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“Fucking higher-ups,” Satoru muttered, wiping the curse blood from his hands as he kicked the door of his apartment closed behind him.
He’d been on a mission all day, exorcizing every curse in some abandoned shopping mall. Usually, it wouldn’t be a problem for him — he was the Strongest for a reason — but there were so many and there were multiple high-level curses. And they were some slippery bitches. Took him all afternoon into the evening.
But he was the only free sorcerer on call, and Satoru knew the higher-ups’ favorite pastime was making Satoru as miserable as they possibly could in recompense for all the annoyances he caused them on a daily basis. Sure, one could call it karma, but Satoru was in no mood to think about the inner workings of the cosmos. Not when his head ached and his muscles fought his every move.
His anger was only kept at bay with white-knuckled fists held at his sides. He forced himself into stillness. If he hit or threw something, he’d have to clean up the mess. He didn’t have the energy to do something so strenuous.
Instead, he retreated into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him. The mirror was the first thing he saw. He didn’t know if the reflection he saw was a mercy or a punishment. The truth was so rarely found in Satoru’s world. Yet he loathed staring it in the face.
His hair was matted and shiny with oil and old sweat. Finding the energy to brush his hair, let alone shower, had been nothing short of a Herculean task.
The outline of his ribs showed through his shirt, the fabric hanging off his frame.
Gods, he looked like Death walking.
Briefly, Satoru wondered if he’d always looked like this, in some form or another. If everyone had been lying to him his whole life. Even his reflection. Or if his reflection had been the only one telling the truth, and Satoru had made himself blind to its veracity.
The cause — of his disarray, his despair — had never been kept from him. No lying mirrors or mendacious ‘friends’ ever had cause to keep the source of his exhaustion from coming to light.
It was his own actions. His drive. His job. Saving people from curses, protecting the people he cared about — and the ones he had no love for — from the dregs of humanity’s emotions.
Because, for all his actions, his efforts, it was never enough to keep them safe. It was never fucking enough. The elders had him on missions every second they possibly could. They didn’t care how many curses he exorcized, how many people he saved, it was never enough. They always wanted more from him, more than he had to give. His bones, his breath, his strength, he’d given it all to them. And still, they demanded more.
Well, Satoru didn’t have any more to give. His body, his soul— Christ, his fucking sanity was gone. They’d taken it. Ripped it from him with clawed hands, saying that he needed to do more. But what more could he give?
On the bad days, the ones where he struggled to find a real reason to get up, they barely gave him a second glance before scoffing.
“You need to try harder,” they’d say. “It doesn’t matter that everyone else gets to take breaks. You’re not everyone else. Don’t forget that.”
How could he? The higher ups, his coworkers, his enemies, barely let him breathe without reminding him that he isn’t like everyone else, that he’s different in the best and worst way possible.
Satoru let out a broken sob. Why? Why was he chosen to have the strength that he did? Why was he the one cursed with Six Eyes and Infinity? The only thing, the one damn thing, that Satoru hadn’t given was his life. It was the one thing they’d yet to ask from him.
Satoru didn’t want to give it. He’d given so much already, he wanted to be selfish for once and keep something for himself.
But the sad thing?
If they asked, Satoru would give his life without a second thought. If he had to choose between protecting people, and protecting himself, there wouldn’t even be a choice.
And that fact disgusted Satoru. How pathetic was he to go back and obey the orders of the very people he hated and longed to see destroyed?
They asked, and he gave.
They hurt, and he stitched his own wounds.
They raised their blades, and he knelt.
But no matter the blood they made him shed, no matter how many scars he wore — the ones visible, and the ones only he could see — he didn’t get to cry.
After all, he was the lucky one. He was the Strongest. He should be grateful for the power, the attention, the money, the renown. The Strongest doesn’t get to cry or rest or be weak. It was his job to protect the weak.
He didn’t get to make mistakes.
He didn’t get to break.
No. He had to carry the expectations of the world on his shoulders. Had to conform with their wants and needs and orders, retreating back to the laps of the higher-ups like a dog.
But Satoru was tired.
He was desperate. For relief. For a damn minute to slow down and breathe. To not be their Atlas for a day, to not be the symbol of safety and hope. He wanted to yearn for a life other than the one he had without being sick to his stomach with guilt.
Would a day where he didn’t have to bear the mask of joy, didn’t have to perform for his friends and students, be so much to ask? Where he could be human and cry and break?
You should be grateful for your power, a venomous voice hissed in his head. Everyone else would kill to be able to have even a taste of the strength you wield.
For all Satoru cared, they could take it. They could take his power, his wealth, his rank. He didn’t want it. They could strip him of everything that gave him worth, gave him purpose, so he could die being the one thing he longed to be.
Completely and utterly fucking useless.
People didn’t miss useless people, didn’t get mad at them for dying and leaving their responsibilities behind. They expected such things, dismissed them. They didn’t beg them to give everything they had because they had nothing.
But that was just it. Satoru’s strength made him who he was. Whether he liked it or not, his power was tied to who he was. His whole being. It was the only thing that made him wake up and rise from his bed, even on the hard days. He didn’t get to lay down and die; that was a luxury only the weak could afford.
So, bones shattering, muscles and tendons ripping, soul torn to shreds by the talons of their expectations, he stood.
Because what other choice did he fucking have?
So many days, he wished he wasn’t born the way he was. Sure, he had riches and fame, but he didn’t care about that. From the second he left the safety of his mother’s womb, he was paraded around like a trophy, forced on a throne he never asked for. People forgot that he, too, was human. Blazingly, painfully human. He was just as fallible and tired and scared, even if he dared not show it.
Geto — Suguru — was the only one who understood that. Or at least still treated Satoru like he was a person.
But he was gone. And not just “left Jujutsu society” gone, like he had been for almost a decade. He was dead. Dead. Satoru killed him. Finished him off himself.
Satoru glanced up, staring at himself in the reflection of the mirror. The ugly bathroom lighting didn’t do favors for his sallow, pale complexion. They made the bruise-like marks beneath his eyes seem all that deeper. The sweat in his forehead gleamed like blood in the moonlight, slick and tacky and filthy.
The sclera of his eyes — the ones he hated so much yet depended on for meaning — was struck through his bulging red veins. Satoru didn’t know if it was from overuse of his technique, or crying. He didn’t care. But gods, he looked… awful.
He tried for a smile, stretching the muscles in his face farther than they were willing to go, if only to could that he still could. It only made him look all that more broken.
At his side, his hands trembled, nails digging into his palms. He felt the wet heat of the blood that dripped from his knuckles to the floor. He’d reopened the old wounds, the moon shaped scars on his hands that matched the ones on his arms.
Satoru let out a quaking sigh, and slid down the surface of the door behind him, the wood cold and smooth against his back. He curled into a ball when he hit the ground, burying his face in his hands, sleeves muffling his cries. A blood-streaked hand tugged at his hair, pulling at the strands until a few came out. The pinpricks of pain grounded him, keeping his mind tethered to his body.
He sucked in breaths that rattled his chest, the quiet noises echoing off the tiled walls of the bathroom. Nausea rose up his throat, but he swallowed it back down with a grunt.
Time passed in a blur, Satoru’s head too screwed to acknowledge the growing aches of his body that marked the minutes creeping by.
When Satoru was finally able to lift his head, he stood slowly, using the counter and walls to keep his balance intact. He somehow found the energy to brush his teeth and drag himself to bed.
When his head hit the mattress, the tears inevitably came again, with nothing to distract him from his thoughts but the thick, ragged sound of his sobs.
He grabbed a pillow and held it against his chest, so tight he could hardly breathe. A hand, so deceivingly gently, carded through his hair, nails scratching at his scalp. He pretended the fingers were someone else’s, someone kinder, softer. Who whispered sweet nothings into his ear at times like these. A faceless stranger without a name, yet someone he was intimately familiar with. Years before, the hand truly belonged to someone else. The hushed comforts weren’t nothing. They had a face that he knew and loved. That he kissed in the deepest hours of the night.
In the light of the day, Satoru would never admit to the existence of his faceless lover. Would scoff and laugh at such a preposterous and humiliating thing.
But in that moment, Satoru had neither the authority nor the wherewithal to deny his falsified comfort. He’d lose too much.
He slid his other hand to his hip, ducking under his shirt and rubbing circles into his skin.
“It’s okay, darling,” the faceless man said, his voice low and sonorous. Satoru could imagine the sound of the man’s breaths as he laid next to him. Deep, slow intakes, near silent exhales. Could almost feel the warmth of another body beside him
But when he opened his eyes, and saw that he was alone in the bed, the voice silenced. The hand in his hair stilled. The warmth disappeared, never really there in the first place.
Satoru bit his lip to stifle the renewed cries, squeezing his eyes shut as he curled into himself.
He remembered that there was never another body there, nor its warmth and comfort.
New tears pricked his eyes, but he didn’t let them fall. Instead, he simply closed his eyes, and let the realm of sleep fitfully wash over him for another night.
✧☽☼☾✧
In the morning, when the sun’s light crept out from under the curtains’ bounds, Satoru woke to the screaming of his alarm.
His eyes snapped open, and he immediately regretted it. No. Please. Let me be dead to the word for just a little while longer.
But, as always when he made his silent plea, his alarm kept begging to be heard.
Every morning, it was like this. Every morning, his face itched from the salt of his dried tears on his cheeks. His eyes burned, the small cuts on his hands and arms stinging with any movement he dared make.
Every morning, he struggled to find a reason to get up again. To stand and dress and pretend to be happy, leaving the house wearing the plastered-on smile.
Every morning, he yearned for another body to be lying next to him, being the sole reminder of why he fought.
Satoru sighed, closing his eyes once more.
I miss you, Suguru.