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"I thought I'd find you here."
Shoko looks up to see Utahime standing in the doorway, holding a steaming cup of something and a plastic takeout bag. "Well, you found me," she mutters, the hush of her voice owing only to the late hour. Nothing else.
Utahime flips a light switch on, and Shoko flinches, her eyes not yet accustomed to more than the blue glow of her screen.
"Autopsy reports again?" Utahime sounds unimpressed; Shoko understands the concern evident in it only because they spoke the same language at this point. A hand, a can of coffee, a message in the morning sometimes to make sure she'd actually slept, and a blanket on her shoulders when she wakes up from passing out at her desk. This time is no different; Utahime pushes a paper cup into her hands, and it burns her fingers, numb from typing for so long. "It's ginger tea. I… thought you might be nauseous again, if you hadn't eaten since lunch." The smell of the takeout hits Shoko all of a sudden, and she knows it should make her hungry, but she's running on ketones by now. Her mouth tastes like sand.
"Thanks, Utahime." Somewhat begrudgingly, she closes her laptop and pushes it to the side of her desk. A few papers fall to the floor. It doesn't matter anyway. The reports are old, sometimes outdated, and Shoko hasn't gotten rid of them because the thought of the dust the table must have collected underneath makes her… well, she's not sure. It's comforting to have the piles around, in some strange way. It makes her feel like she's accomplishing something.
Utahime checks the date on the papers, and unceremoniously drops them onto the floor. "You can recycle those later. Honestly, there's so much clutter in here…" She drags a chair across the sterile, tiled floor and sets it across from Shoko, and uses one of the more egregiously old reports to keep the takeout containers from staining the table.
"Stir fry. Extra vegetables. Eat up." Utahime is never this commanding, except when it comes to Shoko's health. It might be ironic somehow, though she'd never point that out.
Shoko mumbles another thanks. There's nothing more to say.
She's barely forced the last of the stir fry down her throat before Utahime gently grabs her wrist. "We're gonna go for a walk, okay? You need fresh air."
"Do I?" she mumbles weakly. Do I really look that bad? Maybe her hair, pulled back into a ponytail that barely counts as one anymore, is a little stringy. Maybe the bags under her eyes are more pronounced, never quite going away but definitely capable of darkening. But she thought she'd been careful, dry shampoo and the occasional swipe of concealer serving to preserve her carefully composed image, every layer of something she'd have to wash off eventually serving to, if infinitesimally, increase the distance between herself and everyone who had better things to do than worry about her.
Utahime's grip softens, and so do her eyes. "No real reason, then. I'd like the company."
They end up talking about the jujutsu world, as they are apt to do. Every time. They can't share a single moment alone together anymore, not like when they were younger.
"They were just kids," Shoko sighs, wishing she were exhaling a drag of her cigarette instead, but not knowing how to light one around Utahime without receiving a disapproving glare. "The last casualties, I mean. Test of courage went wrong."
Utahime's lips form a tight line. "Do you think… do you think we're doing enough?" Her eyes flit over to Shoko's, nervous in their intensity. For a brief moment, they drink each other in, lit by the glares of the city. Shoko wonders if she's cold. She had been wearing a letterman jacket before, but now it's around her own shoulders instead.
"I hope so." Shoko thinks of Itadori Yuuji's body, cold and not entirely whole, rising from its slumber but never shedding the shroud of death that hung on it like a vulture picking at carrion, casting shadows in the eyes of a boy whose life was cut short before it had the chance to properly begin. She thinks of autopsy report after autopsy report, failure after failure when her technique, the only thing she was good for, the only thing that made her strong, wasn't enough. She thinks of Haibara, and the only half of him they could recover. She thinks of Geto — of Suguru — poisoned from the inside without anyone noticing, without her noticing, and then leaving without a word. "I fucking hope we are."
Utahime takes her hand and squeezes it, soft and slightly frigid fingers wrapped around chemically stained ones, from when she forgot which gloves to wear when working on post-mortem analysis.
"I just hope these kids end up okay. Not like us." Utahime laughs a little. "Though, things seemed pretty nice back then. Before everything went to shit."
Bubblegum memories, sickly sweet in their nostalgia, pass before Shoko's eyes. They could barely keep their hands off each other, then. It was easy to poke fun at Satoru and Suguru, too — Satoru would usually say something stupid back, but Suguru was so easily flustered it was almost unfair — even if they were the same, if not worse. Shoko thinks of stolen kisses behind arcade machines, shared drinks between classes, nights when they fell asleep together on the couch watching some psychological drama that Utahime only pretended to like for her own sake, for a moment the weight of the future lifting off them. They were kids. They were just kids. And then one day they stopped being kids. And then one day Shoko wasn't sure what they were anymore.
"Do you want to stop here?" Utahime points at a karaoke bar. "For old times' sake."
"You just want to go in yourself, right?" Shoko punches her lightly in the arm. "Don't let me stop you."
"It's only fun if you come too."
It feels wrong, somehow, to do it; to act like they have the right to let their guards down like this.
"Okay, if you sing once, I'll throw in a free kiss."
"Feeling nostalgic?" Shoko laughs, as she opens the door and steps inside.
It might have been the drinks, or it might have been Shoko failing to hide her exhaustion, but she ends up in Utahime's bed again. She's dressed in only her shirt, and Utahime in only her sweatpants. Like old times. Two halves of a whole.
"You don't have to," Shoko says. It's a waste of breath, she knows. But she says it anyway.
"Shoko, I do." Utahime tosses an extra pillow at her — she always needs one under her knees, to help with her back from long hours of standing in the morgue. "I do, in fact, have to. You're not going to get any sleep if I don't."
Shoko curls up around the pillow. It smells like her fabric softener, lavender and sea salt. "I still have to finish up those reports."
Utahime climbs into bed next to her, turning off the lights save for one, a cheap and shitty string light with half the bulbs already burned out. It's always been a habit of hers never to sleep in the dark, after one too many rude awakenings by everything from rogue curses to Satoru Gojo deciding to cause problems on purpose. "Shut up and go to sleep."
Shoko stares at her back, faintly illuminated by the moonlight. It's not broad or muscular, not smooth or gentle. Freckles dot along her spine, and scars trace the slope of her ribs from missions gone wrong. It's the strongest thing Shoko knows.
Idly, she reaches out and traces along her vertebrae, naming them in her head. 7 cervical. 12 thoracic. 5 lumbar.
"Oi." Utahime peeks over her shoulder. "Watch where you're touching."
Shoko offers her a wry smile. "Maybe I forgot what you felt like. It's been a while."
"You're so gross." But she turns over, noses almost touching.
Shoko closes the distance, kissing the scar that, on anyone else, would be disfiguring. Not on her. It reminds her of a stroke of paint, silhouetting a classical portrait of a face, every part balanced with the other. She lets her breath linger for a moment on her skin, before pulling back and closing her eyes.
There's a shift in the mattress, and a crinkling of plastic. Shoko feels the cool press of a makeup wipe under her eyes, and tries to keep as still as possible.
"Really, Shoko, do you ever take your makeup off? You'll get wrinkles."
"No way. I can keep my skin as young as I want forever. Perks of reverse cursed techniques."
"And then what?"
Shoko opens one eye. "What do you mean, what?"
Utahime puts the used makeup wipe down with an exasperated sigh. "Will you do that every time your body starts failing? Every time you break down without sleeping, without eating? You're not a machine."
"Sure, why not?"
There it is, the glare she's so used to.
"What's so wrong with that?" Shoko continues. She sits up, too, "You think I'll end up like him?" There's no need to say the name, not when it hangs in every shared glance and every rainy day and every Christmas Eve and every space that she leaves between herself and Satoru when they walk together.
"Yes," Utahime says firmly. "I do."
"Well, that's stupid. You're stupid, did you know that?" Her voice is scratchy now, as her throat constricts around the words. "If you think I'm that weak. Why don't you just leave me, then? Stop trying to — to remember the steps of this song and dance."
Utahime only looks at her, silently.
"What? Say something, I just insulted you. I'm awful, right? I'm fucked up and nobody wants me. Not you, not…" Her breath comes out in shudders. "Not them. They didn't need me."
Slender arms wrap around her, as unflinching as always. "I know. Let it all out."
Shoko has never hated herself more than she has now, crying in the dark about nothing, nothing at all. "I just… I'm tired of being thrown away."
Lips brush against her ear, as soft as she remembers. "You are so much more than you think you are. Please believe me when I say that."
Shoko buries her face into Utahime's neck. "I can't believe that. Not when the only thing I'm good for is something I can't even do right."
"Well, try to believe it. Try, for me." Utahime presses a kiss to her temple, holding her like something fragile, something valuable, something priceless and beautiful, the marble statue to her Renaissance painting. "I won't throw you away, for what it's worth. And you're good for a lot more than that." She laughs into her hair, a shared joke that only the two of them understand.
"I promise that you're stronger than you know, Shoko. You never stop caring, and that's what matters, isn't it?" She lays back down, pulling Shoko down with her and closing her eyes. "So be as gentle with yourself as you are with everyone else."
Shoko smiles, and sinks into a dreamless slumber, the warmth of barely-touching bodies easily enough to banish the chill of the morgue that she always seems to return to.