Work Text:
To my one and only, my love, my everything, the strongest sorcerer of today; to my Suguru,
I hope one day you may forgive me.
I’ll be waiting for you, so when the time comes, let’s head north together, see something new.
Forever yours,
Satoru Gojo.
P.S: Will you marry me?
────────────
Satoru Gojo, the strongest sorcerer of today, loved by many, doubted by none, currently, at the age of twenty-nine, finds himself laying on the floor, lifeless.
He is cut in half, with scars all over his body, but most importantly, Suguru takes notice of how his chest has stopped rising.
“Suguru?” He hears a voice call his name, it’s not cheerful, or childish, or even said in that high pitched tone with the purpose of annoying him like he got used to hearing whenever someone called him. The voice is deprived of emotion, said in a calculated manner, but most importantly, it’s said without love.
It’s been two seconds but he can’t recognize the world anymore.
“Suguru?” the voice tries again, but he pays no mind, his eyes fixated on the screen.
Satoru’s white hair gets ruffled by the air, he still watches his chest, hoping it will raise, but nothing. He knows it is impossible, he doubts Shoko would even be able to fix something like that, maybe if he brought the body back fast, Satoru could live again, but he can’t move, because this is the last of Satoru and he doesn’t wanna miss it.
“Satoru Gojo, you have cleared my skies,” he hears, and oh, it hurts, something inside him breaks when he hears Sukuna talk to him with admiration, making Suguru wonder for a second.
Satoru went in there as a soldier, someone sent to fight a war, to make sure humanity stayed the same, but did he die as a soldier too? The thing he spent his whole life running away from, the title he could never escape, a part of him that made up who he was.
It ran through his blood, dirtying his soul.
Satoru took it with pride, he loved being strong, but it was damn lonely, he would catch him sometimes, watching his students be kids with a look in his eyes that was almost sad to witness, like watching the blue sky get tainted by the gray of the clouds.
Suguru knows that Satoru felt satisfied with having him present in his life, but there were a couple of years where Suguru ran away and Satoru had to be on his own, so it always made him wonder if that left a hole inside Satoru.
Something Satoru could never be able to fill.
Suguru wouldn’t return phone calls or messages, no one knew his locations or even heard of him, he went radio silent for five years and when he came back, he did with Nanako and Mimiko in hand.
He told Satoru everything, how he wanted to kill non sorcerers, how Riko dying switched something inside him, how the school was slowly changing him for the worst.
“I was a mess of a person,” he said, “and I found something when I took the twins in, it was all so sudden, they just, they needed someone and- I don’t know, I wasn’t planning on keeping them but then one night, during the first week I was gone, Nanako asked if I could hug her while she slept and it was the best sleep I got in months.”
Satoru didn’t say anything, just watching,
A moment happened between them where neither of them talked. It was killing Suguru on the inside, so he kept talking, to fill the void, “the more I took care of them, the more I saw them trust those who hurt them before, befriend non sorcerers and be normal kids, the more I felt something inside me being fulfilled and–”
“So why come back?” He asks, this sort of hurt look in his face, he couldn’t see his eyes, but Suguru could tell, he has always been able to.
“I missed you,” he expressed, honestly, without needing to go around it. Maybe at seventeen, he would’ve said something else and hid, but he was done running, he wanted to stay.
“Suguru-”
“No, listen, I’m sorry I left, I wasn’t planning to come back at all, I always felt like it would’ve been unfair to you but one day they asked me who you were and– it hurt, Satoru, as if I was holding my breath for years and hearing your name finally allowed me to breathe.”
“And yet you abandoned me,” he whispered, faintly, painfully.
“I know,” he volleys.
“You left me.”
“I know,”
“And you are sorry so I should just take you back?”
He frowns, “no, of course not,” he paused, hesitant on whether or not he should add the next thing but ultimately deciding to, “but Satoru, if I stayed, I would’ve hurt you more.”
He scoffs, “I doubt it.”
“I wanted to kill my parents,” he confessed, raw and pure, “thought about it every night, they were– are, different, used to think of them as monkeys and it was the lowest I have ever been, I felt disgusted with myself, my thoughts, the world. If I stayed, I would’ve done something that I couldn’t take back and changed our lives forever.”
“And leaving didn’t?” he asks bitterly, “what if life gets hard again, will you run away one more time?”
And that’s when he heard it, the betrayal, the hurt, how deeply he wounded Satoru because at the end of the day, Satoru’s doom has always been his loneliness. It’s the core of who he is– was .
“If I could stay again,” he said, slowly, trying to put the proper weight into his words “I would show you every day for the rest of my life that I am never leaving your side again.”
He promised.
And then, six years passed.
Suguru was always found next to Satoru. When things got hard, when raising four kids became a lot, Suguru took Satoru’s hand between his, when Tsumiki felt into a comma, it was Suguru who took charge so Satoru could spend more time with Megumi, when she died, they held each other, when Satoru was sealed, Suguru didn’t leave the scene for three days, and when he finally got unsealed, Suguru made sure to let Satoru be the first person he greeted.
(Satoru ended up spawning somewhere else, challenging Sukuna to a battle, but still, Satoru told him it was the sentiment that counted.)
Now? Well now things are different, his best friend, his partner, his lover, his everything is gone, and all he has is two halves of a body.
Two halves of a soul.
“We need to bring the body back,” another voice says, he still can’t recognize sound, but something resurrects inside him. It’s not his heart, the organ might be beating, however, it has no life, but now at least his consciousness is back.
“No,” he speaks for the first time. His own voice sounds foreign.
Did Satoru feel the same when he left?
Maybe not, at least Suguru left alive.
Oh.
Satoru is dead.
Suguru isn’t.
“We are working with limited time here,” someone else says, he is faceless, Suguru can’t recognize anything right now.
“I said no,” he stands up, finally turning to people, letting Satoru out of his sight even though it hurts, “you want his body? You take it from my hands.”
“He agreed to this, everyone did, we have his permission, and we need it to win the fight,” the faceless figure crosses his arms, “we can buy time but we need his body to win.”
“He’s cut in half ,” he exclaims, pained to be even have to say that, running a hand through his face, “his organs are all out, and he died the most gruesome death and you want to use that? You want to use him?”
“We all could end like that without doing this, he doesn’t care what happens to his body, so why–”
“So it’s you over him?” He snaps
“You know that’s not what he meant, Suguru,” he recognizes this voice, Shoko is speaking to him, calmly as ever, and it bothers him because the world just ended and she didn’t falter like him, why? “You also know there was an agreement.”
“And he also agrees to eating ice cream for dinner, that doesn’t mean you just give in to him like that,” he’s upset, he feels the anger cling to him, making him sharp around the edges without anyone to soften him. Suguru could kill, he would for Satoru, he has known as much ever since he was a teenager, and if he needs to do so to protect Satoru’s body, then so be it, “why are you agreeing to this?”
“Because he made me promise,” she says, “he knew you wouldn’t let anyone touch him so he told me to ‘talk some sense into you’” she quotes with her fingers the last part, to make sure he understood the words didn’t come from her but Satoru.
It makes him angrier, that Satoru is– was so careless with himself.
“ Shoko ,” he calls her name, maybe as a plea, maybe as a warning, “I can’t.”
“Geto,” someone else speaks, “with all due respect, this is part of our win condition, we need Gojo for this.”
You already used him , he thinks, he died for you and that is still not enough? Filthy–
He cuts off his own thoughts.
“How fucked do you think we’ll be if I kill every sorcerer that tries to touch him, tell me, would that affect our win condition?”
“Dad” he hears Mimiko call to him, gently, a reminder that she and her sister are present, so are Satoru’s students, his own, everyone.
Suddenly, the people around him gain a face and a voice.
“Will you throw everyone to the fire for one person?” Higuruma asks, unfamiliar with Satoru and Suguru, because everyone else knows the answer to that.
Satoru Gojo hung the stars, he carried constellations in the blue of his eyes, he was the sun, the moon, the sky, whatever word the poets used to describe their loved ones, Satoru was that and more. He was the entire world, the universe, the air Suguru breathed.
Satoru was everything, and there weren’t enough words to describe him.
(Right now, maybe ‘gone’ would do the work.)
Something burns inside Suguru, hot and angry, consuming him whole.
Would he throw everyone to the fire for one person? What a shitty joke, he would do that and more.
Satoru wasn’t just one person, he was a teacher, a friend, a parent, a partner, and to disrespect his corpse like that, it would dishonor every person who ever cared for Satoru.
The first time Suguru thought of Satoru as more than just annoying, happened during their first year at Jujutsu tech, right after the goodwill event. After ten hours of fighting nonstop, they were finally let go to go back to their dorms.
“How are your eyes?” He asked, they were the only two people in the common room, but he still spoke softly.
Not long ago, Suguru had learned that Satoru gets migraines after training for so long, but the aforementioned always hid that, probably because he disliked being seen as weak.
“They are fine,” he lied, “I just got a nosebleed because my body can’t keep up with my awesomeness.”
“Sure, and the redness of your eyes mean nothing.”
Satoru grinned, “you get me.”
Suguru rolled his eyes.
“Come here.” He said as he grabbed Satoru’s hand, guiding him towards the couch, forcing him to take a seat. When Satoru saw Suguru ripping off a sleeve from his uniform, he tried to stop him, asking him what the fuck he was doing. “It’s fine,” he muttered, “My uniform is a mess and I need a replacement so might as well give it one last use.”
Once the sleeve was off, he wrapped it around Satoru's head. The world suddenly going dark, the sensation too nice to protest. They stayed silent as Suguru tried to find a way to keep the fabric secured. The silence wasn't uncomfortable by any means, he liked the way Satoru's hair brushed against his skin, it was soft. He tried his best to tie the sleeve, but at the end he had to use his own hair tie because the knot kept getting undone, his own hair falling loosely on his shoulders.
He played with Satoru's hair some more before letting go.
“All done, how does it feel?”
“Like tearing your uniform apart was a bit too extra.”
Suguru ends up on the couch next to him, giving Satoru a small shove, “saying thank you isn’t going to kill you, you know?”
He exclaimed, mostly jokingly. Even thought he knew that nothing would come out from trying to teach Satoru some manners, he still wanted to try. Suguru used to enjoy it whenever Satoru would complain, acting bratty, because deep down, he liked seeing someone who could say what he wanted, unlike him at the time.
He was expecting his usual protest, instead, a soft voice greeted him, too shy to even think it belonged to Satoru.
“Thanks.”
It made Suguru’s heart race. A small flutter sitting on his stomach.
He didn't say anything back, afraid of the moment being stolen from him. Instead, he let his head rest on Satoru's shoulders, Satoru's breathing echoing like a lullaby.
They fell asleep on that couch, and it was peaceful, a new type of quiet Suguru didn’t know it was possible, a new type of safe Suguru experienced for the same time.
All of it is gone.
“Yes,” he answers.
Suguru would throw everyone in the fire and more. Afterall, he has never been a saint.
“The kids too?”
He squints his eyes, they are trying to push him into giving in, using the kids as an excuse, but if they cared about the kids, no one would be relying on them to win the fight. “Last time I checked one of my students will have to wear their teacher’s body, so this is me looking out for them.”
“Better to damage Gojo’s body than Yuta’s, he said so himself.”
Suguru seethes, they talk about Satoru like he isn’t human, like he’s their perfect little weapon, and a part of him dies on the inside alongside his lover.
“He’s not some kind of costume, you can’t just wear him.”
“We’ll die if-”
“People always die!” he explains, exploiting, “and who cleans up that mess up? He does, it’s always Satoru, do this, Satoru, do that, Satoru, help with this, and he always helps and yet he can’t escape you leeches even after dying, are you fucking kidding me?”
“Suguru,” Mei Mei interrupts, and God, why is she even her?
“No, he’s dead, all there is left is his body and you still want to exploit him, do any of you hear yourselves?”
“It’s not like we want this, but the plan relies on this, and-”
“And Satoru can fuck himself?” He closes his eyes, his thumb resting in between his eyebrows, a habit from when he was sixteen. His breathing is fast and agitated, he wants to cry, he’s breaking down, falling without no one to catch him. The hand on his forehead opens and ends up in his eyes, covering them, “he’s dead, and you people can’t understand that?
“We understand, however, the consequences of not using him outweigh whatever emotions we might be feeling.”
He laughs and it’s empty, almost in a manic manner, the sound echoing against the walls, his other hand going up to also cover his eyes. It’s hard to tell whether or not he’s crying or laughing, “you barely even knew him, what possible emotions could you be having?”
“Even Ieiri agrees with us,” and that’s low, using her like that.
“But at least she knows when she’s overstepping.”
“Geto-”
“I said no, and if you go against my wishes, I’ll kill you,” he announces, letting go of his restraint, letting everyone feel the weight of his curse energy. “I’ll make it look clean and pretty and have Yuuta use your body instead, how does that sound?”
Silence.
No one says anything after that
────────────
Satoru’s upper body ends up in front of him five minutes later.
For the first time since Satoru has died, Suguru feels the need to cry, his eyes burning with the need to let go.
Satoru looks ethereal, there are new scars on him, still fresh and it's a weird change, Suguru isn’t used to seeing him be so muscular yet, but he’s beautiful nonetheless. He tilts his head and with one hand, he grabs his cheeks, his thumb slowly and carefully caressing the skin, as if it was made out of glass. He’s still warm, barely, he’s starting to get cold and his chest shrinks at the thought.
He moves Satoru’s hair out of his head, they are getting in his eyes, and that bothers- bothered Satoru a lot. The action it’s pointless, he reminds himself, because Satoru can’t feel anything, he could hit him right now and no complaint would leave his pretty lips.
It breaks him to even think about that.
He wants to speak with Satoru again and ask him what to do, because he can’t, for the life of him, let anyone touch him, and in a way, he feels like that might disappoint him, but he’s too consumed by the hurt, it’s all he feels, like it’s a part of him. People need him and he can’t bounce back like Satoru does, coming back stronger than ever, no, Suguru falls apart and hurts.
He knows he needs to get back there again, fight his battle and win, to bring Megumi home, his kid, the only boy of the family and his youngest, but he can’t.
His family is all broken right now.
Suddenly, Suguru feels anger again, Satoru leaves him with three kids to deal with, all alone. He’s mad, because he has to witness them grief a parent and a sister and he won’t have a partner to rely on, someone to give him a break.
When Tsumiki died, he had Satoru the same way Suguru had him, they caught each other and picked the other up. The twins were a mess but they were a mess together and Suguru had someone next to him.
It all happened so recently.
He feels like he can’t breathe anymore.
His chest tightens and his lungs refuse to give him any air.
Suguru became a single parent again, he lost a child, and now? Now he lost the love of his life.
A tear lands on Satoru’s face.
Then another, and another, and then, there are too many to even count.
Suguru falls apart in the corner of the room with no one to witness his down fall. His sobs is all he hears, and it makes sense, because corpses can’t mane a sound. He holds Satoru in his arms and whispering sweet nothings. How much he loves him, how he forgives him, how he’s sorry for being upset. He tells him how scared he is, of being alone, of how he thinks he can’t make it. He begs him to come back to him, to lift his arms and clean his tears like he used to every time he cried.
He pleads to whatever God that is out there listening to bring his Satoru back, because his lover is now running cold and he always hated that. He tells him that Satoru shivers a lot and how he is going to need more layers if they don’t bring him back to him soon, if they don’t allow him to warm up again.
Satoru will be cold for the rest of his life, and maybe so will Suguru.
He sobs even harder.
He wants out of his skin, to be someone else, a person who isn’t chased by death. He wishes he had simple mornings, to be someone who worries about what to make for breakfast, he has always craved normality, unlike Satoru, being strong pained him, and all he even wanted was to stop being used.
Time passes but he doesn’t know how long exactly, just that his tears have dried up on his cheeks. He makes sures to clean Satoru’s face, gently and carefully. He wants to wrap Satoru up and take him away, forgetting about that doomed life of theirs. Satoru is- was , too good for this earth, always sacrificing himself, always hurting, never wanting something in return.
Satoru, oh, baby.
He suddenly feels a hand on his shoulder. It's soft, careful, gentle, all traits opposite to Shoko, but something that she can be with the right people, he has witnessed that care, around Utahime and back when they were kids, willing to change just for the right times. However, the touch makes him recoil, because Satoru had touched his body the night before, and he doesn’t want it to be replaced by anyone.
He doesn’t want traces of Satoru to be gone just yet.
He knows one day he’ll forget his voice, then his face, and suddenly his memories will become inaccurate. He won’t be able to tell stories about Satoru as clearly, changing the facts and essentially, changing the essence of who Satoru is as a whole.
No one will remember Satoru Gojo. Now it will be Suguru’s mortality killing him.
“It’s time,” she tells him, and now, he can tell just how tired she is, how uneven her voice comes out. Maybe she can only fall apart in private like him.
“No, I can’t, what if they use him while I’m gone? You saw everyone and how they view him, I can’t leave him, not now, not when he can’t resist.”
“I understand that–“
“Do you?” He cuts her off, “because if you did you wouldn’t be asking me any of this and would leave me alone.”
“The kids need you,” she tells him, trying to keep him grounded, to not let him spiral, the brown of her eyes are neutral, but they miss its spark.
Shoko always had beautiful brown eyes, they are Utahime’s favorite physical trait.
“I need him,” he says, and it must sound pathetic the way it comes out. With Satoru dead, he’s now the strongest sorcerer of today, but all it takes is one person to disarm him.
He’s already defeated without even entering the battlefield.
“I know you are hurting and the last thing you want is to leave him, but,” she pauses “there’s a time and place, and everyone needs you.”
He scoffs, “and it’s always about what the weak need, god forbid me or Satoru ever wanted anything at all, right? Let’s fuck the strongest over, they can handle it, they don’t have any emotions, fuck them.”
“You know damn well I don’t see you like that,” she exclaims, her eyebrows furrowing.
“Then why even bother coming?”
“Because it’s Megumi we are talking about,” she hopes that will change something inside Suguru, but when that doesn't she continues “he only has you now”
“And I can’t be a parent and be broken, so leave and let me grieve for a couple of more seconds.”
“We don’t have seconds.”
“Shoko, you need me and if you want me there then you’ll leave,” he is firm, because it’s either that or more tears, and being angry beats being sad, “how much worse do you the fight will be without me going? Huh? Who do you think will be next?”
She doesn’t back away, looking for something that will make Suguru react, move away from the body so they all can live. Society will be doomed and it’ll be all because of one one man.
“The more time we lose, the more Satoru would’ve died for nothing.”
“And his death needs a purpose?”
“That’s not what I mean–”
“Then what do you mean?”
A pause.
“I lost him too, Suguru,” she settles on, probably trying her best to empathize.
“Not like me,” he comments bitterly, angrily, with all the intention of hurting her too because he can’t bear to be the only one bleeding right now “you lost your best friend, but you still have Utahime, don’t you? You’ll go back to her and cry about how it hurts and she’ll be there to help you but tell me Shoko, what would you do if she was gone?”
“Suguru,” she warns, something akin to hurt flashing her eyes.
“Exactly, now imagine living it, imagine that being your reality, imagine knowing you won’t wake up next to her tomorrow, that you will be alone and a mess and the only person capable of picking you up is dead.”
“It hurts, but–”
“But nothing,” he bites back bitterly, finally snapping properly, his index finger pointing at her. He’s not playing fair, he knows that, but he doesn’t care, why should he care? Life doesn’t care about fairness either, “you don’t know what it's like. You can’t possibly feel this hollow, or empty, like the world has stopped, like every breath you take is painful because you no longer share the same air, and worst of all, even if Utahime did die, you still can’t know what I’ll go through because you have no kids that rely on you. You aren’t going to go home with them and sit through their grief while swallowing your own because you might have lost the love of your life, but them? They lost their dad, how do you beat that?”
“You heal together,” she attempts, the words leaving her too fast, as if she has had this conversation before.
“I can’t do that,” he almost wanting to laugh at her reply, “one of my kids is going to think he killed his sister and father, so you don’t get to fall apart because they rely on you, because his death is something that happened to everyone, because they need a pillar and you have to be that for them,” he stops, taking a deep breath, suddenly feeling the tears come back again, “the only time I’ll have to grief is when I am all alone, in our shared room where Satoru used to sleep with me except he won’t be there, and I’ll be by myself Shoko. This is the last time I’ll have him and I just can’t- I can’t leave.”
He can see the way her shoulders fall, deflating, tired.
“There won’t be a home to go to if you don’t leave,” she tilts her head to the side slightly, licking her lips, a habit of hers from when she is thinking, “I know it hurts, and it’s like, suffocating right? He was so high in the sky he was basically the sun and now you are left all in the dark, but like you said, you can’t fall apart when the kids need you.”
“And I just want another five minutes with him,” he confesses, “I don’t want to be a sorcerer, or the strongest, I want- I need, I need to just be a guy that lost his partner.”
“Okay,” she agrees, “okay, be that guy.”
“Thank you.”
“But I’ll be here then.”
“No,” he says without thinking, a primitive part of him not wanting to share Satoru, to keep him all by himself.
“You need someone Suguru.”
“And like I said it five seconds ago, you don’t know what it is like.”
She scoffs, like something funny was being said, “Satoru told me the same when you left, said that I had Utahime so what did I know about breakups and–”
“Satoru didn’t leave,” he corrects her, “he died, Shoko.”
“I know-”
“You don’t!” He lets out, he’s like a bomb, waiting to explode to anyone and anything that pushes just a bit. “You don’t know, you- you may have lost him too but you don’t know,” he is yelling now, standing, Satoru is behind him and Suguru guards him like a dog, “you are comparing this to me leaving as if it’s remotely the same but it isn't, Satoru didn’t just go for a walk, he is gone, and if you got it, you wouldn’t compare situations, like it’s the same, like you can handle both.”
She frowns again, “I wasn’t comparing situations Suguru,” she tells him, “I only brought it up because Satoru told me the same thing and yet he cried about you to me every night. You are right, I can’t get it, I can’t even possibly know what you are going through but Suguru, you can talk to me, you can talk to someone that knows him as more than just being the strongest.”
Something still burns hot inside him, so he keeps going, fighting a pointless fight, “I can’t, I just can’t, I’m too distressed, too angry, too tired to even bother to filter my thoughts, to be considerate and nice, and whoever everyone perceives me as, which is why I want you to leave and let me have some time with him.”
“No,” she pushes back, “you need to talk more than you need five minutes.”
Suguru laughs, but it's empty, devoid from joy, “oh yeah, and you know this how?”
“Satoru told me,” she explains, “he said the last thing you will need is to be isolated.”
“Yeah?” He takes a few steps forward, aware of how far behind he is leaving Satoru, hovering over her. “He also told you how much I would resent you merely by the fact that your girlfriend is alive while my boyfriend is dead?”
Shoko doesn’t move, meeting the challenge, “he said you get dark thoughts, and that I shouldn’t take them seriously.”
“What about my murder tendencies?”
“That you wouldn’t actually kill anyone so I should let you lash out,” he’s wrong, Satoru is wrong, he wants to tell her that but when he opens his mouth Shoko continues, “he said that you can kill people. That you have the strength and the mentality for it, but he said you won’t go through it relying on the fact that you made your choice about murder a long time ago.”
There’s a pause, where Suguru can almost relax, he’s getting fed crumbs of Satoru he didn’t have before and if he focuses on just that, it’s as if he was having a conversation with him, “what else?”
“That if we had this conversation you would, at some point, calm down, so it was better to have it soon, something cheesy about how you can’t resist not having more of Satoru, and I should use the chance to convince you to let him use his body, but-”
“Shoko,” he says her name low and slowly, a threat.
“But, ” she repeats, “I won’t, I only promised him to have the conversation once, which technically we did, so…” she trails off, “I won’t let anyone touch him Suguru, I promise, not even me, he’ll stay right where you left him” she smiles and it’s empty.
He feels like he’s sixteen again and Shoko is covering for him. They are joining hands to bother Satoru one last time, to go against him and bother him in the afterlife (if there is one).
He can feel the fight leaving him.
They look at each other for a second before Suguru walks back, “I’m sorry,” he mutters.
“For what?” She jokes, or tries to, he doesn’t know, “I’m not actually hurt by anything you said, and you have a lot on your plate right now.”
“But I shouldn’t have said any of it, I’m just so…”
“Upset at the world?” She finishes, “me too, but we all have ugly feelings inside us, maybe yours are about Utahime, mine are about you. How angry it makes me that you left and then came back and had Satoru all for yourself, it makes me think, you know, how many moments did I lose with him just because you came back and I got replaced?”
“I’m sorry,” he apologizes again, he doesn’t know why but every time anyone mentions him leaving, he feels the need to say how sorry he is, the anger has left him, no longer able to put a fight against her, so he tries to makes amends for looking for blood the way he did, “but you were never just a replacement for him… God, Shoko, you were his sister, you two formed a close bond I could never replace. There were times where he wanted you instead of me and it made me feel like an incompetent boyfriend.”
She chuckles at that, lightly and barely audible, but he catches on to that, “I don’t want you to apologize, I know he… well, I know he cared for me, and I am not mad that you have moments with him, I just wish I could have, I don’t know, more?”
“You have five years I don’t have.” He offers.
“And I bet you still share more memories of him,” she murmurs.
They stand there for a second, letting the moment be, grief coming in waves, he still can’t leave, he knows some of the kids are in battle and it’s his turn to go, but he can’t bring himself to walk away.
“I was going to marry him,” he decides to share, “I have the rings in my pocket.”
“Oh,” there is a pause, hesitancy in Shoko that doesn’t quite fit her, “Satoru also had rings for you, they should be in his right pocket. He picked them around the time Tsumiki fell into a coma.”
Oh.
Satoru wanted a life with him.
He wanted to marry him too.
He searches into his pocket and immediately feels it, the little box. It’s soft against his fingers, round edges, and when he takes it out to take a look at it, he notices how the box is the same purple as his eyes. He doesn’t want to open it but when he does, he sees the most beautiful pair of rings.
They are black, the same color of his gauges and other jewelry, they aren’t the conventional set of proposal rings but they are set to match Suguru’s taste. Inside of them, there’s a date engraved, it takes him a moment to read it and then Suguru cries for a second time.
24th of December.
Satoru was planning on making it out alive.
Suddenly the world is different again, he falls to the floor and Shoko sits next to him. He has his hands on his hair and is crying once more. They could've been husbands, he could’ve been a widower, something that ties him deeper to Satoru.
His rings for Satoru were white and they could’ve matched, like Satoru always loved doing.
His heart breaks even further. Shoko places a hand on his shoulder and he lets her.
He sobs harder this time, finding it hard to take a new breath.
He’s gone, he thinks, my Satoru is gone.
He won’t come back.
Why?
Why can’t he come back?
Why can’t he yell at him for being careless?
Why is it that the only thing he has of him is a corpse?
He wants one last talk, one more kiss, another hug, he wants to hear him say his name one more time. He wants so much more, to have his touch until it’s part of his DNA, until he is sure he won’t ever forget, and even then, he would never be satisfied.
He hears a sound that could come from a hurt beast, but he knows it was made by him. It’s hard to describe, barely human, more animalistic, making Suguru’s throat hurt. He falls apart, violet box in hand.
Shoko shushes him but he can barely hear her above his own yelling.
He wants to hit his chest, scratch it, free his heart so it can be forever next to Satoru, but he can’t despite how hard he tries, it makes him bleed, but that hurts less than the pain in his heart.
(Shoko tried to stop him but her strength falls short to his, so all she could do was heal him with her RCT.)
He should’ve ran away with Satoru.
Or maybe leave him in that box where he was safe. He shouldn’t have been that clingy and desperate to get him back because at least Satoru was alive then, the sky was bluer, the sun shone brighter, and things were relatively good. He should’ve been grateful, that Suguru didn’t actually know what it was like to be alone.
This Suguru knows and he wants to fucking die.
“Shhh,” he hears, “let it out big guy.”
Satoru called me that, he thinks while hating himself for it, because he never wanted to be the type of person that went ‘my boyfriend used to do that,’ but he can’t help it, he craves after every little thing Satoru used to do and he can’t have anymore.
Like his smile, or his laugh, or even his inappropriate comments in the middle of a school meeting made to discuss how the kids are doing.
He misses the way his nose would scrunch and he would kiss it, making Satoru push him away to hide his blush.
He wants more.
Suguru can’t have more.
He drowns in grief and love.
────────────
Almost a year later, still at the age of twenty-nine, Satoru can be found six feet under in some place in Okinawa. In his grave, there’s a little note that says, ‘yes’ attached to it alongside a bunch of carnations, calla lilies, and daisys.
There are all types of candies and pastries laying on the grass, all his favorites. Photos of multiple people, all of different ages, in the back, some of them have descriptions.
Our kids keep stealing our bed, but it’s the only way they can rest -Suguru, January, 2019.
Dad’s birthday -Nanako, February, 2019.
Caught Megumi wearing one of your expensive shirts -Nobara, March 2019.
P.S him and Yuji are pining even harder than ever, save me sensei.
First day of school without you -Mimiko, April, 2019
Third year and last, we figured you would want to commemorate the moment so here’s all of us -Yuuta, April, 2019.
Utahime said this frog reminded her of you, she’s right -Shoko, May, 2019.
Toge finally got his prosthetic -Yuuta and Toge, May, 2019.
Tsumiki’s birthday -Suguru, May, 2019.
Shoko said I should bring you something, so here’s the sky -Utahime, June, 2019.
^^^ She is trying to be nonchalant but the blue is similar to the one in your eyes -Shoko
Geto-sensei brought us some of your favorite snacks, I don’t know how you could eat this crap -Maki, June, 2019.
I passed my first exam, it was made by dad and it made me miss your tests, they were easier -Nanako, July, 2019.
Mimiko’s and Nanako’s birthday -Megumi, July, 2019.
Megumi, Nanako, and Mimiko modified their uniform, it reminds me of yours -Suguru, August, 2019.
I found this old picture of you, Ieiri and, dad Geto -Megumi, September, 2019.
Suguru wears your button on his uniform, you guys make me sick -Shoko, November, 2019.
Megumi uses your blindfold to sleep and you were right, he’s a very soft child -Suguru, November, 2019.
Happy birthday -from everyone, December, 2019.
The grave read as it follows:
Satoru Geto.
December 7th, 1989 - December 24th, 2018.
Teacher, father, and husband, loved by many, forever the greatest.
Let’s head north.