hand, fingertips skipping up past skin leaving chills behind until he can cup his face, as gentle and soft and light as a feather. 

“I wouldn’t do it if it were you.” The words were whispered, barely audible over the movie. They sounded almost sacrilegious. “I wouldn’t kill you. I couldn't ever forgive myself if I did.”  

He felt something light against his temple, something warm pressing as hesitatingly and uncertainly as Satoru Gojo could be. He feels the words buzz against his skin as Satoru kisses him. 

“I wouldn’t let them touch you.” He feels the thumb skip along his cheekbone. He feels Satoru’s breaths against his skin, his low promises, nothing but sincere and saccharine and adoring. “They’d have to get through me first.” 

Come morning, they don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about it ever again. But now, alone and covered in dried blood, heavy with nothing but regret and with the hole left behind where his heart has been bled from him, Suguru wishes that they had, because maybe if he had been more prepared, this would have been just a little less painful. 

Love, after all, is the most twisted curse of all, he knew that, they all did, but Suguru Geto didn’t know that it would also be this beautiful as a thousand cerulean eyes blink back at him.

“Su-gu-ru.” 

…

The shot rang through the chamber loud enough to kill, but not loud enough for him to flinch. Suguru had seen too much to flinch from a simple gunshot, but it was enough to choke him with horror as Riko fell at his feet. It was enough to make him stop breathing for a moment.

He was here. How was he here? That wasn’t possible. 

Yet only inches away, Riko lay, her eyes dark yet her hand still outstretched in undeniable physical proof that yes, it somehow was possible. 

Suguru felt sick. They had almost touched. She had been almost able to live. 

“Why are you here?” He forced words through numb lips, wide eyes dragged up from the corpse, from his friend, the person they had been responsible for and had failed in the worst way possible as he slowly turned toward the man. 

“Why? You mean that?” The man in the doorway smiled. He smiled because Suguru could see that the man was happy.  

“I killed Satoru Gojo.” 

The words took a second to sink in, a second to filter through the pounding of his heart and the harsh buzzing sound in his ears as he felt Riko’s blood soak his shoes, thick and warm. It took a moment for his mind to put together the words Satoru Gojo and killed because in no universe would Suguru ever have believed such a thing. 

But The man was here. He was unscathed. He was happy.  

The wave of fury that overwhelmed him was as dark and raging as a windstorm, howling within him like a shrieking animal as shadows condensed and liquified, curses born from nothing appearing again at his order. 

They were the best he had, the most vicious and volatile that he had had to bend and beat into submission and that now would be the last stand against the beast before him even as he drowned in the sensation of rage. 

“Is that so?” His voice was low. It was livid. It was beyond any human feeling or emotion or instinct. It was cremating.  “Die.” 

Suguru didn’t know what he could do that Satoru couldn’t, but he wasn’t thinking. He had been feeling as he threw everything and himself forward. 

As he fought, as he burned, it didn’t feel real. As the man slashed him down, it didn’t feel real. As he coughed blood and his mouth tasted of nothing but disgusting iron and that low monotone voice droned above him, as he was helpless to do anything but lay there and do nothing, it still didn’t feel real. 

Satoru didn’t just die, he was too strong for that. He was too gifted, too favored by the gods to just die. It was wrong, an abomination to the universe. It wasn’t supposed to happen, not now, not then, not ever. Satoru was the one who was meant to survive. 

“But you guys with all your blessings lost to a monkey like me who can’t even use Jujutsu.” The man wiped off his blade with his hand. Suguru’s own blood splattered onto his face. He didn’t have the strength to wipe it off or even bare his teeth. 

Satoru wasn’t gone. 

“Don’t you dare forget that if you want to live a long life.” The man suddenly paused his movements. He let out a laugh, a chuckle that was more like a puff of air. 

“Megumi. ‘Blessings’. I’m the one who gave him that name, I remember now.” The man chuckled again. He sheathed his blade back inside the worm spirit. He looked down at Suguru. He looked confused for the first time. 

“Crying?” He squatted down. He wiped the mix of tears and blood from Suguru’s face. “Over him? Over the Six Eyes? You can’t be serious, you knew that you were always temporary. Monsters like him can never be chained down to mere humans, he would have gone one way or the other, power and loneliness go hand in hand for a reason.” 

He wiped the blood and tears from Suguru’s face like one would from a naive child.

“This is easier on both of you, you’ll see that one day.” 

That made Suguru angry again. It made him stir, fresh adrenaline burn through his veins as he bared his teeth, pink with blood. 

“I’ll kill you.” The threat sounded weak to the sorcerer’s own ears. It didn’t mean he meant it any less. Suguru’s fist clenched beside him on the ground. “He’ll kill you.” 

Because Satoru wasn’t dead. 

The man laughed. 

“He’s dead. Dead men can’t touch me no matter how powerful they were, and I think we can both see you can’t either.” 

Gathering what shreds of strength he had left, Suguru spat at the man. The man blinked surprised but all he did was pull away and stand up again.

“Next time we meet, I’ll kill you, shikigami or not. Don’t follow me if you know what’s good for you, I have a payment to cash out on.” 

Suguru didn’t watch him retreat. He closed his eyes and he simply let the tears flow down his dirty cheeks silently. 

It wasn’t true. He knew it, he just had to prove it. 

He forced himself to move, to push through exhausted muscles and fatigue that clung to him like a stubborn curse, refusing to let go and making his body scream as he forced the limbs to stretch, to take his weight and work the way they were designed to do. 

He’s the one who finds the corpse first. If anyone else would have found it before him, they would have had the decency to at least cover it with a sheet. But it was uncovered, horribly vulnerable to the world. 

He doesn’t even recognize it at first, his eyes just detecting a mix of white black, and red among the wreckage of the landscape around them and the swarm of low-life curses that clogged the air so thick Suguru could barely breathe. I

It took almost nothing to exorcize the flies, but it was almost too much for his weak body as it swayed. Suguru tried to focus on the bright smear on the ground with a mixture of disbelief and dread. The world didn’t look right.

No, that couldn’t be him. It couldn’t. There was too much blood, red blood, blood that was human like the rest of them. He had seen Satoru bleed, hell, he had seen him bleed not an hour before, but that couldn’t mean that he had had this much blood in him. No god had this much blood to spill. No human did. 

Suguru walked closer, his eyes fixed even as he stumbled and slid and tripped, legs heavy yet continuing to move as he forced them through each aching step, each stabbing pulse of his heart. It hammered against his ribs. It made him shake. 

Something was wrong. 

It couldn’t be him. It couldn’t. The body was torn open, throat to hip, innards spilling out to stink in the sun above as little curses and flies tried to buzz closer. That couldn’t be him, Satoru never would have been gutted without a fight. He never would have lost like this without a fight.

But there had been a fight. The evidence, the wreckage was all around him. 

And the truth lay before him, red and physical and pure in its sincerity because no one else had hair like that. No one else had eyes like that. No one else had those blue eyes, deep eyes like lagoons and oceans and trenches below the surface sparking with life and joy just out of reach. Eyes of azure and cerulean and lapis and skies. 

Eyes that rested dull in their half-closed lids. 

It was him. It was Satoru. Satoru gutted and dead. 

Suguru doesn’t register falling to his knees. He doesn’t register pulling the corpse up to his chest, heavy even when his friend had been always so light with joy. He just remembered feeling numb as his very soul was torn from him, his breath was sucked out of his lungs faster and more painful than any hit could ever be. 

He remembered that he didn’t scream, a scream was too small to encompass what he felt. 

All he remembered was letting out a broken whimper, a half sob that tore at his throat and ripped through his chest like a thousand razors. It made him dizzy, it made all the air escape his lungs leaving him only with pain as reality crushed him. 

“No-” 

He cupped Satoru’s face. He ran his fingers across still-warm flesh, through dirty air that snagged against his knuckles, and down a still unmoving throat as his palm was dyed scarlet.

“No. Please.” He shook Satoru as if to try and wake him up. It didn’t work. He was a puppet with its soul gone and strings cut. A shell that would only rot. 

“Please! Please no!” 

Suguru was shaking as he slowly began to rock, as he cradled the limp body of his friend closer to him, as he tried to envelop and shield him from the world far too late. He was crying and trembling as he slowly, carefully, pressed his lips to the still sweat-damp forehead with as much reverence and desperation as a sinner did to a god, begging for mercy. 

And like a sinner, he wasn’t answered. Satoru was dead, and he was what was left. 

Despite the misery swirling within him, the spark of anger caught in a low flame, something that made him writhe and smolder like wet paper as his fists clenched in blood-soaked fabric. 

“Fuck you.” His voice was hoarse. It was damning. “Fuck you, Satoru. Fuck you for leaving me behind.”

The words poured out of him. They couldn’t be stopped. 

“Fuck you for promising you would stay.” 

There were consequences to words like that. He hadn’t been thinking. He hadn’t cared. He was grieving and angry and alone in this world. 

“You said we’re the strongest but how can we be the strongest when you’re dead? When I failed? You said we would go through this together, you said you would stay with me. Fuck you. Fuck you, fuck you fuck you, Satoru Gojo. Fuck you for making me believe we could have had it all.” 

If possible, he pressed ever closer. He wanted to combine their bodies and never let go. He wanted to consume Satoru so that he could carve a place among his bones and never let go.

“Fuck you for making me love you and for not being able to say it.” 

He didn’t move for a long time. 

It took even longer for people to find him. If they hadn’t, Suguru would have been content to rot away here with Satoru. But people found him, they called others and they stepped forward, they tried to intervene. 

There were hands on him, familiar hands that he can’t recognize as he desperately tried to cling onto the corpse, fingernails pulling away scraps of cloth as the body was torn away and he was held back. He couldn’t hear clearly, the buzzing in his ears hadn’t left, but he dully recognized his own voice, screaming out at last. 

Finally, a sharp pain in his neck formed him to slump, forcing his eyelids to slowly droop down as he could only watch Satoru be wrapped in a white sheet. His eyes were wet again. He wasn’t conscious long enough to see if someone would wipe his tears away again or if they would chastise him for being an idiot who loved as deeply and intensely as he breathed. 

Someone didn’t have to. Suguru already did that to himself because yes, Suguru Geto loved Satoru Gojo like the sun loved the moon. Eternally, impossibly, and unreachably all because it was too late now.  

…

The white tiled ceiling and the smell of antiseptic greeted him. 

Suguru blinked his eyes open but he didn’t move, not for a moment. His body felt like lead. He couldn’t move it. If he moved it, he would feel the dried blood sticking to him. The blood of his friend stuck to him. 

It had happened. It was real. Satoru was gone. 

“Oh.” Someone shifted beside him. With great effort, Suguru turned his head. 

Shoko was sitting up in her chair, rubbing her eyes as if to get the sleep out of them but he could see how red they were. Their gazes connected. The air was heavy between them, empty without someone else. 

“Where is he?” Shoko didn’t need to ask who he was referring to. She pointed at the joining door. 

Morgue. 

Suguru let his gaze go back to the ceiling. He felt hollow. 

“What happened?” Shoko didn’t sound tentative, she sounded flat, like him, but he didn’t have chronic apathy. 

“Do you have a cigarette?” She dug one out without saying a word about how they were technically in a hospital. Such silly things didn’t matter now. 

One spark and the paper caught flame. The familiar acrid stench of nicotine filled the air as Suguru for a moment just let it burn down. The ache of smoke filled his lungs and made him feel alive. For the first time, he didn’t like it. Shoko took the cigarette from his fingers when he offered it to her. 

“There was a man, he didn’t have any cursed energy, he was there and waited until Satoru lowered Infinity. He stabbed him.” 

“A stab wound doesn’t make injuries like that.” 

“No, of course that didn’t kill Satoru, why would something so small do that?” He took the cigarette back. He breathed it in again. Alive alive alive. “He said he would handle it, that it would be okay, and that I should take Riko -the plasma star vessel- and go. I did.” 

“Did she make it?” 

“In what way?” 

“To the merger.” Shoko took the cigarette again. Suguru shook his head in minuscully as she offered it back to him. 

“No.” Suguru swallowed. “Dead. Right in front of me.” 

What they didn’t know was that if Riko wouldn’t be dead, the merger wouldn’t have happened anyway. Same outcome but with every different legacies, one with a happy girl and another one with a body.

“We didn’t find her corpse.” 

A legacy with a body and no funeral.

“The man was a mercenary, he probably took her for evidence.” Suguru lifted an arm, draping it across his eyes to block everything out. 

“God- this was all for nothing. All this loss for nothing.” Shoko didn’t answer him. She focused on finishing the cigarette. Suguru heard her drop the spent bud to the ground, the sound of her heel grinding what remained of it to dust filling the air with the feeling of dull resignation. 

“I healed you.” Of course she did, that was her job, that was what she was able to do. She wasn’t able to heal a body when it died from rapid blood loss, she wasn't able to bring back the dead, but she was able to heal him.

“What time is it?” 

“Seven thirty at night.” 

“Where are the others.” 

“Away.” 

“Do they know?” 

“Not all of them. Not yet.” The they will at the end of that sentence was passed on silently. 

Slowly, Suguru sat up, the slightly blurry world coming more into focus as the last of the tranquilizer wore off. There was an IV in his arm and he was wearing a new uniform shirt, his other surely in shreds from when it had been ripped away when Shoko had needed to reach his wounds. 

Suguru turned to sit at the edge of his bed, elbows against his knees as he hunched over. He felt hollow. He could feel Shoko’s eyes on him. He waited. He didn’t have to wait long. 

“I know what you’re going to do.” She sounded pained, emotion finally piercing through that veil of indifference. “Don’t do it.” 

Sucuru scoffed. It wasn’t kind, he didn’t have the energy to make it kind. 

“You don’t know what I’m thinking.” 

“Yes, I do. You’re going to go out again. You're going to try and find him and if you do, you’ll lose again. You’ll die.” Her eyes burned, and so did her voice with sudden intensity. Suguru flinched as her hands grabbed his arm, squeezing it hard enough to leave bruises. 

“You’ll die and I’ll be left here alone. Don’t throw your life away when Satoru died for you to succeed.” 

“Well, I didn’t succeed. I failed, Shoko, I fucking failed and he’s gone.”

“And you will again.” 

“Then so fucking be it.” 

His face snapped to the side. 

He swung his head back again, mouth half open as one of his hands came up to cradle his stinging pink cheek. Shoko was standing now, hand still half raised from where she had slapped him. His eyes were bright with anger and tears and betrayal. 

“You’re not the only one who is suffering now. He was my friend too, my best friend, and you are the only one left now! Don’t fucking do that to me, don’t leave me alone! Don’t kill yourself because he’s gone and you failed, it would have happened one day or another! We fuck up! We fail! He fucking dies and he won’t be the last so don’t drown yourself now when there are people who still need you!” 

It sounded so eerily familiar. It made Suguru feel like there was a stone in his chest again, sinking deeper and deeper into him. 

“Go away, Shoko.” 

“Fuck you, Geto. Fuck. You.” She stormed out of the room, the door slamming behind her with an impressive boom. Suguru let his head fall into his hands. 

She was going to tell Yaga what he was going to do. She was going to have him under watch so that he couldn’t do something incredibly desperate and stupid. He had to be gone before she came back. 

The IV bled as he pulled it out but he didn’t feel it. He didn’t even have time to wrap it up, to change out of the rest of his dirty clothes, he just stood up and began walking. 

He only paused at one of the tables where a flashlight was. He recognized it as Shoko’s, the one she used when she looked at wounds to see if there was debris in it before she could begin to heal. It was a small thing but it was more powerful than it looked. He pocketed it before going through the sterile door. 

There was no one in the halls to stop him, they were all busy with their own things. It was just Suguru and his thoughts now. 

You were always temporary. Monsters like him can never be chained down to mere humans, he would have gone one way or the other, power and loneliness go hand in hand for a reason. 

This is easier on both of you, you’ll see that one day.

Dead men can’t touch me no matter how powerful they were. And I think we can both see you can’t either.

Next time we meet, I’ll kill you, shikigami or not. Don’t follow me if you know what’s good for you.

Satoru might not be able to, but he would try. He would try and he didn’t care if it would kill him. 

The curse he summoned was a small slip of a thing, a curious mixture of fly and rat that would have been naturally crushed in the order of things as the wheel of life turned, but as much as it was weak, it was invaluable for a different reason, tracking. 

“Find it.” Suguru offered the curse the bits of the man’s worm spirit he had pulled away from it. It was almost nothing, a few fragments but as the curse consumed them, its head jerked up. It began to fly, not fast, but quick enough that it didn’t lag behind as Suguru walked. 

He followed the curse outside of the school barrier limit, down the empty dimly lit streets as it tried to track down the man. Suguru waited patiently. If there was one thing he had now, it was time. 

In his pocket, his phone buzzed. He reached to turn it off without checking who was trying to reach him. He needed to be alone now. 

As he walked, the last of the daylight above him faded and night settled over the city like a deep blanket, needle pricked as the stars shone softly through from above. There was no moon to light his way, the new moon nothing but a faint glowing circle above him, even that dead set on making his life as difficult as possible. 

The flashlight flickered for a moment when he turned it on, but it was enough for him to see his surroundings and where to step so as to not trip in the alleys that he was led through, the curse above still tracking diligently, its ugly buy eyes big as it followed the invisible trail. 

He didn’t know how much time had passed, but it was enough that the sky was completely black when finally, the curse stopped. It hovered body still. Suguru tilted his head at it. Its eyes were still twitching, attentive, as were the little clawed feet, but its body was frozen. Survival instinct, it sensed something bigger ahead that even usurped Suguru’s control. 

Even the sorcerer could feel it, if only vaguely. His heart beat a little faster, his hair stood on end as a breeze brushed his hair from the dark alley ahead. It smelled faintly of rust and something much more sour. Fear. 

“Okay.” He called it back, melting the body into shadows again with a wave. It had done its job, he was close enough. Now completely alone, Suguru took in a breath. He stared down the nothingness of the void ahead. There was danger there. There was something big. 

“Okay,” He said to himself, clicking the flashlight to its highest setting. “Okay.” 

He stepped forward. He might not be able to step back. He stepped forward anyway. 

Anything for Satoru.

... 

It was a warm day, the heat just toeing the line between pleasant and muggy, humidity thick in the still air that hung low over the city, forcing people inside buildings rather than out of them where the sun shone periodically through fluffy clouds.

Unlike sane people, they -Satoru, Suguru, Shoko, Nanami, and Haibara- were all out. It wasn’t ideal, but the days when they all didn’t have missions or homework or responsibilities were rare, and every opportunity no matter how unideal the weather would be was one they had to take advantage of. 

But even if they were all off campus together, that didn’t mean that they weren’t unaffected by the heat. For many of them, it was the opposite, their uniform’s long sleeves serving as more of an oven than a relief despite the thin cotton fibers that drove them all to huddle in the shade. 

They were under a bridge, slightly detached from the rest of the city, gathered on the slab of concrete that was slightly cracked from wear and erosion from the creek that ran nearby. Even with the less-than-perfect conditions, the bubbling waters created a little bubble of privacy for them to lounge in, the faint sounds of cars and pedestrians far off and almost drowned out completely. 

Suguru was slumped against one of the concrete pillars of the bridge, eyes closed against the still bright light all around him. His body felt both pleasantly warm and heavy, the things combining to make him sleepy despite it being midday. He wasn’t the only one who was feeling the effects of the weather either. 

Satoru was laying on the concrete, long body stretched out languidly with his head resting in Suguru’s lap, his vivid eyes closed underneath his glasses as if he was asleep. 

The others were nearby, less than a handful of meters but they were busied among themselves. They had all learned one way or another to let the two do their things alone in their little world. From the sound of it, today Shoko and Haibara were trying to goad Nanami into playing some game, their voices and laughter somehow muffled despite the short distance between them. 

In his lap, Satoru shifted. Suguru opened his eyes, his head coming off of the pillar to look down at his friend. Satoru had his eyes open too, peering up keenly past his glasses that had slid down his nose at some point up at Suguru. 

“Hi,” He said stupidly. Suguru couldn’t help but laugh dryly, a puff of air coming out which only made Satoru smile softly. There was something tender in his eyes. 

“Hi,” Suguru said, picking up one of his hands off the ground to run it through the pristine white hair, fingers combining out knots that weren’t there. 

Satoru’s smile widened slightly, his eyes slipping shut again as he melted into the touch, almost unnoticeable strains of tension loosening from his shoulders as if Suguru had washed them all away with a single touch. 

At this moment, Suguru allowed himself to stare unabashedly down at Satoru, taking in his content state and unfurrowed face. Unknowingly, a soft smile of his own curved his lips up.

How could someone be so perfect? 

“Who wants to get drinks?” As soon as the intimate moment had come, it was gone. 

Satoru’s eyes blinked open, suddenly very alert and interested as he struggled to sit up, long limbs flailing inelegantly. Suguru helped push him to his feet leaving him with most of his dignity intact. 

“Me!” 

Shoko rolled her eyes but she was smiling as Satoru collected the drink orders one by one, uncharacteristically helpful because of the promise of sugar and free range of whatever lone vending machine was nearby. 

“Peach tea?” It wasn't so much a question as it was a statement, Satoru’s head slightly tilted as he looked down at Suguru. 

“Yeah.” 

“Great.” The teen lingered for a moment, eyes roving as if he was looking at something just past the bridge pillar. Suguru turned his head, confused. That, however, was exactly what Satoru wanted. 

Satoru caught hold of Suguru’s hair tie as the other turned away, pulling it out so quickly and painlessly that it took a moment for the other to realize what had just happened as his thick dark hair tumbled freely down over his shoulders. 

“Satoru!” He lunged for him but he was too late, Satoru was already dancing out of the way with a smile on his face like a cat that got its cream. 

“Too late!” Satoru flicked the hair tie at him, the rubber band hitting his chest lightly before falling again into his lap. By the time Suguru had picked it up and put it on his wrist again, Satoru was out of sight, surely still smug from his surprise victory. 

Suguru sighed to himself as he ran his fingers through his hair, trying to comb out the dent that had been made from it being up for so long, but he couldn’t help but smile also. Classic Satoru. 

“He adores you.” Shoko was looking at him, attentive for the first time in the day. Suguru sighed again, fingers continuing to comb through his hair. He was still smiling.  

“I know.” Shoko shot him another look. 

“Are you two ever going to talk about it?” Suguru laughed. 

“No.” 

They knew this was… something, but they would rather face a hundred curses than talk about it. Better to die a normal death rather than one born from… this because if they talked about it, it would mean this was something serious, something with consequences. 

It was scary. 

They were too young to put such big feelings into words correctly, they would just mess something up if they tried. And even if they could put the right words in the right order, what then? Things moved fast when they lived the lives of sorcerers, there would be so many questions, so many open ends if they acknowledged this as something big and real and alive. 

So they stayed silent. Silent and content. 

When Satoru returned, drinks in hand, he handed everyone what they wanted before sinking down next to Suguru. He opened the can before handing it over, their fingers brushing as Suguru took the drink from him. Satoru smiled at him again, that tender smile with his eyes peeking out from behind his glasses again like the sun peeking out from behind the cloud. 

“No thank you?” 

Suguru smiled, cocking his head in a way that made his hair fall in a dark curtain that he knew the other liked. He saw the way Satoru’s azure eyes tracked the sway of his hair, the way the gaze moved his face and dipped down to stare at his lips. 

Suguru leaned forward, kissing Satoru on the cheek, the sound soft but loud between them. 

“Happy?” The other teen’s smile turned into a full beaming grin. His cheeks were flushed with just the lightest shade of pink. He raised his drink as if to try and hide behind it. 

“Yeah.” 

They drank their drinks in silence while listening to the others and didn’t talk about it. 

…

The air became thicker and thicker with the smell of blood and fear as Suguru moves further into the darkness, the bobbing beam of his flashlight his one source of light in the alley. It isn’t long until he finds the source of the stench. 

The first thing he finds is an arm. He recognizes the arm, its muscles and scars characteristic even in death. It is curled around a blade uselessly, fingers still tight around the weapon as if it would have been any of use against whatever had done this. 

The arm was from the man, the same arm and hand that had both cut him and soothed his tears all at once before. It had been torn off, which was clear, but it is not that or the bright pool of blood that it lay in that scared Suguru. It isn’t even the burning vermillion streeks splattering the ground and walls alike like thrown paint that scared him, god knows how much blood he has seen just recently.

No, it is the fact that something had the power to do that that scared him. Something had the strength and size to overpower someone like the man so oppressively that the scene was a slaughter rather than one of a fight. 

What scares Suguru most of all is that it was still here, lurking. There are curse residuals scattered among the blood. All Suguru can from them however was anger. Overwhelming anger. 

It is waiting for something. Someone.

Suguru steps over the arm, feet quiet against the ground as slowly, he steps closer, flashlight focused on the ground to make sure he doesn’t leave bloodied footprints behind him. 

It wasn’t long before he found more desecration. 

Blood is spattered like it has been thrown by a vile artist, chunks of flesh, and cloth that are ripped to shreds decorating the ground like confetti in some places, chewed up and spit out again. 

Suguru has to swallow down bile as he steps over something that might have been half of a rib cage, skin and organs and viscera dragged along with it to rot on the ground.  

The smell of death is eye-watering as finally, the narrow alley ends. A warehouse door comes into view, industrial and cold as it is lit by Suguru’s flashlight. 

It too wasn’t unscathed, the walls were dented in places, red busting out from the dents like flowers in full bloom. Something had been smashed into the walls by something much much bigger. 

Suguru would bet the entirety of his savings that it had been the man who had been thrown around like a rag doll, as far-fetched as the idea seemed in his mind. 

The door to the warehouse has been knocked open by something so that it rested still halfway closed, but it is just open enough for the sorcerer to almost see inside. There is no light in the warehouse, but Suguru with his flashlight could see all he needed to as horror rose in him.  

Wrigging, halfway out of the warehouse is a worm curse -it is the worm curse-, purple and bloated and repulsive. It’s making whimpering sounds, sounds that are both high and low at once but fully pathetic as it struggles towards the light. 

“Mother…” The word is strained, desperate. Suguru recoils in horror, stepping back on reflex. It is talking to him. It is begging him for help. 

The worm struggles closer. It whines more, pitiful like an ugly child. 

 “Mother. Mother, please-“ 

Something dark and fast darts out of the darkness of the warehouse, something so fast Suguru can’t register what it is before it is gripping the spirit, ribbon-like appendages strangling the curse as it is dragged backward into the warehouse. The sound of a high warbled scream of fear is ended quickly as there is a ripping noise, then a dull splatter. 

Suguru presses against the wall, eyes wide and hands shaking. 

He can feel it now. He can feel it fully. 

There is something bigger, a curse far more powerful and dangerous than any he had ever seen before. Its presence fills the air and takes every inch of space in the alley as the foreign feeling of sadistic pleasure washes over Suguru.

It is satisfied. It is triumphant. It is happy.  

If it knew he was there, it didn’t let him know, but then again, this is a special grade, something far, far above any special grade ever seen before in living memory, of course it knows. It is playing with him. 

Suguru tries to breathe through the iron stench and his own suffocating fear. 

This is a new curse, so much is clear, there had been no reports of such a thing in the past. Even with this fact, Suguru can’t help but linger on the residuals, turning them over and over again in his mind because they seem familiar. Familiar but far more twisted than anything they reminded him of. 

“Su-gu-ru.” A voice comes out of the darkness silky like water yet lacking the dimension the word should have had. The syllables are spoken on empty lungs, on dead lungs, each sound being turned in its mouth like it is testing how his name felt on its tongue. 

But it isn’t mocking. Suguru’s heart jumps into his throat. 

It doesn’t sound mocking, it doesn’t sound anything like any curse he had seen before. It sounded like it is cooing, like it is calling him like one would a cat, waiting for it to come to you rather than the other way around so as to not scare such a fragile creature away. 

Suguru gripped the flashlight. He set his jaw. 

There was only one thing he could do. He is the only person left who had a chance of facing such a curse, he is the only special grade the school had. It was either him or it would be Shoko or Nanami or Haibara. 

He forces himself to move forward, limbs stiff and flashlight beam wavering. It almost doesn’t feel real as he grips the steel door with one hand and forces it to swing fully open, flashlight pointing into the darkness. 

Suguru doesn’t drop the flashlight but it was a near thing. His blood goes cold, disbelief and horror crawling up his spine as one as he looks at the dark form that blanketed the warehouse. 

It doesn’t look solid, instead always shifting like sand being poured from one hand to another. Never the same. Always moving. But the sorcerer could catch glimpses of what it might be from one second to another.  

It is black but without a true form. It looks almost as if the night sky with all its stars has manifested in front of him, nearly iridescent in the dim beam of the flashlight as it moves and wavers. 

It is a cloud, a billowing curtain of cloth within a deep body of water, floating in an eerie bundle as it rippled softly in the air, a force manifested in something half-physical. 

It is serpentine with a thick powerful body. It has scales like jewels glinting like the darkest hard-cut diamonds and sapphires, winding through the air with all the ease and elegance of a lounging predator. 

It has frills, ribbons, and clawed feet. It is made up of a thousand shades of black all twining together to create a great dragon, wingless but flying without a care in the world, coiled and poised all at once. 

It has fins, flared like silk in the wind, the features of a predator folded into something softer, something like a fish of beauty and might. Suguru doesn’t know how a beta fish somehow fits into this amalgamation of wrongness and unholiness, but out of all the half-forms, this one seems the most true. 

The spirit takes the form of something that isn’t quite mass, cloud, serpent, dragon, or fish, but instead a mixture of them all. It is a mixture of everything and nothing at the same time but all the same, it is focused on him. 

Suguru can only stare as the fins-ribbons-frills-curtains of night billow out more, and one by one all along its body, eyes blinked open. Bright and glowing as like the breaking of a wave they all opened, thin slits of cerulean in the backdrop of black that once might have been stars opening into irises and pupils. 

Eyes fill the air, fill it until it was bursting with their amount and presence, hundreds- thousands of eyes all blinking at him, looking at him, recognizing him. 

And Suguru looks back. 

He can’t look away from something so horrifyingly destructively beautiful. He can only look away when finally, he recognizes it. Some of it. 

He recognizes that cerulean color. He recognizes the curse signature which has never been so wrong before. 

His breath catches in his chest as a voice fills the quiet night air, thin and cracked as they were spoken with empty lungs in a void of his own creation. 

“Su-gu-ru.” The name is murmured. It is spoken with something that no curse should ever have the capacity to experience. 

It clicked. 

“Su-gu-ru.” 

“What-“ His voice is a whisper on the wind. Fragile. “What is this.” 

“Suguru.” It is so familiar. It is wrong. So wrong. So familiar. 

“No.” Suguru turns away. He turns to walk away because he can’t deal with this. He couldn’t fucking deal with this. 

“Suguru. Suguru wait.” It moves, warping through too much space all at once until it is in front of him, filling the alley like an omniscient cloud, still using that sickly sweet familiar tone. 

“Get out of the way.” The sorcerer’s fists is clenched. He is shaking. He can’t stop shaking. 

“Suguru, it’s me. It’s me.” 

“You’re not him! This- this is a trick. This isn’t real.” 

“I’m here. I’m here, Suguru, it’s me. It’s me.” It twists closer. And then horribly, it shifts again. 

It collapses in on itself, darkness thickening and building in layers until a body is formed, or well, most of it. A familiar head and body emerges and solidifies until color is poured in to fill ghostly features with false life. 

Satoru Gojo is hanging almost upside down in the air, smile almost playful as he looked down at Suguru’s mortified face, glasses dangling off of the tip of his nose. 

“Hi, Suguru,” Satoru said, voice less breathy and dead than before. But it wasn’t right. 

The flashlight clatters out of Suguru’s hand. 

The voice is echoey, like someone is speaking in a large chamber from some great distance. The white hair is tangled like it had never been in life, coarse instead of fine. The eyes are flat, their spark gone leaving only lightless depths. The lips are pale, drained of blood as was the skin. The teeth are stained faintly pink. 

It was wrong. Deeply, deeply wrong. 

Suguru recoils as if he has been hit. He turns and retches as his insides twisted into something beyond pain. Nothing came up but his throat burned as did his eyes. Suguru braces his hands on the wall, looking at the blood-soaked ground, at the wall, anywhere but where that thing is. 

“No.” He sounds pitiful. He sounds like a child. “No.” 

“You crying? Why are you crying Suguru? I’m not dead.” 

“Because this isn’t real!” He whirls around. “This- this wasn’t supposed to happen! Ever! This wasn’t supposed to fucking happen! Jesus Christ- I can’t do this. I can’t do this.” 

He can’t consume his best friend. He can’t. He can’t exorcise him like he did so many others either. He can’t use him like a tool, he won’t. Satoru isn’t a tool, he’s a person. 

But Satoru isn’t a person, not anymore, but he isn’t dead either. 

I wouldn’t do it if it were you. I wouldn’t kill you. I couldn’t ever forgive myself if I did.  

It moves closer. It drops the fake human form and was back to its shapeless shifting mass. Suguru only looks up when it was right in front of him. 

A beta fish is equal parts beauty and violence. They are as gorgeous as they are vicious. 

The males will rip each other to shreds if put in the same enclosure, fighting to the death if they catch another with a glimpse of that beautiful color. The females too will tear the glittering fins off of mates when they don’t agree any longer, leaving a sad lifeless body to float away in the current and their waters clear, untouched by any other of their kind. 

Beta fishes are meant to be alone, isolated from their own kind, but humans are the exception. Humans had cultivated them to be pets in the palm of their hand, and the fish had responded in kind, being bright and friendly where they were aggressive with others. 

And there they were, fish and human, curse and human, something ruthless that would tear everything apart except him, something that looked at him with all those eyes filled with the closest thing a curse could feel to love, what was left of it crystal and sparkling. 

“Suguru.” The voice is softer. It is so achingly familiar. It is so close he could touch it. It would let him. It would let him do horrible things with it. 

I wouldn’t have let them touch you. 

“Suguru.” 

They’d have to get through me first. 

Suguru reaches out. He cups the face of the curse. Its eyes close, one at a time as like in life, it melts into the touch. Suguru doesn’t even try to stem the fresh wave of tears as they pour down his cheeks in the silence, as he simply held what was left of his one and only. 

You’d be the strongest. 

Suguru didn’t want to be the strongest, he just wanted to not be alone. That was all he had ever wanted. 

It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t, not to him, not to Satoru, not to Riko and Shoko or the school or anything. It. Wasn’t. Fair. 

But it was real. This was reality and this is what he had left. The choice was his now. 

Suguru leans forward until his forehead touches the curse. It is warm under his skin. 

“Let’s go home, Satoru.” 

Blue light begins to overtake the shadow, filling the alley with its moon-like glow, but the curse doesn’t writhe or fight against it. It folds itself into the glowing sphere with the elegance of a landing bird, willing and graceful and silent. Never has defeat looked so dignified.

The orb swirls as what it contains moves, a tempered maelstrom of shimmer and life caught within its walls. Suguru holds it for a moment in his palms, looking up at the sky above with its many, many stars. He feels the orb vibrate softly as if the curse inside it was purring or singing. 

“They won’t get you,” Suguru vows, lifting the orb up. “I promise you that.” 

For the first time in his memory, a curse doesn’t taste revolting as he consumes it. It tastes blissfully like nothing, but as it was absorbed within him, as the outer shell broke and the curse was subject to his technique, Suguru feels that there was something different happening. 

It feels like a hole had been dug behind his ribs, a cavity just beneath his lungs and heart and over his stomach. It feels that that space that had somehow been empty for too long was now filled, warm, and almost comforting as Satoru curls up inside of him.  

Suguru presses a hand to his chest and he could almost feel the faint vibrations as if he was really there. He might as well have been because Suguru Geto was as much of Satoru Gojo as the other was of him. 

They were combined. They were whole.