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Satoru’s freedom feels like waking up and taking a breath. It feels like all the years of growth he’s lived since birth compressed into one instant. It feels wrong. He’d forgotten there was a sky that didn’t bear down heavy on his shoulders. Not in the literal sense, at least.
Suguru looks at him, up at him. Satoru is standing; Suguru is leaning heavily on his splayed palms, sat back and heaving. His eyes track Satoru as though he is taking inventory. Seemingly satisfied, his arms buckle and he falls back against the ground. His hair falls about his head like roots, like ink in water. And Satoru doesn’t have it in him to think anymore. He wants to know; selfishly, he wants to hear it, coloured by Suguru’s voice, false or not.
“You’re him,” he says. It’s meant to be a question. It sounds like a prayer.
One of Suguru’s exhales scrapes out of him like a chuckle, “which would be more disappointing?”
Shamefully, so shamefully, Satoru feels the loosening in his chest; his ribs expanding to home this flicker of something that should have gone out long ago. He wants to swallow this feeling like a curse. He wants to keep it somewhere he can never lose it. He might throw up. And, really, this is selfish. There’s so much to do. Everything’s ruined. He’s watching as it all catches fire and though the smoke sticks in his throat, it doesn’t outweigh this. Whatever this is. A sickness he should have cured by now. It’s going to kill him, it very nearly did.
It tastes bitter. He doesn’t remember it tasting so bitter.
“You came back,” he says. It feels like something he has to say— just so it’s spoken, so it cements itself in the air and becomes true.
There’s a silence before Suguru speaks again, but his heavy breaths are enough to quell Satoru’s nerves, “one of us had to.”
“You brought me back.”
There’s an implicit question there. It’s threaded through the words. Suguru must notice, because there’s another silence (twelve seconds, this time Satoru counts).
“You should leave,” Suguru says, “or sit.” The second suggestion is spoken with the same authority as the first; the same nonchalance; but Suguru closes his eyes and turns his head away. He doesn’t want to be privy to Satoru’s choice. Then; “please, just don’t stand there.”
Instead, Satoru takes a few steps. He’s unsteady, unconfident, a foal making use of his legs for the first time. He forgot what it felt like to walk; the sensation of having something solid against your soles, having nothing at your side to balance you. He forgot so much. The normalcies of the world feel like strangers to him. He stands next to Suguru’s shoulder, casting his face in shadow. Suguru’s head turns, but he doesn’t open his eyes. He shifts slightly with each breath.
“You’re so persistent, Satoru,” he finally says, a shallow smile on his face. It’s a loaded statement. Satoru doesn’t want to think about its many shades right now. He wants Suguru to look at him.
He’s always looking at Suguru.
“Let me take you back,” Satoru says. He speaks firmly; but the wind moves hard against them and when Suguru sits up and eyes him for the first time, Satoru can feel the words drift in the air. Suguru’s hair is in his face. It’s fallen from of its ties and hangs around his shoulders, flies about his face freely. He looks unkempt, as tired as Satoru has ever seen him. Suguru looks worn. Satoru can feel his rejection before he hears it.
“Why?” Suguru says, smiling, questioning, a little incredulous but mostly exasperated. He squints at Satoru, the sun in his eyes. “What do you want me to say here, Satoru?”
I don’t know.
The same thing as always.
I don’t know.
Satoru shrugs, “‘yes’,” and his tone says isn’t it obvious when he’s so unsure himself. Satoru can’t say what he wants. Satoru never wanted to be here in the first place. There are thoughts that rise like bile, cruel ones, ones that Satoru doesn’t allow to roam unbidden even in his nightmares. He wants Suguru to stand with him. To look at him. The wind is picking up. “It’s what’s best.”
Suguru outright laughs. It’s a mean sound. It still sounds like spring. The two shouldn’t be able to be true at once, Satoru thinks. It’s unfair. “Not for you, Satoru,” Suguru says, almost quiet enough to be lost on the wind. “What’s best never did mean what’s best for us.”
For some reason, that’s the comment that catches. Satoru’s gut twists sourly and he feels that burn in his chest intensify. And he can only think that it shouldn’t still hurt this much. Surely, now, it should stop hurting, or at least ease. When was the last time he felt at ease? His hands are cold. He wants to be mean. He says, “who’s ‘us’, Suguru?”
Suguru blinks. He’s still aside from his hair, still wild and ever-moving. “That’s fair,” he says; that’s all he says before shifting to get up, wincing from some unknown injury. And it’s toneless enough to arise suspicion. Suguru was always better at hiding his feelings as a child. At least Satoru has had time to practise. When their eyes meet again, Suguru’s are flat. Beautifully dark, when they were young Satoru thought they looked like night, like the sea at midnight. They don’t look like anything now. They’re just eyes. “He’s still in here. It.” Suguru tells him, abruptly, gesturing to his temple. “If you’re worried, you should do it now.”
They were the same height for so long as boys. When Satoru finally inched ahead, he celebrated. Suguru grumbled something about height not mattering to him that much anyway, how regardless Satoru was still the biggest child he knew. Satoru looks down, now, to meet his gaze properly.
“Quit saying stupid stuff,” he dismisses, “we’re going,” he almost says home, cuts himself off.
For the first time in years, Suguru follows.
The safehouse is decently spacious; the kind that Satoru could see any normal person making their own. Perhaps a family. Its living spaces are built for sharing. Suguru does not seem interested in making this house a home.
He skulks and he mutters. He eats very little of anything. He either sleeps through the day or not at all. And Satoru worries; he spends each day pacing and attempting to distract himself. Trying to find the right time to bring up something that may very well leave Suguru destroyed.
They’re barely co-existing. Satoru is technically fulfilling his job by keeping Suguru subdued and nonviolent (though, honestly, he’s unsure how much credit he can really be given), but he still feels guilty. Shoko had told him. She had known, somehow, that there would be this itch in Satoru’s bones. He always underestimated how well she knew him, how well she knew them both.
‘People who don’t know you guys have it wrong,’ she told him once. The heat in the air was a solid entity and Suguru was in his room. Sick. He was always sick, then. ‘They think Geto’s your babysitter, or something.’
Satoru had laughed, ‘which is totally unfair. He’s 100% as bad as I am.’
Shoko hummed, ‘worse. He’s better at looking like he’s got it all figured out, but Geto’s messes are getting bigger. Harder to clean up. I don’t think anyone knows how to do it. Not really.’
Satoru had mulled over that for a while. He wanted to dispute it, but the warmth made him lazy and he didn’t feel like making any concrete points. Instead, he indulged his curiosity. ‘What about me? I could do it.’
‘I don’t think that’s a job you want, Gojo,’ Shoko sighed; she took out a cigarette, Gojo watched her lighter flicker, watched the heat distort the air around it.
‘That’s just being a good friend,’ he’d remarked, allowing his legs to lie straight in front of him. The stone was rough beneath his palms and even in the sun-dappled shade, the sun hurt his eyes. Summer was becoming oppressive. Shoko’s never-ending sigh melted into the blare of the heat in his ears.
‘You guys make my teeth hurt.’
He gets it, now. Watching Suguru like this; it’s splitting his rib cage open. Sometimes Satoru gets so angry he convinces himself it’s a living thing. He can feel it, curling, writhing in his gut; creeping up his chest and into his throat. It’s an ugly, primal feeling and sometimes when he wakes up the world doesn’t look like something worth saving. Sometimes, he thinks, it would be better, kinder even, to put it out of its misery. There is so much to say. But as he is now, Suguru likely would hear none of it.
Satoru wants. He wants so badly for something he can’t even name. He longs for a concept that’s completely intangible, a feeling so old he’s unsure of whether it was even real. He wishes he could be a solid, real human being. He’s made of contradictions and he’s waiting to be pulled apart.
It’s all so heavy. And sometimes, when he looks at Suguru, he doesn’t even recognise him.
If you’re worried, you should do it now.
Satoru doesn’t even think he’s worried. But surely it would hurt less.
Ultimately, it’s not a bet he’s willing to make. He agreed to this, to watch Suguru and make sure he stays benign. And although Suguru is tearing himself apart, loosening each thread just to see what falls, he’s not a threat. Not to anyone but himself.
Kenjaku, for his part, seems sealed away relatively solidly. Satoru has to wonder what in the hell Suguru did. How exactly did he manage to claw his way back to life, to trap the thief that had complete control? And yet, he’s not completely gone. Satoru can hear Suguru talking, often late at night. His words are harsh and clipped and it makes each wound Satoru tends open anew. Suguru is a corrosive substance and Satoru continues to douse himself; because he knows the alternative. And at least here there’s—
Hope feels wrong. Satoru does not hope.
But here there’s something for Satoru to latch onto. And he clings until his knuckles are white and aching and his fingernails bleed and he has to wonder whether the end is enough to warrant all this pain. And he asks himself again, when was the last time it didn’t hurt?
That’s not a hard question; but even answering it tears at him.
One night, Satoru finds Suguru in the living room. The lights are off, the room is drenched in a melancholy, nighttime blue. He isn’t muttering, which means Kenjaku must be quiet right now. His hands are folded in his lap, posture ramrod straight. It’s odd. He’s in a white night shirt, blue plaid pyjama pants — both of which Satoru bought for him when they arrived. His hair is so long now. It’s darker than the night around him, swallowing up the light that deigns to touch it.
Satoru clears his throat gently, to make his presence known. Mostly as a courtesy; he assumes Suguru would be able to feel him regardless. But Suguru jumps. His dark eyes are wide and his hands clench in his lap. He relaxes almost as soon as it happens, but Satoru furrows his brow.
“What.” Suguru asks him flatly.
Satoru takes a tentative step forward, “it’s late.”
Suguru laughs. It hurts, how much Satoru used to love the sound, “you never grew out of being a hypocrite. You’re always awake.”
“I still have a job,” Satoru counters, “responsibilities, shit to take care of.” You goes unsaid, but Satoru fears Suguru hears it anyway.
“Oh, yes,” Suguru remarks, bitterly, “lucky me; all my shit burned up while some bodysnatcher was puppeteering my corpse. Now I’ll finally be able to sleep soundly.”
Satoru swallows. They haven’t talked about this yet. “That’s not what I meant, Suguru.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Your name?”
“The way you say it,” Suguru’s eye contact feels white-hot, provocative. Satoru resists the urge to sigh. He really isn’t in the mood to argue. “I hate it.”
Satoru tells himself it’s a lie and half believes it.
“Okay,” he says, blinking. “I won’t say it anymore.”
Suguru shakes his head; looking halfway between a sob and a scream, “I can tell, you know. I’m not stupid, Satoru. I know you’re disappointed I’m still me — that death doesn’t have the restorative properties you hoped it would, that all the old feelings still don’t fit,” Satoru feels winded, his throat burns at the accusation; mostly because of the grain of truth that lies at the centre. “I’m… I’m disappointed too. Everything I left here has been destroyed. My girls are dead,” Suguru eyes him venomously, “did you know that? Dead or alive, would you have told me?”
“I would have,” Satoru argues, “I was going to—”
“They were my family, Satoru. I loved them.” Suguru drags a hand across his face, “and you didn’t care enough to tell me. I fucking assume that half the shit Kenjaku tells me are lies, but this… this I could feel. In the pit of my stomach, you know?” A pause, “why wouldn’t you tell me?”
Satoru’s voice dries up. He suddenly feels like a boy, standing before a fully grown Suguru. He still can’t pinpoint the change; as much as he racks his brain, he can’t pinpoint a moment in time that he could change and have Suguru by his side. The walls are nighttime blue; he feels like he’s dreaming. “I didn’t want to make you sad,” he says, weakly, childishly. And it’s so, unbearably true. When did being honest with Suguru become painful?
Suguru looks, for a terrifying moment, like he might cry. He turns, and Satoru watches the graceful line of his profile as he considers this. He doesn’t look angry. He looks vacant. “You never did stop thinking of us as friends, huh?”
And Satoru wants to deny it. But it’s harder now. It was easy to pretend when Suguru was something he could fight against; when he presented as a tangible threat that would bleed and cut in return. Satoru could put aside their past when the future was at stake. Hell, it was easy to hate him. All of that same emotion could be redirected and manifest into something physical, even satisfying. And then Suguru was dead and Satoru mourned him as the friend he was — had been. Satoru could finally face, without fear or consequence, the truth of the situation. And he allowed those untouched feelings to lie, in the open; they didn’t grow nor die, but he allowed them to exist how they once did.
And now, now everything was mud.
“I can’t make you hate me again, Satoru,” Suguru says, and Satoru only notices the stinging behind his eyes when Suguru’s voice wobbles, “I’m too tired. I can’t make you hate me, but I shouldn’t be your friend.”
You didn’t make me do anything, it was just easier.
Satoru says nothing, he stands against the wall while Suguru places his head silently in his hands. He watches the moon, just a sliver of itself, as it hangs so stoic in the sky (he’d missed the moon in there, missed her like a limb). And he pretends not to hear Suguru’s nearly silent sobs. And he thinks that when they were younger, on a clear night like this, Satoru might have convinced Suguru to climb up to the roof to look at the stars. And Suguru would complain, because of the pollution, that none of the stars were visible anyway. And Satoru would make up constellations and stories behind them, just to make Suguru laugh. And then he’d point at the moon, always unreal in its brightness, and say, at least we have that. And Suguru would nod and say, it’s not going anywhere, smiling like they had a secret and Satoru would glow.
As the first traces of morning peak over the horizon, Satoru approaches the couch and silently slings one of Suguru’s arms over his shoulder. Suguru doesn’t protest, just stands limply and allows himself to be guided to his room, placed gently on his bed. His eyes are open and he gazes up at Suguru, reaching blindly for his wrist and holding loosely. It burns.
“I miss them,” he whispers.
I miss you.
“I’m sorry,” Satoru whispers back, because it’s all he can say.