Chapter Text
Kagome is checking the strength of the sutras when she feels it, placing new ones to add layers. Ensure there’s multiple interferences for anything - or anyone - that tries to get through with intent to kill.
All encompassing, a gravitational pull that feels like it’s going to trip you onto a different axis, soul crushingly large. Familiar. Comforting. Like a blanket, it drapes her in its existence.
Their baby kicks, bigger now, ready to come out, so full of life it could only be his child. Hers. Theirs.
Instinct, muscle memory, intent has her power flowing forth to empower all the sutras as she turns, eyes brightening, mouth stretching wide so that her delighted giggle spills out of her. He’s back! The anger, the worry, the helpless despair tries to follow but for now she just wants to bask in the happiness of his return.
‘Oil’ spills over her skin, hot and thick in its viscosity. An impression, of tires skidding, of loose asphalt vibrating off a road to press cruelly along flattening flesh.
Her smile falls as soon as it comes, feet sliding and adjusting her stance, fingers of her left hand curling around the impression of a bow (of Azusa, so quick to come to her now, always ) until it materializes while the other pulls a pink string of energy taut, a pink arrow manifesting and ready to be released.
Blue eyes, not alight with his technique, not glittering with mischief or darkening in contemptuous arrogance, not his , not hers , meet her head on. Snow white hair, soft and light, flutters with the breeze that stirs around them. Her own hair clings to her neck, only partially pulled up with a clip. It allows her to see the horrid stitching that ruins his face, that desecrates his body.
As the seconds tick by, so slow in her awareness of them, her Sight continues to unravel more of what stands before her. The cursed energy coming off him is his but there are more death residuals (no, just one, and so bright compared to the dull remnants of his first death against Fushigurou Toji) clinging to his body, splitting him in half at the waist. There’s no blood on him but she can imagine it, the imagery of bodies with similar wounds coming easily to mind.
His image falters, not an illusion, not a trick, but an unfortunate headache her Sight likes to put her through. A boy, no older than her little brother, stands within the center of… of…
Her breath stutters and she tries not to let the strain of holding this stance show. “Who are you?” Her voice does not waver.
A bow, lower than he would ever make. Her skin crawls and a violent shift of her stomach has bile sit at the back of her throat, a challenge to swallow down.
“My name is Okkotsu Yuuta.”
She knows that name and it makes it easier to recognize the afterimage of the boy inside him. She’d been waiting for him to return from overseas so they could finally be introduced.
How did things turn out like this?
“I stumbled on an interesting case today.”
Kagome stirred a little, blinking slowly while she processed the words. “Mm?” Satoru shifted but didn’t go far, simply turning them onto their sides and moving his arms from around her waist to wrap around her knees. He pressed his forehead harder into her ribs. She carded her fingers through his hair.
He always got like this when returning from his ‘secret’ meetups. She knew that some of the higher-ups had their suspicions but she was the only one who knew for certain that he’d kept in touch. Her one accidental glimpse had helped her notice the correlation of his visits with his particularly manic days. If she ever met Geto Suguru face to face, the first thing she was going to do was punch him.
“I think you’d like him, he started out rather morbidly even for your typical sorcerer.”
Because that wasn’t ominous. Or terrifying. Or made her want to hit certain higher-ups.
“Why are you…?” Her voice wavers on the question this time, nose burning with the sudden rush of emotion she’s trying to push down. She furiously blinks until the water distorting her eyes clears.
It’s been months since she’s heard from him. Months since that night in their baby’s room.
Japan has been holding its breath since Shibuya, the government trying to cover it up as some accident while conspiracy theorists rave and rage about another Hiroshima or another Nagasaki. No one has any footage of what happened so people suspect it was a hacker but she knows it was the curtains someone put down that impeded any communication. The missing persons’ cases have continued to pile up, even more complicated because of tourists.
The curses have nearly tripled, their aggression even worse than before, which has led her to place any protection she can. Sutras, talismans, barriers. It’s not usually so hard to handle something like this, she has plenty of power to sustain them but she’s had to gradually expand the areas people can seek refuge in, whether they realize it or not. Her family disapproves and most times they accompany her, more frequent and regular as she gets closer to her due date. She can feel Souta’s aura just a block over, with someone else but safe.
She should have gone with him to Shibuya.
She watches as a body that has held her and been held by her lowers itself, hands that learned they could reach out and she would grasp them, and a face so heartbreakingly familiar fall lower into a dogeza. Her next breath is a painful thing, loud in her own ears.
“I am sorry.”
Her stance falters, arrow dematerializing as her grip on Azusa weakens until it disappears. “Shut up.”
“He did not tell us whe—”
“ Shut up !” Kagome gasps through a sob, stumbling back, clawing desperately at the wall that bears her weight so she does not grab for her stomach. The worries had plagued her mind when he hadn’t returned, as time had passed, but she had expected injured, not this. She has not hummed lullabies, has not read stories, has not played back the recent home videos to comfort herself with the sound of his voice, has not soothed their baby with any thought of an after with—
—without him.
She will break if she tries to touch her stomach for the first time after, the grief will consume her.
”Sis?”
A faint ache vaguely registers against her knees.
'You said always.'
Souta pulls his sister into his lap carefully, holding her against his chest as she wails. He does not need to ask what has caused such a broken sound to come from someone so strong. She has never been a crier, never been prone to break down spontaneously over anything.
The man kneeling just feet away, who is clearly not his sister’s husband no matter how he might look like him, is all he needs to see to know.
“Is it just you?” He asks.
This stranger lifts himself just enough his forehead no longer presses against the ground but he does not look up. “There are a few others I came with but I told them to wait.”
Even knowing he won’t see it, Souta nods his head. He steadies Kagome with an arm under the knee and another behind her back before he stands. “Sunset shrine.” He does not offer anything else before he turns and leaves.