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It was an unspoken agreement in their family that Tsumiki was always meant to be the one to take care of Satoru’s funeral. It’s not like she minded, really, not with the way Megumi flinched every time it was brought up, or Yuuta looked away, unable to face the truth.
It also meant she had the first row seat to their parents arguments — particularly regarding their mortality itself. It also meant Satoru gave her the records he wrote on cursed techniques of others and his own. Along with old, frayed photos from his youth and even older photos that Ai had given him of his mother before passing away. He knew Tsumiki would keep it all safe, would make all the arrangements; easy as breathing. She also took care of Ai’s funeral, as well as helping Panda with Yaga’s.
As far as professions go, it’s kind of hard to explain how she manages a funeral parlour and writes scientific papers, but hell would sooner freeze over than Tsumiki is going to stop doing either. She wants to send people to Mars, to go there herself by her own merits. It’s unlikely to happen now, with how far in life she is and how far away they are from such grand ideas, but she can help as much as possible.
And not many people know as well as she does the importance of letting the dead go.
She should be sad her father died, or she is but not enough, not like most people she has seen go through an event like that. What point is in mourning a man who lived his life to the fullest? A man who traveled the world and raised a new generation, yet was haunted by another, dead world so much he died guilty? Tsumiki is going to be sixty in a couple of years, and her doctor says she has a couple of decades more in her pocket before passing away. She would’ve never lived that long without Satoru; she has spent most of her life in his antics and his equations and his sorrows.
Strong and larger than life as he was — he’s still human and deserved his rest.
Truly, it’s not even that complicated: the house was given to Yuuta — a place for him to host his grandkids, to spent the time that was left to him and Maki and Toge in peace. The Gojo clan is safely in Mitsuri’s hands: as a direct descendant, she was the best suited for the role. She’s pregnant with twins, happy as can be, so similar to their father, radiant and strong and bending the world to her whims. Saya took on a role of her second in command, her red hair so striking Ai almost had a heart attack.
The only unknown factor is Sukuna, but Tsumiki has known him long enough to know he won’t go berserk. He’s mad, he wasn’t with Satoru in his last moments, and he’s still ignoring anyone but Uraume, but she knows he’ll be fine. Their parents departed while fighting, as they had lived, and Tsumiki can’t help but giggle every time she remembers that.
Satoru wasn’t afraid of death and Sukuna was furious with him precisely for that reason; that united him with Tsumiki. She can understand his burning desire to live, to gorge himself on earthly desires, and it just so happened those included Satoru in any capacity he could get. They didn’t talk for three days before Satoru died, with Sukuna sulking just outside his window like a guilty husband, refusing to come in but unable to leave. She thinks that their family will be enough to get Sukuna through what little years are left for him, but the others are afraid now that he’s free from Satoru he’s going to go ballistic.
He won’t, not to them, not when Satoru has laid his whole life on that. As a child, it seems so simple, so logical: of course Satoru would help others, he has money and power and influence, why wouldn’t he? Now that Tsumiki is in a similar position she truly understood what it took from him, how such a thing could strip you bare and leave heaving, empty. She can’t be like that; she helps when she can but she can’t give her whole soul to an idea. It’s not right, not for her.
When she was young, she’s thought those two won’t ever die. It was more than childish belief — a thought ingrained deeply in the whole sorcerer society.
Sometimes — she think they could have, if they really tried. But Satoru was adamant, almost excited to know the life after death. Just so confident Sukuna would find him whenever he was.
The night before Satoru died Tsumiki wheeled him outside to look at the stars with her, and that might just have been the last nail in his coffin. Maybe he would have lived a few days more if she didn’t. Maybe not. They stared up to the sky in comfortable silence, with Sukuna being just at the corner of her eye, angry and pissed and still so horribly in love with Satoru it ate him from the inside out.
To say that she’s planning a funeral would be a bit of an overstatement: Satoru wanted a party instead of any other kind of memorial. Wanted for them to get together and celebrate what they had and what the future could bring.
God forbid they make a curse out of him, but if anyone could it would be Sukuna and he’d never. That’s the question that arises every time a strong sorcerer dies, and Tsumiki can’t help but worry if cremation would even be enough for someone like Sukuna, made from fire and power. It had to be.
It’s only the evening before the memorial she’s hit with the sudden understanding — Satoru is dead. She feels awfully vulnerable like this, without Satoru being able to appear any day and any hour, just blip into existence beside her and talk like they were just in a middle of a conversation. Tsumiki feels small and insignificant without the Six Eyes tracking her across the city, and it’s such a childish thought, isn’t it?
She’s far from being young or naive, but now, two days after his death, it finally hits her — she’s alone. They don’t talk as much with Megumi anymore, and everyone has their lives, and she never wanted a partner or kids. The closest thing to a legacy she has is her papers and her young greenhorn assistant she promoted because he had the best talent with words and socks with holes in them. At least Saya, as the youngest, still refers to Tsumiki for coddling and advice.
Embarrassment floods her before she can breathe through it. What if she in her grief curses Satoru? She doesn’t want to do that to him, she has no right to. But this feels like an end of an era, a road tumbling downhill.
Tsumiki stumbles out to the balcony, raw in her grief, and gasps when a second later there is knocking at the door, insistent, angry, familiar, forcing her to crawl back to the front door — and there stands her second father, entirely too old to jump into her yard over the fence but frustrated he can’t afford to.
Sukuna clicks his tongue, affronted and frustrated, letting himself in:
“He was right, fifty three hours. Always too smart for his own good.” Sukuna said, and Tsumiki wants to cry. How in the ever living hell Satoru knew that?
How did he know anything, really?
“Hi, dad,” she says, quiet and hollow, “you’ll be there tomorrow, right?”
Sukuna looks vaguely uncomfortable, which mean no, and breaks her heart even more. What would happen to them now? Mitsuri is heavily pregnant, Gojo clan around her, Megumi and Yuuta have their own families and the school. And she’s going to wilt alone in her parlour, never seeing the moon.
“Stop,” Sukuna says sternly, “the idiot has died with a smile on his face. What are you crying about then?”He sounds cruel, but his hands that wipe away her tears are gentle. She didn’t even know she was crying.
“What, I can’t cry after my father dies?” She challenges, but complies when Sukuna drags her to the kitchen.
“Well, he wouldn’t like that. And I am still here, aren’t I?” She sniffs when he gives her water and takes her emergency cocoa out of the highest shelf. He is.
He stayed for so many years, but he’s free now, isn’t he? Sukuna can leave them, there is no need for him to stay. Hell, she’s an adult woman she doesn’t need to be babied—
“Do you really think you’re going to see him again?” Sukuna stops, turning to her slowly. “He died while you were still mad at him, you were fighting all the time and now ‘Toru’s dead, and you don’t have the option of reconciling anymore. Do you really think you will see him again?”
She’s angry but only a little, mostly confused, and even more lost. How can you fight with the love of your life on his deathbed? If he didn’t care, Sukuna would have left, but he didn’t. He cared, cares for her still. How could he let Satoru go in a middle of a fight?
“Well, we need to have something to talk about when we die, right?”
****
This time, somehow, dying is different, Sukuna can’t help but think. This time it’s an airport — how modern — but all it succeeds in is Sukuna remembering that he only had to use it once in his life. Satoru and his teleportation are much faster and more efficient. And payment is so much more satisfactory.
It’s predictable and slightly embarrassing — but only slightly — that the first thing Sukuna does when sitting down on the seat next to Satoru is lay a hand on his inner thigh out of habit. It belongs there, what is there to say? There was a reason Megumi has put them at different tables for his wedding.
“So, I was thinking while waiting for you,” Satoru starts, like he usually does, in a middle of a conversation, his legs spread a touch too wide and smile a touch too forced, “what are we gonna do now? Next life? Past? World domination? We did things my way, can try yours now.” And Sukuna can’t help but huff at that, bringing them closer, dragging Satoru until he’s tucked nicely to Sukuna’s side.
They did, and it mellowed down both of them. Grinded down the rough edges, the anger, the insecurity. Suddenly, Sukuna was given a perfect life and he still has no idea if he did it justice. He turns to his right, to be greeted with Satoru’s piercing eyes, assessing him. Satoru, who gave him family and then stomped his feet and refused to heal his aching bones and weakening eyes and high blood sugar.
Fucking hell, they got old — older than any sorcerer had the right to be, especially them. The Six Eyes went blind, six minus two blind, and Satoru demanded to be coddled while he refused to heal them. Sukuna had to drink mint teas to manage his blood pressure. Boring and annoying, and now they’re here again, fresh eighteen, like when they were young with a house and kids and another, new life.
Sukuna doesn’t want to kill innocents right now, he wants — needs — to stay right where he is. Their lives has run their course, but it’s still not enough. He was always a touch too greedy, even if Satoru forced him to accept death; accept a job well done and retirement surrounded by grandkids. Satoru died just two years before Saya gave birth to the next Six Eyes. Sukuna lived just long enough to see them open.
“Also we should have had more sex.” Satoru adds suddenly, raising his left leg and hooking it over Sukuna’s own knee, giving Sukuna’s hand that much more space. Sukuna doesn’t refuse the invitation.
It’s not like they haven’t, but he has to admit more often than not they just cuddled, and ew, what a horrible word.
“We weren’t built for love.” Sukuna finally answers, and Satoru only hums, agreeing but unhappy. A lifetime together has taught Satoru to be patient when Sukuna was gearing up to say more, and they were apart only for slightly more than a year and Sukuna has missed this bastard so much. What a privilege, to know and be known in turn. What a blessing it is, to be able to look back on your life and know that you chose right. That you spent a thousand years never knowing rest to end up right here right in that moment to meet your fate.
Love was never in store for them, not really, not even the physical kind. Sukuna spent too long without a body, and then too long inside someone else. He was built for death and destruction. And Satoru, overstimulated by being near more than ten people thanks to the Six Eyes? Satoru was born to be above things such as human flesh. Saya said it’s called ‘body dysmorphia’ and Sukuna wanted to know nothing about it
“We made do with what we had.” Sukuna adds then, turning to Satoru, and the man peers at him with a frown. “Might get a better deal next time.” He tells Satoru, who blinks, mouth opening and then closing back. Satoru frowns at him, suspicious.
“Have you been talking to Nanamin while I was gone? Cheating while my body isn’t even cold, wow! Whatever happened to a man who said he’d rather kill me myself than let me wither?”
“You left.”
For a year, Sukuna was considering what to tell Satoru if the afterlife ever gave him a chance for one last conversation. Considered fighting, screaming; but that was too close to what they already did on the topic, and Sukuna has spent more than fifty years almost each and every night listening to Satoru’s annoying voice. Until it wasn’t there anymore. Who knew fifty year is all it’s going to take for Sukuna to miss someone?
Satoru, the little shit, giggles, delighted, with blush covering his cheeks. Gods, he’s so painfully young, with his eyes clear and less moles than Sukuna has ever seen on him. Fifty years together, and still not enough, for either of them. Satoru squeezes himself even closer, shamelessly taking up space, climbing into his lap and hanging onto Sukuna’s neck with all his strength. Which is, strangely, not that much. Is there no cursed energy here?
“Aw, you big scary softie.” It is embarrassing how much Sukuna has missed him. He’s at home again. “You really mean it, ‘Kuna? You want to leave it all behind? What if we get born on a different sides of the world, huh? Or worse, as siblings?” Ah, here it is. This is why they died fighting.
“Six Eyes, shut up.”