Chapter Text
When Geto Suguru dies, Shoko finds his body in her possession.
The arm was torn off (probably by Yuuta), there’s numerous claw and slash marks on his torso (Yuuta) and a crater in the back of the skull (Gojo), which combined with the blood loss, killed him.
She writes all these things down in her crisp sheet for patients, undresses him from the stupid outfit he wore when he defected with clinical detachment.
Absently, she notes that he filled out quite a bit in the decade he was gone; his shoulders are broad, wider than Gojo’s or hers, and his body is all hard muscle. He clearly hadn’t been idle in his time as a curse user, only relying on his technique to get by. (Although he was one of the few that could completely rely on it).
Shoko wonders if he still liked the trick he used to do, pretend to put his trust in curses and then get close, snap a bone or two. She was responsible for keeping the captured people alive when he or Gojo went overboard, a task she soon got used to.
“Hey, Suguru,” she says, in the tone she adopted years ago, light and unbothered. “Was it worth it?”
Silence. He doesn’t answer, of course. Shoko doesn’t make it a habit to talk to her dead patients, lest she lose her sanity far quicker than she wants to.
Well, it doesn’t matter either way. She can’t feel much anymore.
The nature of her technique requires her to keep her emotions in check. Always detached from her family, friends, anybody in her space.
Until the two strongest shamans of her generation walked into the classroom. Two people who knew the burden of being special, of being needed, of keeping other, normal people at arm’s reach. They understood why she was never bothered by death, by injuries, by her own friends coming in half dead to be healed. The two years she spent with them, before Amanai Riko were probably the best she ever had in her life.
Shoko may not be able to feel anything for people anymore, but she can still miss things. A time long passed, when they were still three teenagers with the weight of the world on their shoulders.
She finishes the examination in silence, printing sheets and medical information, sending information to the higher ups about his state in death.
She thinks about taking off her gloves and setting her hands on cold, dead skin in an attempt to revive it, but the desire passes quickly. Even if he were able to be saved and she had the power to bring back the dead, she wouldn’t do it. Not unless someone else could turn back time and convince Gojo Satoru to stay weak.
Just as she is covering up Suguru’s body with a white sheet, stripping off her gloves and mask, Gojo walks in, hands in his immaculate clothes.
“Hey, Shoko,” he smiles.
“Yo.” She’s too tired to deal with him right now, but she has to. She is the only other remnant of their past left.
“Are you done with him?” he says with a nod to the corpse.
“Yeah,” she replies. “Yuuta did a number on him, whether he was aware of it or not. You triggered his explosion, right?”
“Maybe. His curse is resolved now, so that’s a huge weapon out of his arsenal, but I think it’s better this way.”
It is better this way, but only for Yuuta and his friends. Orimoto Rika was the strongest special grade curse ever created, and the fact that Yuuta was starting to control her properly was a very large advantage to the Jujutsu College.
Honestly, it’s nothing short of miraculous that Gojo still has it left in him to care so much about his students. Being the strongest person in seven something billion has to take a toll, despite his carefree attitude.
Gojo Satoru is practically god, holds infinity in his hand and shapes reality itself on a whim.
But he’s still more human than Ieiri Shoko is.
Staring at her former best friend’s dead body, she feels nothing but vague regret of the past.
Staring at his best friend’s dead body, Gojo curves his lips into a grin that’s cracking him open from the inside, straining at the edges just like that time ten years ago.
The nature of her technique requires her to keep her emotions in check.
That’s what Shoko started to tell herself in her second year at the college.
People say Gojo has something wrong in his head, doing the things he does and walking away with a smile and a shrug. That his heart must be rotten, or that he doesn’t have a heart at all, power pulsing through his body instead of blood.
If Gojo has an empty space where his heart should be (he doesn’t), Shoko has a heart that she locked up the moment she discovered her technique, shrivelled and deprived of sustenance, beating halfheartedly only when she prods at it with the memory of being normal.
“Say, Shoko,” Gojo chuckles, shattered smile still on his lips. “Do you have any sleeping pills? Don’t think I’ll get very far into sleep without Suguru coming back to haunt me as a curse.”
“I do,” she answers, digging through her cabinet of prescription medicines.
When she finally comes up with an unexpired bottle of pills, giving it a shake, she turns back to Gojo, considering him. Is it safe to give him this? Will he use it for sleep, nothing more?
Any sane doctor would never give it to a person who just killed his best friend, but this isn’t just a person. This is Gojo Satoru, the boy who blew a hole in his head with his own power after discovering his ability to use reverse curse technique.
If he put his mind to it, he could kill everyone on this Earth and then himself. Shoko is not helping him by keeping a bottle of poison from him.
“Here,” she hands it to him. “Don’t take more than two in twenty four hours or you’ll end up dead from a heart attack.”
It’d be funny to hear the news that Gojo died from such a mundane thing, actually. Overdosing is too human for something like him to experience.
“Thanks, Shoko.” he takes it from the desk, and she notices that his hands are shaking. Not visible enough to be worrying, but still there. A sign that the strongest sorcerer is still fallible to grief.
Shoko stares at her own perfectly manicured, still hands and thinks about smoking a pack. The same brand Suguru used to buy for her, despite his complaints of lung cancer and the smell.
Well. Maybe she should honor his memory and refrain, just this once.
She yawns, stretching her neck with a crack.
Gojo looks back at her one more time.
“Good night, Shoko.”
“Good night, Satoru.”
They both know neither of them are sleeping tonight.