Chapter Text
Suguru doesn’t regret his actions, he doesn’t regret defecting, he doesn’t regret killing; but god does he regret leaving him. The first three months he’d convinced himself that Satoru would follow, that he’d see his way, see the validity of his opinions, but Satoru never followed and Suguru was alone- crushing under the weight of grieving the living.
He was so sure of himself, so resolute in his actions, until he started hearing things. Voices. Whispering in his ear with the tone of his mother. And then his resolve, once absolute, began to crumble. Why did he leave? Why couldn’t he have just stayed? He ruined everything he had and for what? For a cause he could never achieve? For a cause he’d once been so vehemently against? His bed was cold in the absence of his best friend, his shoulder was light, long gone was the mess of white hair that lay atop of it. His arms were empty and his lips were dry, his pockets were no longer filled with candy wrappers, and his fingers were stiff where they longed to grasp another.
So perhaps that’s why he was here, sitting at the Fushiguro’s dinner table in the small, shitty apartment, the atmosphere tensing with every passing second.
He didn’t belong.
This was Satoru’s life and he no longer belonged.
His best friend had carved out a hole in a broken family and stitched it back together, and Suguru was the ugly imperfection of messy thread. Black amongst pastels, a dark sky amongst grey clouds.
He pokes at the ramen in his bowl, trying in vain to enjoy it, because Satoru had cooked it. Satoru, who had only learnt what pizza was two years ago. Satoru, who had been taught by Yaga how to hold chopsticks. Satoru, who had discovered soda and candy and fries and burgers at the age of 15. And it was good, it was pretty good for a kid who’d never cooked in his life. Well, the Satoru he knew, anyway. Because this one’s different- matured beyond his years at the age of sixteen, skinnier than he remembers, faker than he remembers. The scar dips from his neck and beneath the too-big tshirt, purple and raised and angry. It probably hurt, if Suguru had stayed, he’d have rubbed oil into the scar until it loosened, he’d have traced the line with gentle fingers.
The girl, Tsumiki, finishes her food first, beaming up at Satoru with such childish love as she asks to go play in her room. And Satoru grins, ruffles her hair with calloused fingers and watches her leave. And then the grumpy boy, Megumi, pouts, and Satoru lets him leave too. Until it’s just the two of them.
Satoru tugs the glasses from his face, pressing the heels of his hands into those brilliant eyes, his shoulders slumping and all Suguru can think is I shouldn’t have come.
“They’re Toji’s kids, aren’t they?” The words tumble from his lips before he can clamp them down, and he flinches at the name between them.
“Yeah.” Is all Satoru says, dropping his hands in his lap as he leans back against his chair, the wood creaking in its age.
Silence follows again, thick with the weight of unspoken words. Suguru hurt him, and Satoru was hurting him in return. Unconscious, meaningless, reflexive. Suguru can feel the steady hum of infinity around his best friend, the infinity that used to drop at the meer flicker of Suguru’s cursed energy, clung tightly to Satoru’s frame in a sick sense of heartbreak.
He’s different, but so is Suguru, and these new people aren’t intertwining like they used to.
Their food goes cold, untouched, the pair sitting in silence can’t so much as meet each other's eyes.
Suguru reaches into his pockets for his cigarettes, and as if they were still best friends, Satoru follows him outside without a word. The door shuts behind them as Suguru lights his cigarette, Satoru leaning against the railing.
“What are we doing?” Satoru asks, eyes fixed on the cars below, though Suguru knows he’s looking at him, he can feel the weight of the six eyes glaring down at him from the stars.
“Trying again.” Is all he can muster up between drags of his cigarette.
“Yeah? Me or you?” Blue eyes meet violet, and Suguru’s heart stutters in his chest treacherously. He aches for him, aches like a gaping wound begging to be filled with everything that was Gojo Satoru.
“Me. I’m trying again.” He manages to whisper, tearing his gaze away from the burning weight of his best friend's stare. He wants to try again, he aches for it. To just try again. To fix it. To stitch everything back together- he doesn’t care how messy, how arduous, how painful. He wants the tapestry of his life to be hung once more, instead of collecting dust and grief.
“There’s a death warrant on your head, Suguru.” Satoru says, joining Suguru in gazing at the city below.
“I’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out.”
“We?” His tone isn’t cold, or venomous, nor is it hopeful or full of love. It’s barely a question, but Suguru allows his chest to ache as he sucks tar into his lungs.
“We’re the strongest.” Suguru whispers, letting the weight of the words settle over them like the rubble of a collapsed tower.
He finds the silence that follows is less permeating, less suffocating. Tsumiki is playing inside, Megumi is watching cartoons, and their food has gone cold at the dinner table. It’s a cold night, late November bringing frost and dark nights. It’s nearly Satoru’s birthday. Suguru fumbles for another cigarette, the click of his lighter melancholy.
And then, Satoru rests his head atop his shoulder, strawberry scented shampoo filling his nose. Suguru takes a long drag of his cigarette as tears prickle behind his eyes, a lump forming like a curse in his throat.
“What happened to your cult?” Satoru asks, his tone bordering on teasing and it's enough to make his tears fall.
“I killed them.” He answers, voice wavering as he feels the flicker of infinity vanish. Satoru doesn’t answer beyond a small hum of recognition, and Suguru moves on the memory of his heart alone; his arm winding around his waist, blood stained hand settling on his best friend's hip, his cheek resting atop angel white hair.
————
Satoru doesn’t know what he’s doing. He hasn’t the faintest clue. With two children to care for, a species to keep safe, people to please and exams to pass. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t know how to be a parent. He never had one of his own.
His clan never spoke of his parents, his teachers were violent when he’d ask about them. So he grew up alone, surrounded by people who saw him as nothing but a lump of steel ready to be beaten into a blade. He has a memory of each of them, of his father and his mother. Memories that keep him up at night with a childish desperation to be held in a mother’s arms, to be soothed by a father’s words. But the only memories he can conjure are bloody. Tainted with death. The rolling of his mother’s head, executed when she failed to breed more weapons, a four year old Satoru forced to watch. The beating of his father, as Satoru’s blacksmith carried out a lesson in emotional control when he was five. His only memories of his parents are the sight of life leaving their eyes.
He knows he’s made a mistake somewhere along the line, taking in two children with such deep abandonment issues as a man who never stays in one place for long. It was wrong of him. Selfish. But it was better than the alternative, so he carried on despite it all.
He didn’t know how to cook, how to clean. He didn’t know what to do when someone got sick, he didn’t know how to react to bad grades. It was only last year that Suguru had shown him how to fold clothes. He was entirely out of his depth, but he was trying, even if he was doing things wrong down the line.
He bought cook books, watched videos on how to do the most basics of being a father in the car ride between missions. He sucked up his pride and asked Shoko what to do when they got sick. He learnt how to do something with his hands that wasn’t killing, he learnt how to talk to people outside of his world, how to sleep quietly so his nightmares didn’t wake the kids. He learnt it all for them, but all he could think as he moved through the puzzle was that Suguru would know what to do. Suguru always knew what to do.
So Satoru did what he had to, and he found that a part of taking care of children was taking care of yourself, too. That he needed to shower more often, that he should eat in front of them despite the nausea, that he needed to be a role model beyond sorcery. A human role model, not a weapon.
The second he saw Suguru his heart had swelled with unbridled hope, a desperate, pathetic kind. Like an abandoned dog whimpering on the sidewalk in the rain. It all felt wrong, all of it, every aspect of them felt tainted but he yearned for it nonetheless. He’d watched Suguru play with Tsumiki as he cooked and the scene just felt… right. Suguru was good with kids. He always had been. Satoru was a tainted weapon, stained with blood and scars, he was nothing the strongest. He may as well not have a name at all. But Suguru? All warm hands and gentle smiles, soft words in that deep voice. Motherly and kind and gentle even in his murder. So perhaps he could overlook it all if he told himself it was for the kids.
They’d talked on the balcony, sharing cigarettes until it was time to put the kids to bed. And Suguru had fallen into place, cleaning the dishes as Satoru tried to get the kids washed and into bed, reading them stories until they fell asleep. The awkwardness only came when it was time for them to sleep, but it had taken a moment's glance into each other's eyes to know they were being ridiculous. They’d shared more than a bed, tainted relationship or not, they needed it.
Satoru had watched him climb into his sheets, grimacing internally because it had been a long time since he’d washed them, but it felt so right that he said nothing.
“I’m just gonna shower.” He said as he grabbed a change of clothes, his heart twisting as he quickly added; “don’t go anywhere.”
Satoru had spent weeks scrubbing at the scars on his skin to no avail. The raised lines on his left thigh from Toji’s blade, the singular one in his chest, and then the ugliest. Spanning from the left of his throat to his right hip, hideous and wrong and disgusting. But tonight, he couldn’t waste time clawing at the weak flesh; his heart fluttered every time he remembered Suguru was waiting for him in bed, before being replaced with anxious terror at the idea that he wasn’t real. A hallucination. He’d hallucinated him a few times recently, when the old bastards sent him on too many missions to let him sleep- that was the day he’d learnt that RCT doesn’t fix psychological damage.
He towel dried his hair, his eyes furiously avoiding looking at his reflection, at the scars. Before long he was doing the final sweep around the apartment, triple locking the door and ensuring the seals were intact, that the stove was off- because apparently that was something he was worried about these days. Eventually, he trudged back to bed, his heart swelling at the sight of his best friend dozing off. His best friend. The man that had destroyed him from the inside out.
It was terrifying how easy it was, to tug off his sweatpants and climb into bed, for Suguru’s arms to wrap around him and hold him to his chest, for Satoru’s head to tuck safely under his chin, for his infinity to melt away.
“You never wear a shirt to bed.” Suguru mumbled sleepily, lips moving against his damp hair. He was soothed so easily, finally back in the safety of his arms, that his eyes were already drifting closed.
“Mhm… people change.” He whispers, nosing the crook of his neck. He didn’t want to taint Suguru with the ugly raised skin, he could at least spare him the sight of how feeble the title Strongest was above his head.