Work Text:
Grief is a fickle thing; it burns your soul, lighting you up from the inside and swallowing you whole. But it can also be something soft and imperceptible, something you carry with you and hold tight even as it kills you to do so. It changes you and tears you apart all at once until you’re someone you don’t quite recognise anymore.
Gojo has been grieving for a long time. He thinks, sometimes, that he has been grieving even before the final nail in the coffin sounded and he was left with a world that much colder. His grief isn’t just fickle — it’s all encompassing and everchanging, sitting on his shoulders from the very start, pushing him down and forward with the memory of violet eyes and a strong back that got too far away from him.
He does all he can to ignore it. He buries the grief, piling onto it memories of happier times and new experiences and hopes that it’s enough. It’s a shallow grave but it’s all he can do.
(Otherwise, his life becomes a cycle of — “oh, I should show Suguru that” or “Suguru would have laughed at that joke” or “what could I have done differently to get Suguru to stay?” and on and on the circus goes, forever on a tightrope pulled all too taught.)
It’s exhausting, but he doesn’t have time to let that matter. He is the strongest, after all, and the world doesn’t stop just because the strongest feels anything less than a hundred percent.
It’s an unremarkable Friday night as he leans against the headboard of his bed as the rain pours down outside, chin resting against his knees uncomfortably. Gojo’s head and eyes ache, even as his reverse cursed technique works overtime to fix it, and it is the first time in nearly a month that he has been able to come home and just sit. His cursed energy blazes within him, hot and scorching and limitless and not for the first time Gojo curses how powerful he has become.
Outside of the rain past the window, it’s quiet. It’s gentle. It’s a harmony of echoes against the concrete floor beyond his room and he relaxes into himself with a sigh that he feels across his entire body. There is a pop as he relaxes his neck against his legs and lets himself be loose in a way he can’t always be when fighting stronger and stronger curses as time goes by.
Today, he sits, and he ponders a grief that was dug back up by old, irritating higher ups that didn’t understand a thing.
(Someone scoffs, “this would be easier if the Curse User had been killed sooner. If Gojo Satoru had just–”
Gojo leans against the entrance and leers beneath his blindfold.
“If I had what?”)
He’s tired. Tired of being reminded of Suguru and the blood on his hands every day of his life. He’s tired of the grief that still exists in him, even when he has been mourning for his friend since the moment he stepped out of his life leaving behind only a hollow part of himself and a button stained in blood that he holds tight in his grip and can’t let go of. He’s tired of being tired, but the only thing he can do is pull off his blindfold and sit it next to him on his bed and pretend closing his eyes is enough to make the world stop and be like it was so long ago.
With great difficulty that he only allows himself to show in the emptiness of his private room, he tips to the side and lays down. It’s almost uncomfortable. The bed is made of the finest materials with the most delicate and costly sheets but too many days of hotel room to hotel room has left him unused to the feeling.
He sighs.
He wonders what Suguru would think if he saw him now. He wonders if Suguru would scoff at him, if he would know there should be bags beneath Gojo’s eyes despite his RCT healing them away, he wonders if Suguru would sit on the bed with him and hold a warm hand over his eyes and ask him quietly if he wanted him to leave because Suguru was always so considerate and didn’t want his own cursed energy to make him worse—
It’s raining outside.
Gojo has been home for three hours now and the clock ticks quietly against the wall above his bed. It’s a Friday night and there is a shaky mark against the date on the calendar on the desk beside him. Once, it would have been decorated with exclamation marks and drawings and Suguru would have shaken his head and laughed before bumping his shoulder against Gojo’s with a thank you on his lips. Now, it’s a black, scratched out line, and he faces away from it because it hurts his very soul to look at it.
Eyes closed, he sinks into the grave built into his memory and wraps himself in the soil. It’s a cold feeling. It’s also a familiar one. Gojo’s grief is a fickle thing. Half the time he will think of Suguru, and he will wonder what he is up to. It’s easier to pretend that the other man is out there somewhere, dark hair down his shoulders and a darkness in his violet eyes that Gojo wants to see shine again.
It’s easier to pretend, because despite all these years without Suguru—
It’s only now that he knows he’s gone.
It’s only now, as that grief burns his soul every day, over and over, that he realises that Suguru isn’t coming back.
(His hands are stained in crimson. It won’t wash out, no matter how many times he tries. Infinity won’t separate them. And over and over, Gojo wonders why he had been so blind. What was the point of these eyes if not to save the one person that mattered—?)
Tomorrow, an all too remarkable Saturday, Gojo will get back up.
He will check his phone for messages about his next missions, complaining but always complying, and he will stop at a bakery before he heads off to wherever he is needed. He will buy a cake, and he will breathe out a wish not meant for his lips, and he will eat every slice on his own in a room too cold for one person.
And then, with a soft and imperceptible smile, he will wish Suguru a happy birthday and get back to work.