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Gojo Satoru is not weak.
But there is something inside of him that crumbles a bit at the sight of her: Riko Amanai, five foot nothing and so, so skinny. She has bird bones, Gojo marvels, sometime after they’re all tucked away safely in Haneda Airport. Her wrists stick out like a sparrow’s broken wings, and her fingers are thin and pale as they draw over the kanji for Okinawa on her boarding pass.
He tries not to think about it, but he sees some of himself in her. The sharp little tuck of her chin when he’d told her that he would ignore her if she got scared. Those shimmering eyes. She’s fourteen — Gojo doesn’t have much experience being a normal teenager, but somehow he can’t imagine himself ever being as young as Riko.
Geto reaches over and puts his palm over Gojo’s bouncing thigh. He’s always seemed so much older than Gojo, though of course Gojo would never tell him so. “Satoru,” he says, gentle (always gentle, even when he’s explosively angry. He has a sort of tone that hovers above whispering but never goes much higher than that).
“I’m fine,” Gojo responds automatically. He’s still looking at Riko’s wrists.
“Okay,” says Geto, but he doesn’t seem convinced. Gojo glances at him, smiles, and jiggles his knee just enough to make Geto’s fingers tighten around it, but not to let go.
She wades out to the beginning of the ocean, where the sand meets the sea, and stares out at the sun. Gojo stares at her back, then lodges his toe into the sand. The next wave rushes up over it, over Riko’s hips.
Before he and Geto had left, they had talked about it. If Riko didn’t want to assimilate with Tengen, then they would protect her — Geto because he was Geto, and Gojo because he would take any excuse to piss off jujitsu society. But then Riko had climbed onto a table in the remains of what had once been a very nice sitting room, pointed her finger at them, and declared that she wanted to do it.
“You have made the mistake of thinking that assimilation is the same as death,” she had spat. Gojo doesn’t remember being so young (or rather, so naive) but he remembers feeling like he knew everything. It might have quite literally been last week.
He feels like he knows nothing now. Or — not nothing. He knows the smell of Shoko’s breath, heady with tobacco, and he knows the exact indeterminate shade of brown-gold that are Geto’s eyes. And he knows Riko is lying when she says she’s ready.
So he splashes through the water, grabs her around the neck, and dunks her straight into an oncoming wave.
Riko comes up sputtering, eyes squeezed shut. She shoves at him before wiping at them; Gojo’s Six Eyes fix on the tiny crumbles of mascara that streak across her under eye. “Asshole!” she screeches. Her skeletal fingers reach for him, catching him around a shoulder. Gojo watches in amusement as she attempts to dunk him. He grabs her wrist and throws her into the ocean again.
This time she reappears heaving, her bangs plastered to her forehead. From the shore, Geto laughs softly. Something warm bubbles in Gojo’s chest. Yes, he thinks, I could do this forever.
He grins down at Riko. She slaps him across the face with a sea cucumber.
Gojo shrieks.
It’s an hour later when Riko stumbles across a sandbar as she’s chasing him and her nails dig into his shirt. Gojo pauses, turns around. Riko is still laughing, out of breath besides, and it sounds like the rattling inhales of a dying man. Ha-ha. Ha-ha. She laughs and laughs.
Gojo stares.
“What?” she says, pulling her hand back. Her fingernails are bitten to the quick and chipped with red paint.
“You’re so fucking annoying,” he bites back. Riko just snorts.
“You’re the annoying one.”
The Gojo clan is cold and strict, wrapped so tightly in their tradition that they’re choking in their kimonos’ silk. Gojo is an only child. But, he thinks, maybe. Maybe if he had a sister, she would be like Riko. A little too much like him. Or maybe he is a little too much like her. They are vessels, both of them, for others to experience power through.
Riko looks at him. Tomorrow she’s going to die. Today her face is slightly sunburnt and her eyes are wide and painfully blue. Gojo imagines that — her dead body, despite the fact that there wouldn’t be one (there won’t be one). Drawn and pale and stolen of all vigor, with cheeks scabbed pink by the sun.
I get it now, Gojo thinks. I can save you. I can look after you.
(But of course, he can’t. He doesn’t. And when he lifts Riko’s lifeless body, Gojo pushes the white sheet down over her face and looks at her flushed cheeks. Under the light of the setting sun, she could almost be alive again, just sleeping in his arms like she had been not days ago.
He listens. Riko’s shallow little chest doesn’t move, and one of her arms slips down over his hands. Gojo stares at the knob between her hand and wrist and swallows down bile.
A sister.)