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You’ve only ever been sure about one thing. In the entirety of your life, there exists a single, unchanging certainty.
“You better come back whole, Suguru.” Your fingers tighten around Geto’s gun when he reaches to take it from you, a silent call for his divided attention. Life has given you too much to think about; all the questions and not an answer, nor time to ask at all.
Geto smiles- you’re not sure where he pulls the will from, but it is the warmest a smile could be. The warmest you could remember. When you think about the endless hectares of field darkened to coal, any sign of life permanently devastated by a sole command to thrash nuclear weapons into its surface; the shaking still vibrating in you sometimes, you think his smile is the warmest thing left . “I know. I will.”
He brushes strands of hair away from your forehead, tucks them behind your ear, and you inevitably lean against the palm of his hand. It’s the sort of comfort the world has yet to feel in a while. The kind of peace that once made songs out of chirping birds.
Nowadays, seeing them means having to run.
“I’ll be back.”
Surviving doesn’t always equate to being fortunate, or being saved from total doom. When the world had folded in on itself, the sky crashing into the ground like a magnified ocean wave, you and Geto— no, humanity had already accepted that fate. For all the crimes your species have committed in the millions of years you’ve prospered, really, a projectile powerful enough to eradicate populations under a single launch seems merciful. It will end in the blink of an eye. Death will come before the pain does, and all will return to peace. If there had been any punishment, it would’ve failed to be felt. Humans will always be prideful beings. Even on the marked day of damnation, they belittle the penalties casted upon them.
Geto had you in his arms. In danger and in safety. In the beginning, all the way to the end.
“You think we’ll be okay?” You can only whisper against his chest. You’ve been trembling. For a long time now, you've been trembling, and you’re using what’s left of your courage to hold him tighter.
“If this place is what the papers said,” Geto answers, trying not to sound half as terrified as he is. “Then yes, we’ll be okay.”
You weren’t the only people there. In the bunker, buried deep inside the soil. There were others— people of different cities, of different paths, children and parents, all of whom have realized the terrors of reality. But despite having chaos literally break loose among the entire human race; the crying, the blood pouring out of the wounded, the running, there was still a certain quiet residing in the atmosphere. A sort of total isolation between loved ones, like everyone had been inside their own, solitary universe with the people they care for, solely out of the crippling idea of time and breath being scarce, limited. It’s a universe that isn’t nearly as feeble as the one you were born into. There, the hands of time had just started moving. Fate had just started writing out its mischief. Hundreds of humans are held by this cloister. It’s been a long time since any of you have seen that many people simultaneously, it’s certainly news that this much had managed to hold out this long, but all of them had completely banished the thought and presence of anyone else in there. To them, to you, to Geto, if the world ends today, then all that matters is the one you love.
(Still, two weeks ago, a helicopter flew over the shelter you and Geto have been taking refuge in for a few months. Papers fell and scattered down the road and on top of ivy covered buildings. It was addressed to those who were still alive, containing directions that point towards several bunkers that promised life, bunkers that were built to preserve what remained of the world; the resilient, the stubborn.
Geto was all of that, and more.)
“We did everything we could.” You did. The both of you had travelled across the country to get to the nearest vault, been on the run for fourteen consecutive days, chasing and panting and sleeplessly fighting . Had it not been for the rush of relief after arriving, exhaustion would’ve taken you out before any military weapon could.
“I love you.” Geto mutters, and you pull away from his arms to stare at him. It’s this exact second where he accepts defeat. The first time in a long time where his features soften into content, and he’s figured out that it’s time to stop fighting.
“I love you.”
If this really is the end, all that mattered was him. It’s that single, unyielding certainty.
———
Surviving doesn’t always equate to being fortunate, or being saved from total doom. When you woke up from coughing up too much debris, the strong sunlight glaring down at your vulnerable state, you almost believed you were dead; in paradise.
“Oh, fuck. Y/n!” Geto rushes from the forest when he sees your previously motionless body begin to move. I can’t be dead , you think. Every part of you felt damaged somehow, like you were a dog’s rag doll and your limbs have been mercilessly torn apart. You have never been religious, but if you had actually ascended into heaven and heaven truly is what you’d been taught as a kid, you would feel a hell of a lot better than you currently do. “Y/n, shit. How are you? Can you talk?”
Geto— you recognize him immediately, a mixture of worry and relief plastered on his face as he waits for you to fully regain consciousness. It’s an expression you’ve unfortunately seen a lot— from the beginning, he never expected any reversal nor cure, like he saw this devastation coming thousands of miles away. He had decided to absolutely turn his back against humanity, its futile attempts at recovery, and begin to adapt. He’s only ever fought for you. In his eyes, you’re the one thing he didn’t fail to protect. The one thing he won’t fail to protect.
In a world so devoid of hope, there’s always a glimmer of it present when you’re with Geto.
You want to give an answer, ease his anxieties, but it’s like the rest of your body has finally turned against your own brain’s commands, like your muscles have personally taken on the task to decide that enough is enough; no human could endure this much strain on their body. Anatomy and physics have yet to allow such endurance. You’d have to be unworldly to live through this.
But you did, despite being just as human as every corpse you come across on the broken road. You and Geto lived.
And for some time, you believed you were saved from all of it. Everyone else was unmercifully obliterated, but by some miracle, you were fortunate enough to choose to be at the corner of the bunker where the walls were built a little bit sturdier than the rest of the establishment, the part that is buried deeper into the soil, and both of you were protected from the explosions, however barely. There’d been other survivors like you, but the hundreds of people gathered in that shelter quickly became a few tens, and the rest is a massive carnage painting the soil deep red, staining the atmosphere with the strong scent of iron and rotting flesh.
You originally assumed that it had some meaning, that you were chosen individuals and was then given a purpose to fulfill. To avenge your kind, perhaps. To restore what had been lost. An additional chance at life, with ultimate liberty.
“Do you want to find him?”
Geto had been staring at a crumpled picture he took with you and Gojo back in high school, a good decade away from all this mess. It’s a perfect piece of memory; big enough to keep fleeting moments alive, to remember, at the very least, and small enough to carry through all of your travels, never to be lost. Geto knows it’s impossible to find him again. He knew it during the instant they decided to part, knew it as soon as his best friend’s silhouette faded in with the forest’s shadows. It was during a tough chase, way back when humanity was convinced governments could fix this. When they swore they could. Back then, the only person more stubborn than Geto was Gojo, and under that moonless sky, when all three of you were stuck before a herd of the undead, Gojo shouldered the most selfish, inevitable decision of all: give himself up to lure them away from you.
“How can you decide that all by yourself?” Your rebuttals prove to be useless pleas when Gojo has already made up his mind. With tears clearing a path as it rolled down on your mud-stained cheeks, Geto swallows down that truth, pulling you and himself away from that place for good.
Gojo left with a promise of return, but if it’s a question of whether or not he made it out of that night, you never found out.
“But it’s been so long.” Geto almost laughs. “We don’t even know if he’s alive.”
“We have nothing else to do.” The light from the melting candle flickers. You sit beside Geto, resting a hand on his knee to get him to look at you, because nothing else could be more convincing right now than your willing gaze. Because if there’s no purpose to this, no reason to hold on to, you might as well be dead. “Gojo is our best friend. He isn’t falling that easily.”
You begin a new journey three nights after. A quest to find Gojo Satoru— to find if he’s alive, at all. Amidst a decayed world, a world where you had been forced into survival,
“We can do it, right?” Geto turns his head, and he almost doesn’t need an answer when he sees you stare off into the sky. (It’s you who breathes for him. It’s you who keeps him alive.)
“Of course.”
On the same day, somewhere on the other side of the country, Gojo lights a small fire for a meal.