Chapter Text
It’s around eight in the morning when Getou wakes up.
He blinks awake slowly. The sunlight cants in from the open door, soft and warm in the way only mornings can bring. He wakes, dry in the mouth and certain in his head that something is terribly wrong— but then the surroundings ground him as his sight adjusts, and he is steady again.
Getou sits up from his futon. He takes a minute to stare out at the garden, and then stands.
It’s cumbersome to change into the robes from yesterday right away. Getou opens the garden doors and steps outside into the morning air, dressed in the yukata he’s slept in. There’s freshness in the grass today, damp with dew. He soaks in the breeze that smells like winter, lets the taste settle low in his lungs.
There is a figure already there in the garden.
The boy, still in the uniform he wore last night, seems to have been staring at the bamboo water pouring out into the pond. He turns around at the sound of footsteps.
Getou sighs. “I forgot you’re also an early riser.”
Suguru doesn’t look happy about his appearance. As expected, Getou thinks, half wanting to leave him for the vultures. “What do you want?” Suguru says coldly.
“‘What do I want’,” Getou mimics, with a roll of his eyes. “Please. Is this really how you’d speak to someone who merely wants to go for a morning stroll?”
“Is that all you’re doing?”
“I’m surprised you have this much mistrust for your own self,” says Getou. “But then again, not that surprised.”
Suguru glares at him.
Ignore, ignore, Getou thinks. God, he never realized how much of a fucking pest his younger self is. In lieu of responding to the stupid boy, Getou ambles over towards the only bench in the garden — wooden, splintering at the corners — and sits upon it. “Come.” He pats the empty spot next to him, with a taunting, fake smile that Suguru definitely picks up on. “Let’s have a chat.”
Suguru looks dubious.
“If you can’t already sense from yesterday,” says Getou, “I barely have any cursed energy, and I can’t use any of my techniques. You have the upper hand here.”
Suguru hesitates for another second, before walking cautiously over. This little shit, Getou thinks, as he watches Suguru choose the spot furthest away from him on the bench.
“I’m hurt,” says Getou.
“No, you’re not,” says Suguru.
That manages, somehow, to quirk Getou’s mouth up into a smile. He doesn’t deign it with a response though, and instead leans back against the benchrest, watching the water trickle down towards the stream with something close to serenity. Close to. These days, all of his peace seems to burn.
“What did you do to Satoru yesterday?”
“Hmm?” Getou lifts a brow. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Did you do anything to him?” Suguru’s facing him now. His expression is cold as glass. He looks ridiculous, boring holes through Getou like that, and even though his voice is still impressively controlled, the balled fist on his side looks ready to jump. “I came back to him sleeping.”
“You’re kidding,” gasps Getou. “What an abnormal thing for people to do at nighttime.”
“There was a vial on the table,” snaps Suguru. “He looked fine and was mumbling in his sleep, else I would’ve come for you.”
“Did you really think I would hurt him?” asks Getou.
That manages to shut Suguru up for a beat. He purses his lips, fury barely contained. Getou knows what his next words are even before he says them. “You wouldn’t hurt him,” says Suguru, lowering his voice to a much quieter pitch now, “but you would…”
He trails off. The meaning is clear, even unsaid.
Getou smirks. It’s not one of his kinder smiles, he knows; it’s seeped with derision, with mockery, and Suguru definitely has picked up the darker tones of it by the way his eyes twitch. “You barely touch him. Do you think an older, more mature version of you would?” He tilts his head. “Use your brain.”
Suguru bites his lip.
Oh, his anger is so palpable. “I met Rin,” says Getou. “I had her antidote. That was all it was.”
Suguru blinks. “You what?”
“Sleep gives him time for the potion to take effect in his body,” Getou graciously explains. “Metabolism and all that. Who knows. Bottom line is he’ll be fine when he wakes up.”
Suguru glances over to their room a few meters away, the direction where Satoru is no doubt sleeping. There are no signs of him stirring inside.
A long pause stretches.
And then Suguru asks, “When will I meet Rin?”
God, he’s so demanding. Getou can almost punch him, pulverize his cheekbone to shattered little pieces. “You youths are always so eager to know your future. Take it easy, why don’t you? I’m not in the mood to explain, anyway.”
“You’re different,” Suguru suddenly says. His brows are furrowed. “Something changed about you. You’re different from me.”
Getou meets his eyes. There is concern in Suguru’s face, in the rigidness of his jaw, and worry. Plus a thousand other emotions that Getou is too tired now to give name to. He ignores the anger that is spreading through his chest. “No one expects you to stay the same between your teenage years and your adult years. You’re overthinking it.”
Suguru glares at him.
It’s too irritating to give the boy a more elaborate answer than that, so Getou looks away. He turns his head up to the sky, instead, to watch as several birds flit by— a better alternative than acknowledging the emotion that is boiling in him right now. An emotion that is not exactly anger, not exactly hatred. Something more like ache.
For a minute or two, they let the crunch of gravel under their feet fill the silence between them. Neither of them wants to give in, it seems, and be the first to break. Suguru is toying with the fabric inside his pocket, presumably doing his level best to come up with as nonchalant a string of words as possible for what he wants to say. Getou lets him get to it in his own time. It takes another full minute, in the end, for Suguru to drop the pretense along with the fabric in his hand.
“Do you,” says Suguru.
Getou glances at him.
“Do you...” Suguru clears his throat. He’s not looking back at Getou. His posture is relaxed, shoulders down, arms and legs unwound as he sits casually in his seat, the perfect picture of ease. But Getou knows a performance when he sees it. “Do you and— do I and Satoru…” He makes a vague gesture with his hand.
Ah.
Getou‘s mouth curves into a smile.
He turns slowly towards Suguru, draping one arm lazily over the back of the bench. “Hmm? What’s this?” His voice is drawled, low and laughing. “Are you asking if he’ll ever forgive you for stealing his first kiss?”
Suguru immediately jumps and slaps a hand over his mouth.
Getou has to hold himself back from laughing. “Calm down,” he says, although with the palm covering his mouth it comes out more like kghm dhmn.
“Shut up,” Suguru whispers angrily. He glances over to the room where Satoru is sleeping, glances frantically to the other side for good measure, and then finally glares at Getou. Oh, this is so much more fun than scamming. “What if he overhears?”
Getou slaps Suguru’s hand away, rubbing at his mouth. “You’re making more of a ruckus than I am.”
“You can’t just go out and say it like—”
“You’re the one who asked.”
Suguru looks ready to kill himself. His cheeks are flushed impossibly red, his mouth tightened into a pale line. Getou knows he is struggling to get his words out right now, torn between kneeing his older version in the nose to feel the satisfaction of blood and keeping his cool for Satoru’s sake.
Suguru, in the end, chooses the latter. Of course he does.
“You’re going to shut up,” he hisses, “and not say any of this to Satoru.”
“Don’t you know it’s rude to point?” says Getou. “I don’t appreciate you jabbing a finger into my face.”
“And whose fault is that?” Suguru says furiously. “You come waltzing in here with no explanation whatsoever, expect us to fully trust you, and choose a moment when I’m not there to give Satoru a vial of unknown antidote. Do you think I don’t know myself enough to know that something is wrong?”
“Doesn’t justify you lacking manners to your elders,” says Getou.
“I don’t like you,” Suguru grits out. “It doesn’t have to be a problem, if you’d just behave.”
Getou looks at him. Suguru glares back, looking angry enough to punch— and Getou wonders, vaguely, if he’s going to end up get the fucking daylights beat out of him. He looks down at Suguru’s hands, at the stretch of torn skin over his knuckles, and decides that he wouldn’t put it past him.
Still.
“Come on now,” says Getou, with a smug smile. “That wasn’t the question you wanted to ask, though, was it?”
The colours in Suguru’s cheeks rise.
“You keep forgetting that I know you,” says Getou.
“If I ask,” Suguru says vexedly, blushing, not quite tight-jawed but getting there, “are you going to tell me?”
Getou hums. “Do you want to know the truth?”
“I don’t know,” says Suguru. “Do I?”
Getou watches him, the smile still etched on his face.
Perhaps, in another world, his answer could make a difference. Perhaps there were things that they could have changed, times that they could have saved together— except the Getou of right now would never bring himself to abandon his plans and return to the boy who has been estranged from him for close to a decade. There’s no sense in backing down now. None of it was ever a gamble. But going through this train of thought is like casting a stone into an abyss, void of meaning and deeply useless.
“…Well,” says Getou, “he kissed you back, didn’t he?”
Suguru’s face goes even redder.
“God, you’re so exhausting,” says Getou. “As I said before, use your brain.”
“But he was half-delirious,” Suguru says weakly.
“Was he.”
“And it was because it helped his pain, wasn't it?” Suguru argues. “Also— also he barely remembers it.”
“Alright,” Getou leans back, crosses his arms, and waves his hand. “I’m done with this conversation. This is pissing me off.”
“What?”
“I said I’m done,” says Getou. “You can go and figure it out by yourself.”
Suguru stares at him, stunned and incredulous. “You’re an asshole.”
“You only have yourself to blame.” Getou concludes that by rising up from the bench, dusting off the filth from his yukata, and lifting his chin.
A sparrow darts across the hedges. This ryokan has always been so quiet, he thinks, so still— remembering that for a time he had hated it, chafed at it, at the absurd serenity of the rooms and the garden, at the faux peace the building holds. Trust the monkeys to run it. He wouldn’t have ever come back here, if it weren’t for the fact that it was the only place he and Satoru could return to again and again over the last ten years, a place neither of them could stand to see the other one without. Some irony.
“Either way,” says Getou, turning to the younger boy, “good news is that you won’t have to put up with this for long. You’ll have some peace of mind; I’ll be out of your hair by the end of the day.” At the barely repressed light that appears on Suguru’s face, Getou’s smiles turn unkind, and he adds: “There’s just one thing I want to do first.”
Suguru narrows his eyes. “...What?”
Getou looks down at him. His smile is still fake, though dimmer, perhaps.
“You two have a low-grade mission today,” he says. “Let me join you.”
_____
It was a mission that brought them together, a mission that drove them apart.
Over time, they had gone on fewer and fewer of these missions together. Still though, in Getou’s mind, they were always steeped in gold, no matter how arduous or painful they were. In his mind, Satoru was seventeen, blue-eyed and young and fiercely devoted. Some nights, Getou dreamed they were back in their younger years, fighting together with the world collapsing around them, and sometimes Satoru would take his outstretched hand. Some nights, they were alone in the skies.
None of that existed now.
You’re not staying the night? asked Getou.
Satoru was buttoning up his shirt, sitting at the foot of the bed. His back was slouched, his white blindfolds still wrapped around his eyes. There was no answer.
That annoyed Getou, but he didn’t show it. All he did, in place of vulnerability, was shrug as uncaringly as he could and smile. You can at least get a couple hours of sleep in, Satoru.
Satoru didn’t say anything. He didn’t turn back to look at him. His hands were moving, slowly and measuredly, across the folds of his shirt, his pants. Even though this had been happening for the past ten years now, the carefulness of his movements was an unbearable, terrible sight to see.
So much care for my sleep, Satoru eventually said, quietly. And not a single thought for my back. Some gentleman you are.
It was childish. It was petty. Both of them knew that it was Satoru who had been asking for it to be rougher, to be harder every time they agreed to meet in this lonesome ryokan. As if the violence of sex could wash away anything between us, Getou thought, but he didn’t say that. He only stared silently as Satoru finished dressing, as the silence hung like cargo rope between them. He only stared silently as Satoru grabbed his things, put on his shoes, and left the room without a single look back his way.
_____
It was a mission that brought them together, a mission that drove them apart.
“Suguru, watch this!”
Getou isn’t sure which of them Satoru’s yelling at, but he’s turning his head anyway.
Satoru is up in the sky, laughing as he swings his leg. The palm of his feet cuts through the air and smashes against the head of the curse that tried to attack him. The poor thing crashes against the ground in a matter of seconds, landing in a cloud of smoke, gone in the debris.
Satoru is up above them, cackling in joy. He’s laughing. God, he’s laughing. Getou lets the sound wash across the nape of his neck, unraveling him stitch by stitch, every seam he’d painstakingly drawn closed and shrouded himself under. Has it always been this simple for Satoru to be happy? All this boyish radiance, undone throughout the years.
“Impressive,” Getou shouts, clapping indulgently. He ignores the underbreath mutterings Suguru makes beside him.
Satoru grins. He’s brilliant like this, basked in the glow of the undying sunlight. “Wasn’t that cool?” He shouts, flying down toward them with his hair windswept. “That was a new technique I discovered! They can’t get to me because of Infinity, and at the same time I’m able to bring them up to the sky and kick ‘em to the ground.”
“Yes, very cool,” Getou says genially. “I can also say that you’ve improved your techniques a whole lot over the years.”
Satoru looks ecstatic.
“So,” Suguru grumbles, “what do we do now? The curses are all exorcised. The mission’s done.”
“Little Suguru is weirdly grumpy today.” Satoru peers at him. “Is it because I killed more curses than you? Or is it the weather?”
“I’m not grumpy,” Suguru says crossly. “And don’t call me ‘little Suguru’.”
“How else am I gonna differentiate you two?”
“Hopefully by him disappearing.”
“You’re definitely grumpy,” Satoru decides, sounding delighted. He hums thoughtfully for a moment, his arms clasped behind his back— and then, in a moment of cosmic karma, his voice rises a little louder when he adds: “Maybe having children will mellow you out, after all.”
Crap.
Suguru blinks. “What?”
“Oh,” says Getou, “let’s not—”
“That’s apparently what happens, Suguru,” declares Satoru. “You have daughters in the future.”
...Silence.
More silence.
Suguru, as it turns out, looks even more shocked that Satoru had.
He whips his head over at Getou so fast, it’s a miracle it didn’t detach. There’s a whole mix of emotions in his expression: betrayal, anger, confusion, bafflement, the whole nine yards. Getou holds up both of his hands. “I didn’t say that.”
“What?” Satoru yelps. “Yes, you did!”
“I lied,” Getou says quickly. “I don’t have daughters. They’re adopted. It’s a complicated thing and it’ll take a while to get into it, but no, I did not have biological children.”
“You have daughters,” echoes Suguru, looking like he’s still processing.
“With,” says Satoru, sounding strange, “with who?”
“Million-dollar question, isn’t it?” says Getou. “Haha. Anyway, now that we’ve finished the mission, why don’t we start heading back to campus? Yaga is still waiting for you two, I expect.”
Satoru and Suguru exchange glances with each other. They both look like they have more to say, except neither of them ventures. To ask out loud the questions they’re itching to know the answer to, Getou realizes, means revealing something about themselves that neither wants the other to hear. It’s hilarious.
And even now — ten years since he’d left and threw away the keys — they still can’t communicate, can they? Ten years. A long span of radio silence, of growing old apart from each other, of growing brittle over time. A long span to recall these memories they made in their youth— but Getou still remembers. He remembers today, even, remembers what mission this was, how simple it was, how the curses weren’t worth their efforts. He knows what the two boys will do after this. Knows that they will come back home, go into Suguru’s room, and play Digimon until dawn breaks. They will both be dead tired tomorrow, lugging themselves sleepy through the halls until Shoko laughs at them. They’ll have a good week next week, a peaceful week.
And here he is.
Here Getou stands, years later — after Riko, after Haibara, after the countless bodies of shamans who only wanted to protect the ungrateful — and he’s looking at Tokyo in 2005, at the encroaching tallow-lights from a passing car and he still thinks, I did not make a mistake. Even if he’s looking at Satoru with the sun in his eyes, he doesn’t think he has made a mistake.
“Before we head back, though,” says Getou, with an easy smile, “I’d like to talk to Satoru privately, if you guys don’t mind.”
They turn towards him. He meant for his words to sound casual. His voice didn’t even waver — he was careful — but there must be something in his tone that suggests otherwise, because Suguru is frowning at him.
“Oh.” Satoru gives Suguru a quick glance. “Yeah, okay. That’s fine with me.”
Suguru catches his eyes. You good with that? Satoru seems to be asking. Suguru shrugs, shoulders jerking, like he’s trying to shake off an insect— but he’s still scowling at Getou. He seems to have picked up something from either Getou’s voice or his words. Keen in all the wrong aspects.
“Unless,” says Satoru, looking back and forth between them, his smile teasing, “you’re about to beg on your knees to let you stay here. Because if that’s the case, then maybe Suguru should weigh in.”
“You’re very funny,” says Getou.
“Hey,” Suguru interrupts. “Will you be back?”
Getou looks at him, slowly and evenly, and smiles.
“You’re fine,” he tells his younger self. “We will be just a minute.” And there, keen as he is, Suguru has registered that something about his words aren’t as truthful as they sound. He nods anyway, though imperceptibly, hesitatingly— but with the city skyline behind him ensconcing them in blue, Getou doesn’t feel like getting one last look at himself.
He turns on his heels and walks.
He doesn’t need to hear footsteps — doesn’t need to hear a voice, or sense a presence — to know that Satoru is following closely behind him.
_____
You’re launching an attack on Tokyo?
Getou turned around.
Satoru was standing at the door, leaning sideways against the wall with his arms folded. Shadows pooled around the tense knot of his stance. The ryokan was steeped in a cloudless night tonight, moonless, the quiet of the building making Satoru’s words sound louder than they were.
Satoru, Getou called cheerfully over his shoulder. You’re early today.
Satoru neither replied nor uncrossed his arms. He remained standing, motionless, and even though Getou couldn’t see his eyes beneath the white blindfolds, he was sure Satoru’s expression was stony and vacant. His feelings had always been sealed away for the past ten years, it seemed.
And then Satoru was walking towards him.
His steps were slow and careful, as though he was still halfway through deciding whether or not he should tread. Every foot forward felt painstaking. Getou stood by the window with his arms folded, waiting patiently— watching as Satoru maneuvered around the creaks in the floorboards like the heedful man he wasn’t. Watching, as Satoru came to a stop in front of him. His chin was tilted slightly down, as if avoiding Getou’s gaze.
Hmm? Getou kept his smile on.
Satoru hesitated. Getou expected him to snap. He expected exasperation or disdain, a mad talking-to, frosting up all the rigid air between them. Fuck you, how could you do this? Who are you to think that your plan could ever work? But instead, Satoru only lifted his hands from his sides, and slowly unwrapped the white blindfold around his eyes.
Once loop around his head. Then another, and another. They were undone gradually over a minute that felt endless, and then, when Satoru lifted his head to look at him, Getou was finally met with blue.
Getou stared at him. The entire act of it felt wrong somehow. Satoru never removed his blindfolds around his presence anymore; his eyes were always shielded beneath them, a protective layer of a child. The only time they were ever loose enough to tumble around his face was when he was lying on the mattress, his limbs tangled up in the sheets, his mouth open to call out a name in a voice so tinged with loss— and even then Satoru would always look away or place his arm over his face, hiding.
Suguru, Satoru was saying now, his voice so soft it was almost a whisper. His eyes — despite being seen, despite directly meeting Getou’s head-on — were void of any emotions. They were simply blue. Do you have to?
Getou watched him, listening for thunder. Ten whole years like a lifetime, he thought, and put one foot in front of the other, stepping to close the frigid distance between them until they were eye-to-eye. Satoru didn’t flinch away, didn’t drop his impassive, hollow gaze. He stood still as Getou raised a hand and slowly, softly caressed down the skin of Satoru’s cheek. Ten whole years like a lifetime— their bodies weren’t foreign to each other anymore.
Come on. Getou’s smile was gentle. They had spent years together, even longer years apart, but Getou’s blood still ran warm. It was a little thing he couldn’t help, what his skin remembered. What his bones still clung to ten years after he’d turned and left. One last night with me?
Satoru gazed at him for a long moment, wordlessly — quiet amidst the darkness of the room and the silence that enveloped them — and then slowly closed his eyes.
_____
“Where are we going, Suguru?”
Getou leads them down a narrow alleyway, far from the eyes of any passing onlookers. It’s a long way from where Suguru is waiting for them, but Satoru follows compliantly, as he always does. As he always had when it mattered.
“Nowhere in particular,” Getou says truthfully. “I just wanted to spend some time with you.”
He hears Satoru’s footsteps falter. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” says Getou. “I won’t hurt you.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
It’s approaching evening. There’s the smell of autumn high in the air, of damp leaves and splintered wood, of gravel crunched beneath the passing tyres of cars. The sun is so heavy with warmth on his skin that he can almost believe this moment is real.
“I know.” Getou smiles. “You never took me for a villain.”
He can tell by the shift of shadows, by the level rhythm of his steps that Satoru is eyeing him carefully, searching for any indication that Getou will act out of his own safety. He understands Satoru well enough to know.
How many times have they met, during those ten years? Twice near yours, once at mine, too many of them deep into the night when everything is more vague. None of them ever made you happy, Getou thinks, but you kept coming back to me. As though with enough time they would return to who they used to be. As though one day Getou would turn around at that lonesome ryokan and find Satoru smiling at him, that smile where he’s all sun, where he’s full of boyish youth, a laugh hidden there. As though Getou would step forward and kiss that hidden laugh, press his lips to the corner of Satoru’s mouth and swallow the truth.
Don’t look back.
Couldn’t that have been enough? Three whole years like the blink of an eye. Three whole years of living like kings in the daze of triumph, punch-drunk on the high of their own immortality. They were both too young, back then. Neither of them turned out to be who they thought they were.
“You are not,” begins Getou, and stops himself.
Satoru quickens his pace to match his. “What did you say, Suguru?”
Getou slowly turns and faces him.
Satoru’s steps come to a halt. Beyond the walls on either side of them, the sky stretches as far they can see, cloudless, an ocean of blue. Maybe Getou can stay here forever, here with Satoru under this endless sky. Here, in his mind.
“I know you aren’t real,” says Getou.
Satoru frowns at him, uncomprehending. Getou looks at him and wonders if the sudden throb in his chest means healing or infection. He isn’t sure he wants to know.
“I know this is only in my own head,” Getou says quietly. “But I wanted to see you one last time.”
Satoru looks at him, and it feels like five hundred feet of freefall, his heart too close to the open air. All his memories come rushing back— and it is then, standing before Satoru in the haze of the approaching dusk, that Getou realizes he was never going to die alone. Satoru would’ve never allowed for it.
“What do you mean, Suguru?”
Getou smiles at him. “I didn’t make a mistake, doing what I did,” he says softly. “But I wanted to tell you one last thing.”
Satoru blinks. Getou uses that pause to walk towards him, closing the distance between them. He leans forward, eye-to-eye with Satoru, and throws down the artifice of his own rhetoric to say:
“———, ————.”
Satoru’s eyes widen.
Getou leans back a little, smiling. It’s the closest thing to the truth he has, dragged out into the light from under his layers of artisan-grade refusal to look too closely at himself. “I didn’t get to say it back,” he whispers. “I wanted to, but I didn’t know if it would make it worse for you. So here it is.”
Satoru’s eyes are fixated on him, wide and shocked.
Then he begins to flush, bright red from the tip of his ears to the curve of his neck, his hand flying up to place embarrassedly on his ear, the one where Getou had just spoken into. “You— what are you,” he stammers. “Gross, what was— what was that? That’s so embarrassing! Why’d you say that?!”
Getou laughs. “I wasn’t the one who came up with it.”
Satoru’s blush covers his entire face. He’s frowning, though it doesn’t look as menacing as he probably means it to look. “What the hell?”
Getou smiles. “Are you embarrassed?”
“Of course I am.” Satoru flushes deeper. “Jeez, who wouldn’t be? Why’d you say that, Suguru?”
Getou can’t help but laugh again.
It doesn’t make it all right, but it does make it enough. Ten years without ever saying anything truthful to each other— trust them to have come up with the worst time to do it.
And there. That was all.
That was it. That was all he needed, all he came here for. Getou feels laid bare, an opening door on a way out of this place.
“Suguru,” says Satoru. “What’s wrong?”
Getou looks at him. Satoru’s head is tilted slightly in concern, his eyes directly meeting Getou’s head-on over the rims of his sunglasses.
It’s always hard to uproot someone who has taken ahold of you, be it flower or strangler fig. You are not my Satoru, Getou thinks, something in him tearing apart. You don’t have his memories, you don’t have his years. You are not him, after all. But Satoru stands there, young and bright and so full of life— and Getou wishes otherwise, wishes to the gods that their story could have been written in ink.
But that was not them. They were charcoal on a page, not ink. Most love stories are.
“Nothing,” Getou says, and quietly smiles. “Nothing at all.”
Satoru stares at him.
His smile still soft and sincere, Getou takes one step forward — closing the distance between them. Satoru watches him, eyes wide and warm.
Then Getou’s arms slowly, gently wrap around Satoru.
God, he thinks, for one last second, I wish—
—and as Getou leans into the hug, everything goes white.
_____
Shoko.
Shoko turned around.
Gojo stood still as a statue, his eyes covered by the white blindfolds at the entrance to the morgue. Getou was in his arms.
Oh. Shoko watched them. Something in her had broken. The aftermath of the attack on Tokyo had numbed it out for her, temporarily grazing away everything that made her human and left the pain of this as tiny as a paper-cut. It would hurt later when she’s alone, she knew; but right now Gojo’s arms weren’t even shaking with the weight of Getou. The trail of blood leading out of the room was not yet dried.
Don’t destroy his body, said Gojo. He still…
He trailed off. There was a deep hollowness to his words, Shoko heard, and a horribly even tone to the way he spoke. She could not see his eyes.
(If this were ten years ago, she would have asked him what was wrong and then let Getou deal with it. If they had been younger, Shoko wouldn’t have had to think.)
But they were adults now. They were adults, and that meant understanding that helping someone grieve did not always require your company. It meant knowing when to stay.
I’ll give you some time, Shoko said, and rose up from her seat.
Gojo didn’t move. He didn’t give any indication that he was looking at her. He merely stood still — Getou’s body unmoving in his arms, the silence of the room a six-feet pull under — and did not utter a single word as Shoko walked past him.
And that was unsurprising, wasn’t it. Vocal as he was about the things that didn’t matter, Gojo Satoru was not someone trained to express his needs. Gojo Satoru was not someone who spoke about his own pain, not someone who could ever voice it— and the only person who could ever read his hurt without him mentioning it for the past thirteen years was already gone.
So Shoko made her way out of the morgue.
She walked down the halls. Out past the gardens. Through one building, then another, and another. The air cuts cold against her skin.
...She would always remember, afterwards, that Gojo Satoru never called for her back.
She would always remember, afterwards, that it took three hours for Gojo to emerge from the morgue. Three hours after she’d left him, he came out of those doors alone and cut across the same halls, the same gardens, the same buildings as she did, and had found Shoko at the back of their dormitory with a cigarette between her lips.
And she would always remember, afterwards, that the moment he noticed her eyes on him, Gojo had raised up his hand and smiled.
.