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“Oh my god,” Todo wheezed, clambering over rubble to Yuki. “Holy shit!”
“I’m fine,” Yuki says, pulling herself up with the help of Garuda. “Nothing to see here, all-” her head swims. “All good,” she finishes lamely.
“Your side,” Todo gasps, running to support her. “We need to get you to the doctors, or something.”
“What? No way, c’mon kid. You know I can patch myself up-” her eyes focus on something on the floor. “Is that my blood ?”
Todo watches her with wide, anxious eyes. “You got hit really hard, and you kept fighting anyways!” His eyes alight with a malicious fire. “It was awesome .”
“I know it,” Yuki says proudly. “I can’t believe I let that nothing grade one get the better of me though, shit. I think I’m going to pass out.”
“No way!” Todo grabs her arm. “Don’t go into the light, Master.”
“I don’t want to go to the doctors.”
Todo watches her with wet, wide eyes. “But…. you’re leaving a trail.”
Yuki looks over her shoulder. Sure enough, there’s a dark wet splotchy trail leading to where they are, staining the dirty city street. “Fucking,” she seethes. “ Fine . I know someone not too far from here.”
Shoko snapped her medical gloves on and examined the sorry duo sitting on her operating table. “Well. This is a sight I didn’t expect to be seeing.”
“Don’t,” Yuki hisses through clenched teeth. “The kid made me.”
Todo jumped off the table, running to Shoko. “The curse gave us the slip,” he blubbers, pulling her to the operating table. “I- I couldn’t see it, and it-” he unreleased a howl of a cry and punched the drywall, denting it heavily for a fourteen year old.
Shoko tsked and patted his shoulder. “It’s all good, kid. If Yuki couldn’t see it either, it must have been quite the curse.”
“I will never let anyone I love get hurt again,” he declared, slashing his hand through the air. “I will die before something happens to someone I love, and come back from the dead, believe it!”
“That’s real nice,Todo,” Yuki heaved, hand on her side. “If you could ease up on the yelling-”
“Oh! I’m sorry, Master!”
“Hey, Todo," Shoko cuts in, rummaging through her actual doctor drawers. “Can you go to the boardroom and find some tylenol for your master? I only have two hands.”
“Of course!” Todo swears, and runs from the room, chanting tylenol, tylenol, tylenol .
Shoko pulled a bottle of tylenol from her drawers and dropped two into Yuki’s hand. “Never thought you’d take on a student. When Gojo told me I didn’t believe it.”
“Believe it,” Yuki said. “He’s extremely powerful. I think he may be a grade A, someday.”
“And here I thought you were only aiming for special grade.”
“Special grade is always good, but Todo is far from composed.”
“So are you.”
“I can be,” Yuki said, and allowed herself a cheeky grin. “When it matters.”
“Glad to see you’re not on the brink of death,” Shoko responds drily. “Seeing how you can make shitty jokes.”
“Ha, don’t speak so haughtily. You used to love my shitty jokes.”
Shoko shot her a look. Yuki grinned and shrugged innocently. “Well, you did.”
“Take your shirt off,” Shoko said.
“Always,” Yuki grunts in pain as she goes to take off her tank top. “Fuck, I think we're going to need to cut it.”
Shoko had guessed that was the case. “Alright,” she said. “Lay still, and lift your arms.” She takes out her heavy metal shears, and cuts upwards, to Yuki’s armpit, where she’s able to lift the blood-soaked shirt around her head and let it fall to the other side, leaving Yuki shirtless.
“I liked that shirt,” Yuki says hoarsely.
“Fortunately, you have several like it,” Shoko replies. “Did you take your pills?”
“You didn't give me any water.”
Shoko snorts and heads to the fridge to get a bottle. “What, are you going to want a pillow next?”
“Sorry to be a princess,” Yuki groans as she gets her shirt off.
Shoko smiles and motions for the water. “Eat your painkillers.”
“Eating up.”
Shoko examines the damage, frowning. “Oh. Oh you’re- you’re not cursed, or anything.”
“Of course I’m not cursed,” Yuki says. “I think half my guts are on Main Street, though.”
Shoko didn’t really think she was either, but she was preparing herself for the worst, compared to how distraught the kid was when they first came in.
“You would not be alive if half your guts were on Main Street.”
“I may not, if you keep being a baby.”
“What? I’m not a baby.”
Yuki’s lips are pale, and she rasps, “You’re scared to touch me.”
Shoko frowns at her. “You’re delirious. Delusional and delirious, and bleeding out.”
“Your hands are skirting me like I’m a hot oven. H-Here I thought my charms had worn off.”
She’s right. Seeing Yuki as she is has shaken Shoko. It shouldn’t. Shoko is relatively new to this but she’s seen people turned inside out, people she’s cared about a hollow husk of a person. She wasn’t supposed to care about Yuki, and yet when she saw her again, bloodied and supported by that kid, her stomach turned and her hands shook.
No one should ever see someone they shared such intimate moments with in a state where their abdomen is so deeply reddened and gashed. But with Yuki here, cracking jokes like she is, Shoko is still scared. She feels worlds younger than she is.
Yuki is a sorcerer, a very important one, and there’s a kid outside, waiting for her to be fixed. It's not the worst she's ever seen, she reminds herself.
So she gets to it.
Shoko touches her uninjured side. Yuki jumps. “Oh,” she says, realizing she was trembling. “Shit.”
“Lay down,” Shoko directed. Yuki obeyed. Shoko got to work, unraveling the bandage while also applying pressure to the wound. Yuki’s head began to swim, as Shoko absolved herself into her work. It felt like a similar dynamic between them, but neither could pinpoint the origins of its familiarity.
It had been a very long time since they were alone together. It had been a very long time since they were together, in all senses of the word.
“I didn’t think I was going to die,” Yuki admits, voice low. “I know my death will be something spectacular, something moving and meaningful, and that wasn’t it. But it did cross my mind that if that was it, I really would have nothing.”
“What do you mean?” Shoko asks, from far away.
“What I said,” Yuki said. “Everything I’ve discovered is only the beginning. There are eons of history, mountains of knowledge, haystacks of answers I’ve hardly begun fishing through. But there are also people . People I didn’t save. People I still could.”
“You’ve saved lots of lives.”
“But not enough.”
“I don’t want to get into this,” Shoko says. “Not now.”
“Ieiri-”
“No.”
“Shoko, I’m going to live.”
“I know.”
“But this is only a short-term solution.”
“I don’t need to hear that while I’m patching you up,” Shoko says. “Lots of people will listen to you, Yuki. But I am not one of them.”
“You say that, but I’ll get you someday.”
“You never did before.”
Yuki huffs a short laugh. “No, I suppose not. But I’m going to live, and there will be time to radicalize you yet.”
Shoko pauses in her ministrations. “I haven’t seen you for a long time.”
“I’ve been busy,” Yuki says. “Traveling, training- ow!”
“Sorry,” Shoko says between her teeth. “I’m sorry, I just needed to adjust that. How do you feel?”
“I can’t flex my abs.”
Shoko tsks, wiping the remaining blood flakes away with an anti-bacterial patch. “There will be other ways to attract women. Maybe start on your life-changing philosophy.”
“Is that jealousy?”
“Irony.”
“You always were good at that.”
Shoko rests her hand in her palm, and watches Yuki’s breathing eventually return to normal. Stitches, bonding, the works. It should have taken longer than it felt, to restore her to the force that she is. Maybe it was. “I’ll go find Todo for you.”
A hand reaches out and grabs her wrist. “He’s fine,” Yuki says. “He’s a tough boy, he doesn’t need coddling.”
“Since when have you known me to coddle?”
“You’re not the hardened woman you pretend you are, Shoko,” Yuki says. “I can see you trying to reassure him, feed him.”
“He’s a kid, Yuki. Forgive me for checking in on him.”
“No, not like you would think. They’re different.”
There’s a twinge of sadness in that. Shoko understands it, and feels it the same. “I’ll stay, then.”
“Yes, stay,” Yuki says, and releases her wrist. “For a minute more, anyways.”
Shoko’s lips quirk at her unsubtle affection. “Did you miss my attention?”
“Always,” Yuki vows.
Shoko bites the inside of her lip. Her fingers, her entirety itches for a smoke, something she can force out of herself. Yuki always made her feel so disoriented, so out of herself.
“I miss yours,” Shoko murmurs.
“Then why don’t you-”
“You know why.”
“You won’t be able to say that for much longer. You better start cooking up other cheap excuses.”
“I can always fall back on the fact you can’t flex your abs anymore.”
Yuki explodes into a cackle, then groans in pain. “Ow! Shokoo, you’re causing me even more pain!”
Shoko smiles and rests her chin on her arms on Yuki’s cot, next to her head. “Did Todo really force you to come?”
Yuki smiles, and keeps her mouth shut. Shoko understands her response- or her lack of it- for what it is, and rummages through a drawer under the operating table for a shirt. She manages to find a clean gown and offers it wordlessly.
"No way," Yuki refuses. "I have a jacket I can wear."
Shoko frowns. "This will be better for your wounds."
"I'll die first."
"You are so dramatic."
The door gently opens, and Todo creeps in, arms full of pill bottles. “I couldn’t find them in the classrooms,” he admits. “But I found this guy, and he gave me a buncha different flavors.”
“Do they have peach?”
“Do not eat those,” Shoko says, standing up to take them from Todo. “But thank you, Todo. Your master will be fine and ready to go, provided she takes care of herself, rests, and changes her bandages in two days.”
“His master would like to come back,” Yuki calls raspily.
Todo’s head swivels between them, confused and entertained. “Hey, Doctor, she can come back, right?”
Shoko hides her smile, putting the stomach acid pills away with her back to the two. “Provided she doesn’t create too many problems, she may.”
“I may be in trouble.”
“She may be in trouble.”
Don’t I know it, Shoko thought.
“Hey, Shoko,” Yuki said, and lifted herself with a painful wince. However, her grin was clear as she looked at Shoko with a familiar expression. “Is your type the same?”
Shoko could feel her cheeks flush hotly. “I never told you my type.”
“No,” Yuki says, and lowers her head onto her hands. “But you’re not as secretive as you think, Doctor.”
Shoko smiles in the doorway. “Then you should be able to figure it out yourself… Tsukumo.”
Yuki jerked her head up at the sound of her name, but Shoko was already gone from the doorway. Yuki groans and puts her head back down. “Hot and cold with this girl!” She complains, but nothing could conceal the smile on her face.
Todo looks suspiciously between the empty doorway and Yuki on the cot. “Hey… is Doctor Shoko your type?”
Yuki shakes her head and grins. “Against my own better will, kid. Come on, lets go get something to eat.”