Archive of Our Own

Light flickered from cracked LED sticks in the ceiling of the old hospital hallway, the long wail of musty air drifting towards them brittle with death, new and old.

Having rounded the corner first just to see yet another nurse's station, Getou sighed, called to the other two, "Nothing down here either."

From behind him, Gojo swung around, Shoko in tow, just to find he was right. Empty.

Getou complained, "You'd think the dead construction workers would be more willing to help us."

"Yeah, not really how it works sadly," Shoko moaned, popping the lollipop back into her mouth.

"Shhhsh, wait, do you guys hear that?" Gojo tilted his head like he was listening.

Shoko played along, cupped her ear and whispered, "What?"

A second passed. Two. Three. Until finally Gojo says, "I thought I heard the thud-thud-thud of that one construction machine... the jabbing one?"

"You mean a jackhammer?" Getou's shoulders slumped. "You definitely didn't hear one."

"You're such a killjoy," Gojo huffed.

Released from her pose, Shoko tipped and spun forward, kicked a crumpled plastic cup. "Maybe the school just wanted you two gone long enough so they could get through a day without the dumb interruptions."

"Frankly I wouldn't blame them," Getou said. "Though it seems pointless to make up an entire story about a haunted hospital just for that reason. You could've gotten this one out of school with less effort. Like leaving a trail of mochi into a fast-moving river."

Gojo sent him an exasperated look over his glasses, "Like you wouldn't have stolen one after I fished them out of the river?"

"Like your big mouth would've left me any?"

"Oi, oi, girls, can we focus on finding the curse?" Shoko called back.

After sticking his tongue out, Gojo obediently started down the hall.

The strongest sorcerer, Getou reminded himself. This kid with his hands in his pockets, strolling through a supposed Grade 1's haunt like it's a candy store that usually carries his favorite suckers.

Since the day he first met the other, he'd watched. Been able to stand side by side because he was told at a young age that he himself carried power comparable to many historic sorcerers and that he should certainly make friends with others of similar potential. Or those with more power. A lot more. Various adult sorcerers had practically tried to carve the two of them to match on a chess board.

Not that he resented Gojo. No... It was more just an intrigue thing that made him watch how the other walked. Whether he would trip and fall.

But he didn't.

And how could he?

The strongest sorcerer wasn't allowed to falter.

The same held true for any brash teenager, but Gojo Satoru being Gojo Satoru, well...

If Getou squinted above the white puff of hair, he might've been able to see the edge of the world Gojo thought he carried on his shoulders.

"Hey, you coming, gloomy?" Shoko called.

Sighing, Getou called that he was and followed them.

Passing the nurse's station, curving into the next hallway, it was just one room after another down the hall, empty, no sign of the cursed spirit.

Two months ago, demolition started on the old hospital. Two weeks ago, the tally of mysteriously disappeared and/or died had reached a worrying thirteen that had vanished to the old, unearthed cursed spirit crawling the hospital.

"Wonderful way to spend a Friday night," Gojo muttered as they walked.

As he passed an empty exam room on his right, Getou called, "Oi, Shoko."

"Hmm?"

"What time is it?"

She pulled her phone out, checked it to say, "One in the morning."

Gojo groaned, "We've been circling this place for hours!"

With a plastic snap, Shoko pocketed her flip phone. Rounding the corner, she pointed, "Officially I'd say there's some kind of repeating maze domain on this floor too. Same broken light three down there, same nurse's station with the shattered screen on the corner."

"Ah, you're right." Getou rubbed his chin. "We've been able to backtrack to the stairs each time, but only when we go backward. The stairwell never appears when we move forward. No matter what floor we hit, it's the same phenomenon."

"A different maze on each floor, and a constant way to move between them," Shoko said.

"But how many floors have we visited so far?"

Shoko seemed to count on her fingers, before running out of fingers.

Getou sighed, "I'll have to add this excursion to my long list of reasons why I don't trust the school to properly gauge any curse threat."

Gojo rocked his hips, hands on them like a model, "Well, long as me and my eyes are here, nothing can jump-scare us. Though, it'd be nice if the thing would hurry up and try."

Glancing over the shoulder to his friend, Getou mused, "It's either a completely inept cursed spirit, or an intelligent one." Reaching a cluster of chairs and desks with mold-riddled computers and nurse's notes, he picked up a clipboard, blowing the dust from it.

"Please." Gojo rested his hands behind his head, leaned towards Shoko, "It isn't intelligent for an ant to think it can outsmart a human."

The clipboard thwacked to stop a hair from Gojo's face.

Infinity catching it, the board slid down to reveal Gojo's bored expression turned on Getou.

The other settled, slipping his hands into his pockets to say, "An ant doesn't need to outsmart a human that's fallen asleep. It only has to wait for nightfall to crawl into the person's ears."

It prickled between those insanely blue eyes, "Oi, if you're trying to say something, then just spit it out."

Leveling his gaze, Getou hummed, "Listen Satoru, we all get tired. It's what humans do."

The round sunglasses drop down his nose as he tilted forward, growled with that smile, "Well, when you two get tired, you can take a nap in the mortuary downstairs."

In a flick of his ankle, Gojo kicked the clipboard across the floor, the wood skating to stop at Getou's feet.

With that, the two watched the white puff of hair swivel and waltz down the hall.

A couple steps clicked from his right, Shoko coming up to ask low, "Do you think he was kidding, when he said we'd been circling this place for hours?"

Getou didn't take his eyes off his friend. How the taller hunched as he shuffled away, probably without even realizing it.

"No. Or, well, if he was joking, then it's him coping with how it's already been three days."

Three days of his Six Eyes on constantly. Three days into a test of limits that Gojo hadn't prepared for, and that there was no precedent for how it would affect him.

"Yeah, could be." Her answer was distracted, as she was busy patting down her pockets.

"Finally out of cigarettes?"

"I didn't expect to be here this long." She sighed, "I guess running out would be just my usual Wednesday luck."

Getou's brows pinched. "It's Monday."

Shoko stilled, looked at him with the slight tilt that said she was considering if he was messing with her. Until she decided, "Oh, you're serious?"

"Yeah."

With an intrigued "Well then," she pulled a crisply wrapped lollipop from her jacket, apparently stocked on more of those than cigarettes, "Ten thousand yen says you collapse from exhaustion before Satoru."

Tossing the wrapper, she popped the candy bulb in her mouth, starting after Gojo down the hall.

True, the ache in his shoulders had grown more than uncomfortable, his feet sore and his eyes a slight burn to them. But oddly, he wasn't hungry or thirsty. Whatever the domain ability, it seemed to have slowed down their metabolic rate, while messing with their mind's reactions to it. It was as if he was being stepped on, and felt every aspect of it, but in increments so tiny and spread out that his brain didn't bother keeping track unless prompted to check.

Thankfully for him, he was used to trudging with sludge in his veins. And Shoko might go through nicotine withdrawal, but she had before, painful as it was to watch, and would live.

But Gojo Satoru—the teenager who had only ever pushed his own limits, never had an outside force push him past them and into the prickling pit that is his own body saying it can't take anymore…

Sighing, Getou followed. His half-lidded gaze drifting across the tile floor, thinking,

Shoko's going to hate coughing up that thousand yen.

~~~~~~~

When Getou was seven, he fell in the frozen lake by their backyard.

The only thing he could think, as he sunk deeper into the cold blind, was how silent the devouring had been.

In a single moment, the ice cracked in warning and the maw opened to swallow him whole. His sinking just as noiseless.

Before the ice echoed his footsteps and decided he belonged underneath it, the winter breeze had whispered by his ears, and only in the blackness did Getou realize it had been asking him to be quiet.

The same hush whisked by his ears now and he froze.

Behind them, the hallway lied by pretending to be desolate.

Had he really been the only one to notice?

Gojo and Shoko kept walking, bickering about soda and Getou swallowed at the fear crawling up his throat.

Stifling a yawn, Gojo rubbed his eye before catching himself.

"Satoru."

Interrupted from their conversation, the two turned to him in slight annoyance.

He leveled his look, trying to fill it with meaning and threat and warning as he stated, "I think you should rest."

With a rough sigh, Gojo whined, "This again? You don't think I can pull a couple of all-nighters?"

"This isn't some sleepover, Satoru. We need you when the time comes and if that means you sleep until one of us wakes you up—"

Gojo whacked his friend's hand from landing on his shoulder, "And let one of you get all the glory taking the damn thing down?" Then he yelled around them, "Wherever the shithead is!"

Getou flinched, an instinctive thing he hated immediately after.

Gojo noticed. "Oh, you think it can hear us? Well then why has it waited so long to show its ugly mug, huh!?" Gojo spun around, calling up and down the hall. "Maybe the thing is a girl and hideous!"

Shoko muffled through her lollipop, "Rude."

"Satoru, calm down."

Gojo shrugged off his friend's grip, cupping to yell down the hall, "Maybe she was hideous in life, and died in this hospital with no friends because of it! Probably deserved it!"

"Dude," was all Shoko gave.

With worry stirred in his limbs, Getou faced ahead, then backward. Ready. And all he saw was the same dusty trash and flickering lights like before but...

"See?" Gojo grinned, stepping back towards them, "The thing's probably afraid of me. And for good reason!"

Those round sunglasses stopped right in front of Getou to glare at him. This close, Getou could make out how deep the dark circles were.

But the bright blue eyes could still pierce him as Gojo growled, "Go home, Suguru. Take Shoko and leave. Why anyone thought you were needed here is beyond me. And actually, it's... Oh what's the word again?" He straightened up to rub his chin.

"You're being an ass, Satoru. Knock it off." Shoko called.

"Asinine." He snapped his fingers. "That's it. At least Shoko was helpful." He tilted his head down, glasses low enough so he could meet Getou's vexed look with bared eyes, pouting, "Helpful. Unlike you and your weak-ass ability."

Getou fought everything in himself to keep from punching the other, but only because goosebumps prickled down his neck.

If before was a whisper by his ear, this was an inhale.

"What's the matter?" Gojo demanded, inserting himself in front of Getou again, shoving him in the chest. "You wanna tell me I'm wrong? Your ability is literally just stealing other abilities from Curses—without them, you'd be nothing! Who's the strongest one here, huh?"

"Take a rest," Getou gritted out, feeling the convergence of something and wishing Gojo would shut up for a second so he could concentrate on where it was coming from.

"I don't need a rest!" Gojo shouted, with a wild laugh, throwing his arms wide. "I feel great! And I'm gonna take down this asshole Curse myself and prove you two weren't even needed here! I'm gonna—"

It happened so fast that Getou didn't have time to react. A giant arm of tortured flesh and stitches shot out of the wall. The hand clamped around Gojo, crushing his arms to his sides, squeezing. Getou watched, open-mouthed, as Gojo's face turned from manic fury to actual terror, a second before the thing crushed him in its fist. The action pulled a surprised, agonized scream from Gojo's throat before it flung him to one side.

Gojo crashed through a wall as the Curse materialized in the hallway, squeezing out of the wall into the hallway, a bulbous amalgamation of screaming faces and stitched together flesh.

"Holy shit," Shoko squeaked before she began summoning her reverse Curse technique.

Getou was already throwing several of his Curses out in an attempt to take the thing down. "Think you can exorcise it if I weaken it?"

Shoko nodded with a look of determination as the Cursed energy rippled around her. "You do the heavy lifting, I'll do the clean-up."

Getou nodded and rushed in, rolling to dodge a swing from the Curse, throwing out a tiger-like Curse spirit of his own that snarled and lunged toward their target, tearing into it with a release of Cursed energy.

It swiped at him again and Getou gritted his teeth, his exhaustion really pulling down on him despite the sudden adrenaline rush of the fight.

"Getou!"

He felt Shoko's energy shield envelope him just in time for the thing to swipe at him, throwing Getou to one side to skid down the hallway. He released a couple more of his heavy hitting Cursed spirits and they leapt at the target, tearing into it. Cursed energy was released into the air and Getou climbed to his feet again, shaky.

"Hit it!" he shouted at Shoko.

She sent a blast of reverse Cursed energy directly at the Curse, taking a chunk out of it. The thing screamed and thrashed, before it was born to the ground by Getou's Cursed spirits. Shoko hit it again and the thing finally burst apart with a curdling scream, sending both Getou and Shoko to the floor.

Getou lay there for a long moment before he forced himself up onto his elbows, pressing a hand against his aching head. Shoko groaned beside him.

"That…really sucked," she muttered.

The hospital was quiet now, and there was no more Cursed energy that he could detect aside from some residuals. Nor were there any infinite hallways and confusing repetitions in their surroundings. They had effectively escaped the domain.

Getou pushed himself slowly to his feet and reached down to give Shoko a hand.

"Where's Gojo?" she groaned.

Getou glanced around, realizing that it was very strange that he hadn't showed up to whine about not getting a piece of the action.

Getou glanced toward the hole in the wall the Curse had thrown their cocky friend through and started in that direction, Shoko following cautiously. Their feet crunched over drywall as they stepped through the opening. It was dark now that the Curse's domain wasn't providing the illusion of electricity in the old building, and Shoko pulled out her phone, switching on the flashlight.

At the far side of the old exam room lay a crumpled figure in dark clothing. A white shock of hair soaked in red rested at the top, giving Getou pause, his breath catching in his throat.

"Satoru?" he called softly, stepping forward.

Something crunched under his foot and he looked down to see Gojo's glasses, smashed and broken underneath his shoe.

It felt like an omen.

~~~~~~~

Shoko couldn't deny that she was worried about Gojo.

From her cursory examination of his injuries, his multiple broken bones and internal bleeding were way out of her league to handle right now. She'd never healed anyone with injuries that severe, and with her current state of exhaustion, she didn't even want to attempt it.

Luckily, they'd been able to call in an ambulance and they'd figure out where to go from there, once Gojo was getting the proper treatment.

Shoko sighed, rubbing her eyes tiredly. Now no longer in the clutches of the domain, she was starting to feel the acute exhaustion and hunger. She really wished she had even just one more cigarette…

The crunch of broken debris had her looking up sharply, but it was just Getou, coming back into the building from where he had been keeping watch outside.

"They're pulling in now."

Shoko felt relief flood through her as she stood from her makeshift seat on a cinder block. Getou walked over to Gojo. "Any change?"

"No," Shoko said, folding her arms over her chest. He'd been…abnormally still and silent, obviously unconscious. Shoko didn't like the implications of that.

Getou went out to lead the paramedics to the right spot as Shoko crouched beside her friend, reaching out to gently flick some of the blood-stained white hair away from his face.

"You idiot," she muttered. "You should have told us how bad it was, but you're always too damn stubborn." She then straightened with a click of her tongue. "And you went and made me lose a thousand yen to Getou too."

Getou returned with the paramedics who flooded into the room with a gurney. Shoko stood with Getou as they watched the EMTs briefly inspect Gojo's injuries before loading him onto the stretcher. Even the jostling didn't rouse him.

"You two can come accompany him to the hospital," one of the EMTs said. "We'll call your school from there and figure out why three students were hanging around in an abandoned hospital in the middle of the night."

Shoko nodded. She wasn't really worried about that right now. Principal Yaga could smooth it over since he was the one who sent them on this mission to begin with. Honestly, she was surprised backup hadn't already been sent in.

They followed the EMTs out to the waiting ambulance, trailing behind so as not to get in their way.

"Isn't it a little odd?" Shoko asked Getou quietly. "That he wasn't using his Infinity?"

Getou pressed his lips together grimly. "I don't think he had been for a while. He was channeling all his energy into using Six Eyes. And I think even that was getting spotty near the end, since he didn't even see the Curse coming."

Once Gojo was loaded into the back of the ambulance, Shoko and Getou climbed in after him, sitting on a bench to one side as the paramedics went to work on Gojo, cutting open his uniform, checking his vitals. One was on the radio with the hospital before the ambulance even pulled out onto the road.

"Male, 15-16, multiple fractures and internal bleeding. Possible concussion…"

"Let's get him on an IV," one of the other paramedics said, working on setting that up, running a line of tubing.

Shoko grabbed Getou's shoulder as the ambulance made a quick turn. She was grateful it was around 3 a.m. considering that meant the roads were mostly empty. The hospital wasn't much farther…

Her gaze wandered back to watch the EMT cut open Gojo's sleeve to insert the IV into the crook of his arm.

The second the needle punctured skin, Gojo's eyes flew open.

"Sugaru," Shoko muttered, slapping the back of her hand against her friend's arm.

Getou's head whipped around, a look of terror washing over his face the second that Shoko realized it too.

Gojo was practically vibrating. Cursed energy wafting off of him in waves.

"Easy, son, we're just getting you taken care of," one of the EMTs said, reaching out toward Gojo.

Getou was on his feet in an instant. "Don't touch him! Everyone get back!"

But it was already too late. Shoko could only watch as Gojo's Cursed energy concentrated and then exploded.

Getou was already on the move, grabbing hold of Shoko as he pulled out one of his cursed spirits. The beast wrapped around them just as the explosion ripped the ambulance apart.

Shoko felt the ball of Cursed spirit that contained her and Getou get thrown by the blast, skidding across the pavement as the sound of debris thudding around them rattled through the ground.

Getou wriggled beside her and shoved at the ripped apart corpse of the Cursed spirit, grabbing Shoko's arm to help her up.

"What the hell?" she croaked, looking around.

As she turned, her breath caught in her throat. The ambulance had been completely torn apart and from the look of it, none of the paramedics had survived the blast. To make things worse, the explosion had happened right as they were going under an overpass under construction which had also been caught in the blast, raining heavy concrete and rebar around the area.

"Holy shit," Getou murmured and Shoko finally looked up to where his eyes were trained.

There, floating a good twenty feet up in the air was Gojo, Cursed energy rippling around him as he hovered there on his back, unnaturally suspended above the ground.

"Satoru!" Getou shouted to him, stepping forward.

"Wait!" Shoko cried, hauling him back. "Look."

The wind was picking up around the area—around Gojo—moving in a vortex around the spot the injured student was floating. Debris from the explosion was getting picked up to swirl around, the vortex seeming to get wider and wider the more the wind picked up.

"This is…not good," Getou stated.

"You think?" Shoko demanded, trying to keep herself from sounding too frantic. "What the hell do we do about this? He's creating a—a trash hurricane here in the middle of the city! We don't even know why!"

"I have a feeling even Gojo isn't aware of what he's doing right now," Getou said grimly. "You saw him before the Curse took him out, he was losing it."

"You think it has something to do with prolonged use of Six Eyes?" Shoko asked. "I told him it would fry his brain."

They were forced to duck and retreat as more debris was picked up, getting added to the vortex.

"What do we do?" Shoko asked. "I could maybe try to use Reverse Curse on him, but I don't really know if it will do anything. He's literally blasting energy right now." She bit her lip. "I suppose we could wait until he goes through all his reserves, but I'm afraid it might kill him."

Getou looked thoughtful. "Can you use Reverse Curse to get me in there?"

Shoko blinked at him. "What?"

Getou pointed to Gojo. "Look. It's completely calm where Satoru is. Like the eye of a hurricane. If I can get in there, then I might be able to talk him down, get through to him."

Shoko folded her arms across her chest. "I don't know, Sugaru…"

"This is obviously just getting worse. At this rate, it's either going to end in more civilian casualties or Gojo's death. I don't want either of those things. This might be our only choice."

Shoko chewed her lip some more but relented. "You're right. We should at least give it a try—if anyone's going to get through to him, it's you." She glanced around the area. "I'm going to put up a veil in case things get even worse."

Getou nodded and Shoko created a veil around the area, cutting off the night sky and any sounds but the whistling wind of Gojo's vortex.

"Ready?" she asked Getou as she wearily summoned her power.

He nodded and Shoko moved her hands in a circular motion, forming a bubble of Reverse Cursed energy around Getou.

"I don't know how long that will last but hopefully it will get you in there," she said.

Getou nodded in thanks and stepped into the worst of the trash vortex. Debris pinged off of the barrier around him, some of it staggering him with the force, but he continued on with determination.

Shoko fiddled with her pockets as she watched with pent up breath. That was when her fingers caught on a slightly crushed cigarette hiding in the depths of her pocket.

She pulled it out gratefully and tucked it between her lips, reaching for her lighter. Maybe things weren't going as bad as she'd thought.

Before she could even attempt to light it, however, the cigarette was tugged straight out of her mouth by a gust of wind. Shoko watched balefully as it floated up to join the rest of the trash swirling around the limp figure in the air.

"Well, shit," she muttered under her breath, turning her attention back to Getou who was slowly making his way to the eye of the hurricane. "You better know what you're doing Sugaru."

~~~~~~~

Gojo Satoru was a child. Had been his entire life, and Getou never saw that changing.

Concrete rubble pounds the barrier around Getou as he pushed through the trash typhoon. A particularly large piece of metal (a car door?) hit with enough force to make him jump, but Shoko's technique held, albeit with a slight flicker, and he shoved on.

Any reasonable person would just call Gojo spoiled and be done with it. And yes, he'd never had to live in the real world like the rest of them, but it just meant he had a different world of crosses to carry. Like still suffering from temper tantrums.

If Getou squinted up, he could almost make out the moonlight poking through the hazy wind and rubble, could almost make out the drama queen's figure haloed by the night sky.

What his friend did was a ridiculous overreaction, but a part of Getou pitied him at times like this, and he felt that was his greatest sin against Satoru.

Reaching the edge of the winds, he crossed the abrupt change in pressure, stumbling into the eye. Debris floated almost weightlessly in it. A miraculous calm like a river frozen and perfectly still between two rushing rapids.

Now if he looked almost directly up, he saw the outline of his friend pressed against the night sky, like he might've become a constellation and stayed up there forever.

Cupping his hands over his mouth, Getou yelled over the crashing of metal and wind around them, "Satoru! You blew up the ambulance, you big moron! Come down here!"

No response. Except for the eye of the hurricane slowly starting to move—no, it was shrinking.

Getou hopped to the very middle, switched tactics, "I get if you're angry about the cursed spirit knocking you out! But it's ok now! Shoko and I exorcised it and it's not worth wrecking half the city with a typhoon!"

The winds started pressing on the back of Shoko's barrier, a chainsaw of rubble.

The message read loud and clear; Gojo Satoru doesn't want to hear it.

It wasn't unfamiliar. It usually took more than a couple harsh words for Gojo to swallow a hard truth.

Getou ran the options in his head. He needed Gojo to listen to him, something he'd been trying to achieve since the beginning. Satoru, don't be a jerk. Satoru, watch yourself. Satoru, you really need to think about how collapsing this building is going to kill at least three innocent people.

Always the constant fear in the back of Getou's mind—What happens when I'm not around to keep him in check? Can Satoru remember who we're supposed to be protecting and reign himself in?

Not this time, apparently.

But, and it dawned on Getou then— This was the first time.

"Oi Satoru! You won't want to, but you have to listen to me! It's ok to be the one who needs protecting sometimes! It's ok to be a weak human being!"

A hunk of rebar clanged on the barrier hard enough to shove Getou to the side, but he caught himself and straightened back up. Realized the barrier was gone when he got hit with concrete pellets like thousands of little bee stings.

Dust half-blinded him, but he managed, "Being human means you're one of us! Isn't that what you've wanted this whole time?!"

It was a shift, a barely noticeable change in the pressure swirling around him, but Getou felt it. Knew he didn't need to shout at the top of his lungs anymore to be heard.

"You're not doing this alone, and you'll never have to. I'll always be at your back, so just come down already, idiot."

A couple seconds passed in which Getou wondered if maybe he actually should've shouted, or otherwise that Gojo was still considering killing him with the trash hurricane.

But, as unnaturally as the winds had started up, they abruptly stopped, suspending a building's worth of rubble as a hazy shroud around them. The lanky form in the sky slowly starting to lower with the rest of the debris, like ice finally melting.

Getou hadn't realized he'd pent up a breath until his shoulders relaxed with a sigh. Turning, he found he could make out Shoko past the concrete pellets and chunks and metal bars slowly starting to fall.

In the distance between them—if he was the batter then she was an outfielder—he watched her give him a thumbs up.

He returned it, thought he saw her smile. And looked up.

Her grin yanked down as she cried, "Getou!"

He followed where she'd pointed—summoned a cursed creature a split second too late—and got slammed to the ground by Gojo's unconscious body and the creature. Although, the creature served less as a cushion and more as a water balloon. Its insides splattered between him and Gojo like they were end pieces and the disgusting smashed curse was just strawberry Oreo cream filling.

Squinting, Getou spit a splotch of curse blood out of his mouth. Not the first time he'd tasted it, but he wasn't eager to try it a second time.

Footsteps pounded closer. Shoko running up to them until she slowed to take up part of the night sky above them, panting, "You alright?!"

With a heavy groan—the air knocked out of him and his lungs had just thought to start refilling—he managed to roll Gojo off of him. "Yeah," he rasped, a hearty cough taking over, "I'm fine."

The final pieces of concrete landed, a clang of rebar off to the left and the distant sound of sirens approaching.

After he hauled himself to sit up, Getou creaked, "Maybe we don't call an ambulance this time?"

Shoko, already on her phone, sighed, "Way ahead of you." And brought the phone up to her ear.

As the school's side rang, they watched Gojo. The jerk might as well have been asleep in bed with how peaceful he looked.

Getou wiped blood from his eye, said it calm like he was acknowledging the weather, "When he wakes up I'm gonna kill him."

"Well, don't get too excited, there's going to be a long line."

~~~~~~~

Gojo drifted. For a long time, he felt like he was floating, just sailing across the wind currents. Where he was going, he didn't know, but he felt like there was something he didn't want to face waiting for him.

Unfortunately, it seemed like he would be coming in for a landing sooner than he liked as he became all too aware of voices and sounds nearby.

"Gah, why do you always get the best cards?"

"It's just luck. The way the deck is stacked."

"More like the way you stacked the deck." A grumble, before there was the shift of a chair. "Hey, I think he might be waking up."

"Satoru?"

Gojo peeled his eyes open, a brief stab of dull pain assaulting him as he did, turning toward the source of the voices. Getou and Shoko were sitting at a small table nearby, cards in front of them.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, trying to remember what had happened, where he was.

"Waiting for you to wake up—you know, like good friends," Shoko said. "We were worried, idiot."

Gojo furrowed his brow and started to sit up before his whole body protested, one arm in a sling, a brace around one knee. A brief moment of panic started to catch hold of him, but Getou was already leaning over him, gripping his shoulder lightly to keep him from rising further.

"Easy," Getou said quietly. "Take a minute to adjust."

Gojo inhaled deeply before he felt the twinge in his side that he assumed to be broken ribs. He cringed. "The hell happened?"

"Don't you remember?" Shoko asked, pulling her chair over to the cot—Gojo finally realized they were in the school infirmary. "We were hunting that Curse at the hospital. It threw you through the wall—busted you up pretty bad."

Gojo looked between the two of them, seeing that there was something they weren't saying. He thought there was something else, remembered the feeling of fear and desperation surging through him like a typhoon. Vaguely remembered Getou standing below him, calling to him to stop.

"What else happened?" he asked.

Getou and Shoko looked at each other briefly before Shoko pulled an awkward look. "You, um…kinda freaked out. We had to call the paramedics and when they tried to put an IV into you, you exploded the ambulance and most of a city block."

Getou shrugged. "Approximately."

Gojo blinked. "Wait, what? But…the Curse, it—"

"We took care of it, Satoru," Getou told him calmly. "Just like I said we would."

"You saying you didn't need me?" Gojo demanded, feeling an odd way, unable to really explain it.

Getou smirked with a shrug. "Not at all. You proved a good distraction for it."

Gojo clenched his hands in the sheet covering him, not knowing what to say until some vague memory trickled in. Him floating above the ground, looking down to see Getou as his friend stood below him, calling up through a wail of wind and flying debris.

"You're not doing this alone, and you'll never have to. I'll always be at your back, so just come down already, idiot."

Gojo bit his lip and looked away, embarrassment flushing his cheeks. "I screwed up."

"You tried and went too far," Getou corrected. "There's a difference."

Gojo sulked, but he also recognized the gratitude that he felt for his friends. They had gotten him out of there, talked him down when he had lost himself. It was possible he wouldn't even be here if it hadn't been for them, and their own skills. It might be a bitter pill to swallow for someone like him, but it was the truth, and he was grateful nonetheless.

He sighed and finally turned back to Getou and Shoko. "Yeah, well, whatever. I'm sure it was a weak Curse anyway. After all, you two were able to take it out with little trouble, right?"

Getou and Shoko looked at each other. Shoko huffed. "You can just say thank you, you know."

"I actually don't think he can," Getou stage whispered as an aside.

"You know what I mean!" Gojo snapped.

Getou smiled then and patted his shoulder. "Sure, Satoru. Now get some rest. You look terrible."

Gojo watched his friends leave, suddenly feeling desperation surge through him. "Hey, guys! Don't leave me here. I'm an invalid! I have to pee!"

Shoko reached into a medical cart as she passed it and pulled out a bedpan, slinging it toward Gojo. He cried out as it hit him in the shoulder.

"Go wild," she said as she waved to him and followed Getou out the door.

Gojo muttered to himself and slumped back onto the cot.

Honestly, he was grateful to have friends like Shoko and Getou. He would never tell them that to their faces, but he was sure they knew in their own way.

And maybe, he would bribe Shoko with a month's worth of cigarettes if she would heal him more quickly.