Work Text:
He can feel it.
Suguru, or what’s left of him – be it his soul, his spirit, his essence – can feel it, can feel them.
He can feel the wet leaking mass stir itself in its place in his body, right behind what used to be his eyes. He can feel said mass take control, using his body to walk, talk, antagonise. He can feel that his body has been taken over and he pilots it no more. He can feel that he has no form of his own now, he simply just is. He can feel that his existence itself is an abomination, the fact that he still maintains a consciousness displays outright anarchy to the principles of nature and probably whatever kind of heavens may exist.
And it’s strange, it’s wrong. He shouldn’t even be alive or at least anything that resembles it, talk less of feeling things. But he feels nonetheless. It’s all he can do in his state. He cannot speak, move, taste, sleep, wake, cry, seethe, fight. He can only feel. With whatever is left of his sentience, Suguru uses it to wonder how he’s able to feel all these things without a body, without nerves clinging to muscle and bone, extending all throughout his body and reconvening at the headquarters of his brain.
And he loathes it so.
All these sensations that essentially grapple onto the nothingness that is him just feels like an itch that can never be scratched.
Which is why it’s even more jarring whenever he feels himself being prised open again. But it's not his body, no, it’s more grating than that. He feels something dipping itself into his being, whatever is left of it.
The defilement of his body was one thing, but having something invade the only form of self he has left as he’s being held hostage in his own body is simply just outrageous – not that he could retaliate if he wanted to though.
He can feel it, them.
He can feel it dissecting him, tearing him apart. He can feel it sorting through his memories as though revising and organising files. He can feel it probing and inspecting them as a jeweller would to check for the finest gem, rid of impurities. He can feel it picking up and retaining what it deemed as useful and tossing aside what served no purpose, as though it were a monarch sorting through old stolen treasures, keeping whatever they found valuable and disregarding whatever was aged and had lost its worth to time.
That is what Suguru’s memories are to the intruder, after all, what Suguru himself is – stolen goods.
And he hates that.
He hates that his body is no longer his own and he therefore is neither here nor there but rather is everywhere and simultaneously nowhere at all times. He hates this limbo state he’s ensnared in, how it grasps onto the emptiness that contains him and refuses to let him go, to let him pick a side. And he hates that he is ‘goods’, something to be used and thrown aside whenever it deems necessary. He hates that he’s being helplessly dragged along with it as his consciousness writhes for some semblance of freedom, all while knowing that he is disposable and is just another grain of salt in whatever twisted dish it seems to be creating.
If he is to be put through the painless agony of being undead he’d rather be the one pulling all the strings, part of the main cast rather than some replaceable side character.
But alas, that choice isn’t his to make.
Which is why he can do nothing but sit idly by and watch as it plants seeds of destruction throughout the whole of the jujutsu world. He watches as it uses his body to congregate and collude with other curses. He watches as it conspires and tricks and lies and deceives. He watches as it wears his own clothes (which is somehow more offensive than it literally wearing his skin) and uses his name in everything it does.
Gojo Satoru.
It’s faint. It’s one of the only things he can hear and it sounds distant, much like the memories of the man himself. Every time the name is spoken it’s as though he is deep underwater and there is something, someone above the surface trying to call him up.
Gojo Satoru.
Who is that again? Oh yes, his best friend, his one and only. His counterpart in the ‘strongest duo’. His biggest strength and most devastating weakness. His murderer. His first. His last. His end.
“Yo! Satoru!”
Suguru swears that if he had a stomach it would have leapt up to his throat.
It was his voice speaking those words, of course it was. And that’s what made Suguru lurch with nausea, the sudden overwhelming wave of nostalgia flaring up those insatiable itches again. Where the prior mention of his name made Suguru feel like a patient who can half heartedly hear the sounds around them as they lay unconscious during a surgery, hearing the impostor use his own voice to speak to and greet Satoru so leisurely as Suguru himself used to made him feel as though his eyes had snapped open while on the operating table, scalpel and forceps still buried deep within.
And there he is in all his Six Eyes glory.
No.
Gojo stares back at him, or at least at the thing in his body.
No, no, no.
Suguru can roughly hear what’s being said but it’s still muffled by the sound of water rushing through his figurative ears.
Move.
He’s thrashing, flailing, suddenly hyperaware that he’s been drowning in his own flesh this whole time.
Do something, Satoru, anything.
He’s desperately trying to break through to the surface but the ball and chain of ultimately still being dead is dragging him down, making such a task impossible.
And finally, he’s tired.
He feels to give up, let the thing win and have its way, even as one of the only people who gave his life meaning was screaming until his throat was sore and was being sealed away in an eternal prison, much like his own.
“How are you gonna let yourself get used like that... Suguru?”
Though far more grave and menacing than when they were teenagers, Satoru’s provocations still reach Suguru all the same. He’s too late and he knows it, yet he can’t stop when he momentarily shakes off his restraints and lets an arm burst forth through the surface of the water. One arm is all it takes to tell Satoru I’m still here as he forces it aside with sheer will alone, an arm reaching up to grab its own throat.
Of course Satoru is all he needed to resurface. Just occasionally hearing his name was enough to make Suguru feel as though he could do it, he could take back what was his, even if such hopes were always quickly extinguished by the crushing weight of the emptiness he exists in.
And still, it's temporary.
The ball and chain chased after him, fully submerging him once again and yanking him down as he all but scrambles for another taste of the real world encasing his arm again, rather than the feeling of being engulfed by the endless void he’s being returned to.
It’s frustrating. He was so close yet so far. Freedom was right there. Satoru was right there. Though he supposes the two are synonymous. Satoru was his freedom after all. His genuine smiles were caused by Satoru and his genuine laughs were shared with him too. Even though he never regretted the path he took, he didn’t feel free. There was simply a different, lighter ball and chain weighing him down.
But even amidst his frustration, Suguru notices he feels something else.
He has felt a lot of different things over the past year or so but none quite like this. It’s different than everything else. It’s something he’s not sure he felt much even when he was in control of his body.
He feels alive.