Archive of Our Own

“Suguru.”

“I know, I’m coming.”

“Suguru.”

Suguru looked toward Satoru. He was crouched casually, arms hanging on his knees as he stared down at the ground between his legs. Suguru’s chest twisted somewhat, more than it already was, but he pushed it away for the moment. His own distress was unneeded. It served a broader purpose, if anything, but did not need to be addressed beyond his duty.

“I’m here, Satoru,” he said instead, finally able to swallow the orb in his hand, leaving the courtyard silent. “I’m coming.”

Satoru groaned softly, and his hands came up to bracket each side of his head. His fingers clenched into his hair, locks of white peeking through the gaps in his fingers. Suguru approached from behind, reaching out and pressing a hand in-between his shoulder blades. He knelt just to the side of him.

Satoru turned, eyes shut as he blindly reached out a hand. Suguru caught it, bringing it to his own face. He let it stay there and with the hand not on Satoru’s back, he reached out and touched Satoru’s face. His wrist was pressed close to Satoru’s nose, fingers brushing gently against his temple. Satoru breathed in deeply, and then let it out slow. Touch worked best, when guiding him back from a zone out. Perhaps it had something to do with his infinity. Suguru never really cared all that much to think about it too deeply. Whatever it was, Suguru would do it.

“It’s alright,” Suguru said.

Satoru’s eyelashes fluttered at the sound of his voice and his head tilted further in Suguru’s direction. “Hm,” he hummed, prompting.

“I’m here,” Suguru said again. “It’s over now. It’s just you and me.”

“It’s a lot, Suguru.”

Suguru found that his lips were quirking up. “Satoru,” he murmured.

Satoru leaned further into his hand, and he breathed in deep again. “It’s so much.”

“No,” Suguru said. “It’s just you and I.”

__________

When Suguru turned around to see a large blade sticking out of Satoru’s chest, eyes wide and staring down at the blood-red silver, Suguru thought this was what a zone-out must have felt like to sentinels. Everything was dialed up to ten and also muted. He felt Satoru’s shock as if it was his own, on top of his own panic and shock. He immediately moved to attack whoever had managed to sneak up on Satoru, but Satoru had always been painfully confident, and he shooed Suguru and Amanai on, assuring them that he would handle it.

Despite the wound, Satoru seemed alright. His emotions had already settled, and Suguru could sense that. In that moment, he was more distraught than Satoru.

Satoru looked up and met Suguru’s gaze. His eyes flickered to Amanai and then back, as if reminding him of their duty. For a moment, Suguru hated their duty. He hated everything. Except for Satoru, who was currently dripping blood audibly onto the ground.

As if he’d heard Suguru’s thoughts, Satoru tilted his head, smiled boyishly, and pulled himself off of the blade to turn and engage their assailant.

Suguru sucked breath in through his nose, turned, and fled with Amanai.

Suguru stared up at the distorted ceiling. Everything was a wreck. Things were falling around him. His chest hurt. It was sliced open, as Satoru’s had been, but perhaps a little worse, for the blood that was soaking beneath him was warm and thick and it felt like lying in a shallow pool. He couldn’t feel Satoru. That pain was worse. It overshadowed the gored parts of his body.

The guilt was more debilitating than anything else. He needed to have been better. He should have been more cautious of the fact that someone who was able to sneak up on Satoru could do other things that Satoru never would have encountered before. And after fighting the man himself, Suguru knew that neither of them had ever dreamed up the possibility of meeting a man like that. Especially a non-sorcerer.

It had been idiotic not to have seen it, or at least considered it. He was Satoru’s guide. And he had not guided him in the slightest.

As Suguru lay there, staring up at the still-crumbling ceiling, breath turning shallow, a flicker of something brought some more life into him. It had felt like Satoru. As if he’d been turned offline and had been turned back on again. Whatever it was, it brought Suguru back from a depth that he had not thought he’d be able to come out from. 

Now, as he lay there, a fool’s hope beginning to swell in his ribcage, Suguru began to feel pain. Satoru was alive. He was unsure how, after feeling the absence of him. But he was, and Suguru was alive, too. And his flesh burned from the material of his uniform pressing wet and bloody to his wound.

His breath deepened again, and he blinked a few times, eyes a little clearer.

Satoru was standing over him. His eyes were still that bright blue. He was covered in blood, and his white hair looked pink from how much had seeped into the locks. He was pale, still, and vacant. His eyes, though bright and ever-seeing, looked far away. And his pupils were pinpricks, practically non-existent. Suguru stared at him, breath halted in his chest, unblinking, wondering if it was a hallucination, and then Satoru was gone.

Suguru pushed himself up. He needed to find Satoru. 

__________

Satoru was staring blankly at the table between them. There was food covering every inch of it, in piles of dishes. Their own plates were squished in, and it was just the two of them. Shoko was somewhere, and Suguru and Satoru had invited her, but she’d looked at Suguru like that wouldn’t happen even if Fushiguro Toji came back from the dead to make her. 

Suguru had appreciated it, really. He hadn’t had much time with Satoru since they’d returned. Satoru had explained to Suguru, Shoko, the other students, and the teachers what happened, over and over, and whenever he did, he had an almost crazed look in his eye, talking about what he’d done to blow a hole through Toji. He’d said, over and over, how he deserved it, for doing what he did to Amanai and Suguru. He’d said that he’d awoken through it, and no one would ever be able to best him again.

It was believable. Suguru knew that Satoru had done what he said he did, and he also believed that no one would be able to best Gojo Satoru again. Even still, Suguru found himself wearily eyeing Satoru no matter what he was doing. Nothing had really changed, yet Satoru seemed so different. 

Even sitting at a low table with food laid out for them, an odd way of consoling the two of them for their failed mission, Satoru did not seem like himself. Suguru supposed that being happy and fully his normal self would be somewhat inappropriate, considering the circumstances. It felt wrong to rejoice Amanai’s death. But this was more than a grieving silence. Satoru didn’t seem like he was present at all.

Suguru tried to reach out to the bond, stroking it like a pet in his mind and in his heart, and Satoru did not react. He continued to stare at the table, gaze distant.

“Satoru,” Suguru prompted.

Satoru blinked. He glanced up at Suguru, and a small smile curved up his mouth. His eyes, ever empty these days, were albeit softer. “Suguru.”

“Alright?” He asked.

Satoru nodded, hand reaching out to grab a pair of chopsticks. “I’m just fine, Suguru. Why?”

Suguru stared at him. He opened his mouth to respond, but he wasn’t sure what to say. He closed his mouth and watched Satoru start to load food onto a plate. 

“What about you, Suguru? Are you alright?”

Suguru wasn’t expecting the question. It seemed almost unnecessary to ask. Did it matter? Terrible things had happened, Satoru was acting strangely, and Suguru could do nothing about any of it. He felt as though he should be allowed to grieve. He sucked his teeth lightly. “Of course,” he said mildly. He grabbed his own chopsticks and began piling food on his plate, too.

“Are you certain?” Satoru prodded, though he did not look at him. He was picking up a piece of tuna and putting it into his mouth. He glanced around. “Where’s Shoko?”

Suguru ignored Satoru’s first question. “Not coming.”

Satoru hummed, frowned for only a moment, and then his expression flattened again.

Suguru found himself feeling around the bond as they ate. Satoru felt normal, but also not. He felt normal, but far away. It felt like it did when they were cities apart. But Satoru seemed fine, even the bonded part. Perhaps this was Satoru’s way of grieving. Everyone had different methods, Suguru often heard.

There were flashes of distress that came throughout the day. Suguru felt one as they ate. Satoru did not react, did not reach out, or crawl over to Suguru to receive comfort, the way he used to. If Suguru hadn’t been bonded to him, he didn’t think he or anyone else would have been able to tell. Satoru just tilted his head back and dropped a glob of noodles into his mouth.

After a few minutes of eating, Satoru paused, chewing loudly, and then pulled his sunglasses out of his pocket. He put them on.

Suguru stared at him, chopsticks frozen in the air. “Satoru?”

“Hm?” He asked, looking back down to continue eating.

“Sunglasses?”

Satoru hummed around the large bite of rice in his mouth. “Bright in here,” he explained, muffled from the food.

It wasn’t too bright at all, really. Suguru stared at him. Unthinking, he set his chopsticks down, rounded the table and crouched down beside Satoru. He reached out and slid his hand underneath Satoru’s hair at his forehead. He felt his skin. Satoru blinked at him from behind his glasses, but he did not protest. He leaned into his hand, though he looked confused.

“You’ve never had anything even close to a zone out outside of a fight.” Suguru’s voice sounded tight, even to himself.

Satoru licked his lips, shiny with oil. “I’m not zoning out, Suguru. There’s no need to worry.”

Suguru frowned at him. “It’s really not very bright in here. What else could explain the light sensitivity?”

Satoru shrugged, as if unbothered. “Don’t know. Doesn’t feel like a zone out though. I think I’m ok.”

Suguru wanted to shake him for a moment. “Satoru,” he said, strained.

Satoru smiled a little and reached up to caress Suguru’s face in return. “I'm serious. You know I’d tell you if not.”

That felt as though it’d be true. At least, before Toji. Instead of that, Suguru found himself saying, somewhat in the tone of a challenge, “Promise?”

Satoru’s smile was a bit more mischievous that time, which put Suguru more at ease than anything else. “I promise, Suguru.”

__________

Shoko was standing beside Suguru. They were both watching Satoru spar against the first years. He was having fun, not doing anything particularly serious, yet the entire thing seemed almost depressing in how easy it was for him. It was like not fighting at all, even though everyone else coming at him were gasping with the effort.

Suguru found himself smiling a little anyway, for each time Satoru laughed, things felt good and right.

“What about you?” Shoko asked, as if they’d been having a conversation.

“Huh?” Suguru said, turning to glance at her. “What about me?”

“Satoru has reached his potential. Is there getting any better than the best? But what about you, Suguru?”

Suguru tried not to bristle. He kept himself carefully still. “Are you asking if I will, or if I can?”

Shoko shrugged, fingers twitching, like she wanted to bring them up to her lips. She didn’t have any cigarettes on her at the moment. “Both, I guess.”

Suguru looked back at the sparring match. “I can,” he said, easily enough. “And I will.”

“Ahh,” she said, dragging out the sound. “So what’s the hold up?”

“Jujutsu High is a school for sentinels,” he said, as if that answered anything. He knew that it didn’t. He didn’t want to speak of this with Shoko. He didn’t think she’d understand. She didn’t have a bonded sentinel. And even if she did, she wouldn’t be bonded to the strongest.

“And?” She prompted, unimpressed. “That’s never stopped you before.”

No, it hadn’t. Because at the time, it had been enough. Suguru had been enough.

Satoru was laughing again, more like a giggle, while he watched someone try to poke past his infinity. Suguru wanted to touch him instead. He wanted to reach through and smother his face with his hand until he laughed a little louder, and his eyes regained that depth that had been missing.

“Suguru,” Shoko prompted.

“Do you feel as though there’s something off about Satoru? Ever since…”

Shoko looked over to the sparring, watching Satoru walk forward and propel all the first years back the closer he got. Her lips twitched. “Not particularly. He seems to be acting very normal.”

Was it because they were bonded? Was it because Suguru just knew him best? Was it nothing at all? Suguru did not know, and he didn’t know how to be sure. It seemed even Satoru didn’t know the answer, because every time Suguru had tried to bring it up, Satoru said everything was fine.

“Watch this,” Satoru said loudly. He turned to look at Suguru expectantly.

Suguru met his gaze and nodded at him to go ahead. Satoru held up a hand, and it was like the infinity got so big that it was visible. The hair on the first year’s faces pushed back, their bodies stumbled, and the dust in the air made a dome around him.

Knowing Satoru wanted to be praised, Suguru moved toward them. “Ahh, look at this, Satoru,” he said, a bit sing-song. “How impressive.”

Satoru expanded it a little more. “I’ve been practicing.”

“You plan to launch everyone back until you’ve mastered it?” Suguru asked, voice teasing.

Satoru laughed and did just that. The first years stumbled and fell to the dirt. “Not everyone. Come, look at this.”

Suguru stepped closer, until he was a few feet away from where he saw the dust curling around the dome. “I’m looking.”

Satoru turned to him, eyes bright. He beckoned Suguru closer. “Come on, I said.”

Suguru stepped closer.

“No, closer.”

Suguru sent him an unimpressed look. “You aren’t gonna make a fool of me, Satoru.”

“I won’t,” Satoru insisted. He stepped toward him that time. “I said I’ve been practicing.” He reached out again. “Grab my hand, Suguru.”

Suguru remained unmoving for a moment. Then he lifted his hand, too, and reached out. There was no pulsing resistance to the infinity in the air. He felt a little surprised, and stepped closer. The closer he got, the more surprised he felt. There was nothing. Like it wasn’t there at all.

“I fixed it,” Satoru said.

Suguru looked at him, sure his bewilderment was on his face. His fingers touched Satoru’s palm. Satoru was smiling at him then, and he laced their fingers together.

“I fixed it,” he said again. 

“What do you mean?” Suguru asked, voice a little bit hoarse. “What was there to fix?”

“I fixed it so that when it’s you, whatever shape you press against it, it will drop.”

Suguru stared at him.

Satoru’s smile dimmed somewhat. “What is it?”

Suguru stepped further into the infinity, and he took a moment to feel the way it folded around him. He wanted to be better. How could he be better? He didn’t think he even knew where to begin. He reached out to flick Satoru on the forehead, and Satoru yelped, hand covering that spot on his head. 

Instead of looking bereft, he looked pleased. He smiled at Suguru and squeezed his hand. “It’s better this way, right?” He asked rhetorically. “Even if something were to go wrong, you’d still be able to reach me.”

Suguru felt a pulse of dissatisfied sadness, remembering how he’d already failed Satoru in this way. It didn’t matter if Suguru could talk him out of a zone out. When Satoru was fighting, and when he was fighting someone formidable, Suguru would have to hope that his own curse technique was enough. And, as it had been proven, had not been enough before. Being Satoru’s guide didn’t heal Satoru from knife wounds. Satoru healed Satoru.

__________

They were sitting in front of Satoru’s bed. Satoru was playing a game on his phone, almost too intently, and Suguru was sitting beside him with a book, pretending to read and pretending that he wasn’t glancing over at Satoru every chance he got.

It hadn’t helped Suguru’s dilemma when Satoru had fixed the infinity. If anything, it had made it all worse. What was Satoru fixing it for? The longer things went on, the more Suguru came to realize that Satoru was just simply too strong. What was all this for? What was Satoru’s strength for? What was Suguru’s? They did everything to protect the non-sorcerers, and yet it was a non-sorcerer who had bested him. Satoru thought they were the strongest. There was only one strongest. 

Satoru’s eyes were vague again. Suguru watched them flit over the screen, fingers moving over it just as quickly. Even video games seemed to be easy. Suguru found it a little charming, even though he didn’t smile about it the way he might have before. He glanced back up at Satoru’s face. And terribly, there was a puff of affection there, blooming out of the dirt in his chest. 

He opened his mouth to say Satoru’s name, but he found he’d rather sit in silence. He mouthed it, in order to keep it to himself, and Satoru did not hear. It was alright that he didn’t hear. It must be boring to be the strongest, Suguru thought. And it must be frustrating, for the body to know how much stronger it was than its guide, yet to be so assured in the heart that there was a match.

Suguru wondered what Satoru did all of this for. He supposed he would have no idea how to do anything else, given how he’d been brought up. If anything, perhaps it would be devastating to consider another alternative. But if Fushiguro Toji, a non-sorcerer, could do what he did, then why should they dedicate their lives in this way? Why did Suguru have to sit on Gojo Satoru’s floor at a school for sorcerers, just to die fighting a cursed spirit? Just to watch a girl be shot in the head? What did Fushiguro Toji, the protected, have against the protector?

“Suguru,” Satoru said, not looking up from the screen. “Are you staring at me?”

Suguru looked at his book. “Of course not.”

“You were,” Satoru said easily.

And then, without a warning, Satoru dropped his phone and wrestled Suguru to the floor. Suguru retaliated, but there was something about the way Satoru had manhandled him onto his back that left him feeling eerily helpless. He wasn’t afraid—just weak, compared to Satoru. And Satoru normally let the fight be a little more even. Now, he was not holding back.

He had a smile on his face as he stared down at Suguru, easy, as if not even realizing his own strength, or that he was using it. “Giving up?” He asked, as though Suguru hadn’t tried.

That twisted something foul in that garden Suguru had for Gojo Satoru. “No,” he said, tone even. He didn’t fight anymore though, despite his denial. He stared up at Satoru, and he studied him. Satoru’s eyes were shiny with mischief. But still far, as if he was hanging up above them all on the clouds.

Satoru blinked, and the sun was cutting just right through the window. There were facets to the blue that weren’t always visible and were only noticeable when the sun shined. The skin of his fingers were on the exposed parts of Suguru’s wrists. His hands were oddly cold, where Suguru was warm. He was only a few inches away. And yet, their bond did not sing. Satoru did not seem to notice.

Suguru’s mouth opened on a question before he could consider it. “Do you ever wish you were not bonded?”

Satoru stared at him.

“Do you ever think that not being tied to anyone, utilizing unbonded guides, or helping guides, would make things easier?”

Satoru continued to stare.

“Sentinels and their guides are tied together,” Suguru continued. “Their fates rely on one another. It’s odd, isn’t it, to make two high schoolers bond? Before they even know what they want, or what they believe. To train them, before they even know what it means to protect the weak.”

Satoru seemed to be paling in the yellow sun. “What?”

“It’s just odd,” Suguru said. “We do so many things, before we know what we’re doing. Before we even know if we want it.”

Satoru’s grip was tightening, and his face was frozen. And then, ever expressive, he frowned, and his eyes squinted up, and his mouth twisted with his words. “You don’t want to be bonded?”

Suguru did want to be bonded. To Satoru specifically. Life was very cruel that way. “I do,” he said. “I was just thinking about how we didn’t even really get a choice.”

“But isn’t that fortunate?” Satoru asked, voice rising somewhat. “That we are?”

Now that was not a question Suguru knew the answer to. He didn’t even know how to begin to respond.

“Suguru?” He asked, voice rising even further.

“I wanted this,” Suguru said. “When they first posited it to us. I promise I did.”

“And now you don’t?” Satoru was starting to near a volume that would alert others to their conversation. His grip was painful on Suguru’s wrists. He looked only just short of shaking him. “You want to break it?”

“Satoru,” Suguru said, voice soft. “This isn’t working.”

“What’s not working?” Satoru shouted.

“I can’t do anything for you anymore.” Suguru paused. “There’s no point to this. You’ve had multiple zone outs since you used Hollow Purple. You deal with them on your own. When you’re sensitive, you handle them yourself. You can do what I can’t, and there is no way for me to keep up with you anymore. I couldn’t protect you or Amanai. You had to come back from the dead to finish it.”

Satoru was breathing heavily. His eyes darted all over Suguru’s face, like he had to the game. Suguru could admit he looked significantly more attentive this time. “That doesn’t—this is—different, it’s all different.”

“You and me,” Suguru began, voice low and as gentle as he could make it, “did it work because we were strong, or did it work because it was us?”

Satoru’s mouth parted, and his eyes went blank for a moment, unseeing.

“Our strength no longer matches. And things are different.”

Satoru was blank and still for a few more moments. And then Suguru’s wrists were free. Satoru had his hands fisted in the collar of Suguru’s shirt, and he pulled him up. “Do not leave.”

Suguru blinked.

“I mean it,” he hissed. “You can’t—” He cut himself up and then dropped his head. “I don’t want the bond to be broken. I really, really don’t.”

On the subject of misfortune, Suguru found it unfortunate how innate it was to comfort him. Suguru grabbed his hands and uncurled them from the fabric. He scooted up to sit and he tilted Satoru’s face up. There were tears hanging unshed on his lashes.

“Please,” Satoru said.

Suguru studied him, the way he’d been doing since the moment he met Satoru. And for the first time since Amanai died, Satoru was Satoru. He was all there, in his eyes, in his trembling, and in his tears. And the bond felt full and heavy, the way it used to. And Suguru found that he was full of doubts, even about his own doubt. “Satoru,” he said quietly.

“Please.”

Suguru held his face, and Satoru nuzzled into it, like an instinct. Suguru didn’t want to break the bond. He just wanted things to be different.

“What can I do?” Satoru asked miserably.

“Nothing,” Suguru said, pressing on even after Satoru tensed. “I’m not going to break it and I’m not going to try. I don’t want to.”

Satoru slumped like a puppet cut from his strings. He leaned on Suguru’s chest, and his face tucked into his neck. “You really don’t want to?”

Suguru wrapped his arms around him. He rested his head atop Satoru’s. “I really don’t.”

___________

Suguru, despite his weakness in comparison to Satoru, was still strong. He’d chosen a sorcerer school that was mainly suited for sentinels, for he had always been able to keep up. And he still did. He would always be able to keep up with the sentinels, and he would always be a powerful guide. Yet he needed more. And if he was to be bonded to Gojo Satoru, he would need to be better.

A part of him wished that the decision had been more difficult, so that maybe he would change his mind and pick the option that kept him close to Satoru. But it was a simple decision, for Suguru had always been a fairly simple man. Satoru was strong. Suguru was strong. Suguru needed to be stronger. Jujutsu High could not give that to him. It was an easy equation in the end. If there had been more toil, maybe it would have felt better, when he came to the decision. Instead, even he felt a sort-of callousness from himself in finding the decision so easy.

His teachers understood, and Shoko had understood, too. The only problem had been Satoru.

His reaction wasn’t like it’d been when Suguru had mentioned bond breaking. Which, in hindsight, Suguru could admit hadn’t been the most tactful method of bringing up his concerns. But he also didn’t have much regret for it. It’d been the first time in so long that Satoru had seemed like himself, even if he’d been upset. 

He hated to make Satoru sad. Despite the ease in decision, it didn’t feel good. Very little did, Suguru found. There was no pleasure in anything anymore, and even less when he saw the ways in which sometimes that dissatisfaction seemed to sink into Satoru as well. Or, maybe, it was the other way around. Or both. Or everything else. Suguru was starting to think it was everything else, always, and that he and Satoru were the only things right.

Satoru was staring at him when they sent Suguru off. Shoko was there, but she’d said goodbye already, and so all she did was stare, elbow on the railing, chin in her hand. Satoru was standing closer, at the bottom of the steps. He stared at Suguru, glasses off, eyes piercing across the distance even though he’d been sensitive to light these days, and the sun was shining.

Suguru stared at him, and wished that Satoru understood. It would make things easier, if he did. Since he didn’t seem to get it fully, within the depths of him, Suguru smiled at him and he waved. 

But perhaps some part of Satoru did get it, because as Suguru walked away, he could hear Shoko ask Satoru if he was crying.

__________

Suguru had always envisioned graduating with Satoru and Shoko. It was a distant sort of disappointment. It was the disappointment from his fifteen year old self, looking on at Suguru from his easy, far away place back in his first year. Now that he was older, nearing the end of his third year, and things were different, the disappointment was matured and accepting. It was unfortunate, but true. It was not preferable, but necessary.

He’d only spoken to Satoru a handful of times the first few months he’d been away. And then it had faded to nothing. It didn’t feel like missing a piece of himself, because he’d already gotten used to that feeling back after Amanai was killed. Satoru had felt far away for a long time. This new distance had not added anything different.

Satoru was still there, somewhere deep in that garden. He was buried beneath the earth, rooted so far below the surface that Suguru would never be able to pull out. It was one of the only reliefs he had to spare.

Sometimes there were flashes in the night, when Suguru woke and his heart was pounding so hard it hurt, his breath was quick, and there was a descending panic inside of him. It felt like Satoru when it happened, and he thought that maybe Satoru had woken up that way as well. Suguru would lie there, breathing just as heavily as he was sure Satoru was, and then it would slow, and calm, until everything went back to normal, and Suguru could feel that Satoru was settled again.

Suguru had already asked one of the teachers at his new school if it was possible to develop the ability to be a sentinel that developed the ability to be their own guide. The question was met with an immediate dismissal for the impossibility of it. But none of them had ever met Gojo Satoru.

The months passed the same, and the seasons changed with them. Satoru was buried so deep that the separation was a fading bruise. Suguru had been able to satisfy many intrinsic guide urges, like helping a sentinel reclaim themselves after a zone. It had felt good to be useful again, even though it offered none of the same comforts or feeling of fulfillment. Suguru knew that it would never be that way, unless it was with Satoru, and he knew that it was really out of his hands if he felt it again, even with Satoru.

Something that had changed that Suguru wasn’t sure if he liked more or not was the way the days moved. They shifted through time differently than they used to. It used to be day by passing day, and they used to feel notable, and significant, and the colors seemed brighter. Now, they ran together like murky pond water. Each day was filled with moving pieces, and tasks, and school work, and Suguru knew that he was improving. Yet it felt empty. It felt dark, almost, as though the edges of his vision were gray, and the colors had all lost their vibrance. Nothing seemed quite as purple anymore. Or red, or blue.

Shoko would call sometimes. She would spend the time complaining about how difficult things were for them now that Suguru and Haibara were gone. Suguru would always stare blankly at the wall when she mentioned Haibara. It was the sort of thing that made his ears muffle, the sound completely drowned out of any room or place. Shoko would continue on, as though that was how life was meant to be lived.

“Is it easier,” Suguru had asked once, “to be able to take what you’re given and move forward?”

“No,” she had laughed in response. “Besides, I wouldn’t even know. Everything exists around me, Suguru. There is me and there is the world. And people can try all they’d like to give me their reality, but it will never change my own.”

But how was one meant to reconcile something like that, when it seemed so simple, but he was not alone? He was Suguru and he was also Satoru. 

Because it was Satoru, of course, he’d seen it coming from a mile away. Even in his pondering and in his words, he had been so right that it ached, and it ached because the truth he’d spoken was unfortunate indeed.

“We’re so different, Suguru,” Satoru had said, a few weeks after they’d bonded. He had been lying on the grass, spread out with his palms upward to the sky. It had been getting dark, but the air was still a bit warm, and Suguru felt warm even without the lingering summer weather.

Suguru had been sitting on the swing nearby, so he had looked at Satoru and said, idiotically, “So?”

“So,” Satoru had replied, “we’ll disagree sometimes. We’ll disagree so intensely that it might hurt. What then?”

“What then?” Suguru had parroted. “Does it matter? We’ll still be bonded, we’ll still be us, and we’ll still be the strongest.”

Satoru had rolled over and then around, until he ended up on his stomach with blades of grass sticking out of his hair. “Yeah,” he’d said, pleased. “Isn’t that comforting?”

Suguru might have felt more comforted as a third year if he’d taken Satoru’s words a little more seriously. He’d tried Shoko’s method, when he and Satoru had spoken of disagreements in that park two years before. He’d tried, wholeheartedly, to accept that it was him and it was Satoru and then everyone else. If it were that easy, would things be this way now? Suguru did not think so.

__________

It had started when Suguru was on a mission. He was going with a group of first years, a few sentinels and a few guides, and he was overseeing them.The guides were students who, like him, were being specifically trained to be able to bring back zoned out sentinels who didn’t have a guide. Suguru found it to be almost therapeutic, to get through multiple sentinels at a time, and be able to move forward with the mission.

There was no pleasure in guiding when it wasn’t a bonded sentinel, and Suguru knew that would be the case when he left Jujutsu High. At least there was some sort of purpose regardless of pleasure. A purpose that saved sorcerers. 

The first pang had resounded in him while he’d been attending to one of the younger sentinels. It didn’t feel like anything distinct enough to grasp onto. It was a pang of discomfort, of upset, and it came in the form of Satoru. Suguru removed a hand from the sentinel to press it to his own chest. He swallowed in discomfort, prodded at the bond to check on it, and continued to guide the sentinel out of their zone out.

It was gone though. There was nothing left to examine, and it had gone back to normal, where Satoru laid up tucked and cozy inside of Suguru as he always had.

He would have forgotten it if it wasn’t for the fact that one of the other guide students had told their teacher about the brief slip, despite the fact that nothing had gone wrong, and they’d completed the mission as if it hadn’t happened at all.

“You faltered, I hear.”

Suguru had his chin in his hand. The classroom was darkening with dusk, and it made the walls look orange. It reminded him of Jujutsu High, in a way. He blinked slowly. “Did I?”

“It was in the student reports.”

Suguru contemplated his response. “Did they say I made a mistake? Or that it caused a problem?”

“No.”

Suguru hummed and then he smiled. “I didn’t falter.”

“Was it Gojo Satoru?”

There was an odd sort of possessiveness that welled up, that desired to keep all of it, to keep them, a secret. He kept his face even and still smiling. Even amongst the desire  to keep it hidden, he also had a desire to share, when asked. Because there was also pride in that garden—Pride in what they’d grown and who they were. Suguru was proud of Satoru. Nothing would change that. “You know that we are bonded. There are times when I feel him. That will never change.”

“And the moment your bond makes you fail?”

Suguru laughed. “I won’t fail.”

“What makes you certain?”

“Satoru and I are the strongest.”

It was true they were the strongest, but it was also true that Suguru would always feel Satoru, and he would always care about it when he did. Part of what he’d been training to do, however, was to be able to do what he set out to do, regardless of all else. And he had been successful thus far, even if he worried at how frequently he was beginning to feel those twinges. 

He’d thought of calling Shoko and asking. He knew that Satoru wouldn’t be honest, even if he asked and coerced Satoru into being honest. He wouldn’t admit to anything being wrong, not anymore. In fact, Suguru didn’t think Satoru had ever had the ability to express what was wrong and then admit to it even if he did.

As Suguru lay in his bed and considered his new life, he felt another twinge. It was oddly comforting to feel Satoru still turning over in his chest. He had been able to be away from him and he’d been able to thrive enough to improve as much as he had, but it hadn’t been without pain and discomfort.

Even if something was wrong, it felt good to feel Satoru.

The twinge lasted longer than it ever had. It was late at night already, late enough that Satoru would be in his room at least. Suguru found himself worrying, even despite the fact that Satoru’s immense level of talent and strength was what put Suguru in this new school to begin with.

Suguru stared at the ceiling and waited for something—anything—to tell him that things were fine. He waited for the feeling to settle back comfortably under the dirt.

But then the feeling grew. And then it lurched, and Suguru’s hand flew to his chest without him thinking about it. His heart fluttered into a quicker pace, breath speeding, as the feeling thrashed.

It lasted, for several minutes, growing worse and worse, until it suddenly went completely blank. It disappeared, as if it’d never happened. It didn’t settle and float back down. It vanished. One moment it was pulsing, the next it was buried again.

Suguru lay in silence. His own body, the parts that were just him, did not feel settled. His eyes were adjusted to the dark, and he stared at the grooves in the wood on the ceiling. His breathing slowed. He settled. He lowered back down to earth and settled back to the place they shared.

He considered calling. He was hyperaware of his phone resting on the table beside his bed. It felt almost like it had a presence with how heavy it was weighing on his mind. And then, as if someone heard him, his phone rang.

Suguru sat up, and there was a quietness in the air, even with the ringing, and it felt somewhat as though it was the deep breath before the bellow.

He answered the call and put the phone up to his ear. It was an unknown number.

“Hello?”

“Geto-san?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Gojo Satoru,” the voice said. The words were breathless and quiet. 

Suguru swallowed. “What about him?”

“Something is wrong,” they whispered. “He’s destroying everything. He’ll flatten it all if he doesn’t stop. It began with him yelling and laughing, and saying things we could hardly understand. The guides tried to help him out of his zone out, and he seemed to calm down. But then it was like he snapped. He started attacking people.”

Suguru began to prickle with an uncomfortable, panic-like heat. “Is he alright?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t think any of us will be unless he calms down.”

Suguru stared at the blanket on his bed. It felt like his gaze could have burned a hole through the threads. “I’m coming.”

__________

Traveling between the schools took an agonizing amount of time. Even with the ability to make the trip quicker by not needing to obey traffic laws or anything of the sort, each minute it took felt agonizingly slow and painful. Suguru, who had spent quite a lot of time practicing how to ignore Satoru, felt him fully.

Satoru didn’t feel like he was fully there. It felt like spending time with someone who was asleep. Their presence was full and heavy, but it was distant and quiet. When they were awake and alert, the presence was different. With a bonded sentinel like Satoru, when he was normal, the presence was unavoidable and loud. Now, Satoru’s presence was unsettling.

Guilt wasn’t a familiar feeling to Suguru. It hadn’t been something he ever really struggled with, until Satoru. And even then, it had been hard for anything to ever go wrong when he and Satoru were involved. It felt irreparable, the guilt. But because his guilt was so tied to Satoru, when Satoru wasn’t around, it had been easier to hide it. When it was just Suguru, it was easy not to feel at all.

When Suguru arrived, he was out of the car and running up the steps before it had come to a complete stop. It was silent at Jujutsu High. There was a general sheen on the air, and Suguru realized it was dust. If Satoru had flattened Jujutsu High and left, Suguru would have known. He could feel that Satoru was close, and it made it worse to know he had stayed, despite the fact that he’d already done so much damage that things were eerily silent.

The typical sound of bugs chirping, or rustling animals in the trees, and the occasional footsteps throughout the campus were absent. There was nothing. 

Suguru made it up to the main courtyard and froze at the top. It wasn’t flattened into nothing, but it was in complete disarray. The buildings were starting to collapse, the stone was dug in as if a giant had gripped onto the earth for balance. Suguru couldn’t see anyone, but the continued silence was more telling than anything else.

But then Suguru caught sight of him.

Satoru was crouched at a ditch of his own making. He was mostly still, but one arm was reaching out, grabbing onto something.

Suguru moved forward before he could really think about it. His feet carried him closer, and as he approached, he saw that the thing Satoru was grabbing was the shirt of a teacher. Suguru couldn’t see who it was. Most of their torso was covered by a pile of wood, stone, and dirt. 

Stopping several meters away, Suguru swallowed. A part of him was weary, but everything else in him wanted to reach out. He’d never seen Satoru like this—so quiet in the face of his own power. And, Suguru thought, Satoru would never do something like this and be alright with it. And if that was true, if Suguru knew Satoru, then whatever version of Satoru this was might have been more unpredictable than was safe.

“Satoru,” Suguru said.

Satoru froze, and his fingers loosened in the fabric of the shirt. He leaned back on his heels. His face was straight, gaze likely pinned on the trees in front of him. 

“Satoru, it’s me.”

Satoru turned his head and stared at him. His eyes were so blue that they almost looked like they were glowing. He hadn’t seen Satoru’s face in so long. It sent a rivulet of wanting through him.

Suguru moved forward, the guide in him, and maybe something else, propelling him beyond his weariness. He crouched next to Satoru and took him in. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his hair was longer, but the rest of him was the same. It made something in Suguru start to hum, like he was a tuning fork that had just been struck. It made him feel more at ease, for if this is what he felt, then it meant he was still looking at Gojo Satoru.

“It’s been a long time,” he managed.

Satoru only continued to stare at him.

Suguru reached out and let his fingers touch Satoru’s cheek. “Focus on me, Satoru. Nothing else.”

Satoru was already staring at him very intently. His eyelids moved as if to blink, but ultimately remained wide open.

“Just my voice,” Suguru went on. “On my hand. Until your vision is a pinprick and I’m in the center.”

Satoru blinked then, slow and owlish. His eyes were vacant, but then they started to look glassy and wet.

Suguru hummed, chest squeezing with the sheen of tears, and then he leaned in. He took up more of Satoru’s field of vision that way. He twisted his hand slightly so that his wrist was closer to Satoru’s nose and his fingers were brushing gently over his cheekbone. “Just me, Satoru.”

“Suguru,” Satoru murmured, lips hardly moving as if his mouth was filled with cotton.

Suguru smiled a little. It’d been a long time since he heard his voice. “There you are.”

Satoru slumped slightly, wilting into Suguru’s hand. He blinked again, even slower. “Suguru.”

Suguru brought his other hand up and held the other side of his face. His skin was somewhat cold, as if he’d been sitting outside for a long time. “Satoru, what are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” Satoru murmured, eyes drooping. “Did I do something?”

Suguru’s small smile turned somewhat tight. “You sure did, baby.”

Satoru blinked his eyes open again, looking insufferably innocent, as though he really did not know. “What did I do, Suguru? I feel like I haven’t seen you in so long.” He paused, and leaned further into Suguru’s hand. “I missed you.”

Suguru’s chest squeezed again. He leaned in fully and pressed their foreheads together. “It has been a long time, hasn’t it?”

Satoru let out a sound, almost like a moan, and he sounded bleary and confused. “It has. I’m so tired. What happened? I can’t remember how I got here.”

“I’m not sure, Satoru,” Suguru murmured back. “I was going to ask you what happened.”

Satoru stared at him, eyes eerily close, and then he pulled back to look at him better. His eyes flickered over Suguru’s face. “You look different. But also the same. Your hair is long.”

Suguru smiled again, more genuine that time. He stroked Satoru’s cheeks. “So is yours. Not as long as mine though.”

Satoru frowned then, and he looked down. There were tears hanging on the bottom of his lashes, and he winced. He flexed his fingers and then looked at them. They were bloody. Suguru had noticed the same time Satoru did. They both froze. Satoru grew tense. “Suguru,” he said, voice very dark. “What did I do?”

“I don’t know, Satoru,” he replied, a little more seriously that time.

“Suguru,” he said, starting to sound more upset. One hand clutched at the material of Suguru’s jacket.

“It’s alright,” Suguru said, when he began to feel twinges of the change in Satoru’s emotions. It was starting to get overwhelming again. “I’ve got you.”

Satoru’s other hand rested on Suguru’s shoulder, as if to keep himself balanced. He looked as though he was dizzy, blinking rapidly as his spine stiffened. “Suguru, how long have I been asleep?”

Suguru frowned. “I don’t—I’m not sure.”

“It has to have been a very long time,” Satoru said, tone growing more upset as he went. “I…your hair is long.”

Suguru blinked at him, and there was a very deep, terrible sinking feeling beginning to grow in his stomach. “Satoru, what’s the last thing you remember?”

Satoru met Suguru’s gaze again. “I am unsure of what was a dream and what was not.”

“What’s the last thing you’re sure wasn’t a dream?”

“When I…” Satoru’s eyes grew vacant again, and it made Suguru shift uncomfortably. “When I saw you on the ground, after Fushiguro Toji—” He cut himself off.

Suguru’s mouth parted, and he stared at Satoru for a long time. He felt like he needed a guide, for he felt as though he was about to spiral. “Satoru,” he eventually choked out.

“What is it, Suguru?” Satoru asked nervously. “Was that very long ago?”

Suguru wasn’t sure what to say. He thought that if he opened his mouth, he might throw up.

“Suguru,” Satoru said urgently. “I remember other things, I just… they feel very far away, like they’re a dream.”

“Like what?”

“Killing Toji. Seeing you alive. Taking Amanai. You telling me we should consider breaking the—our—”

Suguru dropped his head and he stared at the ground between Satoru’s still bent, crouched legs. There’s broken gravel beneath them.

“I remember other things. But it doesn’t feel like me. It feels like I wasn’t in control—like I was watching someone else move my body.”

Suguru’s throat was sore when he swallowed.

“I did things I didn’t like that I was doing. I hated it.”

“How’d you get back?” Suguru asked, voice somewhat hoarse. He lifted his head. “Just now?”

Suguru stared at him very earnestly, and it made Suguru want to tear his own hair out. “You called.”

“But I—” Suguru stopped to take a deep breath. “I’ve spoken to you, calmed you, called for you, since Toji. And that never brought you out? Only now?”

Satoru shrugged, a little helpless and a little desperate, like he was waiting for Suguru to come up with an explanation for the both of them. “I’m not sure, Suguru.”

Suguru continued to stare at him and then eventually, he realized he wouldn’t get an answer there, in the middle of the courtyard, amongst all the rubble. “We’ll figure it out later. For now, we should get back inside, and you should rest.” He pulled back.

Satoru clutched onto one of his hands, the other wrapping at the base of Suguru’s head. He made a strangled, aborted sound of discomfort. “Suguru—”

Suguru put his hands back on Satoru’s face and he stared at him so hard he thought it might rival the gaze of the six eyes. “It’s alright. I’m here.”

Satoru stared at him, breath heavy and quick. “If you let go, I think I’ll go away again.”

Suguru, for the first time in a very long time, felt tears prickle at the back of his eyes. He pushed it down his throat with a firm swallow and kept a hand on Satoru’s face. “I won’t let go, Satoru.”

He stood up and brought Satoru up with him. Satoru didn’t move from where his feet were planted on the ground. He’d gotten taller, too. He had several inches on Suguru now. He wrapped his arms around him and pressed his face into Suguru’s shoulder.

“I did something bad, didn’t I?” Satoru asked quietly, voice muffled.

Suguru felt somewhat afraid to answer. “I don’t really know what you did yet, Satoru. I just got here.”

Satoru was quiet for a moment. “So that part was real? You’ve been gone?”

Suguru’s arms tightened around him. “I’m here now.”

Satoru’s exhale was shaky. “And you’ll stay?”

“I’ll stay,” Suguru said. “Of course I’ll stay.”

Satoru pulled back and he looked at Suguru for a moment longer, and then he let his gaze flicker away. He kept a hand on Suguru’s as he turned around and surveyed the damage. He was stiff.

“It’s alright,” Suguru said. “It’s not your fault.”

“It is,” Satoru said.

“No,” Suguru said sharply. “No.”

Satoru turned back to him with a weak smile. “You let me get away with too much.”

Suguru turned his nose up slightly. “I don’t let you get away with anything. You should know that better than anyone.”

Satoru’s smile was still a bit weak and joyless, but he still smiled nonetheless.

Suguru glanced over at the body on the ground that Satoru had been tugging at. They weren’t breathing, so Suguru pulled them forward.

When they reached the part inside that was still intact with a roof over their head, Suguru caught sight of a breathing teacher. She was new—he didn’t know her name. 

“I’m taking Satoru to his room. Things are fine now.”

Her frown was deep, and her gaze kept flickering between the two of them. Eventually, she nodded. Her hesitance was unsurprising. But she seemed to understand that it wasn’t a request, and there was nothing to oppose. After all, if anyone was going to be able to deal with an unsettled Gojo Satoru, it was his bonded guide.

Satoru’s grip was like iron when they reached his room. They stared at the remains. There was nothing left in tact. It was in complete tatters.

Satoru turned and pulled Suguru further down the hallway.

They reached the end, where Suguru’s room used to be. He’d left it largely as he’d lived in it. His posters were still on the wall, and his uniforms were still inside. It seemed no one had taken anything out, and with the way Satoru’s eyes shifted around, he wondered if Satoru had anything to do with it.

Suguru decided not to mention anything.

They dressed in silence. All the while, one was touching the other. There was nothing there except for a base-like skin hunger, one that Suguru hadn’t even noticed he’d pushed so far away until he felt Satoru’s hand pulling his long hair out of the collar of the shirt he’d put on.

Satoru leaned into him, face in his hair, and arms around his waist. They stood there for several moments, unmoving. Suguru stared at the wall while Satoru held onto him tighter with every passing moment, like he might go away again. The guilt was eating away at Suguru now, worse than before, and it was rotting him. 

He brought Satoru over to the bed and pushed him in. Satoru grabbed after him, one hand still holding Suguru’s, and the other reaching up. When Suguru laid down beside him, Satoru latched onto him, burying into him, and Suguru felt like they were young again. Even through the guilt, he felt like they were just fifteen, freshly bonded, and Satoru newly addicted to the feeling of being settled and his senses at peace at his leisure. 

Suguru remembered how it felt to be so useful, and good, and talented, and important. He remembered how it felt to keep Satoru safe.

Satoru began to shake.

Suguru pulled him in closer so he could wrap both arms around him. “I know,” he said. “It’s alright. You only have to do one thing right now—focus on me.”

Satoru continued to shake, but it slowly began to ebb as his breath began to deepen. He started to sleep, and even though Satoru wasn’t conscious, it still felt like he was completely there. Suguru hadn’t felt so much of Satoru since before Toji had come and since he’d implied that they’d been forced to bond outside of their will.

It was quiet at the school, but after notifying the only conscious teacher he’d seen that Satoru was fine, Suguru began to hear them start to come out during the night. He could hear them shifting through the rubble, looking for the living, and then taking them to doctors.

Suguru couldn’t sleep. No part of him was tired. He felt content to hold onto Satoru—if anything, that was the most comfort he’d felt in almost a year. Even thinking of how long he’d been away had made him want to hold tighter. He felt like he’d just woken up, too. He felt like he’d gone to sleep with Satoru, and now they were both conscious, and worse for it.

Satoru woke frequently through the night. Each time, he was asleep again within minutes, but he always shook until he slept again.

The fourth time he woke, however, he began to cry.

Suguru held the back of his head, and something twisted terribly inside of his chest. “Satoru, what is it?”

“Did you really want to break the bond?”

“No,” Suguru said immediately, mortified. “Of course not.”

“You did before. It’s one of the only things I remember.”

“I didn’t want to,” Suguru said. “I never did.”

“You left,” Satoru said. “After you had to calm me down. You said we wouldn’t break it, and then at the next chance, you left. And you haven’t spoken to me since.”

The guilt again.

“I didn’t know that you were…” Suguru struggled to find the right way to describe it. “I didn’t know you weren’t fully aware of things, after Fushiguro. For me, it felt…”

Satoru pulled back and looked down at him. His lashes looked dark when they were wet.

Suguru stared up at him. The squeezing inside of him turned oddly pleasant. He really loved Satoru. Even regret and failure and guilt held no candle to that. “I kept feeling like I’d lost you. You were very far away. And I didn’t understand that it wasn’t your choice.”

“I’d never choose something without you.”

Suguru swallowed. “I thought so, too. But so much had happened. And I began to think about things I’ve never thought about before. And I still believe the conclusions that I drew. Even if you didn’t agree.”

Satoru frowned down at him.

“And I knew you wouldn’t agree. We have different paths, Satoru.”

Satoru’s frown turned a little crazed, and it was like the air developed static. “What do you mean? Suguru—”

Suguru reached up and held his face. “Satoru. Breathe, it’s alright.”

“I can’t do this without you,” he said. “I can’t be me, the strongest, without you. You saw what happened without you. What’s the point in being the strongest if all I use it for is destroying everything?”

Suguru’s thumbs moved over Satoru’s cheeks. “I’m not asking you to do it without me. I don’t want you to do it without me. I don’t want to do it without you either.”

Satoru stared down at him terribly earnestly again. “Then what do you mean?”

“We can discuss it another time,” Suguru said. He pulled Satoru back down, until Satoru’s face was pressed back into his collar. “For now, all you need to know is that I’m here, and I’m staying. We’ll remain bonded. Always.”

__________

If the teachers knew to look for the two of them in Suguru’s room, they did not make their presence known. Suguru was unsure how they would be addressed. He was unsure if they would be punished, or if it would be counted among the occasional casualties when working with high schooler sentinels. 

Suguru still did not sleep, and even as he held Satoru to his chest, his breath puffing slow and gentle against Suguru’s throat, Suguru thought about how he hated that this was the way things were. He thought about why Satoru had to be in this position in the first place.

When Satoru shifted around, face still in Suguru’s throat, Suguru  found his fingers already strong through Satoru’s hair.

Satoru’s breath deepened once, then twice, and then evened back into a shallow sort of cadence. He was awake, and his lashes were ticklish when he began to blink his eyes open.

“You with me?” Suguru asked, even though he already knew the answer.

Satoru nodded and hummed.

Suguru turned to kiss the crown of Satoru’s head. He let his mouth rest there.

“I feel guilty,” Satoru murmured lowly, voice raspy with disuse. “I don’t want to see what I did.”

Suguru’s other hand came up and rested against Satoru’s face. He stroked him there, too. It felt nice to touch him again. “I know. We can’t lay here forever waiting for them to clean it up.”

Satoru’s next breath was a huff. “What do we do now?”

“What do you mean?” Suguru asked. “About the damage? Or how to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”

“How to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Satoru lifted his head just enough to look down at Suguru. He studied him for a moment. “Did you sleep?”

Suguru smiled.

Satoru rested his face on Suguru’s, nose pressed to his cheek and mouth pressed to his jaw. He stared at him still, blinking in that creepy way he often did. That look always meant one of two things—he was trying to be cute or he was about to showcase so much power that even he understood he was practically a scientific anomaly. 

Suguru squirmed under the weight on his face, but Satoru only rubbed his face in harder, eyes squeezing shut, until Suguru laughed. 

Satoru kissed his cheek then, and then again and again. The bond was thrumming once more, happy in a way it hadn’t been in a long time.

“Are you going to leave again?” Satoru asked, voice a little more serious. “It’s alright if you say yes. I’ll just follow you this time.”

Suguru felt a fondness surge in him. “I don’t know yet. Maybe I’ll go and maybe I’ll stay. If you’re coming with, does it matter either way?”

“Not really,” Satoru said. “Maybe it would have, if it were still ten months ago.”

Suguru sighed and his eyes rolled up to the ceiling. Satoru was right—it would have mattered more back then, where they decided to go.

“Why did you leave?” Satoru asked.

“Several different things began happening,” Suguru said, not meeting his gaze. “I dislike the way things are. I wish that it was not this way. What do we do this for, if there are people like Fushiguro?”

Suguru didn’t have to explain very deeply what he meant. Satoru seemed to understand. He hummed and then rested the side of his head on Suguru’s chest. “I don’t know what the answer is for other people, but I know mine.”

“What’s that, Satoru?”

“I want to.”

Suguru smiled. “That’s good enough for me. Even if I disagree.”

Satoru laughed lightly. “I know.”

It was quiet between them for a few moments. Satoru was tracing idle patterns along Suguru’s arm. 

“What about the other reasons?”

Suguru’s mood soured a little. “I didn’t know how to help you anymore. And that, amongst everything else, made it all feel quite useless.” 

“Why do things have to be useful?” Satoru asked. “Can’t it be useless and good? Can’t it not be worth saving? Why should fruit convince you its sweet? Why should the rain feel good on our face even though it’s meant for the plants and the rivers?”

Suguru was unsure what to say.

“It’s enough of an explanation for you when it comes to me that I should do as I please. Why must you always explain? I don’t need an explanation. I never have. You could tell me that you wanted to kill half the population and I would understand. You could tell me you hated everything that touches the earth from the sky to the core and I would know to the depths of me that you had a good reason, even if you didn’t know it, and even if I didn’t like it. I don’t need to hear it to know that.”

Suguru stared at the ceiling.

“Just tell me what you want, ask for it, and then let me give it to you.”

Suguru didn’t move even as Satoru moved up again to hover over him. He rolled his eyes down to meet Satoru’s gaze. “What’s your excuse, Satoru?”

Satoru blinked at him, suddenly looking lost.

“You say I must not give any thought to my happiness, or my gratification, and yet you give an infinite amount of thought to things that make you unhappy. Why should the strongest have to be good?”

“Because I want to be.” Satoru’s voice was serious.

“Is there only one way to do it? Do you have to be good in such a way that makes you like this? Not yourself?”

Satoru swallowed and he kept Suguru’s stare and then he said, a bit more strongly, a bit more surely, a little bit relieved, and as though it answered every question he had— “You and I are very different.”

The fondness he felt for Gojo Satoru once again unfolded and unfurled like a flower in his chest. Suguru smiled, and found a little bit of relief there, too. “And in that way, we are also painfully similar.”

Satoru leaned down until their foreheads touched. “You’re my best friend.”

Suguru held the nape of Satoru’s neck and pushed up into him. “And you’re mine.”

__________

Even though it had been Satoru who had done everything, it was Suguru they looked at when they questioned what had happened.

Satoru was still the one to answer, back ramrod straight. He was tense, face stoic, and Suguru stood behind him like a shadow. He stood there to keep a hand on his back. Satoru had been nervous that he would go away again. He still didn’t seem to be entirely sure what had happened, but his theory was the only thing they’d be able to give.

Masamichi’s gaze moved over to Satoru. “Do you have an explanation for this?”

Satoru stared at him. “Only a theory, sensei.”

“Well?”

Satoru was so rigid that the muscles in his back felt more like bones. Suguru pressed the tips of his fingers further into Satoru’s back. “My power has exceeded the power of a sentinel,” he said. “I feel that even if sentinels did not exist, my power as a sorcerer would remain the same.”

Suguru’s own gaze moved over to Satoru’s face. At the angle he was at, he could only see Satoru’s cheek and the stretch of his lashes.

“I surpassed it,” he said, “and the sentinel in me became dormant for a while. After I saw Suguru—” He cut himself off.

Suguru thought back to feeling half dead on the ground, and the feeling of Satoru coming back to life, and then wondering if he’d hallucinated Satoru standing over him, staring.

“The sentinel in me was distraught,” he said, voice growing strained. “And that is one of the last things I remember.”

“And what else do you remember?”

Satoru twitched a little. “…Suguru.”

“You remember Suguru.”

Satoru nodded. “I remember some moments, with Suguru. But they’re distant memories. Anything I remember clearly, as if it happened, was with him. The rest I can remember, if I really think about it. But it’s the part of me that isn’t…” He stopped, trailed off, and Suguru could see his cheeks growing pink.

Incredulous, Suguru gaped at him. He didn’t think he’d seen Satoru embarrassed even once.

“That isn’t what?” Masamichi pressed. 

Satoru shifted, and turned a little bit away from Suguru. His pout seemed audible. “Complete.”

Masamichi raised his eyebrows. “So you’re saying it’s Geto’s fault?”

Suguru stiffened at the same time Satoru did. 

“No,” Satoru said, tone growing dark.

“The purpose of a guide, particularly a bonded guide, is to avoid this exact situation.”

Suguru thought about killing him. It was something angry and bitter, and it was like every offense their teacher committed began to flicker through Suguru’s head, like a review of all that he’d done to deserve Suguru’s hatred. People like Masamichi, people who perpetuated this, were just as insufferable as the non-sorcerers they gave their lives to.

Satoru, seemingly knowing what was going through Suguru’s head, shifted forward and mostly in front of Suguru. “If it wasn’t for Suguru, you would likely be dead, sensei, unless you had managed to run away.”

Suguru snorted, and then burst into laughter.

Masamichi stared at Satoru blankly, and then turned the unimpressed stare to Suguru. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Suguru wiped mirth from one of his eyes. “I was becoming more powerful, sensei. A better guide.”

“And will you return?”

“We’re about to graduate,” Suguru said. “I’ll graduate where I am now. Satoru will graduate here.”

“Are you going to break the bond?” Masamichi asked, eyes narrowing and looking doubtful but hopeful, as if the two of them had been the ones to cause him to age.

“No,” Satoru said, reaching back to grasp Suguru’s wrist, as if he would have pulled away. “No, we’ll stay bonded.”

“We’re the strongest,” Suguru commented, a smile on his face that he knew made Masamichi weary.

Satoru turned after Suguru spoke and looked almost incandescently happy, and very much himself. Suguru found himself smiling back. Satoru wrapped his arms around him and rubbed their cheeks together. “Suguru,” he said.

Suguru rubbed his back placatingly and looked to Masamichi, despite Satoru still leaning into him. “Are you going to punish him?” He asked.

Suguru was unsure if there was something on his face that made Masamichi make his expression of exasperation and displeasure, but regardless, he shook his head. “We are prepared for events like this to happen, even if we wish they would not. I might make him write sentences though.”

Suguru felt angry again, for if they wished it wouldn’t be this way, truly, then it did not have to be.

Satoru stilled and turned to look at Masamichi again. “I’m sorry, sensei.”

Masamichi smiled a little, an attempt to be genuine even if tired. “I know. You’re dismissed.”

When they stepped outside, Satoru stopped walking. His hand was in Suguru’s.

“You don’t want to be a jujutsu sorcerer,” he murmured. “I want to be one.”

“I don’t want to spend my days protecting non-sorcerers,” Suguru said. “I hate watching us die for them.”

Satoru nodded a little. “What will you do?”

Suguru sighed, very put-upon, and then squeezed Satoru’s hand. “Protect you, I suppose. It’s the only compromise I can manage.”