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Toji has worked in this industry for years. He sees these people with this foolish hope in their eyes that they’re going to be different, that they’re going to be special. He’s also seen that moment when the light leaves their eyes and they realise it’s too hard for them. He’s seen them lay flat on their back, dead as rocks and he’s apathetic to it each time.
Sure, it’s unfortunate, sure they deserve to be mourned: just not by Toji.
He’s been working as a sherpa for years, guiding and helping the crazies up a mountain that’s supposedly unconquerable but Toji’s been up and down it more times than he can count.
They all come and they talk to him about how dangerous it is and how excited they are. They tell him about how this is their thing, they love the adrenaline rush, they love the excitement. They tell him about how this is super dangerous, how they’ve gone skydiving but even that wasn’t close to the thrill they’ll get from doing this.
Toji doesn’t care, he never cares. They’re all foreigners trying to get the right to say they’ve done something most other Westerners haven’t done. They like feeling special . They like acting like it’s this feat that nobody else has ever achieved as though they aren’t speaking to Toji, a man who literally does it day in and day out. It’s his fucking profession.
It’s whatever, they yap and they yap and Toji ignores it all because if they want their last words to be about how unlike other people they are then so be it.
It doesn’t matter to him. As long as there’s adrenaline junkie foreigners he’ll have money to keep Megumi alive. It’s almost May so it’s the busy season, it’s the warmest all the way along the mountain and so Toji is fully booked for once. It’ll be hard to not see Megumi for so long but it’s not like he’s around all that much anyway. He practically lives with Yuuji these days anyway.
Toji really doesn’t have a lot of things to be grateful for in this world beyond Megumi’s existence in his pitiful life but Jin and Kaori’s understanding of his delicate situation is definitely one of them. They’re practically like second parents to Megumi and he’s grateful his son has that. Toji is away for months at a time, he comes home when he can, he picks Megumi up and they go out for dinner and he finds out all about what Megumi has been doing.
He knows Megumi isn’t fond of the arrangement, knows he feels rejected and abandoned when he mentions the art exhibitions he’s been in at school or how he got the lead role in the school play. He knows Megumi would appreciate seeing a familial face in the crowd, knows Megumi would appreciate getting to show his dad what he likes doing but he stays quiet about it, promises he’s content and happy with the way they live.
He knows he’s doing a shit job at being a parent and he hates it. His wife would’ve hated him too, he’s sure.
He hates it desperately. Not much he can do though. He knows his wife would’ve wanted better for Megumi. Not much he can do about it. She’s gone and he’s doing the only thing he’s ever been good at.
Toji was the first to scale the tempestuous mountain all those years ago. The first to tame a beast nobody else had ever thought to challenge. Now he’s a glorified tour guide for the damn thing.
It’s the middle of April and now he’s waiting on a bus to deliver a whole new cohort of tourists.
Some of which will die.
At the beginning of all these he used to weed out who he thought would survive. Sometimes he’d be surprised at the outcome but usually it’s nothing unexpected.
Toji stands and tosses some loose change on the table. Hopefully they don’t count it too carefully because he’s about six rupees short. It’s not like he doesn’t want to pay them the right amount, it’s more that he doesn’t have the cash on him and fussing over six rupees that could be better spent on Megumi seems stupid.
He walks out and breathes in a breath of fresh air. It’s warm and humid down here and he savours the way the warmth licks at his skin and the fact that the cold harsh blows of the mountain’s breath aren’t hitting him yet.
Toji hates the mountain.
The bus pulls into the car park and he sees six budding climbers. Most of them are chatting with one another happily, they’re dressed appropriately for the weather at the bottom of the mountain, skin kissed with what is clearly a nice tan from the rest of their holiday. That’s what this is for most of them, they catch some sun rays in the nicer areas and they take advantage of the cheap prices and the sexy exotic prostitutes. They spend their holiday discovering themselves all over the country and they end it all on a bang. They climb the mountain at the very end so they can say they’ve experienced everything when all they’ve really experienced is what their fancy American dollars can suck out of the place.
They haven’t experienced shit. They don’t know this place, they only know the tourist’s version of this place.
Most of them are sporting tank tops and baseball caps and their eyes are all bright and burning.
Most of them.
Not all.
One young woman steps out, dark hair contained in a tight bun, body trapped in a large coat, eyes cold and distant. She doesn’t speak to anyone and she doesn’t look like she’ll last the Winter. Her face is sunken in in that way that only the people who never eat enough are. She’s short too, looks like she might blow away with the mountain gusts. Her bag practically dwarfs her and it’s a crazy thing to see.
She won’t last.
Toji feels a little like telling her to just stay down here, to not bother with this whole thing. He feels like telling her she’ll just join the ranks of all the other dead bodies on this damned mountain and yet he doesn’t. He stays in place and continues watching. There’s six of them so three with him and three with Kong.
He watches as they come over to him. There’s one kid with big brown eyes and a stupid looking bowl cut, he’s giddy and bouncy like a twelve year old but he’s built enough that it does make sense for him to survive the summit. He’s decently tall but there’s too much hope in his eyes, it’ll get crushed. This isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Toji reckons he’ll probably come back alive physically but part of the kid will definitely die inside. It’s a shame but it’s not for Toji to mourn. He’s done his fair share of mourning.
There’s the dark eyed girl with the big eye bags in his group and he thinks about how she’ll probably be the only casualty in his group this time around.
There’s another girl in his group, blonde hair and well built, she’s almost as tall as Toji and her eyes are browner than the soil they’re standing on. She’s boisterous and loud and yapping to the little brown eyed dumpling about what type of woman is his type.
Toji doesn’t give much of a shit.
He doesn’t until she comes closer and directs the exact same question at him.
She smiles brightly at him like her question hasn’t made him scowl at her.
“Are you ready?” He asks the group to avoid her question.
The question is invasive and rude and it makes him think about his beautiful wife. She’s gone now. She was his type. Nobody else on the planet will ever come close to her. He’s tried out a million different shapes and sizes of prostitutes but nobody has ever filled the hole inside him the same way her grin did and her warm brown eyes. Nothing will ever fulfil him like her.
“Hey! Did you hear me? I asked what your type of woman is?” She asks again before tilting her head at him and giving him a challenging stare, a little flirty perhaps. “You don’t have to be shy, you can tell me if I’m your type.” She says as though she’s the most gorgeous thing to hit planet Earth.
She’s not even close.
The most gorgeous thing to hit planet Earth was a short woman, a little petite but it was fine because her smile was bigger than the moon. She had these beautiful eyes, golden in the sunlight and earthy brown in the moonlight. Her hair was dark and it was straight and spiky and untameable and Toji used to call her a little porcupine. It was never the right word to call her, sure she was as cute as one but there was never anything about her that could hurt you. She was a stunning person, inside and out.
“Yes, I’m ready.” The girl with the dark hair and tight bun says.
The girl who won’t make it to her next Christmas dinner.
The blonde pouts but her face takes on a determined look nonetheless and they begin the climb.
Satoru is always with me. Satoru is always with me. Satoru is always with me.
It’s a mantra she repeats to herself everyday since she lost him. It’s a mantra she repeats to herself as they embark upon the incline of a steep mountain that touches the Heavens.
Their children are also with her.
She carries the three of them in her heart all the time, and right now, she carries the all of them in her bag.
Satoru was her first love, the only man she’ll ever love. He’s always understood her, been by her side, he made her laugh and he wiped her tears when she cried.
He’s the reason she’s climbing Everest.
Suguru’s eyes are puffy and her throat is raw and painful. She’s spent the better half of a whole day pushing and pushing and pushing.
She can’t imagine anyone else would say that the labour was actually the easier part of delivery day. Only she can say that. Her and maybe a few other mothers.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” a nurse says as she brings in Suguru’s meal for the night.
It won’t be eaten.
Suguru doesn’t have much of an appetite. She just wants to hold onto her babies, her precious little girls. She can’t let go of them, she can never let go of them.
“Thank you, we’d like to spend some time together as a family, please.” Satoru’s voice sounds broken too. He’s being polite. That’s a change. Maybe he knows Suguru doesn’t have the energy to remind him to be polite.
“Of course.” The nurse says back before she leaves them alone in a room shrouded with death and despair.
Suguru’s body feels numb and her heart feels hollow.
She hasn’t let Satoru hold them once and he hasn’t forced Suguru to give them up for even a moment. He hasn’t insisted on touching her when she doesn’t want him to and he’s let her cry her eyes out. Satoru has probably cried too, Suguru doesn’t know for sure though, she hasn’t looked in his direction since the doctor told her.
She can’t.
This is her fault.
They’re dead because of her.
The next few weeks pass and she bleeds for a month straight and every time Satoru takes her to the bathroom is a reminder of what she’s done to her babies.
Satoru is a rock through it all. He lets her rot in bed while he works tirelessly to bring them money to support Suguru’s newly found lazy lifestyle.
He brings her food and he kisses her forehead every night.
She doesn’t eat much of it though. She doesn’t need to. Her body isn’t growing any new lives anymore. Her body is useless and she doesn’t need to feed a broken object.
She tries to pretend a little for Satoru. He does help. He makes the darkness feel a little less dark and he’s the only person in the world who knows what this feels like.
He tells her before they go to sleep one day, he says these magical life changing words to her one day while she’s mid breakdown about the fact that they have to cremate their babies before they’ve even breathed a breath of life.
He tells her, “Suguru, I will take their ashes and I will climb the unclimbable mountain, I will take them to the tallest peak this world has so our children can touch the skies, so they are as close to the Heavens as possible. I will ensure their journey from this point onwards is short and it is painless.”
And the words were comforting and sweet.
What should have been long lives for Mimiko and Nanako will instead be a short period of limbo. They will venture into Heaven together.
Satoru should have taken them to the top of the mountain himself, he promised to carry their ashes upwards and to free them from all the pain they’ve experienced.
He couldn’t though.
Saving up the money to climb Everest was hard. It required far more hours at the farm and instead of giving up on his dream of burying their children near the Heavens, he decided to take on work at one of the factories.
He never should have.
It’s all Suguru’s fault that he’s dead. If she had pulled herself together and crawled out of bed herself she might’ve been able to get a job of her own to help pay the fees. If she had found a job she would only have to hug two urns of ashes.
The blonde, Tsukumo, and the bright eyed bug, Haibara, yap and yap together. They talk about things Toji doesn’t care much for, something about European sports, foods Toji has never had the money to travel far enough to try, something about science that even Haibara doesn’t seem to understand much.
The other girl has only divulged that her name is Gojo Suguru.
Toji takes a couple glances at her every once in a while. Her silence is intriguing.
He’s used to having to tune out the tourist chatter, especially from the ones destined to die. Not her though.They walk for as long as they can before they stop and take a break to eat.
“So, Gojo, what’s your type in men? Or women if that’s your thing.”
Tsukumo’s a pest but Toji will listen to the idle chatter if only to find out a little bit about the enigma that is Gojo Suguru. He stirs his noodles in the warm water and looks up at her.
She’s a pretty woman despite the lack of meat on her bones and the dark circles under her eyes. Her eyes are kind of like burnt honeycomb. Like they used to be something sweet, something beautiful and tasty but they’ve been ruined by time and maybe by tragedy. She’s too young to have the aged up look in her eyes but it’s one Toji knows well. It’s the overcast of mourning.
Maybe this is some complex form of suicide for her.
“I don’t have a type anymore.” She answers plainly, knees folded neatly beneath her, hands working away at a small stew of her own.
“Anymore?” Haibara pipes in with a confused look on his face. It looks at home on him, like he’s never had a thought in his life.
Gojo stays quiet, a shadow of regret sits on her face and Toji can tell she doesn’t want to talk about it. She shouldn’t have spoken in the first place.
“Alright you two, quit your nattering, I’d like to make it to a decent checkpoint before nightfall.”
Toji doesn’t know why he intervenes but he does and the appreciative look she sends him makes him bubble up with something he doesn’t want to think about. Instead he scowls at her because it’s easier that way.
She’s quiet and eats her food thoughtfully. She smiles politely but it never reaches her eyes and she doesn’t finish her meal so she offers the rest to Haibara who slurps it up like he’s been starved his whole life.
She’s too skinny because she doesn’t eat enough. She ate maybe thirteen grains of rice and two chunks of meat from her stew.
“If you eat like a rabbit there’s no way you’ll make it to the top of the mountain, Gojo.”
It’s Yuki that pipes up and it’s the first thing Tsukumo has said that Toji agrees with.
“Thank you for your concern, Tsukumo, I am just eating as much as my stomach permits me.”
As much as her stomach permits her. Is her stomach suicidal? They’ve been walking for hours and she should’ve worked up an appetite. Even Megumi eats more.
Still, Toji says nothing, her death won’t be on his hands.
“Thank you for the food, Gojo! Your food was so delicious!” Haibara says between mouthfuls of food. He’s a polite kid, maybe a few years younger than Gojo. Toji and Tsukumo probably have about a decade on the kid though.
She nods and smiles politely and thanks him and it’s a little egregious because the words don’t match the haunted look in her eyes.
Someone who’s gone now must have loved her food. Maybe that’s why she looks so down.
Toji doesn’t say anything, he just stands and offers her a hand to help her up.
It’s not for any reason other than the fact she looks so weak.
It’s not for any reason other than the fact he’s not in the mood to wait for her to push herself up off the ground when she looks so feeble, so breakable. They should have left her at the bottom of the mountain.
She looks up at him, surprise swirling in cold gold eyes.
“Come on, we’ve gotta get a bit further before nightfall.” He grumbles.
With a quick nod she ignores Toji’s hand and gets herself up.
Toji rolls his eyes but brings his hand back to his pocket. Whatever, if she doesn’t want to accept his help that’s on her.
They set off again. She keeps pace despite her shorter stride, her heavy bag looks like it should weigh her down, it probably is but she doesn’t look like she’s struggling. She keeps a neutral expression plastered on her face and there’s this strange sparkle of determination that glows in her otherwise cold eyes the further they go up the mountain.
It’s not strange in that he’s never seen it before, it’s strange in that it looks odd among the rest of her. She carries herself all sullen and widow-like. She carries herself like she’s got nothing else to live for except she’s got determination flickering in caramel eyes and she’s got this gritty look in her eyes like she'd rather die than give up.
He wonders what it is that’s got her so determined.
It’s strange but it’s not exactly the first time the mountain has motivated someone, it’s not the first time the mountain has lit a fire inside a person.
He should be used to it by now but; Gojo Suguru is different.
The determination in her eyes is blazing, it shines amongst the coldness that otherwise hangs like a dark shadow.
When they set up camp for the night they’re barely a quarter of the way up the beast. Her muscles ache and her stomach screams in agony and emptiness.
She needs to eat more food. She needs to be more like Fushiguro and Tsukumo and Haibara. She needs to be strong like them. She needs to be strong so she can carry Satoru and Mimiko and Nanako all the way to the top.
Tsukumo was right. It’s a hard truth to accept that she’s truly withering away. She’s let herself fall so far into ruin and as much as she deserves it, her children and husband deserve to see the top of the world. They deserve to be beside the Heavens. She needs to be strong so they can be where they belong. After that she can wither away. After she’s done that she can ruin herself, she can punish her body for the crimes it is responsible for.
“Gojo, could you help me with my tent?” It’s Haibara who asks her. His face is bashful like he’s a little embarrassed to have to ask for her help but it’s still sweet and kind.
Haibara is very sweet, she’s listened to all of his and Tsukumo’s conversations and it seems that he’s going to be good company for the trek up the mountain. When morale is low and oxygen is scarce she can imagine him using his breath on sweet words of encouragement.
He seems to like her as well which is certainly a bonus considering she isn’t all too sure that Tsukumo likes her at all and the sherpa accompanying them seems as though he does not care about any of them in the slightest.
“Yes, of course,” Suguru says, rushing up to her feet. Haibara is a kind soul, he is sweet and innocent in that way teenagers often are. He is younger than Suguru and she feels a sort of instinct to protect him, to guide him.
Something maternal for him.
Her heart aches thinking about the fact that she feels anything maternal towards Haibara because she was never able to feel something maternal for her children, for her sweet babies.
They died too soon.
Gojo Mimiko and Gojo Nanako.
Haibara smiles down at her gleefully before rushing off to his tent on the other side of the basecamp. A chill crawls over her bones at the sight of his kind smile, the ghostly kind of chill that lingers on your skin and makes you feel all nostalgic and pained.
People do not often treat widows with true kindness or appreciation. Their smiles are always tainted with sympathy and their offers of understanding are always falling short.
In Suguru’s village everyone knows and even those who do not know, still know .
Maybe it’s something in the way she carries herself but people always seem to know.
She doesn’t try to hide it or anything but still, it is sometimes hard to know every smile she receives is poisoned with the deaths of her family. Not Haibara’s though, perhaps he missed her comment from earlier, perhaps he is choosing not to acknowledge it but his smile remains pure and his eyes have not dulled. He smiles at Suguru like she is more than just her tragedy and it makes her heart ache to be treated like a real person once more.
She has not felt like a real person outside of her loss for months.
Years even.
She hammers in the pins while he holds onto them. She’s careful about it, hammers gently, delicately. She makes sure she’s not even close to Haibara’s fingers, her movements are slow and she’s sure she must look like a maniac.
Still, she’s obsessive about it. Obsessive about not hurting Haibara.
Her body hurts people, it destroys people. Her body has killed her children and because of her, her husband is dead. She will not hurt anyone else.
The pins are hammered and Haibara’s tent is secured. It takes a lot longer than it should have.
“Thank you so much, Gojo!” Haibara hugs her. His embrace is warm and it’s nice but it’s hollow. Hugs feel different now. Before she could appreciate the way every pair of arms wrapped around her in a different and unique way but now? Well, these days all she can think about is the fact that the arms holding her are never quite long enough or that the owner of the embrace isn’t quite as mischievous with their touch, there’s no hands crawling down to her bottom and there’s no teeth nipping at the tops of her ears.
It’s not Satoru.
It’ll never be Satoru again.
Short, brief bursts of pain stab at the back of her eyes and there’s nothing she can do but to excuse herself so she doesn’t cry in front of Haibara. She does not want to do that. To place the burden of her grief onto a near stranger would be cruel. She does not want him to know who she is or what she has been through.
“You’re welcome, Haibara, I’m quite tired so, I’ll be going to bed now, goodnight.” She speaks hurriedly before dashing back to her own tent.
She shivers in the night as the mountain chill breathes its warning breaths to deter those who wish to conquer it. The temperature will only continue to drop as the mountain gets steeper and she imagines herself at the peak, cold and chilly, bones frozen through. The nights will only get colder and with every sunrise she will have to drudge through the snow and the winds to reach the heights she aspires for.
It sounds horrible.
It will be horrible.
She’s going to do it though. Regardless of how horrible it is, she’s going to make it to the peak of the mountain and bury her family where they belong.
Suguru falls quickly into slumber with her sleeping bag wrapped tightly around her body and her heart set on her goal.
She’ll make it to the top of the mountain if it kills her.
When Toji wakes up it’s about an hour before they’re set to depart. He always wakes up before the tourists, he likes to watch the sun rising over the mountain and sip on some tea to warm him up for the day. He stretches his limbs and brushes his teeth quickly before crawling out of his tent to greet the morning. The first thing he feels when he opens the zip of his tent is the cold feel of the vicious mountain air. It’s nothing new, he’s used to the feeling of being woken up with Everest’s chill on his face. What is new though, is the scent of fresh tea in the air. It floats into his nose and all but pulls him out of the tent with its aroma. It smells sweeter than he would usually have it but, strangely, he finds the additional sweetness in its scent isn’t unwelcome. He’s always been the type to drink tea black and sugarless, he enjoys the smell of the leaves brewing and he likes the refined taste on his tongue. So it certainly takes him by surprise when he smells a sweetened tea that he actually finds he wants to drink.
He crawls out of his tent all the way and stands up so he can follow the smell.
When he finds a small woman with dark hair sipping on a cup of tea watching the sunrise from the floor, Toji is a little shocked.
In the soft glow of the rising sun Gojo looks like this ethereal being, she looks kind of like a goddess and a whole lot like Toji’s wife. She’s of course much more prim and proper with her hair in a neat bun as opposed to the wild locks of his beautiful wife but still. The high points of her cheekbones look dewy and soft in the sunlight and the tip of her nose is red with cold. Her brown eyes glow with some renewed passion and she just looks so beautiful that Toji has to rip his eyes away from her.
“What’re you doing up?” Toji speaks quietly so he doesn’t wake up the other campers but gruffly enough that he seems annoyed by her presence.
When Toji speaks her head whips around to him, eyes wide and startled before settling into calmness when she realises it’s Toji. She smiles at him politely before standing up.
“Fushiguro,” she says quickly, “good morning. I didn’t realise you’d be up now, I thought I’d have a little more time. Are we setting off already?”
“No. Are you drinking sweet tea?” He asks, ignoring all of her other comments.
“Yes, I have some left over, would you like some?” She moves over to her stove where the hot tea sits bubbling away. Toji can hardly get a nod out before she begins pouring him a small cup of the sweet stuff.
When she walks over and hands it to him he gets another chance to really take note of her. She’s small, her head probably comes up to the same height as his heart. She’s frail too, that much is noticeable but, there’s more. She smiles at him politely, like a good little girl who does exactly what mummy and daddy tell her to do. She smiles at him like it’s the last thing she wants to do but she keeps on trying anyway. She smells a little like cinnamon and sugar roasted nuts, it’s warm and it’s a gentle thing, something someone would like coming home to he imagines.
They stand around awkwardly for a few moments before Toji finally takes a quick sip of the tea. It’s good, it’s quite sweet, not something he’d expect a girl like her to be drinking but he supposes she has to get her energy somewhere. Sugar in place of things like protein and fat seems pretty on brand for someone of her size. It’ll actually probably be quite helpful at the higher altitudes. He usually sticks to more salty carbohydrates for the peaks but sweet teas will be easy for her to digest and consume. Plus it’ll keep her warm. Maybe she has got a chance at surviving.
He walks over and sits on the floor beside where she had sat earlier. He doesn’t do anything, doesn’t indicate for her to sit next to him or even look back, he simply sits and sips on his tea.
Silently, she follows him, returning to her spot on the floor. She does subconsciously sit just a little farther away, just enough to keep a good bit of distance between the two of them and Toji is a little curious but he’s alright with it.
Toji isn’t sure how long goes by with them watching the sunrise and sipping on their tea in the quiet of the morning before they speak but he doesn’t really care. Sitting in the silence with Gojo isn’t all that bad.
“How is your tea? Is it too sweet?” She asks out of the blue.
“No, it’s good.” He says back gruffly.
They fall into silence again for a few moments before Toji speaks up once more.
“You don’t seem like the type of person to drink such sweet tea.”
She smiles and looks down at her cup.
“I’m not. I wasn’t at least. I developed a sweet tooth a little while ago and I never really let it go, I guess.” She shrugs the question off but Toji can tell he’s hit a nerve with his question. He can tell from the way her voice drops and her smile twitches into something more painful.
He doesn’t press her on it.
They return to the silence, sipping on their overly sweetened tea on the rocks of the mountain. The sun rises and the birds awaken. Their tea runs dry and Gojo washes up her dishes before letting Toji know she’ll be going off to get ready for her day now.
Toji grunts to let her know she’s been heard and acknowledged before slipping back to his own tent to pack his stuff back up for their new day of walking.
It’s maybe half an hour before the other two are up and making their breakfasts while Gojo sits on a nearby rock and helps Haibara prepare his dehydrated meat.
“You can season your stew to help the meat have more flavour?” She suggests as she passes him a couple of seasoning packets. “If you season it afterwards the meat will be too salty,” she continues, offering the boy a smile.
Toji begins setting up his own stuff to make breakfast with them all. Tea won’t keep them satiated for the morning but it’s nice to sip on it before the rest of the world is awake and bustling.
He prepares his chapati and heats up some soup before glancing over to Gojo’s meal. She’s got a couple of slices of meat, a good portion of rice and a few florets of that broccoli.
Honestly, it’s a decent meal. It’s more than a decent meal and he wonders how much of it will be going to Haibara today.
They’ve only spent a day together but even Toji can tell that Haibara is the resident garbage dump for the group. Anything the rest of the tourists don’t want to finish will be caught in Haibara’s gob before anyone can even offer it to someone else.
Toji would bet money on it.
They all sit down with their meals, Tsukumo isn’t feeling too yappy quite so early in the morning it seems. Her hair is a bit of a mess and her mouth is set in a straight line as she quietly chews on her own bowl of porridge with honey drizzled on it.
Haibara is always feeling rather talkative though from what Toji has gathered. He tells Gojo about his high school and how his teachers were always super “radical”, whatever that means, and he tells Gojo about this candy he likes to eat because it sounds like tiny explosions in his head and he feels like his mouth is a minefield.
Honestly, the kid is kind of entertaining. He reminds Toji of Yuuji. He speaks about anything and everything on his mind without even a moment of restraint and Toji finds the familiarity to be a little endearing. Yuuji, as Megumi’s best friend, is a huge part of his life. It might not always feel that way considering Toji only really sees Megumi a few times a year at most but it is. Toji knows all about Yuuji’s romantic dalliances with that Ozawa girl and he knows about Yuuji’s strange family dramas. He’s heard about Yuuji’s crushes and his favourite foods, he’s heard about Yuuji’s odd affinity for sports that he never decides to actually play and he knows about Yuuji’s interest in that stupid movie with the human who fucks a worm.
Yuuji’s never been shy about telling people everything about himself and Toji’s never bothered to shut him up. Haibara and Yuuji are a lot alike, they’ve both got bright smiles and they talk enough to get rid of all the oxygen on planet earth.
Probably eat enough to cause a small famine too.
Toji thinks he likes it. He likes Haibara. He’s a sweet boy. Maybe one day Toji can introduce Yuuji and Haibara.
They’d get along.
They finish their meals and to Toji’s surprise, Gojo has actually finished a good chunk of hers. She does gulp a little too much like her stomach is way too full and she feels a little nauseous but still, she hands over just a small amount of rice and a few strips of meat to Haibara for him to eat.
He doesn’t really care what the reason for her eating more than usual is because it isn’t really any of his business but he does find himself just the slightest bit curious. Not that he’d ever admit it. He doesn’t care how much she eats or doesn’t eat. He doesn’t care whether she gets some meat on her bones or not and he most certainly does not care if she lives or dies on this expedition.
Throughout the day they take small breaks for food and for water, Tsukumo and Haibara chat and today Suguru joins in for a few of the conversations. They talk a lot about Tsukumo’s research today. Apparently in America she’s a big deal, she writes research about consumerism and about the harm that can come from fast fashion. She writes about cheap labour practices and about the unethical nature of capitalism as a whole.
Suguru stays quiet during this conversation.
It makes her sad.
It makes her think about Satoru.
They were never the wealthiest and that was okay. They worked where they could find it and they managed with the money they had. Satoru was smart, he was intelligent in all the ways a man could be but intelligence means nothing if you aren’t also rich. Their home country is rife with injustice but the greatest one is the tragedy that stole Satoru.
In another world he would have been able to work as NASA or he could have built his own tech company, in another world he wouldn’t have had to be the cheap labour at that shitty factory. In another world Satoru is alive.
She listens to Tsukumo explain to her of all people how there are “of course some benefits to these unethical business practices”. She talks about how people from her neck of the woods benefit from cheap labour from something as simple as the shirt on her back to the phone in her pocket.
Suguru knows Tsukumo means no ill intent but she still hates that she’s had to listen to someone praise the very system that stole her Satoru from her. Even if Tsukumo was, for the most part, berating that system, Suguru still does not want to listen to any benefits of it.
It hurts.
Of course she blames the system, she blames the fact that the factory was itself unsafe and the fact that safety is not a guarantee in the workplace for people like her but, there’s still a part of her that blames herself. She doesn’t think the guilt will ever leave her. There were so many times where she messed up. If her body had been good enough to keep the twins alive then neither of them would have been depressed. If she hadn’t been so depressed and lazy in the aftermath of their deaths she could have gotten back to work sooner so Satoru did not have to take on another shittier job. If she had told Satoru that she didn’t want him to bury the twins at the top of the world he would have had no reason for so much extra money. If she had done this differently or that differently Satoru would still be alive. Maybe she ate too much sugar during her pregnancy, maybe that had harmed the girls. Maybe she hadn’t exercised enough or maybe she had exercised too much.
Satoru never should have fallen in love with Suguru.
She didn’t deserve someone like him. She knows it now and she knew it back then but she let herself listen to Satoru, she let herself believe that Satoru was right every time he said she was just overthinking or that she was his soulmate. She let herself lose herself to a love she knew she didn’t deserve and now the world is worse off for it.
Gojo Satoru should be alive and Gojo Suguru should never have existed.
“Hey,” she says, eyebrows furrowing a little as she questions whether or not she really wants to do this.
Suguru continues to walk, her eyes downcast and narrowed on the floor.
“You can all call me Suguru.” She says quietly. To any of them it must seem like she’s trying to be friendly but to her it's like extracting poison from her body. Hearing people call her Gojo makes her feel crazy, it makes her heart ache and it makes her stomach coil up because it should never have belonged to her. She never deserved to be a Gojo.
Still, that doesn’t mean she renounces the name entirely. She is still Gojo Suguru because it’s the least she can do to honour Satoru.
It’s probably selfish that she asks them to not call her Gojo, it’s probably selfish that she asks them to not remind her of all that she’s lost but she isn’t sure she’ll be able to make it up this fucking mountain if they do. She’s not sure she won’t just collapse in all her grief if they keep reminding her that she goes by a name that she doesn’t deserve.
She doesn’t hear any objections, only a small hum and Haibara’s voice piping up to taste the name on his lips.
“Suguru!” He says like an excited child that’s just been given permission to cuss for the very first time. He says it on shallow breaths as the gradient of the mountain continues to grow and the temperature dwindles as they stumble into sunset.
“You can call me, Yu!” Suguru looks at him as he says it, eyes wide and bright, innocence dancing in his irises and joy in his tone. He’s a sweet boy. Suguru likes him.
“Yuki,” the blonde beside Suguru chirps up with a smile on her face. She isn’t nearly as bright and bubbly as Yu but she too seems happy with the development in their relationship.
Fushiguro says nothing.
That’s alright, Suguru is really only asking to be called Suguru out of selfishness.
A week flashes by before Toji can really even comprehend it. He starts all of his mornings off the exact same way: with a cup of sweet tea in his left hand, eyes fixated on the hues of the sunrise whilst sitting next to a beautiful woman. Sometimes she smiles at him, asks how he’s doing or about their progress as a group. It’s always just polite small talk, nothing crazy and nothing he isn’t willing to answer.
She always insists he calls her Suguru but he doesn’t. It feels too intimate. It feels like too much attachment.
The days go by without much variation either. Gojo chats to Tsukumo and Haibara but Toji always notices the way she draws back or gets quiet when Tsukumo brings up her research. It’s a sore spot for Gojo but neither Tsukumo nor Haibara realise. Or maybe they do and don’t care, who knows.
Today wasn’t any different. He drank his tea with Gojo in silence, the morning was cold and it was windy and Gojo’s shivering was hard to ignore but he managed.
Today though, she was different.
She’s been trying to eat more these days, that much is clear to Toji. She stuffs her face with what most would consider a fairly average portion of food until she looks just a little bit nauseous with how full she must be.
She didn’t eat all that much today though.
Haibara practically finished off the entirety of all three of her meals.
She’s been trying to talk more too. Get to know the group and whatever.
She didn’t today.
Haibara and Tsukumo spoke amongst themselves about some basketball team or something, Toji didn’t really care to listen to it.
He’s noticed that he doesn’t really care to listen to the chatter unless he can hear the little enigma voicing her opinions too. He didn’t say anything about her silence, just brushed it off. If anyone understands the random ebbs and flows of silence that comes with grief it’s Toji. He knows she’s lost someone, grandma, grandpa, parents, siblings, husband or wife, whoever it is, she’s lost someone and he gets it. He understands the need for quiet, the hanging lull that makes some days seem so much darker than all the rest.
“Night, night,” Haibara chirps out before crawling into his tent. Gojo finishes washing the last of her dishes and does the same wordlessly whilst Toji and Tsukumo stay out for a few more minutes.
Toji doesn’t really like Tsukumo. She’s odd but she’s conniving, that much he knows for a fact. She’s as exploitative as every other tourist that comes to visit except something about her feels off.
“Looks like it’s just the two of us,” she says as she sinks to the ground and sits on the cliffside beside Toji. The wind is loud and the air is icy.
Tsukumo shivers.
Toji does nothing. He doesn’t speak to her, he doesn’t even really acknowledge her.
“So,” she starts and Toji already knows he’s going to regret staying outside.
“Suguru’s your type.” She says plainly as though it were clear as day and Toji can’t fathom how on earth she’s come to that conclusion.
“What?” Toji responds back just a little taken aback. He had no intention of really speaking to her or anything but this question has shocked him enough to provoke a response before he can think about it.
“She’s your type, right? You look at her all the time, way longer than you’ve ever looked at me by the way. Especially today. Either she’s your type or I’m ugly and I’m most certainly not ugly.”
Toji says nothing.
“You should give it a try, she seems nice. Might help you lighten up a little,” she jokes as she brushes her arm against Toji’s. The touch feels electric in an awful way. Like all his nerves are being lit on fire just by having her touch him.
“I’m not interested.”
Tsukumo makes a sound of disbelief while Toji scoots just a little bit further away from her.
“Whatever, whether you’re interested or not you should tell her to head back down the mountain. She won’t survive this trek, you and I both know that.”
Toji scoffs. She’s right but he refuses to give her the satisfaction of it. Besides, he’s never told the tourists to head back down before and he can’t start now just for a woman who’s piqued his interest just enough for him to give her the occasional lingering stare.
“Not my job.” He grunts out.
“It should be. What do you think you’re doing taking people up such a dangerous mountain when you know it’ll kill them? You’re just as much involved in the deaths of these people as the expedition itself is, you know that? You should have turned her away and given her money back the second you saw her.” Tsukumo says in an even, neutral tone. Her words are cruel but she doesn’t say them like she’s angry, she speaks like she’s above him, like she knows so much better than Toji.
Toji knows he doesn’t have to justify himself to her and so he doesn’t instead, he lets the silence hang over them like the icy chill of the Himalayas.
She preaches to him about right and wrong and maybe he should have turned Gojo away, maybe that would have been the right thing to do but he can’t. He needs the money and this is all he’s good for. He didn’t get the fancy American education that Tsukumo did and he doesn’t have the family money that must’ve got Gojo up here.
He doesn’t get to have morality and he doesn’t need it either.
“You should tell her to get down. She won’t last a minute when the altitude gets higher and we really need to start climbing.” Tsukumo says before she stands and walks over to her own tent.
She only stayed outside the extra minutes to berate Toji on his broken morality.
Whatever.
He breathes in deeply and listens carefully to the hum of a peaceful song in the breeze. It’s a song he knows well, the one that accompanies the tallest mountain the world has to offer, it’s the lull of loneliness despite being amongst companions, it’s the dreary song that always seems to ring a tune in Toji’s ear whether he’s with people or not. It’s a soft sigh of a tune that he’s grown accustomed to ever since his wife died.
Stars begin to dot the night sky with their brightening presence and when the darkness begins to feel a little too stifling and the space beside him feels just a tad too vacant, he finally decides to head into his own tent.
Tsukumo’s words play on his mind.
They’re true. Gojo should go home before she kills herself. She should. She definitely, 100% should.
He can’t bring himself to interfere though. He doesn’t interfere, it’s not who he is.
He doesn’t get attached and he doesn’t interfere, it’s the only way he’s been able to stay in this fucking job as long as he has.
Toji crawls into his sleeping bag, the whispers of a cold, hard truth about his immorality making it hard to get comfortable, hard to feel okay. He’s never worried quite so much about whether he is or isn’t a good person or not but, Gojo, she just, she’s like him. She deserves to have someone stop her from her suicide mission. She deserves to have someone stop her from making the biggest mistake of her life.
He just doesn’t know if he can make himself do it.
Toji falls into a dreamless sleep and wakes up once more to the smell of fresh extra sweet tea floating into his nose.
A Gojo delicacy at this point. There’s never been a morning where he hasn’t woken up to it.
Ritualistically he crawls out of his tent, grabs the extra cup of tea Gojo always leaves next to the burner for him and takes a seat on a snowy knoll beside her so they can watch the sunrise together.
He takes a sip and it’s deliciously sweet as per usual, a little overbearing perhaps but he’s grown to enjoy the flavour.
He’s sure his soul will appreciate the extra sweetness in his decidedly bitter life.
“Good morning,” he says and it’s the first time he’s said those words in a while. Even when he’s home with Megumi he rarely says it, the kid’s more of a “morning dad” and jut off kind of guy so Toji hasn’t really had the opportunity to say it in years.
Gojo looks taken aback for a second, brings confused glowing eyes to his before softening into a good morning back.
Once more silence looms over them and again, he breaks it.
“How are you?”
“I’m good, thank you, and you?”
“Decent, yeah.”
Silence once again and it really shouldn’t be so hard to speak to her but for some reason the words keep getting stuck in his throat and he wants to kill himself instead of just fucking speaking.
“So,” he begins as he takes a sip of tea. He’ll miss her tea.
“You should go back down. Like return to the car park where you came from and someone will help you get a refund or something.”
He doesn’t actually know if anyone can get her a refund, they all work for some stupid travel company and so he only takes his salary which varies depending on the amount of climbers he takes for an expedition.
It’ll affect his salary but still, she deserves to get out of here, she deserves the truth and the truth is that she’s going to die up here eventually.
“What?” She says, eyebrows furrowed and eyes slightly widened.
Toji puts his tea down in the snow and looks at her for a second. Her eyes glow like lava and her skin has a thin sheen of life to it now thanks to the extra food. It’s all still overcast with the shadow of loss that hangs over her though.
He turns his body to her and narrows his eyes, scrutinising, glaring.
“What are you doing here, Gojo? Are you trying to fucking kill yourself? There’s more than enough corpses up here, we don’t need to fucking add yours to the count.” He grits out, tone clipped and annoyed. Looking at her annoys him. Looking at the precious life that swirls in her almond eyes annoys him. Against his will, his mind conjures images of her, blue faced and dull-eyed and his heart clenches a little.
He thinks of Megumi before thinking back to Gojo. She’ll be mourned by someone if he doesn’t save her from this and for once, he wants to save someone from grief. He wants to save someone from the trouble of mourning.
She stares at him, shock bleeding into her features before her tea falls to the floor and her knees draw up to her chest.
“Fushiguro, please, please don’t send me back.” She says quietly, solemnly. She says it like she thinks he can force her to go back against her will. He can’t, he’s just telling her she should, she can decide to stay if she wants to but, now he needs to know why. Why is she so stubborn? Does she just want to die on a famous mountain? What happened in her life to make her like this?
“I need to get to the top. I need to make it to the top, please, Fushiguro,” she says, looking up at him with soft dew drops in her eyes.
The feeling that overcomes him at the sight of her crying takes him back just a little.
It’s this feeling he hasn’t really felt in years. Only with Megumi he supposes.
It’s this overwhelming urge to scoop her up and cradle her in his arms, to kiss away tears that haven’t left golden orbs and whisper soft words to comfort the hurt he’s just caused.
It must just be remorse. Maybe it’s just the discomfort he feels with confronting her, he’s never done it before so it would make sense.
“I need to,” she whispers.
Toji pauses at the way her words seem to break on her lips, she needs it, she really needs this.
He turns his head away from her and back to the orange hues lighting up the sky before sighing and picking both of their cups of tea back up. His half full, hers now emptied.
He stands and ladles more into both of their cups before returning to his position and offering the cup to a curled up Gojo Suguru. Her eyes meet his in a flurry of gold on green and it makes Toji feel just the slightest bit of warmth light up his face amidst the harsh winds blowing at him.
“Alright. Drink your tea then,” he hesitates before he finishes his sentence, bright burning eyes boring into his soul, “Suguru.”
Night falls once more but they haven’t reached a safe place to camp for the night. Snow blasts at each of their faces, wet and cold in its pursuit to dissuade them from continuing their mission.
“Fuck, this is such a thrill!” Yuki yells out, planting her boots into the crunching snow, loud and heavy. She seems to be the only person enjoying herself.
Suguru wraps her arms around herself and tries to conserve her heat as best as she can while maintaining pace. She sings a little song, a tune she used to hum when there were babies still growing in her stomach. She sings soft and quiet so that nobody can hear her and she reminds herself why she’s still going, why she has to keep pushing through all of the struggle. Still, the roar of the angered weather continues to flood into her ears and there’s little she can do but to listen to its cries.
It’s scary. Terrifying actually.
The way the gusts blow, loud and heavy, makes her heart race with anxiety.
She knows she’s weakened up significantly recently, her body isn’t all too strong these days and the storm could easily eat her up entirely.
What will become of Satoru and Mimiko and Nanako if she succumbs? What will become of her family if she allows herself to fall to weakness and die?
Her nose drips and her head spins and for a moment, a brief moment, she doubts herself and her resolve. She thinks about giving up and allowing the storm to swallow her whole. She thinks about the snow piling up on top of her dead corpse while she gets to reunite with the man she loves more than anything.
Her feet stop pushing for just a moment, a brief moment, but it’s enough to get Fushiguro to push a hand to her back.
“Come on, no time to slow down!” He yells as the pressure of his hand on her back drives her into another step forward. One foot in front of the other.
Her head clears and empties and she simply allows Fushiguro’s guiding hand to pull her away from day dreams and back into reality. His hand remains firm and solid against the plushy fabric of her thick jacket and even through all the layers between them, Suguru feels her heart race with the electricity of being touched like this.
In such a kind way, intimate and sweet.
“Tsukumo, head East! We’ll have to take shelter in a cave for the night!” Fushiguro yells out from just behind Suguru’s head.
Yu says nothing but his pace is firm and it seems confident. Suguru has no doubt he’s strong enough to beat the steady howls of a Spring time storm.
It was an unexpected storm but the moment the clouds turned even a faint shade darker Fushiguro had changed their route. He went to the back of the group and instructed Yuki on which direction to lead them in.
He leads the group whilst pushing Suguru forward and his masterful guidance draws them into a dark cave for the time being. It frees Suguru’s face from the assault of ice cold snow and the self doubt crawling through her brain.
It’s cold and darkness consumes the rocky cavern but it’s safer than camping out in the midst of a snowstorm and getting buried alive.
“Suguru, are you alright? You’re shaking like a leaf,” Yu asks, pressing a gentle hand against Suguru’s shoulder. She’s freezing cold and now that there’s no more adrenaline pumping through her veins all she feels is this distant coldness, this urge to cry and admit defeat, to give up and just die.
“Yes, I’m fine, just a little cold,” she smiles. He accepts her words as truth and that’s all that’s said on the matter. Still though, she can feel a pair of eyes boring into her and she assumes it’s a forest green glare that she’s grown rather accustomed to.
Fushiguro has motivated her more than anything ever since she confessed to needing to get up there. He didn’t pry or prod, he didn’t force her to confess why exactly she needed to get up there, he simply accepted it to which she’s grateful for.
He watches her like a hawk and it’s nice to be seen. It’s nice to have a pair of eyes looking out for her again.
It reminds her of Satoru, his ever watchful eye, his ability to see when she was getting upset before she even really knew it herself, his calming words, his sweet gaze.
She misses him.
Desperately.
“No tents tonight, I guess,” Yuki says as she shrugs her jacket off and Suguru has to wonder how on earth she can take off her insulative layer.
“No, sleeping bags only for tonight,” Toji replies, breaths coming out a little short as he too shrugs his bag and coat off.
Suguru isn’t hungry, neither is anyone else. Their meals are usually short and quick, incredibly frequent and sugary and it’s the diet that is going to get them up the mountain. Lots of chocolate, electrolytes, water. It reminds Suguru of the diet she had when the twins were inside her. She and Satoru used to joke about the fact that they had inherited their sweet tongue from their father. They used to joke about whether they’d be as similar to Satoru in appearance as they are in taste buds.
Nanako was.
Her pretty blond hair and dark blue eyes that never got the chance to blink up at Suguru and see her mother’s face. Her face was chubby like all newborns but her cheekbones would have been high like Satoru’s and her lips were the perfect little packaged up bow just like her father’s.
Mimiko had a full head of dark brown hair, something that probably would have darkened to look more like Suguru’s as she grew older. She was pale and probably would have developed the colouring of her quick to sunburn father.
They looked just like the love of her life.
Yuki sets up her sleeping bag deep within the cave, far into the darkness, a place where Suguru just can’t stand being.
Yu places his down next to hers and Suguru places hers next to Yu’s.
Yu and Yuki say their goodnights and fall into quick slumbers. Suguru wishes it were that easy for her, between the call of the storm singing overhead and the cold corroding her bones there’s nothing for her to do but stay awake and shiver to keep herself warm. Her jacket lays on top of her like a blanket and she has all of her clothing on and yet nothing works. Her teeth beg to chatter but she refuses to allow them that freedom knowing the noise will disturb the others.
Suddenly, a large arm pulls her close and the movement makes her gasp.
“If you’re going to keep shivering just get in my bag,” he whispers into her ear and the words make Suguru take pause. She blinks up at him, confused, a little annoyed at herself for putting him in this position, for bothering him.
“It’s fine, I’m fi-”
“You’re not fine, I can feel you shivering.” He says back, tone gruff and a little annoyed.
Suguru wants to argue back but she figures it’s better to do as she’s told. As quietly as she can she rolls up her sleeping bag and tucks it in with the rest of her belongings. Then, she saunters over to Fushiguro’s unzipped bag, open and waiting for her to crawl in beside him. There’s not much room and they’ll be pressed together but the warmth of his body heat will stop her from being annoying at least. Besides, he was the one insisting on it.
He furrows his brows and glares at her. “Are you going to get in or just stare at the empty space all night?”
It prompts her to shake her head and crawl in. She’s hyper aware of Fushiguro now, his hard warm body pressed against her, back to back, solid and respectful. The sleeping bag keeps their body heat contained and the added warmth from Toji helps to quell some of the goosebumps growing on her skin and the cold setting into her bones.
Her shivering lessens and she at least gains a little comfort despite the otherwise precarious position.
Still though, sleep does not find her. As she lays on her side her mind races and her thoughts turn towards the worst.
She should quit now before it gets even worse. She’s struggling now even before they need to use their oxygen tanks and it will only get worse the longer they keep climbing, the higher they go, the farther they travel.
It’s better to quit now while she isn’t too far up th-
“Quit thinking so much and go to sleep.” Fushiguro whispers harshly.
“Sorry, I can’t sleep,” she mumbles, too tired to pretend that she wasn’t thinking too much or something else.
Her muscles ache and her heart weeps. It’s so hard. This is so hard and she doesn’t want to do it anymore. She wants to go home and she wants to lay her head on Satoru’s chest, she wants him to kiss her forehead and tell her how all of her problems are just her overthinking again. She wants to hold her babies and hear them giggle and watch them bat their big eyes at her. She wants to sleep in the embrace of the man she loves instead of sharing a sleeping bag so she doesn’t die of hypothermia.
She wants Satoru.
She feels Fushiguro’s body move to lay on his other side and feels a heavy arm drape around her waist. He pulls her body close and with their proximity he practically speaks directly to her brain.
“Fucking quit the thinking and get some rest. We’re gonna have a long day tomorrow.” Toji says harshly, his body pressing up against hers even more insistently and strangely, the contact, the embrace, it makes her feel safe, cared for.
She hates it. Hates herself for feeling this way.
“Yes, of course, Fushiguro,” she says back just a little bit more snappily than she otherwise would.
He picks up on it. Huffs a small laugh straight into the shell of her numbing ear where the cold continues to attack.
“Toji.” He says.
“What?”
“Toji, call me that. You’re practically in bed with me, may as well call me my first name. ‘S only fair after all.”
Her heart warms and speeds up and the distinct urge to throw up fills her at the realisation. She’s a horrible person, disgusting and vile.
How could she do this to Satoru? While she carries him in her bag she allows her heart to race for another man, how horrible and cruel.
“Goodnight,” she says. She can’t say his name, she can’t hurt Satoru like this.
If he cares about her rejection, he doesn’t say anything about it.
Fushiguro Toji.
When Toji wakes up Suguru is still in his arms. She fits surprisingly well, not exactly perfectly but she fills the hole where a person should be fairly well.
It’s where his wife belongs but over the years he’s gotten used to the cold loneliness and so now the warmth that lays asleep on his chest is comforting, maybe not perfect but, it’s pleasant. She must have moved some in her sleep for them to end up in this position but Toji finds he doesn’t really mind. It’s cute, a little funny actually, she looks like the type to fidget in her sleep. Her hair is messy and her eyes are still closed and she looks nice while her overactive mind is resting.
He’s glad she joined him, her added warmth was nice as the storm continued to spit snow at his back. And it was nice to cradle her to sleep too, it felt nice to be needed like this.
He only really got a few nights of taking close care of Megumi, the nights where the darkness was too dark and too scary for him to exist in alone and so he would crawl into daddy’s embrace and fall asleep on his chest. Toji doesn’t really get the chance to feel really needed these days so, this is nice.
In his head he hums a tune, a familiar one, the same one he heard her singing yesterday. It was quiet but it rang out like a beacon amidst the harsh howls of a tempestuous mountain. Something of a lullaby, like maybe the storm made her anxious, made her sing as a coping mechanism or something.
Whatever it is, Suguru’s voice is pretty.
Outside the storm continues to rage on, icy hisses float into Toji’s ears and yet all he can hear is the warm glow of Suguru’s voice singing sweet and soft to herself.
The distinct lull of her voice is intoxicating and-
Toji breathes in sharply, heart singing and head banging.
What he feels isn’t right. He shouldn’t be feeling this way. His wife, his beautiful wife. How could he betray her like this? How could he even consider feeling pleasantly for another woman?
He should hate the way Suguru’s scent makes him dizzy and he should hate the way watching her and making sure she’s taken care of makes him feel good. He should hate the way his breath catches in his throat and the way he looks forward to the mornings so he can drink her sweet tea and watch the sunset.
He should hate himself for all he feels and he should hate her for making him feel it.
Do his vows mean nothing to him now? Death may have parted them but he never expected he would ever feel anything for anyone else ever again.
He needs to nip this in the bud. Kill this crazy thing before he lets himself betray his beautiful wife. Nobody will ever compare, nobody will ever match up to her majesty.
Climbing out of his sleeping bag proves to be a bit of a struggle as Suguru makes short small whiny noises through a haze of sleep.
“Satoru, don’t go yet,” she mumbles, voice heavy with sleep and sweet dreams.
Toji doesn’t say anything.
He needs to be out of her grip, he needs to be away from her because Yuki was right and Suguru is his type but he doesn’t want to move on for real. Sex is one thing, but falling in love? He can see himself doing exactly that with Suguru and it’s the last thing he wants to do. He can see himself looking forward to mornings with her, sipping on tea in silence and he can see himself looking forward to cuddling at night, thin bed sheets concealing their love for one another away from the world. He can see himself desperate to brush through her long silky hair and begging for her to sing a song just so he can hear her beautiful voice.
It’s terrifying because he wants Gojo Suguru. She’s so enticing and he hasn’t got a clue why.
He finally manages to shuffle out and goes over to the other side of the cave to sit on the floor, immediately, cold winds abuse him and he misses the hard comforting warmth of being beside Suguru but… he can’t. He can’t lay beside her because it’s too risky, it’s too difficult. He’s clingy and he’s attached to her and he can’t be either of those things because he doesn’t belong to her. He wasn’t made for her. He and Suguru were both made for other people.
His might be gone but Suguru's, hers is still out there.
If Toji knows one thing in this life it’s that he can’t be selfish, the world will take anything that it gives him and turn it into a curse. He can’t have anything, he knows that. Still, the way the cold seems to feel so much less cold when she’s around makes it hard for him to look past all that.
Suguru wakes up to her teeth chattering and an out of place whine worming its way into her ear. The freezing cold burns numbness into her exposed flesh and her body responds accordingly to the signature of the biting winds.
Her eyes blink open although they protest with her doing so, sticky golden fluid glueing her eyelashes shut and bright white snow that is much too bright for so early in the morning.
As she looks at the snow lining the entrance of the cave she rolls her eyes and remembers distinctly how she didn’t fall asleep in this direction.
Suguru’s always known she’s a fidgeter, it was one of Satoru’s biggest gripes about her. He used to joke about the fact the babies would be born with motion sickness or something because of all her tossing and turning. It was just a joke but it had scared Suguru shit enough that she had cried for hours in the bathroom until Satoru found her and kissed away all her worries telling her it would all be fine.
Well, he was wrong.
Gojo Satoru was wrong.
It wasn’t all fine and their babies didn’t even get the chance to have motion sickness. Instead they were simply just stillborns.
Nothing was fine.
Absent-mindedly, a palm goes to caress her belly covered with half a million layers of fabric and a twang of hurt rumbles through the delicate muscle in her chest.
There’s nothing in her belly now. No life. No tiny little heartbeats or viciously kicking legs. Nothing but an ache of where life should have been able to survive and to grow.
She presses her head down into the small head of the sleeping bag and tries her best to blink back tears, breath thumping into an uneven beat as freshly rained on wood fills her nose.
Toji.
Her nose fills with the scent of Fushiguro Toji and as much as it feels like a betrayal, she buries her nose in even further just to smell him, to remind herself where she is and what she’s doing. It helps to ground her, forces her to remember she’s here, on Mount Everest, she’s already been through the worst of it.
She’s no longer in that hospital room holding her dead babies, she’s not sobbing on the floor clutching onto Satoru’s dead body anymore, she’s here and she needs to get them to the top of the world so her family can touch the skies.
“Good morning,” Yuki says, her voice thick with sleep.
Toji grunts and says a quick morning himself.
Suguru hears Yuki make a sound like she’s stretching, high and wide in the air like a cat. Not that she can see it with her head buried in the makeshift pillow but she can imagine the way Yuki stretches having seen it so much in the past month.
“How long have you been up?”
“Not long,” Toji responds and even Suguru wants to roll her eyes at the lack of information. She wants to giggle just a little bit actually because he can’t possibly think that’s helpful.
Yuki scoffs out a laugh, “right, I forgot how much you love to talk.” Suguru hears shuffling, like the movement of a jacket and she feels a small chill blossom in her muscles.
“So,” Yuki begins, “I was wrong, I guess?”
“What?”
“Suguru isn’t your type? You don’t like her?”
Suguru’s heart clenches a little at Yuki’s words and she finds herself holding her breath for the answer. She shouldn't, but she does. She wants to know, wants to hear one answer in particular even though she shouldn’t.
“I’ve already told you to quit askin’ stupid questions.”
“Hey, it’s a valid question. Since she’s still here I figure you don’t really care whether she lives or dies.”
What?
“Again, stop saying stupid shit.”
Yuki ignores his warning, “I mean, I don’t get it, she’s stunning, maybe a little too skinny but she’s pretty hot. Shame she won’t live much longer I guess,” Yuki pauses before her tone perks up a bit, “hey, you think we’ll be able to get outta this cave tonight? Maybe I can convince her to let me inside her tent before we get to the Lhotse Face. I doubt she’ll make it too far with the oxygen tank on her back.”
Suguru’s breath catches in her throat and it becomes harder and harder to feign slumber.
Even Yuki thinks she’ll die.
Perhaps she should give her family’s ashes to someone else just in case. Maybe to Toji as he’ll definitely survive and, as much as she doesn’t want to admit it, part of her trusts him, an innate part of her that she can’t really understand.
Toji doesn’t say anything in the contrary to Yuki’s words.
Toji doesn’t think she’ll survive.
Suguru shuffles around the vacant landmass with practised ease as she takes the opportunity to cook a nice breakfast for all of them. It’s a warm and sweet thing, high in calorie and easy to digest but it’s hearty and delicious with every sugar coated crunch that dwells in Toji’s mouth.
“This is really good, Suguru! I’ll miss this when our expedition is over!” Haibara says with all the grace and manner of a toddler chewing on chicken nuggets.
“Yeah, Suguru, I just want to put you in my bag and take you to the states with me,” Tsukumo drawls out getting far too close to Suguru. Toji hates Tsukumo. She’s an awful bitch of a woman and Suguru deserves someone far better than Tsukumo. At least someone a little more sensitive, perhaps with more tact too.
Suguru smiles a little but it doesn’t really meet her eyes. Toji knows because whenever the sun shines in the horizon she looks alive, it’s the only time her smile is genuine and real. Her eyes look dazzling when she’s happy and he wants nothing more than to keep them that way.
“Thank you both, I’m glad you like it.” She looks over at Toji with big wide eyes before bringing over a cup of super sweet tea to him. “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to ask a favour,” she says quietly, placing the cup beside him and taking a seat right in front of him where the wind still howls on his back.
She shivers as the cold of the cave entrance freezes her blood and her bones and Toji does his best to shuffle a little closer so his large body can protect her from the storm just a little. Still, it feels odd doing something like that for someone.
“What is it?” He asks, voice low as he spares a glance to the other two, deeper in the cave, nattering on about something unimportant to Toji.
She takes a deep breath, collects herself and looks down like she can’t say the words.
Instead, she pulls her bag closer to her and opens up one of the compartments to reveal three envelopes.
Satoru.
Mimiko.
Nanako.
He reads them from her hand and waits for her to explain what’s going on because Toji is by no means a mailman. Satoru sounds familiar because it is, it’s the name she called out to this morning. A boyfriend perhaps.
Does she want Toji to deliver letters to her family for if she dies on the summit? He wants to tell her there’s no need, wants to tell her that he’s going to make sure she survives this damn summit if he has to carry her on his back and breathe the oxygen into her lungs directly. He’s going to do it because something about her makes him want to.
“These are,” she pauses like she’s thinking about whether or not to say what it is she’s thinking. “These are the ashes of my husband and my two babies. He-” her voice shakes, “when our girls died, he promised to take them to the top of the world. Wanted their ashes to be able to touch the Heavens, it was silly but I liked the idea and then he- well, I know I’ll probably die, you do too and,” a shaky hand offers him the three envelopes. “I was hoping you would scatter their ashes at the top if I don’t make it.”
A million thoughts gather in Toji’s head but the loudest and most sadistic amongst them rejoices a little in the fact that she’s just like him. Their grief is the same and she understands him on a level nobody else has. She’s lost so much and she continues to climb this beast of a mountain for her family.
Suguru looks up at him, golden eyes shining with soft tears, hoping, pleading with his soul to do her this favour.
He ignores her pleas and refuses to accept the envelopes.
“No,” he begins before he reaches over to press a thumb on her cheek. “No, you’re no freeloader, alright? You’re gonna spread their damn ashes yourself.” He says in a harsh tone.
He hopes she understands that he says it from a place of kindness, that he believes in the fact that she’ll survive this expedition. He hopes she understands that he can’t take away that moment of spreading her family’s ashes from her and he hopes she realises that he will do just about anything to make sure she gets the opportunity to do just that.
“But-”
“No buts, I ain’t no damn errand boy. ‘Sides, I think my wife would be jealous if I spread the ashes of some strangers at the top of the world when I never even thought of doing that for her. I think she would have loved that.”
Suguru looks at him, face a little shocked like she wasn’t expecting the information about his wife being dead.
He doesn’t know why he feels okay with telling her about it but he does. He doesn’t know why he feels alright with her knowing but, it feels good to let another person in. Especially someone who’s in the same boat.
Toji feels weird doing it but he can’t control the way his mouth curves into a small smile, the scar on his lip pulling his skin in a way that has long since become unnatural to him.
“Okay,” she says, returning a soft smile of her own, brown eyes glowing golden and he knows it’s genuine.
Suguru thinks she would probably sob if she had more oxygen available to her. She breathes in as steadily as she can with the oxygen tank helping her to catch some of the vital element she so desperately needs.
Corpse after corpse decorates the steep ground, faces frozen and pale, stuck in a time Suguru never knew. After the storm came a period of sunny days which has melted a considerable amount of snow off the peak of the mountain.
Unfortunately, the issue with the melted snow is that the deaths that were once covered up by a fresh white layer of precipitation are now out and ready for tourists to view at their leisure.
Body after body, hopeful person after hopeful person. They all had families, dreams, a life cut short.
“Don’t look, Suguru,” Toji says. He breathes in heavily but still, he has yet to use the oxygen canister. Suguru supposes he’s used to this kind of altitude, that low oxygen is nothing to a man like Toji. Still, the way he seems to not be using it makes her a little scared, a little frightened. She worries for him despite the fact she can feel his strong insistent push on her back, she can feel the fact that he is not growing weak but her brain cannot get the image of a dead Toji out of her head and before she knows it she removes her lips from her own oxygen tank and pushes the tube at Toji’s face.
“Toji,” she says, eyebrows furrowing at him.
His eyes widen in alarm before an expression Suguru can’t quite understand makes its way onto his face. Silently, the tube makes its way into his mouth and Suguru feels her tension alleviate with the sound of Toji’s big deep breath and his hand over hers.
He nods at her gratefully before guiding the nozzle back to her own mouth.
She doesn’t have the time nor the brain cells to really think about the fact that she can feel the warmth of his mouth on the nozzle and taste the salty sweetness that is Fushiguro Toji. She simply continues to suck on the tube for oxygen whilst climbing.
She does her best to ignore the corpses and she tries to focus on the fact that she’s already proving Yuki wrong by making it to the Lhotse Face.
Yuki, who wanted to sleep with Suguru before this part of the journey because she was sure Suguru would join the ranks of the dead bodies dotting over this damn mountain. Suguru is going to make it, she is.
This is just another thing she thinks is difficult because she’s never done it before, just like how she was scared before she stepped over the ravines using the ladders for the first time.
She's scared now but there’s nothing to be afraid of. There’s nothing at all she should be afraid of.
She unclips her carabiner and reattaches to a new rope as the slope steepens and her body reignites with a flame of determination.
She can do it. She’s going to-
A rumble floats into her ears. A loud rumble that doesn’t sound good in the slightest.
“Toji?” She yells, eyebrows furrowing and her body tensing as he makes a move to grab onto the rope and ensures her ascender is fully clipped in.
She has a feeling she knows what is happening and it isn’t good. The recent snowstorm and the now sunny weather does not lend itself to another good.
“Everyone clip in your ascender!” Toji yells as he makes a move to do so himself. Suguru hears the clicking of metal behind and directly in front of her but there’s one definitive click missing.
“Yu?” She yells out, voice panicked and desperate as she hears the repeated brushing of metal on rope.
Suguru looks up and watches as Yu unclips his oxygen so he can speak clearer as he looks back to Toji for guidance.
“It-It’s not attaching, I-” another rumble interrupts Yu’s terrified voice.
“Yuki, help him!” Toji calls out from the back of the group cursing under his breath. “Keep fucking trying, Yu.” He and Suguru are far behind Yu and Yuki, there’s too much distance between them all and Toji can’t reasonably get all the way up there without putting both Suguru and Yuki in danger.
Toji pulls the rope to be even more taut to help make it easier for Yu to clip in his ascender but it seems to be to no avail.
Another loud rumble echoes over his scared voice and Suguru’s heart clenches, she makes a move digging her crampons into an unstable piece of ice to try and get there so she can help.
The ice moves and shakes under her weight and a hard, firm hand keeps her steady.
“I-It’s not fucking wo-” Yuki’s voice is interrupted by a large white cloud of heavy snowfall and Suguru’s eyes widen as a sheet of pale white comes down in large folds.
“Yu!” She screams and it all feels surreal.
“Put your fucking oxygen back on!” Toji yells over her as a last resort. Suguru isn’t sure if Yu has had the chance to oblige though.
It’ll be alright, it’ll all be fine, it’ll be alright. She repeats the mantra in her head as she watches the first wave of heavy white collide with Yu and Yuki.
Fear consumes her as they both let out loud screams of terror.
Toji’s grip on Suguru tightens and he pulls her closer to him, arm wrapping around her protective and shielding.
She’s going to die, isn’t she?
They’re all going to be buried alive.
Suguru breathes in heavily from under the snow as she lays as still as she can. Her body feels weak but the adrenaline coursing through her veins helps as she forces her hand through the snow and grabs onto the rope to help pull herself out.
Her ascender is the only reason she’s alive right now. She hasn’t moved down any because of this little piece of metal.
Fuck.
With an insane display of strength she pulls herself fully out of the snow before gasping at the realisation that Toji didn’t even have his oxygen on before they were submerged.
She breathes heavily and loud as fear begins to set in, her hand digs through the snow searching for the large heavy set one she knows as Fushiguro Toji’s.
A beat goes by of pointless searching. Another and another before - Suguru feels it, a heavy hand clutched around hers desperate and tight, painful in its grip but that fact is comforting for Suguru right now. Gathering all the strength she can, all the muscle she has, she pulls as hard as she can. She pulls and pulls, face sweating with the effort and her eyes blinking back tears before finally, Toji’s arm emerges, followed by his shaggy wet head of hair.
Suguru crumbles to her knees at the sight, her heart delighting as she sees him alive. She rips the oxygen from her own mouth and presses it to Toji’s forcing him to take in the oxygen he so desperately needs.
“Toji,” she says quietly, eyes leaking with tears, face red and relieved.
Toji gulps down the oxygen whilst he pulls his body up.
“‘M alright, princess,” he says although as he gets to his feet he wobbles just a little and the motion makes Suguru think otherwise. She grabs onto his hand and whether it helps him or not doesn’t matter so much as the fact it helps ground her. He’s here and he’s alive. She’s here and she’s alive.
They’re both together and they’re alive.
They weren’t under the snow for too long, maybe about ten minutes but the cold piling up on top of them was horrible and the freeze begins to gnaw at Suguru’s tired bones. Still, her adrenaline keeps her warm enough as it’s not quite over yet.
“Yu?” She yells out.
No response.
“YU?” She yells out louder before a firm large hand clamps over her mouth.
“Don’t yell, it’ll trigger another avalanche.”
Oh.
Suguru can see Yuki now, her blonde hair a mess but otherwise, seemingly alright.
“Fuck, did the kid even put his oxygen mask back on?” Toji says in a quiet voice as he removes his hand from Suguru’s mouth and urges her to move forward. Crampons crunching into freshly fallen snow she pushes onwards and closer to Yuki.
“Yuki, grab the rope and tug hard till it’s out of the ground,” Toji commands in a deep voice, fast paced and as calm as he can be. “I’m going to have to unclip and go over to Yuki, Suguru.” He explains to her, “hold the rope tight and taut, just like I’ve been doing.”
Fear fills her but she does as she’s told. She feels the cold emptiness when her safety net disappears from behind her and she tries desperately to not release the tears welling up inside her. She wants so badly to crawl into bed and sleep and forget all about this nightmare.
With a hawklike gaze on Toji’s unclipped, incredibly unsafe movements, she observes how he ascends an almost 70º angle like it’s nothing.
Suguru wraps the rope around her fingers and pulls as hard as she can while Yuki seemingly does the same.
She feels the pull when Toji’s hand grabs onto the rope and she feels the give when he lets go to pull on Yu’s harness. Suguru’s breath catches in her throat and her heart rattles.
Shallow breaths meld together with fear and hope that he’s alright, that he’s perfectly fine.
From where Suguru is clipped into the rope, she can’t exactly see what Toji is doing, only that the effort and strain on his face looks like he’s pulling a lot.
The ascender is the thing that keeps them from actually losing their place if they slip, it only moves one way, up.
If Yu’s ascender wasn’t clipped in then there’s really no telling how far he might have travelled. She waits with bated breath, thick veiny hands pulling on the rope more and more and Suguru finds herself praying, finds herself speaking to God, begging for Yu’s safety.
“Your husband is dead.”
The words flash through her head, the painful stinging memory resurfacing at the top of her head as her breathing becomes shallower and her tears continue to moisten her red cold cheeks.
Suguru runs through the hospital, feet failing to carry her at the speed she needs.
White wall after white wall, thoughts racing through her head as horrible spiders make a nest within her stomach. It can’t be. It simply can’t be.
Anxiety fills her, the horrible disgusting kind, the kind that nobody would ever want to be filled with.
B4
Catching sight of the room the nurse had told her was her husband’s she runs inside to see Satoru like he’s never looked before. There are bruises on his face and chest and tubes coming out of his body where there shouldn’t be. His eyes are closed and there’s a large number of doctors surrounding him.
“What happened, what’s wrong?” She cries out, knees buckling under the pressure of her already too difficult to handle despair.
“Satoru,” she mumbles quietly as tears fall from her eyes, too lost in the memory to notice or even care.
“There was an accident, so far it’s unclear how exactly it happened but the belief right now is that the factory was using some cheaply made machinery. That paired with a few workers who weren’t paying enough attention has landed about twelve people in hospital, seriously injured.”
“Is he going to be alright?”
The doctors give her a solemn stare and her heart breaks. She knows what it means.
“He’s out! I’ve got him!” Toji yells out to them as Suguru can see him throw Yu’s unmoving body onto a patch of ground.
“His lungs are full of blood and he won’t be able to survive for long, ma’am. I suggest you say your goodbyes.” A doctor grabs onto her shoulder, squeezing it comfortingly.
Toji presses his hands into Yu’s chest to give him CPR as Suguru absent-mindedly crunches through the snow as quickly as she can. She isn’t quite all there in the moment, she isn’t quite all there in the head right now but still, she goes over and supports even in her dissociated state.
“Satoru, don’t leave me,” she speaks as she presses a kiss into his knuckles, tears flowing freely down a splotchy face and lashes clumping together with misery. “You can’t leave me.”
“Come on, Yu, stay with us, alright,” Toji grunts as he repeatedly slams his fists into Yu’s abdomen trying his best not to disturb the oxygen tank he’s strapped over Yu’s mouth.
“One, two, three, four,” he counts out loud. Yuki has her head to his mouth listening for breath sounds but his pale blue face and his closed eyes make Suguru’s heart clench.
“Satoru?” She speaks softly, “do you remember when you promised me you’d take our babies to the top of the world? I don’t want you to do that anymore. You don’t need to escort them to the Heavens like this, we can go to Everest together, we can scatter their ashes together. Please, don’t leave me to do all this alone,” she cries.
He says nothing in response, his heart rate picks up though. Nobody comes in, this moment is entirely theirs and Suguru knows why. It’s their last moment together.
“Yu?” Suguru speaks softly, “don’t leave us like this. Please don’t.” She pleads with him quietly as she reaches a hand over to him and presses her hand against a frozen solid palm.
Suguru feels a squeeze on her hand, small and hardly there but she knows it’s there. “Satoru,” she cries hard and loud, wailing louder and harder than she had during her own labour.
She feels it when the life leaves his body, she feels it in his waning grip and in her soul.
“Yu,” she mumbles, when she feels a small twitch of muscle underneath her palm. It’s only small but once again, she feels it when the life drains from his body.
“Kid,” Toji grunts out more until Suguru presses her palm against his shoulder.
“Toji, he’s,” she can’t find it in herself to say it and so she doesn’t. Toji gets it, she knows he does.
Defeated, he falls back on his haunches and allows the failure to wash over him.
“Your husband is dead.”
Haibara Yu is dead.
Neither Yuki nor Suguru seem to be handling the loss well.
Neither is Toji if he’s honest.
He carried the corpse all the way up to basecamp three after he secured his oxygen, assigned Yuki at the back and Suguru at the front so they can keep the rope taut between the two of them. Toji wants to make sure if there’s any more snow that comes barreling down at them, Suguru will be alright. He can’t lose her, he decides.
His heart hurts with a familiar awful twang at the thought that this could be Suguru in his arms. An accident, an ascender not clipping in could kill Suguru.
He can’t imagine holding her pale limp corpse in his arms all the way to basecamp three knowing that there’s no way to dispose of her body respectfully. He can’t imagine going back down the mountain and trying to continue his life knowing her body has been tossed out into the cold to collect ice and snow whilst he returns to his duties as a semi-present father at best.
He looks down at the boy he’s only known for about a month at this point and his heart hurts.
He’s dead.
He’s really fucking dead.
The boy, barely older than his own son, is dead in his arms.
Everything hurts as Suguru lays alone, wide awake in her cold tent. Her bones are cold and her heart feels weak.
She might die from this.
She isn’t really thinking when she does it. She isn’t really thinking when she crawls out of her tent and makes her way over to a big blue one she knows to be Toji’s.
Unzipping it quickly she’s greeted with a raised eyebrow that swiftly fades into understanding and an outstretched arm waiting for her to lay her head on it.
“Toji,” she says softly, her voice barely able to reach a decent volume.
She climbs inside, breath catching at the high altitudes but it seems worth it to be a little light headed and loopy. It makes the sting of losing Yu hurt less.
He says nothing, just lets her crawl into his sleeping bag and lay her head on his thick arm.
He knows how she feels. He’s lost people too. He’s lost important people, just like Suguru.
Words fail her as warmth and affection wrap around the entirety of her body. Toji presses a chaste kiss to her forehead, lips lingering too long but it’s fine. He’s here and he’s alive to give her kisses.
“I thought you were going to die,” she whispers.
“I didn’t,” he responds with another kiss to her forehead, lips cold and chapped but the texture feels comforting, human and alive against her cold flesh.
Silence blossoms at the words. He didn’t. He didn’t.
Suguru’s head feels cloudy and uncertain but throughout all the fog the one shining star that guides her through it all is Toji, the fact he’s alive is enough for her to be alright for now.
“Toji,” Suguru wraps her arms around his neck and pulls herself up so she can press a kiss of her own to Toji’s cheek.
“I was so afraid of losing you, please let me feel you. Make me feel good, Toji, please. Make the hurt go away.”
It’s not exactly the same as making love, maybe not for now anyway but, it’s nice. Toji moves with short deep thrusts inside her and his lips never really part from hers. It’s hard at first, it hurts but, the stretch and the burn of a big cock are alright, she can manage, it’s nothing she hasn’t been through before and it’s nothing that she isn’t asking for.
It’s nice, she can feel his pulse in her cunt and he drives her to a slow and sweet orgasm whilst he empties himself inside of her.
It’s perhaps not the smartest decision but the warmth settling in her organs helps her feel a little more solid with the high altitude and foggy mind. She supposes Toji’s good at that, he’s a bit like a boulder, helps keep her feet on the ground and stops her from floating away entirely.
Their hips don’t separate at all that night, Toji’s soft cock remaining inside her while they sleep, anchoring her down, keeping her stable and safe. She appreciates it greatly. She appreciates him greatly.
“Are you worried?” Yuki asks him. She hasn’t spoken too much lately, kept fairly quiet and Toji gets it.
“For what?” He says back, it’s soft and a little more forgiving than usual. As much as he doesn’t like interacting with Yuki, she’s just lost someone too.
“The Yellow Band. We’ll be climbing up that today, won’t we?” She pauses and gives him a flash of a nervous stare, “we don’t have anything to worry about, do we?”
Suguru flashes a nervous glance at him too as she stares at him for an answer and well, he doesn’t really want to say it in front of Suguru. He doesn’t want to make her sad or make her worry.
Toji wants to say no. He wants to reassure both of them that it’ll be fine but he can’t.
Climbing up Lhotse isn’t usually the most perilous part of the journey and yet, for Yu, it was.
“Just, uh, let me check your ascenders, yeah? It’ll be fine as long as you can clip in and get a steady foothold, alright?” He says as he chews on another bite of sweet flatbread.
After his death scare he’s felt a little light headed. More so than he usually would at this altitude.
Toji knows that avalanches only really kill because of the fact you eventually end up breathing in your own carbon dioxide while it’s all trapped with you under the snow and so, while he’s certainly still alive, he’s definitely feeling the after effects of being high on carbon dioxide.
The same poison that killed Yu could have easily killed Toji too.
A small cold hand wraps around his index finger and he looks to see Suguru holding onto him with a shy comforting smile on her lips. Like she’s trying to assure him that it will be alright.
It’s unnecessary but the gesture doesn’t go unappreciated by any means.
She doesn’t know just how special her presence in Toji’s life is. There’s still a part of him struggling with this idea of him betraying his wife, of him hurting her even beyond the grave but there’s this other part of him that feels she loved him enough to want him to be happy. That she cared about him enough that she would want him to give this a try at least.
He doesn’t really have the time to think about it now.
His fingers wrap around her delicate hand and he squeezes it tightly enough to feel secure but not so much that it’s stifling or painful.
“Put your oxygen on today, okay?” Toji turns to the quiet voice next to him, soft and chiding, a protectiveness being the driving factor for her to say such a thing in the first place.
“Yeah, okay Suguru.” He smiles and it’s a little strange to be smiling right now as genuinely as he is but Suguru pulls it out of him, even if the air is tense with sadness and despair, she helps his aches just be being around.
She’s wonderful and he cares about her more than he’s cared about himself for the past few years.
Familiar yet foreign, that’s the only thing he can really think of that describes the feeling he gets around Suguru. He’s well aware of the fact he can feel himself slipping into something reminiscent of love but it's different this time. It’s less like this bright white light being shot at him before he can even register it, more like the slow gentle ease of a warm bath on tired muscles.
It feels good, just different.
Maybe that’s okay, maybe it’s just different enough that he can manage to not feel like he’s cheating on his beloved wife.
He still loves her, he probably always will but maybe he can love someone else too. Maybe he can let himself do that.
Suguru breathes in heavily, the weight of the heavy bag on her back begging for her to succumb to gravity’s sweet song. Her hand grabs on firmly to a hard piece of limestone and she digs her crampon into the snowy rock as much as she can.
“You good?” Toji yells up at her.
Suguru is in the middle and she can’t help but feel like it’s because they think she needs protection.
To their credit, she does too. Yu’s death has left her shaky, scared. She can’t really process it at all though, like there’s too much going on for her to really sit there with the feelings and digest what is happening.
She misses him, misses the hum of his voice and the mindless chatter that seemed to always find its way onto his lips but, in all honesty, it’s like all she knows is the numbness of acceptance, like her grief just isn’t hitting quite as hard as it once had.
Maybe it’s the cold painful reality of the fact that she's used to it by now. That loss is just something she’s come to accept.
Or maybe it’s just the fact she hasn’t let herself be thoughtless long enough for it to really hurt yet. Her mind has yet to find a moment of solace to torture her with grief and defeat.
Maybe that’s a good thing. She’s tired of grief. She’s tired of knowing sadness so intimately, tired of being so well acquainted with the monsters that plague her with depression. Maybe it’s good that she’s so numb to it all now.
“Yes,” she says back as she unclips her carabiner and reattaches herself to a different rope.
The Yellow Band isn’t a long strip of land, however the nearly vertical ascent with the heavy bag on her back does make her want to give up just a little, even if she knows she can’t and even though she knows she won’t .
“Keep going, basecamp four is coming up.”
They go up the Yellow Band and almost immediately into the Geneva Spur.
The Geneva Spur is technical and it’s rocky. It’s crumbly and it’s hard to climb over and there’s hundreds of people who have died on it because of its difficulty to scale. If Yuki hadn’t thought Suguru could make it up the Lhotse Face then Suguru has to wonder if Yuki believes she will die here too.
“Toji,” she says softly, hand going to his as they come upon the snowy rocks of one of Everest’s great landmarks.
His eyes are uncovered and they glitter like fine lime gemstones in the sunlight, his other hand covers hers and it feels safe.
“I’m right behind you,” he says softly, “you’ll be fine,” his voice gentle and kind.
She’ll be fine.
Toji’s eyes don’t leave Suguru’s body as she makes her way up the uneven rock face, he watches every dig of her crampons and even though he knows there’s nothing to be afraid of, he can’t shake this never ending need to watch every movement of hers. To make sure she’s safe, that she’s still there, that she’s not going to leave him too.
It’s odd to him, he’s never watched so intently for a tourist before but it’s Suguru and she’s different and he has no idea why she’s so different but waking up in the morning and drinking tea with her is the happiest he’s been in years and talking to her about nothing in particular is the most understood he’s felt in decades.
She’s so perfect for him and he can’t help but feel like their losses have moulded them into the perfect shapes for one another.
Up and up she goes and she does it without any difficulty and he can’t express how proud he is of her. He can’t put into words how happy he is when they reach the top of the Spur without any issues. She’s careful and cautious and even though Toji can tell she’s struggling with all the weight on her back, she’s managing, she’s pushing forward.
Part of him wishes he could take some of the burden from her, he wishes he could carry at least some of her baggage for her but he can’t.
It’s hers to carry.
Basecamp four isn’t interesting but it’s their last real landmark before they reach the peak. Toji announces that they’ll be taking a rest day when they reach the camp and it makes Suguru want to jump for joy.
She’s never been all that into climbing up steep things and today their elevation has increased the most out of any other day. It’s exhausting and so she’s glad her muscles will get a few hours just to recuperate before they make the final push to the top.
“Do you think you could fall in love again?” Suguru asks, her hips grinding down against Toji’s pubic bone, hands pressed flat against his chest as she searches for her pleasure.
Yes. I already have.
Toji thinks that’s a bit too intense to tell her right now.
“Yes, I already have,” but he says it anyway. His hands wrap around her small waist, fingers brushing against one another.
He can see the outline of his cock bulging out on her flat stomach and the pleasure that image brings him is so immense he thinks he could impregnate her right now.
He decides not to tell her that though.
The grinding halts and Toji feels a sharp honey gaze on him, much brighter than he’s ever seen them even in the dark of their tent.
They’re sharing a tent for now. They haven’t exactly been conspicuous about it at all, everyone knows they’re sharing a tent and he’s sure everyone knows they’re making love right now.
“You have?” She moves her hand up and presses it against Toji’s cheek.
“Yeah,” he takes a gentle hold of the hand on his cheek and turns his face to the side so he can kiss her palm. “Yeah, Suguru.”
His heart pulses loudly in his ears at his confession as guilt attempts to creep its ugly head through the door.
He doesn’t let it in though.
His wife loved him and he loved her but her death changed him. Even if she came back to life right now, she wouldn’t be his perfect match, she wouldn’t fit with him as well as she once did.
Suguru fits with him now. She fits with the imperfect, grief stricken Toji that exists now, in this tiny space, in this time.
“Toji I-” she looks away, tears gathering in her eyes and he wishes he never said it but he wanted to be honest with her. He wanted to be candid.
“Suguru, why are you crying?” He presses kisses along her hand and up to her wrist, over her veins so she can feel the warmth of his lips being taken straight back into her heart.
“I can’t feel the same. I don’t- Satoru he-” she sniffles quietly and Toji understands. He gets it. She can’t love him back yet, the pain is too raw, it’s too fresh. She loved another man not too long ago and Toji knows he’ll never have that exact same place in her heart.
He knows the grief is hard. He knows she’s struggling and so he does what could be considered selfless but he’s honestly only saying it from a place of greed. He can’t let her go.
“I don’t care. Use me for your pleasure. Use me however you want, just don’t leave.”
He presses his hands back onto her waist and forces her to move back up and down on his cock.
He can handle a lot of things but now that Megumi’s practically all grown up, there’s nothing much keeping him tied down to living other than her.
He can’t fucking lose her.
Suguru’s ears fill with the loud sound of screams and cheers.
“WE DID IT! WE’RE ON TOP OF THE FUCKING WORLD!” Yuki yells from somewhere behind Suguru.
They did it. They made it all the way to the top.
It’s bittersweet because they didn’t all make it. Yu was much more deserving of peering over the edge of the cliffs and down over the world. He should be here. He should but he isn’t.
“We did it,” she mumbles softly as she sits on the ground and grabs a handful of soft snow. She lets the snowflakes float away from her hand, carried by the breeze, watching as the frozen fractals dot through the air like magic.
The sparkly, glittery white becomes a part of the skies, one with the world.
Now that she’s here she’s not exactly sure how she wants to do this. She’s not exactly sure how she should do this.
She’s not even all that sure she wants to do this.
It had seemed flashy and impressive, it had seemed like a beautiful gesture all those months ago but now as she holds the envelopes holding her husband and babies in her hand and the reality now is upon her, it seems so hard.
This is all she has left of them. Their ashes. She’s not sure if she’s selfless enough to let them go. Tears well up in her eyes as she thinks about the fact that this is the only way she’s really been able to hold her babies. Mimiko and Nanako.
She sobs quietly as she thinks about how this would be the last time she could ever hold her husband in her arms.
Her veins run cold and her heart runs dry.
She’ll have to really let go of Satoru and Mimiko and Nanako for the first time since she’s lost them. She’ll have to release them and she doesn’t know if she’s strong enough to.
“You okay?” Toji says quietly, hand going to the small of her back as he crouches down beside her.
Suguru turns her head to look at the man beside her, a beautiful soul, broken just like hers. His green eyes shine with empathy and his soft smile makes her feel just a little warmth inside.
Toji’s been so wonderful and she knows she could fall in love with him and that’s the problem.
Would Satoru hate her for that?
A soft pressure wraps around her hand and Suguru looks down to find that the pressure is entirely a phantom one. One reminiscent of Satoru’s hold on her in that hospital as he died. As the life slipped from his body.
A glance between her right hand and the envelopes in her other are the deciding factor she needs.
Satoru will never leave her. He’ll live on in her memories and he’ll live on in her soul.
Her babies will never leave her, they’ll live on through her. They’ll watch her from the Heavens above and they’ll be happy she’s found it in herself to be happy. To not be quite so miserable. They’ll be happy that she isn’t stuck in bed, unable to do a thing anymore.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she sniffles, hand opening the first envelope and mouth forming the words of a song she’s sung to her babies before.
Mimiko’s first.
She scatters her youngest baby’s ashes over a small area on the left.
Nanako lays next to Mimiko, close together.
Suguru imagines if they had had the chance to be alive and happy they would have been the best of friends, that they would have been inseparable and so it seems only right that she lays their remains side by side.
Toji stares on at her from behind, respectful but supportive. She looks back at him before she opens Satoru’s.
“I’m sorry, Satoru. I’ll always love you,” she says softly, tears trickling down her cheek and settling on her jaw.
She feels a phantom pressure on her hand, guiding, comforting, as if Satoru is okay with this, like he wants Suguru to let go of him, to be happy.
It’s bittersweet.
She’s done what she came here to do but it doesn’t feel nearly as good as it should.
She leaves the peak feeling lighter in one way and heavier in another and Toji helps her through it all. He talks her through her feelings, tells her it’s normal and that she’s so brave and so strong. He makes her feel so good and her heart tingles just a little bit.
“Megumi! Come down!” Suguru yells before placing a soft kiss to Toji’s cheek.
It’s Megumi’s birthday and Suguru’s baked a nice cake.
Suguru and Megumi get on well, incredibly well actually. Megumi’s taken to her like a baby duck to a mother and Suguru loves him like he’s her own.
He doesn’t call her mum though, Suguru doesn’t allow it, tells him that he has a mother and her memory is important too. She tells him that the dead deserve names and titles too and so while she can’t be his mother, she’ll be his Suguru.
It’s a nice compromise they all can live with.
Toji’s quit guiding tourists up the unclimbable mountain too. His income isn’t exactly the most stable and sometimes it’s a little difficult to make ends meet for the month but he takes jobs that are much safer and less tortuous. He stays home now too, only working for a few hours before coming home to his beautiful girlfriend and son.
Life is good like this, it’s nice.
Megumi emerges, hair unruly, just like his mother’s but the bright glee in his green eyes is only because of Suguru.
“Happy birthday to you,” Suguru sings, a smile on her pretty face. Her eyes burn with passion and they look a precious shade of golden brown, like perfectly cooked caramel.
In the time since they’ve started their own life together she’s considerably healthier. Her skin isn’t a thin wrapping for her bones anymore and her cheeks are round with life and love. Her grief doesn’t shine like a beacon at anyone looking in her direction and she sparkles.
Not like a diamond, more like a pearl. Like she’s a precious stone found at the bottom of the ocean. Like she was at rock bottom and now she’s been cleaned up for everyone to admire her beauty.
Toji admires it everyday. Not just her beauty, her soul, her presence, he admires Suguru. They sip tea together in the mornings, Suguru sitting on his lap as she reads a book or presses kisses against his neck. At night they hold each other like they’re afraid of losing the other, like the fear never truly went away but Toji doesn’t mind. He’ll spend the rest of his life with his body pressed right up against this girl without any complaints. She makes everything hurt less. She makes the days brighter with a single smile.
She’s everything.
Toji joins in singing gruffly mostly to appease Suguru.
A little to annoy Megumi too.
His son hates being the centre of attention but he’ll put up with it for Suguru.
Turns out it’s a family trait to be weak for this beautiful woman.
Suguru rushes over to Megumi and presses a kiss on his cheek before fussing over his hair being in his face.
“Let me get you a headband for your next birthday, you stubborn boy. I want this hair out of your face so I can see you.” She scolds like it means anything to Megumi.
Toji laughs as his son rolls his eyes.
“Happy birthday, son,” Toji stands and moves over so he can ruffle his son’s already untamed hair much to Suguru’s disapproval. She squawks obscenities at him and punches at his arm, not enough to hurt, just enough to show her annoyance.
“Thanks, dad, thank you, Suguru.” Megumi says back.
He may be a grumpy child but even he can’t hide the way his eyes brighten and his soul lights up.
“I’ve got a date with Yuuji now,” he says peering over at the cake, “can I cut the cake later?”
Suguru’s face lights up with a smile as Megumi distracts her from assaulting Toji.
“Yes! Yes of course! Have fun, baby.” The two of them hug and Toji smiles at the image of his new family. It's beautiful and he never would've expected to call something as pure as this his.
“See you later son,” he says and he rejoices in the fact he can say that.
Suguru’s changed their family a lot but thanks to her, he can finally spend more time with his son.
Megumi might have been Toji’s first blessing, but Suguru is his second.