Chapter Text
Seeing an old friend again was actually a reason for joy. A place where only positive emotions fit, perhaps a little melancholy or regret. Satoru, however, only felt a huge hole inside him. As if his stomach had been ripped open, a huge hole torn through his torso, and all he could do was stare at the attacker in front of him, in pure disbelief that this hole had been caused.
Suguru in front of him looked nervous, looking from one direction to the other as he waited for a response from Satoru. He didn't feel ready to say anything, as if his brain was paralyzed with reactions. Anger won out, however, fueling his muscles to move and his body to gasp for air.
"Is this a joke?" he whispered.
Suguru seemed confused, "What?"
Satoru repeated louder, his hands clenched into fists and he took a step towards the other. Suguru, didn't flinch, held his gaze with blank confusion.
Minutes, hours, perhaps an entire infinity had passed between that moment and when they had met again. Satoru just wanted to stroll through the city, gasping for air and peace, when someone tapped him on the shoulder.
First he recognized the smell of the other person, then the long black hair blowing in the wind. When Satoru turned to the face of the person he was talking to, the world seemed to blur before him. The corners of his mouth twitched as he listened to the voice of the actual stranger.
"Can you please help me? I think I have a problem" Satoru's expression fell at the following words, "I've lost my memory"
The white-haired man didn't believe him and dragged him harshly into an alley while the other complained indignantly. And now they were here, in this place, while it slowly trickled down from the sky, people walking past them as if they were just ghosts. Satoru felt his whole body catch cold, his insides turning over once in his entire body.
"You can try that trick on someone else!" he hissed at Suguru.
But Suguru didn't drop his façade. He put on a cautious smile, as if he was trying not to upset a stranger. His eyes narrowed, strands fell out of his ponytail and covered his hair. It was at this moment that Satoru paused and took a closer look at the other person in front of him. The anger and shock slowly died away, having been released into the air with the previous words and now dissipating there like cigarette smoke.
Suguru looked terrible. His eyes red, body hunched and loose clothes filthy and not at all made for the cold temperatures of these seasons.
"I'm sorry. Apparently we know each other" he paused as Satoru scoffed in front of him, "I'm not lying though."
At this point, Satoru didn't know why Suguru would try to keep up such a ruse for so long. So he sighed, cringing as an uneasy feeling slowly gnawed at his very soul.
"You can't remember m-" Satoru quickly corrected himself, "anything?"
As Suguru shook his head, trying to put on a charming smile, Satoru's face darkened. He didn't know what was worse at that moment. To have been abandoned by the person you loved the most or to have been forgotten. He knew that whatever gods existed, they had cursed him long ago. However, this was the worst trick they had ever created.
"Are you hurt? You look terrible," Satoru took another step back towards the other.
A faint embarrassed laugh fell out of Suguru's mouth as he looked towards the other.
"I don't think so. Although maybe I have a concussion. After I woke up I threw up and the aftertaste just won't go away" to add to his disgust at this statement Suguru shook his head vigorously and sighed.
He didn't realize that Satoru was holding a painful, perhaps pitiful sound locked in his throat. It raged, wanted to scream, wanted to fall to his knees before the gods and curse them for what they were doing to him. But he swallowed it down, dug in his pocket for a mint and held it in front of the other's face. The rain was slowly getting heavier, his white hair falling in his face like a curtain.
"Take this, maybe it will help" Satoru knew it wouldn't, "I'll take you to a doctor"
Suguru nodded hesitantly, the mint disappearing into his mouth. Satoru waited a moment for his reaction as his mouth twisted in disappointment and a certain darkness settled in his dark eyes, the bright purple almost turning into a dark brown.
The whole situation was a bad joke, a nightmare and the worst curse he had ever faced. As much as Satoru didn't want to help him, wanted to run away from the other and leave him to his confused fate, the worry for his best friend had never gone away. It had been buried deep in his heart, now fighting its way out and begging his brain to help.
Hope joined in the lament, for though small, there was a spark there. A spark that told him that this could be a second chance. His chance not to let Suguru succumb to his dark thoughts a second time.
~~~
This morning, Suguru had woken up in an apartment. At a time he could only guess about, on a day whose date he was unsure of. Even worse, he had woken up in the living room of a small apartment that he did not recognize.
With slowly increasing horror, he realized that he could hardly remember anything that had happened in the last few hours.
No, days.
With a gulp, he felt his heart slowly begin to beat faster, squeezing against his ribs and the world before him seemed strangely dizzy. Shortly afterwards, he had run wildly through the apartment, tearing open every room until a toilet was in sight. A little later, he had thrown up in it.
Apart from his name, he could hardly remember anything.
"I can't explain it. Maybe he was attacked?"
A voice from outside the sickroom snapped Suguru out of his thoughts. From where he was sitting on the hospital bed, he could see what was going on outside. He saw the man he had come here with and the woman who had examined him earlier. The woman had called him Gojo and even if the name did not trigger more than a faint scratching in his brain, it felt rather unpleasant to say in his mind.
There was a certain heaviness and intimidation in the word that he didn't like and didn't understand.
"I thought he wasn't hurt?" Gojo asked now.
Suguru heard a metallic click and shortly afterwards the shaky exhalation of another person. Through the slit in the door, he could see small clouds of smoke rising up between them. Gojo wrinkled his nose and Suguru almost smiled at the other's grimace, but he was far too focused on the topic of their conversation.
"He's not," she continued after a pause, "Maybe it was a curse. A traumatic reaction from absorbing the curse. That's why he forgot everything."
"Do you think that after four thousand curses, someone will suddenly knock him to his knees?" Gojo's voice was slightly strained.
The doctor sighed and turned away. Suguru straightened in his seat. For a brief moment, their eyes met and he had to force himself not to look caught.
He didn't want to overhear them, but then they could have closed the door. There wasn't really any other distraction in this boring place.
"It doesn't matter how, let's try to get his memories back first," she finally said, quickly stubbing out her cigarette before walking into the room.
"How are you feeling Suguru?"
"Slight headache but otherwise very normal," Suguru explained and caught a glimpse of her name tag at the other end of the room, "Thank you for the examination, Ieri-san."
"Call me Shoko," she demanded, with more urgency in her voice than was natural.
Gojo snickered softly as he stepped into the room last. He seemed to pause for a moment, taking in the scene before him with an unreadable expression. Suguru obeyed as Shoko lifted his arm, taking his blood pressure. For the second time. For Gojo, apparently, this was an interesting sight, perhaps something to do with her past. Suguru was still puzzled as to what connected the two of them and whether this place and Shoko were also part of it.
All of this, the whole day felt like a bad nightmare. As if he was living a constant deja vu, constantly surrounded by situations and people that seemed slightly familiar, but perhaps he would never understand why. Instead, the dizzy feeling in his stomach that he felt every time he saw them remained in his head.
"The children," it shot out of Suguru like a bolt of lightning, confusing him.
But suddenly he remembered the children from his apartment. The two girls who had slept in the apartment where he had come to. As he looked alternately at Shoko and Gojo, he noticed how they exchanged worried glances with each other.
"The girls are safe. We'll take care of them for now until you're better, okay?" Shoko's voice had a lilt of compassion.
Caution, concern and perhaps fear. Fear that suguru would never remember their faces, would only be a shadow of his former self. Whenever he looked into her eyes, he saw this concern and the deep sadness for which he still knew no reason. It hadn't just emerged, no, it was years old. And yet he knew that this emotion belonged to him, that he had marked her eyes and thus her soul with it. Like a brand.
After a short silence and a brief feeling of pressure on his arm, Shoko spoke, "Everything looks fine, you can go"
"Thank you, Shoko," Suguru gave her a smile as he hopped from his seat to his feet.
She looked at him scrutinizingly for a brief moment. As the old sadness flitted across her eyes again, Suguru fought against wincing under her. Instead, he maintained his smile, his eyes narrowing slightly. Shoko was the first to avert her gaze, fixated on the wall at the other end of the room.
"No problem, Suguru," she murmured the words quietly, thoughtfully and not directed at him.
But to the version that had lived with them many years ago.
"Come on, I'll take you home," said the white-haired one who stood in front of him, a look on his face that Suguru couldn't interpret.
"Thanks to you as well, Gojo."
The other one grimaced slightly at the name, "Satoru"
Suguru wanted to run and bang his head agains the door.
Why had he chosen these people out of the entire population of Tokyo as his first aid?
"Satoru, sure" he corrected himself and followed Satoru out of the infirmary.
He noticed again how Satoru tried to more or less smuggle the other away from the building until they could teleport. He heard Shoko laughing softly behind him as they left the building. It was more sad and exhausted, soaked in disbelief. Suguru agreed with her, this was all just one confusing nightmare.
~~
The sound of their shoes echoed in the stairwell. Satoru walked ahead while Suguru trotted quietly behind. Rattling his keys and the creaking of a door later, they stood in front of the apartment. Satoru made a charming but exaggerated hand gesture that the other should go ahead.
What struck Suguru first were the different smells that hit him as soon as the apartment was opened in front of them. He could still remember very clearly how he had woken up here this morning, his body full of various stimuli that flooded his brain, making his compulsion to scrape the skin off his body greater.
Instead, he had run out onto the streets of Tokyo.
"Can you remember anything now?" Satoru asked as he cautiously entered the apartment.
He looked around, his eyes slowly narrowing. His posture was almost like that of a prey animal trying to escape a predator without running into its paws.
"Quizzing me every five minutes isn't really helpful," Suguru replied, annoyance clearly present in his voice.
"Shit, you're right"
The apartment seemed empty and deserted and even though Suguru didn't know why exactly, the sight made him feel uneasy. Strangely enough, as soon as Satoru walked through the interior looking for something to eat, his heart felt less heavy. After closing the door behind him, he followed the soft humming through the apartment, stopping carefully in the doorway of the kitchen.
The other was humming happily while the kettle boiled and bubbled quietly behind him. Behind the lenses of his glasses he could see narrowed blue eyes, their blue so bright that Suguru was afraid they would blind him if they ever looked him directly in the eye without sunglasses to protect them.
While the other searched through his shelves, treating the fridge and all the items as his own, Suguru couldn't help but think why he had approached this man this morning in the first place. Shoko, the woman from the infirmary, had told him that they knew each other. They had all been friends until Suguru had finally turned against them.
Maybe it was muscle memory. Sensors in his brain that started to move his muscles as soon as his eyes saw Satoru's face on the street. His body and his aura, something familiar that they still felt from before. His heart aching for something familiar, and that familiarity was a pair of piercing blue eyes that couldn't have been sadder to see Suguru in front of them.
Even though Satoru wouldn't tell him why or how they had argued, he still helped him.
There were moments when there was a smile on his lips that was different from the standard smile. It only appeared in moments when Gojo thought he was undisturbed. When he thought Suguru wouldn't pay any attention to him, but that wasn't the case.
"Here," a voice snapped him out of his thoughts.
Suguru almost jumped when a cup was pressed into his hand. Light, warm steam rose to his face and a sweet smell. He looked at Satoru with his hands holding the warm cup, trembling slightly.
Satoru's smile disappeared as he took a sip of his, his mouth twisting immediately. With an annoyed murmur at the bitterness of the tea, he turned away, looking for the sugar bowl. Meanwhile, Suguru took a sip and immediately had the feeling that he had been poisoned. His gums and teeth tightened with the sweetness of the tea while a thick layer of sugar slid down his gullet.
"That's way too sweet," he complained with a grimace.
"No way, that's how you like it" Suguru immediately noticed the lightness of these words and their amusement in Suguru's disgust.
"I may have lost my memory, but I can tell you one hundred percent that I've never drank so much sugar and liked it," Suguru replied, stalking across the kitchen past Satoru to put the mug next to the sink.
Satoru stood in the way, stirring another batch of sugar into his tea, "Well, it was worth a try"
Suguru stopped in front of him and even though he had no explanation why, the way Satoru said the words, his posture and the way he looked at the other made Suguru laugh in amusement. Relief flooded his body that the other was with him and not letting him sink into despair. For a moment, he was glad that his mind had chosen Satoru that morning.
"Nice cup," Satoru said eventually, when the cozy silence next to him had set in.
Suguru's eyes widened as he turned the cup in his hands and found "best dad" written on it. It reminded him of the girls whose room was at the other end of the apartment. The girls who had slept in his apartment, whose names and faces had been erased from his memory.
"You took them in, right?" Suguru murmured, his gaze fixed on the slightly faded letter of the cup.
"Shoko examined them and is looking after them with Utahime until you feel better. They're a little scared because we told them you weren't feeling well, but..." Satoru sighed, "They'll get over it"
"I feel bad," his words died on his tongue, as if the feelings only really solidified once he had spoken the words.
"It's not your fault that you forgot them" Satoru began, but Suguru turned away from him, his cup set down in the kitchen with a clink as he walked out.
"I had one job and that was to look after them," Suguru explained, continuing to talk as he walked through the apartment.
Close behind him, he heard Satoru's footsteps. The white-haired man said nothing in reply to his words, but mumbled something to himself. Suguru ignored him, pushing open the door to the children's room. in the middle of a tidy and deserted room with two empty beds, Suguru suddenly felt lost. A stab, as if a huge sword were piercing him, jerked through his whole body.
"I failed them, Satoru"
Satoru was behind him, he saw the taller man leaning against the door in the corner of his eye. Cup still in hand, head bowed, he sighed.
"You didn't"
"I can't remember their names, I don't know their favorite food or favorite toy," he had forgotten to speak in his panic and gasped, "I failed them"
Satoru had ventured into the room during the other's panicked talk, cup placed on one of the children's drawers. A stuffed animal was leaning against the warm mug. You could see that the other wanted to reach for Suguru but held back. Three years and the loss of his memories must have changed Suguru.
He asked himself how different he was from the person Satoru had locked in his memory.
" It's nothing you can't relearn," he tried to cheer the other up.
When Suguru turned his head, Satoru was already looking at him. When their eyes met, his eyes widened almost imperceptibly and he offered the black-haired man an encouraging smile. It wasn't perfect, seemed fake in places and perhaps as if Satoru had to convince himself that it could be fixed.
In the end, however, Suguru returned the smile.
~~
The sun had long since set. Satoru stood in the middle of the apartment, his back to the darkness behind him. His eyes seemed to reflect in the pale light coming from the kitchen. He had created a pale glow of light around him.
"Should I-" he began, turning towards the door at the other end of the apartment.
"No, please stay."
The two's surprise had exploded like a small bomb between them. Suguru had startled himself with those words, Satoru seemed a little surprised too.
"I-" Suguru wanted to row back.
"No, I'll stay it's okay" Satoru said, a warm smile on his lips.
His smile sent little electric flashes through his body. It was contagious and made his cheeks glow.
"That's good, because I think I'd go crazy if I were completely alone right now," Suguru muttered, scratching the back of his neck as he glanced around the empty apartment.
"I won't let you do that," Satoru said and when Suguru turned his head towards him, he stopped looking at him.
Satoru seemed to be gazing into the distance, at the gray outline of the sofa in the living room. The blue in his eyes seemed to be the only spark of color in a black and white universe.
More words shimmered in them, marked by the past they both shared. As if he hated himself for something in the past. Perhaps, a missed opportunity.
Suguru didn't know what exactly had made him approach Satoru on the street. It could have been pure luck, but he hoped it was his soul. A soul that cried out for longing, because they had hurt each other once and they wouldn't be able to heal until they were together again.
Suguru was sure that the universe had wanted it. Like a second chance, because there was no one he felt safer with than Satoru.
~~
It was no secret that the first impression of Satoru Gojo was usually not a good one. People feared his eyes, his power, or were disgusted by his behavior. The first time Suguru saw him, it was warm outside, summer was slowly approaching, would eventually catch up with them and plunge the world into burdensome heat.
The school wasn't big, Satoru and Shoko his only classmates, he was told.
Satoru was in his seat next to Shoko, his arms crossed in front of his chest, his long and skinny body tense. Suguru wrinkled his nose when their eyes met. His eyes were bright blue, strange and as if they held whole oceans within them. Even though they were strange, Suguru would never think of calling them freakish or bad.
They were beautiful.
Satoru, however, was a cold classmate who completed his missions with an unbelievable level of skill. It was almost outrageous how good Satoru was at each of his school assignments. He seemed perfect and unbeaten in everything.
Until Suguru decided to challenge him. He enjoyed provoking emotions out of the white-haired boy. At first it was combativeness and cockiness, the thought that Suguru would be an easy opponent for Satoru, that he provoked. Admittedly, Suguru had never had an opponent as strong as Satoru, had never had his ass kicked like that. But this was also true for Satoru.
The first time he had forced Satoru to the ground with a punch, he almost thought his heart had stopped. By now they had spent a lot of time together, Suguru had been surrounded by Sorcerers for so long that he knew who the Gojo family was. The richest and strongest family of Sorcerers, who placed great value on their strongest heir.
Seeing him lying in front of him now felt wrong and strangely inspiring. Was it an achievement to be able to bring such a highly respected Sorcerer to the ground at all?
Suguru took a step towards the other, who was still looking at him with a hint of horror. He held his cheek, reddened, and small tears were reflected in his blue eyes.
"I'm-" he was about to apologize when his voice was drowned out by a loud laugh.
It silenced his throat and made his heart beat so hard that you could say it had never beaten before. As if Suguru had only just come to life when he heard this laughter. And perhaps Satoru felt the same way.
Because that punch seemed to have broken the boy's unity. It broke down his walls, because he had realized that he wasn't untouchable and it wasn't bad. Suguru wasn't like his family, who punished any sign of weakness.
Suguru would soon learn what was behind the walls the Gojo clan had built. That his eyes were sensitive, needed glasses and blindfolds to prevent weekly migraines. That sweets were an easy way to take away the morning grouch's bad mood. And that Satoru's laughter would make the world a little brighter, even the heavy gloom of the rain could be chased away.