Chapter Text
Satoru Gojo has three cigarettes, twenty-seven dollars, and six bullets to his name right now.
Scratch that-- two cigarettes.
He glances in the rearview mirror for the third time in as many minutes, but nothing has changed; Megumi is still sound asleep, tipped half over in the back seat, head cushioned on his ugly stuffed bird. He’s small enough that Satoru is sure that he should technically be in a booster seat, but unfortunately, he hadn't really been thinking ahead when he stole this car.
Satoru's eyes burn. His head throbs. He puffs on his cigarette, watching exit signs emerge from behind a curtain of lushly forested mountains and early morning fog before vanishing behind him. Exit 225 finally materializes and Satoru signals to get off, despite there not being a single other soul on the highway at half-past five in the morning. He's on pure autopilot right now. He can't afford pesky distractions like thoughts.
If he allows himself to ask ‘What the hell am I doing?’ then he'd crumble beneath the weight of the answer.
He couldn't think about it. He couldn't think about anything beyond his next immediate goal, which was to find this random guy in the backwoods of Montana who could supposedly help dig him out of the pile of shit he'd buried himself in. He really hopes Mei Mei's intel is correct-- it was very, very expensive.
Satoru stops at a gas station to top up on coffee and fuel. He also buys a fruit cup for Megumi; the kid probably needs something fresh after three straight days of fast food. With the foodstuffs, he has enough for about half a tank of gas before his cash finally runs out.
Satoru Gojo needs a miracle.
---
The address Mei Mei had given him leads him up and then down a steep mountain road, to a sprawling, rural spread of old houses nestled amongst the trees in the valley. By this point, it's past noon, and Megumi is quiet and broody in the backseat, his DS chiming quietly as he plays.
He didn't blame the kid. It's been a rough week.
2427 Cedar Road. Satoru mumbles this under his breath as he slowly meanders along long stretches of empty road, stopping frequently to consult his map-- a skill he'd allowed to grow quite rusty since the indulgent luxury of GPS. Unfortunately, Satoru had had to ditch anything that could have been tracked back when he'd stolen this car, to throw the agents off his scent at least temporarily. He had no doubt they'd found his phone where he'd stashed it in an Uber, but if luck was on his side, they'd still be scrambling for at least another day or so.
Satoru finds where he took a wrong turn and carefully backtracks towards it. God, if Satoru's old drill sergeant could have seen him now, he'd drop dead from the shame-- twenty-eight years old and struggling with a map.
Ridiculous.
2427 Cedar Road.
2427 Cedar Road.
2427 Cedar Road.
He misses it twice before finding the entrance to the driveway. It winds through a lovely little copse of trees before revealing a quaint little two-story house with a light blue paint job and an ancient brown pickup truck parked in front of the single-car garage. Satoru puts the car in park and sits back in his seat to stare at it for a long moment. He rubs his eyes. He runs his hand through his greasy hair.
“Oh God, what am I doing?” he moans under his breath.
He still doesn’t have an answer. He turns and catches Megumi’s eye.
“Stay in the car for a second, okay?”
“Sure,” Megumi mutters, returning his attention to his DS like he really couldn’t care either way.
He climbs out of the car and makes his way down the flagstone path, and up the creaking porch stairs. There’s a wreath on the front of yellow and white flowers, with a little wooden sign in the middle that says “Welcome” in a looping, artsy font. Nothing about this place seemed to imply that this was a man who frequently worked under the nose of Limitless, that he could help Satoru slip by them as well, but it was his last chance. He didn’t know what he’d do if this didn’t work.
Even if he didn’t trust Mei Mei as far as he could throw her, he did trust her love of money.
Before he can chicken out, he raises his fist and raps on the door.
He hears a small clatter on the other side, the shuffling of his feet.
“Just a sec,” a masculine voice calls through the door. Something in Satoru’s mind flickers, a whisper of familiarity that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
The door opens and the entire world turns upside down. A face that has haunted Satoru’s nightmares for five years suddenly sits in the warm light of day, hale and whole, dressed in a faded band tee and sweatpants.
“Uh...” Satoru attempts. In retrospect, he should have seen that right hook coming.
Pain explodes along Satoru’s jaw and he stumbles back. Fortunately, muscle memory saves him from the next strike, but shock and exhaustion have slowed his reflexes, so the next kick sends Satoru sailing off the porch and onto the path, groaning.
“Wait-- wait-- just hear me out--” Satoru tries to get a word, and then has to roll out of the way from Suguru-- Suguru Geto-- trying to crush his head in.
“Limitless probably thinks they’re pretty damned funny sending you, huh?” Suguru snarls, unrelenting and vicious as Satoru tries and fails to get to his feet. Another kick catches him in the ribs, knocking the breath out of him.
“They-- didn’t send me,” Satoru gasps out. “Please, I’m not--!”
Suguru grabs a fistful of Satoru’s shirt and slams him into the ground. Apparently, whatever he’d been doing in these past ten years hadn’t dulled his skills one bit, a fact that Satoru really shouldn’t be paying attention to when there was the very real possibility that Suguru-- Suguru fucking Geto might actually kill him.
Suguru has a hand around his throat now, a knee on his chest.
“Who knows that I’m here? How many of you are in the area?” Suguru growls. Satoru wheezes as the pressure on his windpipe is relaxed, but only slightly.
“It’s just me--!”
“ Bullshit.”
“I swear! It’s not what you think, I’m not--!”
At that, Suguru laughs, a mean, rough thing in the back of his throat.
“ Right. As if Limitless’s beloved poster child would ever have the guts to--”
Before he can finish his sentence, a rock comes sailing from the right and nails Suguru in the temple with startling accuracy. Suguru curses and the brief moment of distraction allows Satoru the chance he needs to throw Suguru off of him and scramble back. Megumi stands a little way down the path, filled to the brim with all the fury his lanky, nine-year-old body could possibly hold.
“Leave him alone!” he snaps.
Satoru turns back towards Suguru and notices with relief that there’s something other than cold rage on his face and that, at least for the moment, he doesn’t seem intent on killing Satoru anymore. Satoru lets out a huge sigh and flops limply onto the grass.
He hears Suguru let out a very measured breath through his nose.
“Satoru,” he says, “what have you gotten into now?”
Satoru pulls his tinted glasses from the breast pocket of his shirt and slides them over his nose; the morning sun is starting to give him a headache. That, and the whole ‘got punched in the face’ thing. He jerks his thumb towards Megumi.
“ That is Toji Zenin’s son,” he says, and then points to the car, “and that is the shitbox I stole to get him here without Limitless knowing.”
Satoru sits up and props his elbows on his knees to meet Suguru’s gaze solemnly. Suguru’s eyes are flicking between Satoru, Megumi, and the aforementioned shitbox. His shoulders slump and digs his thumb into the space between his brows-- Satoru is delighted to realize that even five years later, he still does it exactly the same.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me...”
“I wish I was.”
Suguru levels him with a hard look for several seconds. He sighs, glances back towards his house, and then seems to resign himself to the absurdity of the situation. Then he stands, brushing the grass from the seat of his pants, and offers a hand to Satoru.
“I think we'll need a drink.”
---
Suguru leads Satoru and Megumi inside.
Suguru’s house smells like cleaning supplies and the lingering scent of maple syrup from whatever he had made for breakfast that morning. The walls are bare and landlord-gray except for a clock that ticks loudly in the silence, and when they all enter the kitchen, Satoru winces at how badly it needs an update. It’s like he just stepped directly back into the 80s-- worn, unpainted cabinets, laminate countertops with the corners peeling up, and hardwood floors that creaked with every step.
Everything about this place screams temporary. A home you didn’t stay in. Satoru rubs the back of his neck uncomfortably.
“Nice place,” he tries. Suguru ignores him. Which is fair.
He flicks his hand at a small breakfast table covered in papers as he opens the fridge. For lack of anything better to do, Satoru sits. Megumi clambers into the seat beside him, rests his arms on the table, and proceeds to attempt to set Suguru on fire with his mind.
Satoru nudges him.
“Quit that,” he whispers.
“He’s an asshole,” Megumi whispers back.
“Hey! Watch your language.”
Megumi continues to mean-mug Suguru. He returns from the fridge with two beers and a box of apple juice. He slides the last one to Megumi before using his lighter to crack both beers and pass one to Satoru. Immediately, Satoru chugs about a third of it, makes a face, and then presses the bottle to the feverish skin on his jaw, already starting to swell and throb.
Despite the hospitality, Suguru’s face is stone cold as he regards them both and takes a conservative sip from his beer. Now that the shock and adrenaline have worn off, Satoru can take in his appearance for the first time; he spies new piercings in his ears, his gauges probably three or four sizes bigger than the last time he saw them. A tattoo on his shoulder peeks out from the sleeve of his shirt. He’s put on weight and bulk, no longer overworked and underfed, no bags under his eyes, his hair long and neatly brushed, but still with that same silly lock of hair framing the left side of his face.
He looks like he’s been doing good. Really, truly good.
“First off,” he starts, pinching the bottle cap between two fingers, folding it in half, and flicking it toward the trash can behind Satoru and Megumi. Satoru doesn’t have to look to know it lands perfectly. “How did you find me?”
“Mei Mei,” Satoru responds, rubbing his temple, and Suguru curses darkly under his breath. “Though to be fair, I didn’t ask her for you. I asked her for someone to help me get this--” he points at Megumi-- “where he needs to be.”
“And where does this--” Suguru jerks his chin-- “need to be?”
“I have a name, you know,” Megumi butts in petulantly. He still hasn’t touched the apple juice, but now his attention is split between glaring at the juice and Suguru.
“Megumi, Suguru, Suguru, Megumi,” Satoru gestures between them and takes another pull from his beer. He chews on his lower lip. “And uh... I’m not... entirely sure, yet.”
Suguru groans low in his throat and tips his head back.
“For God’s sake, Satoru--!”
“I have leads!” Satoru protests. “I just need supplies. Cash, a car, maybe some weapons--”
“Ha, I’m gonna stop you right there-- first off, it’s an extremely bold move to be asking me for favors when I still haven’t decided whether or not I should end this little field trip right here. Secondly, you still haven’t given me a single reason why I should care about some Zenin brat. And lastly, what part of this--” Suguru gestures vaguely around him, at the out-of-date kitchen, at the impermanent home, at all of it, really-- “makes you think that I even can give you any of those, even if I wanted to? I’ve worked pretty fucking hard to escape this, and I’m not risking everything I’ve built without a very, very good reason.”
Suguru leans forward and rests both arms on the table, aiming a sharp look at Satoru that sends chills down his spine.
“So talk, Satoru.”
Satoru purses his lips, before sighing in defeat. He glances down at Megumi, hesitant. Catching on, Suguru redirects his attention to the boy. Megumi flinches at suddenly having all that focus on him, but he doesn’t buckle, lifting his chin defiantly. He gestures over his shoulder towards a doorway on the opposite side of the ride.
“Living room’s that way, kid. Go watch cartoons or something,” he says. Megumi bristles.
“I’m not a baby, you can’t just--!”
“Megumi,” Satoru cuts him off, putting a hand in his hair. “It’ll be alright. This is grown-up talk, now.”
“But--!” Megumi protests, betrayal flashing across his face. Satoru squashes Megumi’s head down a bit, flattening his spiky, dark hair so that it gets in his eyes.
“Not up for debate, bud. Go.”
Megumi lets out a frustrated noise and shoves himself away from the table hard enough to scoot it a few inches.
“You’re so annoying!” he protests before stomping off towards the living room. Suguru and Satoru watch him get halfway, before he pauses, backtracks, and snatches the apple juice off the table.
“You’re both annoying,” he snaps at them before finally vanishing. Satoru can’t help it, a low giggle bubbles up from his chest and he buries his face in his hands helplessly. Everything hurts and he’s beyond exhausted, but something about Megumi grounds him, and makes this entire situation feel more bearable. At the very least, he can’t fall apart completely-- not when Megumi is relying on him.
He lifts his gaze again to find Suguru still watching him, but his expression isn’t as icy. Something somber, almost melancholy, has folded itself into the crease between his eyebrows, in the lines around his mouth.
“It’s a long story,” Satoru says, eyes falling to his drink. His fingers trace shapes in the condensation. Suguru lifts a hand and checks his watch.
“I have until three.”
Two hours. That might be enough. Satoru sighs and shifts more comfortably in the chair. Hell, where did he even start? Toji himself was probably the best option. Satoru sighs.
“So, for the past six months, Toji Zenin has been working with Limitless as a mole. I was put in charge of... managing him.”
Suguru’s jaw works as his eyes visibly flare with anger. He takes another pull from his beer and nods, telling Satoru to continue.
It’s not like Satoru Gojo and Toji Zenin had become friends. Satoru’s body is thick with scars Toji had personally given him in the scuffles they’ve had over the years. Hell, his shoulder still clicks when he reaches too high after the last bout they’d had that had hospitalized Satoru before Toji had suddenly gone underground. That had been about ten years ago.
Then, out of the blue, Toji came to Limitless with the head of one of the Zenin family’s most brutal enforcers in a bag. He came offering information from the inside in exchange for the one thing that the Zenins could never give him-- freedom. A normal life.
He’d cited a woman as his motivation when they’d questioned him, but looking at Megumi, Satoru thinks he understands things a bit more now.
So, over many months spent sitting in dark cars, in cramped offices poring over maps and dossiers, sharing bad beer, and arguing over cigarette brands, eventually there had been something like an understanding-- a realization that neither of them was as free as they wanted to be. A mutual anger they both carried, that they couldn’t afford to indulge in. Different cells, but still the same prison.
Satoru didn’t know him, but he’d like to think that he’d gotten good at reading him; able to recognize the good moods that followed big paydays, and the bad moods that followed interactions with his family.
So over the past several weeks, Satoru knew something was wrong; he could see it in the overflowing ashtrays, the lines under Toji’s eyes, and the snarl in his voice when he spoke. They could only sabotage so many shipments before the Zenins realized that there was a leak, and as one of the family’s top enforcers, Toji was responsible for sniffing them out. The longer he failed, the more severe their punishments got. The last time Satoru spoke to him, his nose was broken, and he’d visibly lost weight, the lines of him growing sharper, more deadly.
He’ll have his reward once the Zenins are taken care of, Limitless kept telling Satoru every time he pressed for them to hold up their end of the bargain, even if he knew, even if he didn’t want to believe that they never had any intention of honoring it. Just one more sting. We’ll have them.
It was supposed to be Toji’s last delivery. The blueprints for the warehouse Limitless wanted to sack in exchange for the witness protection papers Satoru had had in his bag. It was supposed to have taken five minutes. The warehouse they met in was supposed to be empty.
Satoru was supposed to say goodbye, close the case, and never see Toji Zenin again.
And then... Satoru doesn’t even know what happened. One minute, Toji was bumming a cigarette off him and the next--
Carnage. Agents flooding through every access point, Zenin family grunts crashing in and filling the air with the clatter of semi-automatics.
He never figured out who shot Toji. Whether it was Satoru’s allies or Toji’s own, it didn’t matter. To both, he had simply become acceptable collateral.
Satoru had dragged him behind a shipping container and tried his best, but Toji had been torn apart by hollow points. It was a miracle he’d even still been conscious.
Toji pulled a small notebook from the pocket of his pants and pressed it into Satoru’s chest. Satoru would never forget the look on his face-- the rage, and the resignation. The fury and the knowledge that he was never going to get to leave this behind-- that all his goals had been pipe dreams.
All the promises from Limitless, all the power of the Zenin family, and he’d never been anything but a pawn.
“His name is Megumi. Don’t let them...”
He didn’t get to finish.
Most of Toji’s notebook was encrypted, which wasn’t surprising, but there were at least four different kinds of ciphers in here, three of which were almost jokingly easy to crack. These revealed contacts, passwords, bank numbers, and hideout locations for the Zenin family's numerous allies, information that Limitless would have practically salivated for.
The rest were pages and pages of dense text in a cipher that Satoru couldn’t make heads or tails of. Leave it to a man like Toji to leave the important shit practically out in the open, but hide his feelings behind an unscalable brick wall.
In the six days between Toji’s death and Satoru's arrival here, Satoru had found a series of payments made to a CPS officer, in charge of ferrying a child between foster homes. He'd found a dizzying and frankly annoying number of dead ends, misdirections, and coverups, all with the intent on making sure nobody knew where this kid was at any point except Toji.
Satoru would have almost chaulked it up to a money laundering scheme if it hadn't been for the picture tucked so carefully in a handmade pocket in the back:
A woman in a hospital bed, holding a wrinkled, pink potato swaddled in blue that looked so unhappy it couldn’t have been anyone but Megumi. Her face was lined with exhaustion, but she smiled affectionately at whoever was standing behind the camera. It was an old picture, heavily creased from years of being folded over and over again.
As far as Satoru could tell, not even the Zenin family knew about Toji’s son.
And upon meeting Megumi four days ago, Satoru realized that Megumi knew nothing about his father either. Toji had gone to extraordinary lengths to keep those worlds separate. And here they were, colliding at light speed, with Satoru the only barrier between them.
It had taken Satoru forty-six hours to find Megumi. It had taken Limitless forty-six and a half; it would have taken longer if Satoru had been more careful, hadn’t been half-crazed with exhaustion and guilt and a strange, misplaced grief.
Satoru hadn’t been thinking-- isn’t entirely convinced he still isn’t thinking-- but he’d taken Megumi, incapacitated the other two Agents, and ran.
And now he was here.
By the time Satoru finishes, the light in the kitchen has shifted, the beers have been replaced with cans of Coke, and Satoru feels wrung out and on the verge of dropping right then and there. Suguru is holding Toji’s journal, his thumb running over the dried blood on the edges, his expression tense and puzzling.
“So? Where are you taking this kid?” Suguru asks, closing the book and sliding it back to Satoru. He doesn’t take it, instead staring at it blankly.
“I think Megumi’s mother is still alive. In the very back, where I found the picture-- there’s an address.” Suguru raises an eyebrow. Satoru shrugs helplessly. “If she’s evaded the Zenins and Limitless all this time, then that’s the safest place Megumi can be.”
“And if she’s dead? Or in prison? Or--”
“Then I will cross that bridge when I come to it,” Satoru cuts him off irritably. Suguru frowns at him.
“You realize you’re not making a great case for me helping you, right?” he asks.
“Ah-- so you can help me, right?” Satoru countered. Suguru’s frown deepens, his lip curling back slightly. Suguru turns his head away to gaze at something Satoru can’t see, his fingers tapping rhythmically on his Coke. He turns back to Satoru.
“Why now?” he asks without preamble. Satoru blinks.
“... Huh?”
“For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve had your tongue planted on Limitless’s boots. You’ve known what they do long before now. So what’s so special about this kid, huh? Why do you care so much?”
Satoru feels his stomach twist-- those questions are forcing his thoughts very close to the things he’s been trying desperately to avoid for the past several days, things he still doesn’t have answers for. He turns his gaze away from Suguru.
“... It’s the right thing to do,” he mutters. “I wasn’t gonna let them kill a kid.”
Suguru explodes, launching to his feet so fast that the chair tips backward and hits the floor with a bang.
“You have five seconds to stop lying to me or you can go right back where you came from,” he snarls, his eyes blazing. Satoru’s hands ball into fists, his nails biting into his palms.
“I’m not lying, Suguru--”
“ Four, Satoru.”
“I don’t know, okay?! I don’t know why--”
“Three.”
“I don’t, I can’t give you answers that I don’t have!”
“ Two.”
“I DON’T KNOW!” Satoru’s suddenly on his feet as well, hands slamming against the tabletop. “I don’t know why! I don’t know why I can’t stomach the thought of Limitless getting their hands on him. I don’t know why I need this so badly. But I need it, Suguru. I need him to be okay, I can’t--”
Infuriatingly, Satoru feels his eyes start to burn and he turns his gaze to the ceiling, blinking rapidly.
“Please, Suguru. I have no other options. If not for me, then please -- we both know Megumi doesn’t deserve this. That nobody deserves to grow up like we did.”
Suguru’s expression grows pained. Slowly, he turns and picks the chair up, sinking back into it. Satoru collapses as well, putting his head in his hands and balling his fists in his hair until it hurts. After several seconds of silence, he chances a look up at Suguru.
He’s got a hand over his mouth, rubbing back and forth as he frowns at the table, deep in thought. He sighs and checks his watch.
“How much time do you think before they pick up your trail again?” he asks.
“A little over a day or two, max,” Satoru says. Suguru purses his lips and stands, gathering up the empty bottles and cans on the table.
“I need to make some calls. And you need to shower-- you look like shit. Bathroom’s on the right upstairs, towels are in the closet across from it.”
Satoru can only sit in stunned silence for several seconds. He watches Suguru drop everything into a small recycling bin and open a cupboard to pull down a cookbook. He glances over his shoulder at Satoru.
“That wasn’t a joke, by the way. You stink.”
“Jeez, alright-- no need to be a dick about it,” Satoru mutters, pushing himself to his feet as well. He flounders for a moment before turning around and heading back down the hallway they’d come through before; he thought he remembered seeing a set of stairs near the entryway.
In a daze, he finds the linen closet, then the bathroom, then the hot water knob, then the buttons on the clothes he’d been wearing for two days straight now. He stands under the spray of water as hot as he can stand and stares at the blue and white tile in front of his face.
Don’t think about it.
Satoru washes himself with the soap and shampoo he finds, scrubbing off days of sweat and grime from too many days on the road; the drive from New York to Montana wasn’t a short one by any stretch of the imagination.
Don’t think about it.
There’s a knock on the door before it creaks open.
“Clothes. I’ll leave them on the toilet,” Suguru says brusquely.
“Uh-- thanks.”
The door closes again.
Don’t think about it.
Satoru shuts the water off and steps out, toweling himself off. Jeans, boxers, a white t-shirt, and a green flannel sit neatly folded on the toilet, and Satoru dresses. He tries not to think about it. He tries so fucking hard.
But these are Suguru’s clothes. This is Suguru’s house. His hair smells like Suguru’s shampoo. His mouth still tastes like beer from Suguru’s fridge.
It’s Suguru.
Suguru.
Suguru.
Suguru.
Satoru’s stomach rapidly curdles and he flips the toilet open just in time to vomit up everything he’d eaten in the last six hours-- that is, a lot of coffee, some pretzels, and not much else. He spits bile, retching until his stomach hurts and his head throbs.
When he’s reasonably convinced that his stomach is done throwing a fit, he wipes his mouth, flushes, and falls back on his ass, back to the tub, panting. He can’t stop thinking about it-- can’t stop thinking about anything. It wells up in him like poison, drowning him, choking him.
He’d been with Limitless since he was eighteen. And so had his father, and his father’s father, and his father’s father’s father. From the age of ten, his entire life had been planned for him, and as suffocating and miserable and bloody as it had been, Satoru had allowed it. He’d gone along with it, because as horrible as this work was, the consequences for bucking authority had been worse.
It was easier, sometimes, too-- to not have to think. To simply be a weapon that his superiors could point at their enemies. Pull the trigger, to hell with the aftermath.
It was gone, now-- all of it. Now every Agent on the roster would be trying to find him, every Zenin footsoldier hunting him down, because now he had Toji’s son-- and who knows what kind of untold damage that kid could do. Even if he didn’t know anything, even if Toji had made sure of it, they didn’t care. He was a loose end to tie off.
Satoru’s body, once his most reliable tool, trained and honed to a deadly edge, is suddenly betraying him at every level. His vision is blurring, his hands shaking, terrible, involuntary noises leaving his throat that he can’t stop no matter how much he screams at himself to just get it together, you pathetic piece of shit.
He stuffs his knuckles into his mouth to muffle the noise, biting down until his hands stop shaking, until the iron tang of blood spreads over his tongue.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
---
Twenty minutes later, Satoru rummages through Suguru’s fridge and emerges with a carton of strawberries.
“Gotta say, I didn’t take you for an oat milk kind of guy,” Satoru drawls as he leans against the counter and picks the leaves off the berry. Suguru glares at him from the breakfast table where he’s bent over his cookbook, cell phone pressed to his ear. The cookbook, in actuality, contains Suguru’s rolodex of shady contacts.
If Suguru heard him throwing up or noticed the teeth marks on his knuckles, he didn’t comment on it. Not for the first time, Satoru is glad of his documented medical excuse for wearing tinted glasses indoors. Suguru seems intent on ignoring him, focused instead on whoever he’s talking to.
Satoru shrugs and heads into the living room to find Megumi sitting on the floor in front of the TV, curled around a pillow and glowering at an episode of Spongebob. The living room is dated in the same way the kitchen is, with green carpet and wallpaper peeling at the edges, nicotine stains on the ceiling, and an AC unit rattling in the window. It makes the modern additions like the couch, the TV, and the bookshelf in the corner stand out like sore thumbs.
“Hey, kid,” Satoru says gently, sitting down next to him. He offers the carton. “Strawberry?”
Reluctantly, Megumi uncurls from around the pillow and picks out the biggest strawberry in the carton, picking the leaves off one by one, glaring at it like the fruit had somehow personally wronged him.
“Don’t call me kid,” he mutters. Satoru purses his lips.
“Sorry. Are you, uh...” Satoru rubs the back of his neck. “Are you doing okay?”
“Oh, it’s great,” Megumi says, shrugging. “Driving across the whole world with a weirdo I barely know, no idea where I’m going, sitting in a stranger’s house watching fucking old people cartoons because apparently he doesn’t even have Netflix.”
Satoru winces.
“Seriously, where did you learn that kind of language?” he asks.
“Your mom.”
Okay. Satoru kinda walked into that one. Megumi takes another strawberry. Satoru watches Spongebob.
Old people cartoons. Out of everything he said, that one stung the worst.
“Well, you're taking this remarkably well. You're a tough guy, Megumi,” Satoru says, knuckling his shoulder gently. Megumi scoffs, batting away Satoru's hand.
“You're not the first,” Megumi scoffs, an aged bitterness in his tone that doesn't belong in someone not even out of their first decade yet. “Just dump me somewhere with better TV, okay?”
With that, Megumi stands up and storms out of the room. His footsteps pound up the stairs and then the bathroom door slams shut. Satoru eats another strawberry, mulling glumly over Megumi’s words as he chews.
Everything had been so chaotic in the aftermath of going AWOL, it's only now striking Satoru how strange it was that Megumi was going along with this so calmly.
In Toji's notebook, Satoru had found four different addresses associated with Megumi, four different foster families, all lasting less than six months. It was unlikely that this was Toji's only notebook, as well. How many homes before that? How many temporary families? All so that the Zenins could never catch wind of this kid?
Satoru had shown up, flashed his badge at a confused older woman in a headscarf, and said that Megumi would be coming with him. The woman had protested fiercely, demanding paperwork or a phone call as he'd marched through a cramped apartment, dodging other young kids, until he'd found the bedroom in the back where Megumi had been on the floor, doing math homework. It had all been well-intentioned, Satoru was sure, but he hadn't had the time or patience.
Satoru had told Megumi to pack his things, that he had to come with him. Megumi hadn't even bothered asking why-- he simply grabbed his backpack and shoved his things into it with practiced gestures. Like he wasn't surprised. Like he'd done this before a dozen or a hundred times.
Poor kid, Satoru thinks, before catching himself. His feelings don't matter; if he can track down Megumi's mom, if she can take him and hide away again, then everything would be fine. Megumi would grow up with a mom and home, far away from the death and grief of a life spent under Limitless's thumb. Megumi didn't understand it now, but one day, maybe he'd even thank Satoru.
Isn't that a thought?
The floor creaks and Satoru tips his head back to stare at Suguru standing in the doorway of the living room. He’s got his keys in one hand and shoes on his feet.
“I’ll be back in twenty minutes. Don’t burn my house down while I’m gone,” he says bluntly. Satoru gives him a little two-fingered salute.
“Aye, aye, captain,” he says. Suguru huffs through his nose in something that might be a chuckle before vanishing. The front door opens and slams once again. Satoru can still hear the clock ticking from the kitchen.
Twenty minutes. He can get a lot done in twenty minutes.
Immediately, he slips back upstairs and stands before the hallway once more. It stretches down, two doors on either side and then one at the very end. The first two, he already knows, are the bathroom and the linen closet. Been there, done that, boring.
Satoru opens the second door on the left. It looks like an office, with a big desk, filing cabinets, and a few framed degrees on the wall. Satoru steps in to peer at them more closely.
One proclaims that Suguru Geto had finished, with honors, a Bachelor of Engineering. The other said he'd achieved a Master's in Business Administration. Satoru makes an interesting face as he steps back from it.
“Seriously? Business?” he whispers to himself. He never expected his ex-best friend to become such a square. When Satoru picks through the paperwork on the desk, it's all budget reports, permit requests, and blueprints for what, as far as Satoru can tell, is a hydroelectric dam. Or maybe just a high-tech toaster-- it's not his area of expertise. Satoru flips through all the big, heavy books on the shelves, looking for hollowed-out centers or cryptic, hasty notes about his evil plans to take down the government.
All he gets are neatly highlighted sections, Suguru's tidy handwriting declaring writing out equations in the margins.
Boring.
Whatever work that Suguru does that Mei Mei kept tabs on, there's no evidence of it here. Satoru makes sure to arrange everything exactly the way he found it and leaves, clicking the door shut softly behind him.
He tries the second door on the right, and Satoru feels his blood freeze.
It's a girl's room-- or girls, plural. Two twin beds with purple sheets, glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling, and boy band posters taped to the wall.
Suguru-- Suguru has kids?
Does that mean Suguru is married? Satoru is almost positive there wasn’t a ring on Suguru's finger when they'd been talking earlier, but suddenly he isn't sure and it plagues him.
Satoru shuts the door, both the one in his hand and the one in his mind. He feels like he's on the verge of spiraling into a black pit of despair over the mere idea of Suguru being with someone, and he actually, really doesn't want to address that right now.
He opens the last door-- jackpot.
The master bedroom is small, with an adjoining ensuite and several big, south-facing windows. Suguru has very reasonable gray sheets to go with his reasonable gray walls and reasonable light gray carpet. The bed sits in the center of the room (bad sign), but only half of it is undone (good sign?).
Satoru makes a beeline for the dresser pressed against the wall, pulling open drawers at random. Lots of plain white T-shirts, more flannels, and several pairs of jeans that are nearly identical. The sock drawer is more interesting due to the handgun buried at the bottom.
Satoru takes it apart, checks the mag, and puts it back together. When he cocks it, every piece moves smoothly, clearly maintained regularly.
Okay, maybe not so boring after all.
Satoru removes the bullet from the chamber and puts the gun back where he found it.
Pulling open the closet reveals several button-down shirts with Suguru’s name and a logo Satoru doesn’t recognize embroidered on the breast. A few pairs of steel-toed boots sit at the bottom, while a few colorful Hawaiian shirts confirm that at the very least, Suguru hasn’t lost his entire personality. Satoru breathes a sigh of relief when he doesn’t see any women’s clothes either. Not married, at least. A girlfriend still isn’t out of the picture, though, but Satoru can pick Suguru’s brain for that one.
Last but not least are the shoe boxes on the top shelf.
The first one is full of ammo for the gun in the sock drawer.
The second is full of ties and matching pocket squares.
The last one is tucked in the very back and covered in a fine layer of dust; Satoru handles that one as carefully as he can, trying not to leave obvious fingerprints.
It’s full of pictures and keepsakes.
Satoru slowly sinks to the floor and sits cross-legged as he slowly sifts through it, his stomach slowly sinking.
The girls look like twins, one with dark hair, the other dusty blonde. There are elementary school graduation pictures, a series of matching Halloween costumes (salt and pepper, cat and dog, Thing 1 and Thing 2), pictures of their faces smeared in ice cream and sprinkles. Suguru’s in a few of them too, smiling as Satoru had only seen early in their academy days, before Suguru began losing pieces of himself that Satoru couldn’t find again.
Satoru’s eyes catch on a photo half-tucked into a crease at the bottom of the box. He wiggles it free with numb fingers, his other hands rubbing at a sudden pain in his chest.
Satoru’s own face stares back at him, fifteen and baby-faced, hair buzzed to regulation length, his arm around an equally bald and baby-faced Suguru, both of them all buttoned up in their service dress uniforms. Satoru beams widely enough to show all his teeth, Suguru is in the middle of rolling his eyes, his cheeks dusted pink.
Suguru’s parents had taken this picture on family day, as Satoru’s hadn’t bothered showing up. Satoru’s tinted glasses are hiding his eyes too, despite being indoors-- that meant that this wasn’t quite the year he’d stopped expecting them to show.
All these years since Suguru had left Limitless and burned the bridge behind him, Satoru had imagined him alone and on the run, hounded by agents, harboring sinister plans to destroy Limitless completely. At least, that’s the story that Satoru had been fed; he shouldn’t have been surprised that they’d lied, but something still stung badly in his throat.
Ten years. He had given them ten years, with nothing to show for it but carnage that he couldn’t even escape in his dreams. All this time, he’d been promised that he was keeping people safe, he was maintaining order, but who had he even been protecting? People? Or profits?
Satoru feels sick again.
The front door downstairs slams and muffled voices fill the air.
“Shit,” Satoru hisses, rapidly scooping photos back into the box, fingerprints be damned. He slides it back onto the shelf and slips from Suguru’s bedroom, shutting the door behind him silently. He turns and freezes.
Megumi gives him a very unimpressed look from where he stands in the bathroom doorway.
“... You didn’t see anything,” Satoru gives his best attempt at an authoritative voice. Megumi rolls his eyes.
“Creep.”
He goes downstairs. Satoru rubs his face and follows. As he gets closer to the kitchen, the muffled chatter resolves itself into individual voices: two girls, plus Suguru.
“--and in art class, we’re doing stuff with clay now!”
“I’m making a gargoyle.”
“We’re all making gargoyles, dummy.”
“Come on, not cool, Nanako,” Suguru chastizes as Satoru and Megumi walk into the room. Immediately, they both get two very judgemental stares from the girls; they look older than the pictures, maybe eleven or so now. Satoru smiles and waves.
“Hello!” he chirps. Suguru rolls his eyes and turns his back to continue cutting up fruit.
“Mimiko, Nanako, this is an old friend of mine, Satoru Gojo. And that’s his nephew, Megumi.”
Suguru hadn’t made a move to indicate which girl was which. Satoru starts to sweat. The blonde one muffles a snicker in her hand.
“Megumi? Isn’t that a girl’s name?” she giggles. Megumi bristles.
“And so what if it is?!” he retorts. The one with brown hair elbows her sister.
“Nanako, that’s not very nice,” she whispers, and then turns her attention to Satoru, folding her hands politely on the table. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Gojo.”
“Well, aren’t you sweet? It’s nice to meet you, too,” Satoru gushes. Nanako rolls her eyes and proceeds to unzip her backpack and pull a folder out to lay on the table. Megumi makes his escape back into the living room, grumbling under his breath.
Satoru sidles up next to Suguru under the guise of shuffling closer to the breakfast table where Mimiko and Nanako sit, leaning back against the counter. He swipes one of the apple slices from the cutting board, narrowly avoiding Suguru making a genuine effort to stab him in the hand. Satoru wiggles his eyebrows, and Suguru gives him a death glare.
“So! What grade are you two in?” Satoru asks.
“Sixth,” they respond in tandem.
“Do you have a favorite subject?” Satoru tries to steal another apple slice, but Suguru is anticipating him this time. He stabs the knife into the cutting board hard enough to bury it, and there’s a beat of awkward silence.
“Um... I like math...” Mimiko offers hesitantly. Suguru swipes the apple slices onto the plate and sets them on the table.
“You got the best score in the class on your last test, didn’t you, Mimiko?” Suguru says, ruffling her hair affectionately. Mimiko nods, but Nanako is still peering at Satoru with narrowed brown eyes like she doesn’t buy Suguru’s bluff for one second. When Suguru’s back is turned, Satoru sticks his tongue out at her. Her jaw drops, offended.
“You--!”
“I think!” Suguru cuts her off and puts a hand on both their shoulders, “You two should do your homework upstairs today, okay? Me and Mr. Gojo have adult stuff to talk about.”
Nanako’s eyebrows disappear into her bangs disbelievingly, but she gathers up her papers and shoves them back into her back, as does Mimiko.
“Suuure thing, Dad,” she says. “Come on, Mimi.” She takes her sister’s hand and they disappear down the hall and up the stairs. Satoru opens his mouth to say something, but Suguru holds up a hand to stop him, still watching where they left. He rolls his eyes and lifts his chin.
“In your room, girls!” he calls. Satoru hears Nanako make a put-upon sound and then their footsteps finally disappear fully as a door slams.
They left the plate behind. Satoru steals two more apple slices with a smug look at Suguru, who only sighs in resignation.
“So...?” Satoru prompts, gesturing. Suguru purses his lips and yanks the knife out of the cutting board, placing it in the sink and running the water.
“I was able to buy you a bit more time-- not much, but enough. I’m picking up the car tonight, and tomorrow, we leave early. Denver is an eleven-hour drive, so the sooner we leave, the better.”
Satoru had been following along perfectly fine until that last part. His brain scratches, resets.
“Uh, sorry, we?” he repeats.
“We,” Suguru confirms, setting the knife and cutting board aside on the drying rack. He turns and aims a cool look at Satoru as he dries his hands and Satoru, for some inexplicable reason, suddenly wilts under the weight of this gaze. “I’m coming with you.”
“Uhh...” Satoru tries to think of some kind of protest, but even he can’t lie so egregiously to himself and say that his brain isn’t lighting up with fireworks and sparklers.
“Even if you could somehow drive eleven hours and not kill yourself, I can’t in good conscience leave a kid in your care-- I’ve seen how you eat.”
The fireworks die out.
“Wh-- hey!” Satoru protests. “I’ve been doing just fine taking care of Megumi!”
“Right. And if I go out to that shitbox in my driveway, I won’t find at least four happy meal boxes littering the backseat?” Suguru says, a smile crossing his face for the first time since Satoru had arrived, dry and mean and making Satoru uncomfortably warm all over. He crosses his arms tightly over his chest and turns his face away, indignant.
“And so what? It comes with fruit,” he mutters. A shadow passes over Satoru and without warning there’s a firm grip squeezing his jaw and forcibly turning Satoru’s face back to look at Suguru, who is suddenly right in front of him.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Suguru says, his voice low and threatening, dark eyes glittering in the waning sunlight streaming through the windows. “I’m not doing this as a favor to you. I am doing this because you’re right about one thing and one thing only-- Megumi deserves better than a life with Limitless.”
Suguru’s grip tightens until it’s painful, leaning in close enough that Satoru can count his individual lashes. Satoru’s heart thunders in his chest, his limbs cold and useless where he sits.
“And when all is said and done, I want you gone from my life. Permanently. I have worked too god damned hard to give my daughters some sense of normalcy, and if you fuck that up-- you will wish you’d stayed an agent. Are we clear, Satoru?”
Satoru’s nod is the barest flicker of movement. Suguru releases him and steps back, finally.
“Good. Glad we understand each other.”
Suguru turns around as if nothing happened. He leans halfway through the doorway to the living room.
“Yo, Megumi, anything in particular you want for dinner tonight? The guest gets to pick,” Suguru says amicably as if he hadn’t just put the fear of God in Satoru Gojo. Satoru hears Megumi mutter something, but Satoru’s ears are ringing too much for him to make it out.
“Hmm, it’s a little late for me to make dough, but I can make pizza grilled cheese?” he offers. Another quiet response from Megumi.
“You’ve never had pizza grilled cheese? Well, prepare to get your socks knocked off, kiddo.”
Satoru feels sick again.
Without even excusing himself, Satoru leaves the table and doesn’t stop walking until he’s back outside, sitting in the driver’s seat of his stolen shitbox. His hands shake as he lights his second to last cigarette, and he puffs on it desperately until the nicotine quiets the rattling of his thoughts.
Satoru’s soul is split in half, each part warring furiously with the other.
On one hand, Satoru isn’t convinced that Suguru would genuinely try to kill him under any circumstance. Suguru could talk as much as he wanted about how he was only doing this for Megumi, but the fact of the matter was that he was helping, period because Satoru had asked him.
On the other hand, Satoru had read the reports.
Two dead agents, bodies unrecoverable because of the flames. Suguru, a ghost in the wind.
Satoru had been convinced that he knew Suguru then, too. As familiar, achingly familiar, as the man in that house was, it had also been five years. Suguru has wrapped himself in all these trappings of a normal life-- a job, a house, two girls he obviously thinks the world of-- but there are gaps in the stitching, and Satoru can’t make sense of the darkness he sees beneath.
On the one hand, Satoru knows he shouldn’t trust Suguru Geto.
On the other, he has no choice.
---
After dinner, Suguru sets Satoru and Megumi up in the living room. Megumi gets the couch, and Satoru gets an air mattress that he’s almost certain will be flat before the night is up.
This far out in the country, it’s eerily silent at night. Satoru had spent his whole childhood with the constant hum of vehicles outside his window, watching headlights crawl across his ceiling and vanish in an endless cycle.
Now, he lays on his back and listens to the clock tick in the kitchen, exhausted, sleep still stubbornly evading him.
Satoru feels the absence of his smartphone acutely; at least when insomnia struck him before, he could watch cat videos until he either passed out or the sun came up. Megumi shifts on the couch and can sense it coming before it happens.
“Satoru,” Megumi whispers. “Are you still awake?”
Satoru sighs.
“What’s up, kid?”
“Where are we going, tomorrow?”
“Denver. It’s in Colorado.”
“Why are we going to Colorado?”
Satoru opens his mouth and then closes it again. His thumb presses into the cuticle of his middle finger, dry and cracked and in need of a trim.
“To find someone to take care of you. For good, this time, too.”
Megumi is quiet for so long that Satoru thinks he’s fallen asleep.
“Are they going to be nice?” Megumi asks. Satoru tastes acid in the back of his mouth. These are questions he doesn’t have answers to, but there is something unusually vulnerable in the softness of Megumi’s voice, and Satoru aches to soothe it.
“Yeah,” he says. “They’ll be nice.”
“Promise?”
Satoru bites his lip until he tastes blood.
“Promise.”