Chapter Text
“I killed Gojo Satoru.”
The path back to the entrance of the school swims in his vision as Suguru stumbles forward. The wounds from his battle against Zenin are still bleeding sluggishly, burning his sides as he moves, but he needs to see, he needs to know .
He emerges into the courtyard, eyes taking in the changes that were made in the battle but not comprehending them as a ringing sounds in his ears. Mostly it’s the blood. So much blood, with a body lying in it still and unmoving, face turned towards the sky, eyes open and unseeing. Eyes that looked at him not long ago with burning confidence.
“I’m fine.”
Somehow his legs carry him over to that body, feet scraping through blood as their strength wanes the closer he gets, until his knees hit stone and he is bowed over his friend. The wet feeling of blood soaking through his pants registers in his mind, but his focus is taken by Satoru’s face.
There’s a knife in his head.
His thoughts catch on that, like a record skipping and repeating the same melody over and over.
There’s a knife in his head.
And it doesn’t make sense, he thinks absently. When he last saw him there hadn’t been a knife in his head.
There’s a knife in his head.
Suguru’s breath hitches in his throat, panic clawing its way up the longer he stares at the handle of the knife, at the blade that’s piercing the bone of Satoru’s skull. He rips his eyes away as he takes in the rest of Satoru’s body, blood coating his chest, his neck, his hair, the ground beneath him.
He brings his hands up and shakily clutches the lapels of Satoru’s jacket, gasping at the feeling of more blood coating his hands as he grips the fabric in his clenched fist.
“S-satoru–” he wheezes, petting desperately at his chest to jostle him back to life. The ringing comes to a crescendo as his hands travel up from his chest, skipping over the viscera that has become Satoru’s throat to cradle his face. His skin is still warm to the touch.
Suguru’s own hands feel cold and numb as he wipes at the blood that’s coating the skin beneath his fingers, streaking red the harder he tries to desperately clean it. His eyes stay averted from the object protruding from Satoru’s skull as black meets blue and he focuses on his eyes. Those eyes that always seemed to lock Suguru’s own whenever they met, sparkling with mischief or mirth while they sat in lessons, went on missions, or just spent time together.
He’s never seen them so empty.
His breath heaves wretchedly the longer he looks into those eyes, choking his throat as his vision blurs with tears. Suguru’s hands move down again, clenching at Satoru’s shoulders and lifting his limp body off the cold stone of the courtyard. An arm flops down as he pulls Satoru into his lap and curls around him, rocking him slowly as he threads his fingers through white hair gently.
“Please, p-please wake up. Satoru, don–, just wake up please-” he pleads, but the body of his best friend remains cooling and lifeless in his arms. Something hard catches on Suguru’s hand as he cradles Satoru’s head, and his whole body shakes as he realizes it’s that knife . His brain stutters over that, eyes now locked on to the sight of it stuck there as his hand hovers over it, shaking near the handle.
There’s only so much he can manage at this moment, and that… he can’t deal with that. Can’t imagine pulling that from Satoru’s head and seeing what comes after. The ringing in his ears hasn’t lessened since he reached Satoru’s body, the senselessness of what is happening hasn’t quite reached him yet.
Suguru averts his eyes, looking back at Satoru’s face for who-knows-how-long and brings his hand back to ghost the tips of his fingers over his cheek. Satoru has always had an angelic, youthfulness to him, something Suguru found himself admiring in their quiet moments together. He often found his eyes tracing the shape of Satoru’s face when he wasn’t paying attention, focused on homework or his latest manga copy.
He looks so young. They’re both so young. Satoru will never reach 18.
A choked cry claws inside Suguru’s throat that he lets loose with a guttural scream. He presses his face into Satoru’s chest as he sobs, clinging desperately to his body as he tries to pull him impossibly closer. Like maybe he can keep Satoru with him if he gives himself over, if he could trade places and breathe life back into his still lungs. A high keening noise pulls itself from his throat, his legs go numb beneath him as he stays kneeling there for what feels like forever.
“I killed Gojo Satoru.”
The voice echoes in his head still, turning the all encompassing despair that’s been filling his mind into a cold, roiling anger the longer it lingers there. It begins in his stomach, the curses within him clawing and growling as though they feel his rage building into a storm that he could release at any moment. It just needs a target.
He knows where Zenin is, the thought in the back of his mind pushes forward as the energy that is building within him becomes an agitated heave of potential. His mind is blank as he lays Satoru out on the ground again, his eyes still open and staring at nothing as his head lolls to the side with nothing to support it. Suguru brings a hand up to them and slides them closed numbly.
“I’ll be right back,” he whispers into Satoru’s hairline, pressing his lips there in a soft kiss. “Wait for me.”
Satoru remains still in front of him, arms by his side, head turned towards Suguru who keeps his eyes on the peaceful expression that is frozen on his face, tracing the curve of his lips that are parted slightly as though breath would pass through them at any moment. He traces from there to his nose, up to his brow, down to his closed eyes, over and over again, etching it into his memory.
Suguru stumbles to his feet, legs having long fallen asleep and gaze empty as he summons one of his flying cursed spirits. He knows where to go, and he knows what to do, how to win. How to avenge Satoru. The energy that is building within him will not wait long though, so he mounts the curse and points it in the direction of the Time Vessel Association.
— — —
Zenin Toji walks out of the building and right into his line of sight. The rage and energy that’s been building in him since he laid down Satoru’s body snaps as he lays eyes on him. He feels it coalesce into something unexplainable, something hulking and looming over him. Zenins eyes snap up to where he is floating above, and an expression crosses his face that makes something inside him purr in delight. Unease.
“Haven’t had enough?” Zenin yells up at him with a crooked grin stretched across his face. He widens his stance and pulls a sword from the mouth of his own curse.
Suguru simply stares back at him, eyes wild and wide though his breathing remains even and undisturbed. He briefly wonders what Zenin must see, what shakes his earlier confidence. His hair has come loose from its tie on the trip over. Perhaps he makes an intimidating image with it hanging limply around his face. But he has no time to linger on that, he’s come here to kill Zenin Toji.
“Satoru,” he whispers to himself, and from the edges of his vision could almost imagine his best friend standing by his side, putting an arm on his shoulder as they sized up their enemy. “I’ll see you soon…” He swears he can see the edges of a familiar smile even as his eyes stay locked on the man below him.
He doesn’t know who moves first, can’t recall specifics of the fight as something new, something that is feral and monstrous, that gnashes inside his chest as he dodges and evades Toji’s strikes rises within him. He’s like a puppet to it, his strings being pulled and manipulated like one of his own curses even as new wounds open and repair themselves with remarkable speed.
In the back of his mind he registers that looming mass hovering over him, a maelstrom that bleeds into him and bolsters him in a way he hasn’t felt before. It changes him in a way he can see reflected back in Zenins eyes as they continue to throw themselves at one another. Toji’s moves become a desperate, fearful fight for survival. That switch, from being the prey stalked by this man who dared to take what was his, to being the predator pushing him into the corner instead feeds that side of him that seems, for the moment, more curse than human.
Zenin gains some distance on him as he realizes the change, Playful Cloud snapping into his hands as he sizes up the teenager in front of him.
“What the hell are you?” he grits out.
The boy is changed from before, where earlier he would send out curses to distract him, the thing in front of him is something of a monstrous hybrid, a swirl of curses blanketing and dwarfing the kid. He’s cut through parts of it just for them to be replaced by new ones, concentrations of cursed flesh and pure energy absorbing blow after blow. Toji thought this guy's Technique was just simple Curse Manipulation, but this is something more, and he hasn’t figured out what yet.
This will be a never ending battle that he’ll lose if he’s not careful.
Hollow eyes stare out from the pulsing cursed energy that Suguru has become. Around them lay the fallout of their fighting, broken pieces of the building and cracked ground catching the periphery of his vision. His eyes stay focused on Zenin who stays standing with his weapon drawn.
He thinks of the wounds he saw on Satoru’s body. Were they made by this weapon or another? Did Satoru feel the same helplessness he did when he first fought Toji in the catacombs?
Did Satoru die thinking he’d failed Suguru?
The choking grief from before surges from his stomach the longer he thinks about it, the more he wonders if Satoru died as alone and scared as he feels right now.
“You… should have killed me.” He means to say it in a low murmur to himself, but his voice is changed as though speaking through a hundred mouths. He knows the words have reached Zenin when his expression becomes wary, bracing for what is to come next.
The space inside Suguru where his curses are stored has always felt bottomless, he has long suspected he could consume an infinite amount of curses if he wished to. Now, he digs deep into that unending chasm, feeling the energy of every curse swell up within him again. He doesn’t even register Zenin closing the distance between them, charging for one more bout as he senses the reckoning coming his way.
He thinks of Satoru. Thinks of him bleeding and dead on the ground, a heavy weight in his arms as Suguru holds his lifeless body. He imagines him now standing beside him with that easy smile on his lips he’d always have whenever they’d finish a mission together. He remembers long days at school where they’d sit together and read beneath a tree to escape the summer heat, and it felt like that was all he needed in the world. Just them together, the Strongest Duo.
Tears silently flow down his face as he feels a wind pick up around him, tossing his hair gently where it falls around his shoulders. With his eyes closed he can almost feel the phantom touch of a hand on his shoulder, could imagine quiet words being whispered to him in a voice he longs to hear.
“End it.”
Opening his eyes to reality again, Suguru raises his hand to direct the raw power that explodes forward with unstoppable force, splitting the air in a cacophony of screams and wails that shake his bones and leave his ears ringing. A choking and raw relief flows through him as he throws every curse, every speck of his technique at the wide eyed Zenin Toji before him.
A moment passes where all Suguru sees is that shocked expression, and somewhere in his mind he registers the looming sensation has gone. But he is still there, suspended in the air, looking down at Zenin. He wonders briefly why he isn’t moving to strike again, until his eyes catch the massive gaping hole where his chest once was. It feels as though he is looking in on the scene through a fogged window the longer he stares, like this is a moment happening to someone else.
“Huh.” Somehow he’s still talking though. That damn voice.
“I killed Gojo Satoru.”
Suguru comes rushing back to himself with the final scraps of a rage he felt before, though now it feels more like desperation.
“Don’t you ever… shut up .” he growls, stumbling forward. His energy is drained, he feels empty and hollow, like someone took a knife and carved a hole through his very soul.
Blood paints the ground around Zenin as his body begins to collapse on itself, and Suguru looms over him, wanting desperately to see the light fade from his eyes.
“Any last words.” he bites out.
“Nah…” something flashes through Toji’s face. “In two or three years my kid will be sold to the Zenin clan… do whatever you want.”
And for the third time… or fourth time that day Suguru is staring down at a dead body. Zenins entire chest has collapsed in on itself with not enough flesh and bone to support the weight of his shoulders. Suguru watches as the muscle and skin he can see through begins to decay, flesh turning blackened and rotting at an alarming rate as his skin shrivels up. He watches in a disconnected fascination as the body of a perfectly healthy individual becomes a withered corpse in a matter of moments.
Satisfaction rattles dully in him as he looks down at what he’s reduced Zenin Toji to, distractedly registering the final remnants of his cursed energy finishing its work to consume all of the Heavenly Restriction lingering in the corpse. Fleetingly he registers the feeling of his body screaming at him, wounds he can feel that are still sluggishly bleeding despite his lackluster attempts at reverse cursed technique. It was never his specialty.
The inventory curse Toji wore is an afterthought to absorb after that, the choking taste of it is nothing compared to the taste of blood in his mouth. His body moves on autopilot after that, his last remaining curse that wasn’t shot out of whatever deep void he holds within himself still waiting for him where he left it.
Is this what revenge should feel like, Satoru…?
It carries him back, back to where he’d left Satoru on the cobbled ground of the courtyard in a sick facsimile of sleep. He feels a counter that had been running in the back of his mind unknowingly reach zero as he dismisses his curse and his knees crack against stone for the second time that day next to Satoru’s body. He’s as still and unmoving as before, face peaceful but for the blade still sticking out of his head.
But Suguru is done. Done with everything as he wraps his arms around the cooling body of his friend and rests his head on a bony shoulder. He vaguely registers the tackiness of blood beneath his cheek that has soaked and mostly dried on the fabric of Satoru’s uniform. He just stares at a point in space roughly where the profile of Satoru’s eyes are still closed and blinks slowly as time passes around him.
The sun was high in the sky when they’d arrived, now it’s cresting over the horizon to darken the sky in a brilliant sunset that throws sharp shadows across the courtyard. A shiver works its way through Suguru as the temperature drops, no warmth coming from the body he holds tightly against himself as the stone beneath him saps the heat from his own bones.
He’s hollow now, where his stomach once burned with power he is empty. Where his mind once perceived the world around him in great detail it is now quiet. And where his heart once beat in his chest, it now lies in his arms, broken, still, and bleeding.