Chapter Text
Suguru has been dead for three days.
They wander aimlessly. They hike through forests and follow roads until they hit dead ends, only to turn around and follow them all the way back. They pass through towns they don't bother to scrounge through because being so close to the remnants of a life they once knew does nothing but remind them of their dead friends.
Blisters form on their feet and their shoes finally split where the fabric meets the rubber sole after wearing down from months of travel. They have no destination in mind — not like they ever have, mostly because they find it more beneficial to just pick a direction and walk until they find something — but this time they walk with the hope of never finding anything. Like if they walk long enough, maybe they'll walk straight into the Styx and wade through the water until it kills them. Either by the gentle grace of the river guiding them to the afterlife or the parasites that lurked inside the water crawling into their open wounds to infect and husk them.
It doesn't matter where they go, because they want to be nowhere. Not without Suguru.
Nanami can, at the very least, find it within himself to get the group to stop every once in a while instead of walking through the night until they collapse and sleep where they fall. Ieiri can, at the very least, find it within herself to bandage their blisters and drain them when they’re too painful to walk on, to clean the scrapes on their hands and knees, to check for any signs of infection. Gojo can't find it within himself to do much of anything at all.
He lies awake at night and imagines Suguru's rotting corpse somewhere out in the woods where nobody would ever find him. Even if somebody did find him, they wouldn't see Suguru as somebody who once lived, once smiled and frowned, laughed and cried. Someone who walked through city streets and danced in the kitchen and fell in love. They would see Suguru for what he was: a rotting corpse, melding into the grass beneath him, with clothes and a backpack that could be stolen.
Maybe if somebody found him, they'd shake their head solemnly before moving on. Maybe they would reach down and close his eyes, take his jacket off and cover him with it in some crude play on respect for the dead. Maybe they would even call him lucky, because it wasn't the parasite that got him — it was his own hand. Because it was quick, instead of long and gruesome. Suguru knew how to make it quick. He knew better than anyone.
There isn't anything they can do but walk, so that's what they do. They walk.
They walk through the woods in complete silence from morning until noon, when Nanami makes them stop and eat whatever food they still have in their bags. They've only been sitting for around 30 minutes when Gojo hops up, slings his backpack on, and keeps walking without a word, making Ieiri and Nanami frantically pack up their things and rush to catch up. They huff, and they share knowing glances, but they don't scold him. That was Suguru's job.
They walk until they stumble upon a hiking trail, one overgrown from the lack of foot traffic. Gojo and Ieiri play rock paper scissors for which direction to turn — Gojo left, Ieiri right — and they end up going right. Ieiri doesn't brag. Gojo doesn't lament.
From noon to evening, they follow the hiking trail until it meets a road, play another game of rock paper scissors, and follow it left. They follow that road for a little while until paved asphalt meets gravel, and the trees clear enough to give them a lovely and wide view of the mountain towering over them straight ahead. Gojo hasn't bothered to admire the beauty of the sticks. But here, he let himself look up at the snow capped mountain, the way the sunset lowers behind the peak, the songs of the birds and rustling of the trees. Even though the world stopped, it never really did. Not out here.
It must make Gojo feel some sort of way, because he ends up being the one to suggest the group set up camp nearby, before the sun has even disappeared behind the mountain peak. Ieiri and Nanami exchange confused glances and furrowed brows, but say nothing.
They follow that gravel road to a clearing nearby, because it's generally a good idea not to set up camp in the middle of the road. Even a few months after the outbreak when most survivors had resigned themselves to walking or biking, some people did still travel by car to take advantage of the gasoline before it spoils in a few years. Gojo didn't even know it did that. And as much as he can wax poetic about wanting to die, he doesn't really want to be run over by a car in his sleep. Too painful, too slow, and most of all, extremely embarrassing.
They set up camp, which consists of gathering sticks for the fire, laying their backpacks down to use as a pillow, and hoping their bodies eventually shut down from exhaustion despite how uncomfortable the ground is and how they can feel the bugs crawling up their skin. As per routine, Nanami collects the sticks and makes the fire. Ieiri catalogues the supplies and notes what they need more of. Gojo makes a quick sweep around the perimeter to make sure they're not intruding on anybody's space. That last task was new, added a few months back when Gojo took it on with no objections from the rest of the group.
Gojo follows the circumference of their campsite using the fire they built as the epicenter, and scans the tree lines and trampled grass beneath his feet for any signs of life. He doesn't have any weapons pulled, because if there is somebody out there, somebody angry and territorial, it’s always better to negotiate instead of scrabbling at each other until somebody bleeds enough to die. People don't know how to fight out here. People act on instinct and pure rage. That's why they die.
As Gojo closes the circle, he shoots a greedy glance up at the mountain peak again instead of watching in between the trees for wild animals with bite and wild people with bark. It's easily a mistake that can get the three of them killed in the state they’re in, but it doesn't matter. What Gojo does see is a plume of smoke rising into the orange sky, a little ways further up that gravel road and ascending up the mountainside. He isn't the only one who notices, either, because Ieiri wanders to his side with a quick shoulder check and curious huff.
"Must be a camp," Gojo says. His gaze is still fixed on where the smoke is dissipating.
Ieiri agrees with a hum. "Why would someone set up camp that far up the mountain? No reason to hike up all that way if you gotta make the journey back down in the morning."
"It isn't a camp," Nanami says. Gojo and Ieiri jolt at the sound. Nanami is always quiet, inadvertently scaring everyone when he stalks up to join a conversation, but it'd only become more prevalent when they became nomads in the wake of the outbreak. "Look."
They follow Nanami's finger as he traces it from the top where the smoke dissipates down towards the base of the plume where there should be a clear view of a bright fire against the darkening mountainside. There should be one, but there isn't. There must be something obscuring it.
"Nobody would build a campsite that far up the mountainside," he explains, "not unless there was something up that way. Whoever that is must've settled down where there was an abandoned building because they knew nobody would go out of their way to hike up that road. It isn't a campsite. It's a settlement."
"You think it's a group?" Gojo asks, and Nanami nods. "Not a bad idea, I guess. Must be a pretty smart group." A pause, and then, "Maybe they're making up for something."
The silence is thin and buzzing with anticipation, a stark contrast to the thick silence that hung over them while they mourned for the past few days. They're waiting to see who bites first. Maybe someone'll be brave enough to suggest getting their hands dirty. A quick ambush where they kill the ones who fight back and dismiss the ones who cry for mercy. This low on supplies, they could use a group's worth of food. They're all thinking it. Nobody wants to be the one to suggest it.
"Let's go up there, while there's still light," Ieiri suggests, and it's finally enough to tear Gojo's gaze away from the smoke to Ieiri's ever-calm face. "Don't look at me like that. I mean— I'll be the one to say it. This little nomadic journey we're on isn't exactly a great plan in the long run. We need to settle down somewhere, before we croak from exhaustion."
Gojo opens his mouth to protest, but Nanami places a firm hand on his shoulder before he can get anything out. "She's right, Gojo. We can't do this forever."
Maybe at some other time, some three days ago, Gojo would agree. Ieiri's right; nobody wants to admit it, but they're all sick of this. Of the wandering, and the mourning, and the fraying of the thread holding the sword that hangs above them. They're wearing themselves thin. They know better than to say it out loud, but they all understand Suguru. That's exactly why Suguru told them, didn't leave them in the dark about why he left and did what he did, because he knew they would understand. And even though they refuse to say it out loud, they all envy him. Maybe he wasn't brave for what he did, or courageous, or even smart. But they can't deny that he was right. He cut down the middle man to face Death, and Death took him because he was right.
"We can though, can't we?" Gojo protests regardless, because he never goes down without a fight, not until his last breath. "So that's it. We're just giving up. We're giving up when there's not a chance that every town here has been looted already, when we haven't even tried to look—"
"Really, because you were singing a real different tune when you told us to skip every town on the way here," Ieiri says. "I'm not surprised you're being childish, Gojo, but I am surprised you're being selfish. Do you really think it's just you who's going to die if we keep going like this?"
Ieiri isn't being malicious, because she isn't angry. She's never been angry at Gojo a day in her life. She's just right, like always. But the air still hangs heavy around her words, leaving Gojo quiet and contemplative, heaving breaths that freeze the particles around his mouth and squeezing his eyes shut against the memories of him. The words are left unspoken, but Gojo still hears them loud and clear. Do you really think it's just you who's going to die if we keep going like this? I thought you would've realized that now that you've watched it happen.
"Fine," Gojo says, some form of surrender. "We can go look. But I'm not making any promises to stick around. Not my fault that you guys can't keep up."
It's a joke, maybe, but it doesn't feel like one. Gojo's always had some sort of complex about independence. He wants to be able to do everything himself, even if it kills him. Last time he relied on somebody fully and truly, he opened his arms for a trust fall only to hit the ground instead of being caught in the warm embrace of somebody he told to leave.
Gojo stays true to his word, like he always does, and they meander up the steep incline to get to the mystery campsite. The smell of smoke wafts over to them as they get closer. If the others notice Gojo's fingers twitching over the combat knife strapped to his thigh, hastily tied with frayed, pink-stained twine, they say nothing. And if they see him snap the knife off his leg, the twine twirling down and landing in the gravel and slowly disappearing behind them, well, they don't say anything about that, either.
His stomach turns. They had done a lot of fucked up things to get here. Now the opportunity presents itself to cross the one line none of them were ever brave enough to even toe towards. The ultimate sacrifice of their humanity. Even presented with the option, there’s some part of his questionable moral code of conduct that hasn't gone away even after months of doing things like looting whatever they could off of wandering corpses.
When someone succumbs to the parasite, they become a shambling mockery of human life. The lights turn off and their bodies try so desperately to switch them back on again that they fire off every signal they can think of — those memories of the lives they once had still stored in their muscles. Stumbling through hallways. Sitting on couches and staring at blank TV screens. Washing their hands under broken sinks. Turning when you said the name of somebody they loved. It only lasted for a little bit before they lost any shred of their humanity and made their way to the water.
A few months ago, when their legs still ached from their newfound hobby of traveling miles and miles by foot and they were still five instead of three, Gojo grabbed a husk — a man probably around their age, maybe just a bit younger — to pull him out of the hoodie he was wearing. He had pulled him so forcefully that once his arms were free he fell backwards and hit the ground hard, so hard they could hear all the air escape from his lungs, and from his mouth, a pitiful oww came out. The husk writhed and squirmed on the ground, not unlike the worms growing in his body, and heaved in gasps of air to try and get oxygen back to his decaying brain. They watched, long past the acceptable time to make up any excuse for it, as the husk eventually stumbled back up to his feet. They watched as he wobbled unsteadily before collapsing back to his knees with a frustrated groan. When he finally succeeded in getting upright again, he steeled himself and walked towards the group which parted for him as he stumbled onward. Mindless. Hollow.
Suguru had come up to Satoru's side then, but Satoru could barely tear his eyes away from the husk as it walked away. Suguru had looked at Satoru with something he assumed was remorse, maybe pity, because back then he had no reason to doubt Suguru's trust in him. Now, looking back on it, he might instead refer to Suguru as looking at him with something like revulsion.
When he looked down at the hoodie, he saw that it read:
UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO
And Suguru had asked him something like, Do you think he was your classmate?, but Satoru couldn't remember exactly what he'd said because when he tried to imagine Suguru's voice, he could only hear the crickets chirping. When he tried to look at Suguru's face, he was already decaying.
Does it matter? Gojo responded, and he could hear his own voice just fine.
Gojo is still wearing that hoodie even now, not because he can't find anything else, but because it’s a nice, worn out hoodie that Gojo would've definitely worn back while he was still attending. In fact, he's pretty sure he might've even had the exact same one, which would still be hanging in the closet of his apartment. If he thinks about that place too long, he gets stuck in time. How it looked when the two of them had left for vacation. Lights off, bed made, clean laundry folded and put away, photo frames filled with family members and first dates and graduations straightened on the wall and the stove triple checked to be off. It was strange, how something so associated with life for Gojo had death clinging to it. It didn't matter how many times he tried to scrub himself raw of it, because ever since he started wearing that hoodie, Death never left him.
They stand in front of the gates.
It’s a lot bigger than they could gauge from the ground, a large perimeter of fence made up of scraps of metal and wood shoved into the ground and tied together with thick rope. The place is entirely empty, despite the many shoddily built sheds scattered about the place. The settlement was clearly built around the large wooden cabin off towards the back that was probably some ski lodge back when this place was alive. There aren't any lights coming from inside of there, but they can see where the mystery plume was coming from now — the chimney.
But more importantly, much, much more than that, they see heaven in the middle of the camp: A body of water, completely still, free of floating corpses and the scent of death.
"It's water," Gojo says. "There's— it's water, there's water in there. A pond."
Ieiri and Nanami peer in where Gojo's looking through a gap in the fence, and he can hear the breath escape both of them as they lay their eyes on that pond, like it’s the most beautiful thing they've ever seen in their lives. It honestly might be.
"Shit," Nanami says, breathless, and it makes Ieiri and Gojo laugh. They laugh, they laugh with disbelief and hope, they're laughing for the first time in so long and they're feeling hope. They savor the feeling of life in their chest and let it bubble out their mouths in quiet, giddy laughter. "These shelters, they all look empty, don't they? Where is everybody?"
"More importantly, I think," Ieiri adds, "who built that fire? Even if there aren't, like, a lot of people here, which there should be, there's at least one person. The fire couldn't have started itself."
Gojo turns to Ieiri, eyes wide with horror, and her face blanches. "What if it's a gh- gh- ghost?"
Ieiri elbows him hard in the ribs and tells him to stay focused, dumbass, but she's laughing, and he's laughing, too. He hasn't felt this real in a long time.
"Look over there." Nanami motions with a jut of his chin, over to where a gate is built just around the corner of where they're standing. It's surprisingly large, sort of like the big fancy gates you'd see outside some rich gated community. The metal it's made of has rusted and caked the bars in brown and orange clumps, and each bar is wrapped in barbed wire. It’s probably to discourage intruders. It’ll do literally nothing to stop anybody, considering the perimeter fence won't be hard for a non-husked person to break through. It’s more for show than it is for actual defense, something that says, you can break through, but we'll fight back.
"Let's go check it out," Gojo offers, but he's already pushing away from the fence and heading that way. "Obviously nobody’s here," he quickly adds when both of them open their mouths to try and protest or warn him or do any of the things they do when he tries to do something cool. "And like I said, we don't even have to stay. But there has to be a ton of shit in there that we could take, right? You wanna pass that up after your little speech earlier?"
Nanami turns to Ieiri again, communicating in that silent language that they both know how to speak but is nonsense to Gojo. Ieiri shrugs with a small, amused smile. "Couldn't hurt," she says, and Nanami relents, but Gojo can guess he wasn't fighting back all that much in the first place.
There's a whole lot of large wooden stakes stabbed into the ground going a few feet out from the entrance that they have to maneuver through to get up to the gate. Again, these definitely wouldn't actually get in the way of somebody trying to get in, but it sends a message.
The stakes aren't as well crafted as some of the other defenses. They're haphazardly carved into a point, all of them jutting and pointing out in strange ways. They aren't even long enough to avoid being ripped from the ground if a strong storm rolled in, and are very easy to snap under the slightest hint of pressure, evident when Gojo rips one from the ground and snaps it into two with one hand. Everything points to Gojo's hypothesis being correct, but—
When he turns to Ieiri and Nanami, both watching him with very confused expressions when he abruptly stops and pulls a stick out of the ground to break it, he just shrugs. He shrugs, and tosses the broken stake out of the way and continues walking. And they say nothing, as they always do.
It's selfish, maybe. Definitely. Gojo isn't sure if Ieiri and Nanami even think anything of the stakes in the ground, even as they follow his footsteps to avoid stepping on any of them. And if Gojo is right, which he usually is, and they've been planted recently, it means that there’s somebody here.
Somebody angry, somebody violent, somebody doing everything they can to protect whatever's inside. It doesn't bode well for them. Not at all. But Gojo says nothing. If they don't die, then great! Supplies, clean water, a shelter if they actually want to settle down. If they do die, well, at least they died with a bit of hope and laughter in their heart.
Apparently the barbed wires and stakes weren't enough of a warning sign for whoever is still around, because the gate is also tied in the middle with a hefty, relatively new-looking rope. Each of them takes their turns rattling uselessly at the gate, or attempting to stick their fingers through loose spots of the rope to untangle it. Despite the shitty handiwork of the wooden stakes in the ground and the buildings inside, this feels like the only thing done with a true amount of effort. With the intention of keeping people out. Or keeping people in.
"Whoever is here really doesn't want visitors," Gojo muses as he continues prodding at the rope, bent down at the waist to try and trace his fingers along the strands and find the sweet spot where it could all be pulled apart.
"You mean, whoever was here," Ieiri corrects.
Gojo huffs a frustrated little noise, the air around his mouth momentarily condensing into an angry cloud. "Right," he says, "whoever was here is a real pain in my ass."
Gojo can feel Nanami approaching over his shoulder, maybe to get another turn at untying the knot again, but Gojo's already feeling impatient. Once he has his mind set on something, he won't rest until he gets it, something equally as admirable as it is his fatal flaw. So, he resorts to something he's grown to rely on most: sheer brute force.
The combat knife he'd ripped from his leg on the way up, the one he'd been idly rolling back and forth in his hand, playing with the weight of its craft and sin, comes up suddenly and down hard and fast. It whiffs through the air, the sound clear with the force at which he snaps his arm, and slices through the knot in one clean cut. The gate swings open on its own accord with a deafening creak as the rope falls limp like a dead man.
Gojo doesn't bother to turn and check on the other two before making his way inside — another remnant of Suguru hanging over them. When the two of them went from Gojo and Geto to Satoru and Suguru, it's like their souls merged, their lives a double act in a circus, whatever phenomenon that lets twins communicate to each other also developing in them. When they would sit at a restaurant and Satoru decided it was time to go, he got up and left, and Suguru gathered their things and excused himself for the both of them. When Satoru was ready to move onto the next town, he swung his backpack on and started walking, and Suguru looked back to make sure everybody else was ready, too.
Gojo only makes it a few steps into the settlement when he suddenly turns back to Ieiri and Nanami, but they all know it's a crude attempt at keeping Suguru alive. It isn't that Gojo doesn't care, he does, he cares more about watching over his loves more than he cares about his own life. It's just that he isn't Suguru.
They move on without a word. It's a small mercy. A quiet acknowledgement of that sword hanging above their heads.
Peering in from outside the settlement is much different than walking inside themselves. They can see a lot more, obviously, but they could still tell what was inside by looking through the gates. Inside, though, they can feel the weight of the people here, the remnants of an abandoned home, signs of lives long gone, dead or otherwise.
They work their way through the sheds, peer inside and poke around the small interiors, but the ones they find nearest to the gate are completely empty. They look more like storage than they do shelter. It's a sign that the people who lived here probably all stayed in the warmest and sturdiest shelter of the settlement, which was that ski lodge up ahead. Also a sign that there weren't many people who stayed here. Also a sign that if there's people staying here now, that's where they'll find them.
In one of the shelters, empty and creaking under Gojo's footsteps, there's several carved engravings in the corner. By the looks of it, scratched in by somebody huddling themselves tight into that corner and carving just at eye level. Gojo can see the work clearly when he kneels down next to it, and can follow the progression of the first one to the latest, how the handiwork of the artist improved as they learned to carve cleaner, create clearer.
It's a series of animals, ranging all sorts of species and sizes. They're almost reminiscent of cave paintings, and Gojo's mind immediately goes to the scenes in The Lion King when Rafiki would paint the portraits of Simba and the other lions onto his cave walls. Gojo loves that movie. If only he could see it again.
An elephant. Gojo traces the carvings with a gentle hand. A wolf. A rabbit. A toad. A… bird? Then there's an unfinished one, curving and winding, it must be—
"Gojo!"
Gojo stands up so fast that his vision goes dark and the wood creaks under his weight when he falls back into the corner. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He should've said something. Why didn't he say anything? He scrambles to get back up, nearly trips on the way out, knife drawn and heart racing, and he's lucky that the sun isn't bright enough to blind him when he makes it out the door because he can immediately see Ieiri waving him down by the water, completely unharmed.
"You'll never guess," she says as Gojo joins her, completely unaware of the state she'd accidentally put him in even as he wrings his hands and takes deep breaths to try and calm himself down. "It's clean. Like, completely. There aren't any adult worms, but there aren't any eggs, either. It's untouched."
"Fuck," Gojo breathes.
"Yeah, bud, fuck is right. I haven't seen an uninfected body like this since— God, have we ever? Even that pool wasn't as big as this."
The pool was nice for a little bit. But drinking old chlorinated water, as it turns out, isn't great for you. Who could've guessed? It also didn't help that their friend ended up floating face down in it a day later.
Gojo kneels down to the pond and gazes into his reflection. He hasn't gotten a good look at himself in weeks, and God is he grateful for it, because he looks like shit. He can actually see the way his hair has grown way out, how he's started having to push his bangs back and constantly scratch at his neck because he wasn't used to feeling hair on his nape. He doesn't look at himself for that long, though, because he can see Suguru in the reflection.
Are you going to look at your face all day, Suguru had said to Satoru once, when he was stuck staring at his hollowed out face in the scatterings of glass on an abandoned house floor, or did you wanna come in here and eat with the rest of us?
That's how Narcissus died, Satoru said, only looking away because he'd rather be looking at Suguru. He was so obsessed with looking at his reflection that he stared at a pond for so long he died.
If he had a face anything like yours, then I could see why, Suguru said, maybe. It eats away at Gojo that maybe he's started to make up things about Suguru that he never actually said or did to make up for all the memories he'd be making with him if he were here.
He dips his hands into the water, right into his own face looking back at him. Suguru's voice disappears in the ripples, replaced only by the chirping of crickets.
He tips his head down and brings the water to his lips. It coats his tongue in the soft, metallic taste of freshwater.
"Just because it's not infected doesn't mean you should drink lake water, Gojo."
"Let's check out the cabin," he says instead of acknowledging her. "These sheds were probably emptied when everyone left, but there's still gotta be some good shit in there." He waves Nanami down from where he's still checking through the sheds. "Plus, we can set up camp there. Hey, when's the last time we were in a house?"
"It's… been a little bit." Ieiri looks hesitant, her face scrunched in discomfort, so Gojo pokes her in the ribs to see her smile again when she keels over to laugh. By the time Nanami's made his way over to them, they're full-on wrestling. Maybe Gojo's taking it easy on her, but Ieiri's got a mean guillotine choke, and he has to frantically tap out before she chokes him out and tosses him into the pond next to them.
"And here I was growing fond of the silence," Nanami says, and Ieiri laughs and smacks him hard on the back while Gojo recovers on the ground. Even with all of Nanami's annoyed glares and furrowed brows that were going to make him wrinkle far too early, he can't hide the relief in his face when he sees that Gojo is going to be okay. That despite everything, he's still in there somewhere. "Are we heading out, then?"
"We're gonna check out the big guy," Gojo says. "Maybe stay for a night or two? I haven't decided yet. Shoko didn't want to, but I'm very convincing."
Ieiri scoffs, but Gojo's turning tail and heading towards the ski lodge before she can demonstrate any more submissions she learned from their martial arts training way back in the day.
⤝❖⤞
The building isn't all that big, but it's sturdy. The wood used to make it is high quality and doesn't show the slightest sign of decay, and it probably won't for a while. It stands two stories tall, has a nice wide open porch with a balcony above it to provide some shade. When this place was still alive, it was probably beautiful. Gojo can imagine the warm lighting coming from the inside, the distant sound of laughter and the crackling of a fireplace. It's eerily quiet now. The windows are boarded from the inside, the wood used also showing no signs of decay, so it must be somewhat new.
If it wasn't already obvious, they can see that the smoke is coming from inside. It curls out of the chimney and stains the air with its distinct scent, but there isn't any light pouring through the gaps in the wood covering the window. So far, it’s the only sign of life that can't be plausibly denied, though that doesn't stop Gojo from un-plausibly denying it. Fire can stay lit for a long time, and on top of that, smoke can pour out of extinguished fires for hours. Maybe there were people here who left hours ago. Maybe the gate was tied from the outside and the stakes were planted to deter people because they were coming back.
Maybe they won't have to get their hands dirty.
For all his boisterous attitude, Gojo approaches with caution, if not for himself than for his friends. The stairs underneath them groan in protest as they climb the few stairs leading up to the main porch, silently drawing any weapons they hadn't yet. Throughout their journey until now, Gojo had only ever gotten in a handful of fights, and he doesn't plan on losing that winning streak any time soon.
They fall into the formation they'd naturally learned to fall into over time — Ieiri watching the left, Nanami watching the right, and Gojo taking the front. They used to have someone watching their back, too, but— the thought plants itself into Gojo's head too fast, too intensely, and he can't resist the urge to whip his head around to check behind them for a moment, but it's just a moment too long.
In front of them, right as Gojo makes the deadliest mistake he's ever made in his entire life, the door bursts open and rattles the windows with the force at which it slams into the wall. Before Gojo can even comprehend what he's done, his world becomes cold, unforgiving metal. The knife falls from his hands and they shake when he brings them up in surrender.
Gojo's had this feeling before, the feeling of time slowing as you look into the face of Death. The feeling of your body decaying before it even hits the ground. He sees Suguru. Maybe this is his life flashing before his eyes, and all his life ever was, was Suguru. Is this it? he thinks, helpless. Are you waiting for me?
His eyes cross to stare down the shotgun barrel pressed right between his eyes.
Oh.
He only dares to look at the person standing in the doorway after the realization hits him. A deep void of black hair, spread out every which way like a drop of ink on a page. Pale skin that borders on sickly, hollowed out cheeks and sunken eyes, a desperate look swimming in those blue irises. The shotgun rattles with the shaking of their hands.
Gojo can't place it, but this all feels very familiar.
"Get out," they say, voice just above a whisper, desperate to feign confidence but not doing anything to mask the fear in their voice. "Get out of here, or I'll shoot."
"Put the gun down, kid," Gojo says. "We don't want a fight."
"You're gonna get a fight if you don't get out of here," the kid grits through their teeth, jolting the shotgun just a bit to remind Gojo of its presence. Gojo pays it no mind.
"Where are your parents?"
"What do you want?" they accuse, teeth chattering. "Did you come to loot the place?"
"Well, like, yeah," Gojo answers with a shrug before he lets his hands drop from where they were raised in surrender. "Duh. But, look, that's all in the past. Like I said, we don't want a fight. We didn't even think there was anyone in here, I mean, the place looks like a ghost town."
"Well, it isn't, so— get out, before— before I blow your head clean off."
"Jeez, kid, who taught you to talk like that?" Gojo drops his shoulders in defeat. "Fine, fine, you can kill me. In fact, let me help you out."
Before the kid can even get a word out, Gojo grasps both hands around the cold barrel of the shotgun and yanks it out of the kid's shaky grip with barely any effort. Gojo turns his shoulder to the kid, who's begun protesting adamantly and tugging at Gojo's hoodie to fight for the gun back, but Gojo's already fiddling with the gun.
Click.
"Alright, alright." Gojo sighs with a disapproving shake of his head. He grips the barrel of the shotgun and cocks it, and the loud chk-chk makes the kid's eyes widen in fear. That fear quickly turned into confusion, however, when Gojo handed the shotgun right back to them with the barrel facing himself. Gojo flashes a bright, toothy smile as he raises his hands back up in surrender. "Maybe next time we go pointing guns at people and threatening to blow their heads off, we make sure the safety isn't on?"
The kid is stuck with their mouth agape and eyes wide in disbelief. They flounder for words, somehow every single vowel sound coming out of their mouth at the same time, but before any coherent sentence can be formed they're interrupted by—
"Megumi!"
The kid whips their head around so fast Gojo's surprised they didn't give themselves whiplash. There's a girl racing down the stairs towards them, no doubt having heard the commotion. She can't be much older than the other kid — Megumi, apparently — and Gojo can barely form the question of why there were two random kids in this cabin until she comes closer and he can get a good look at her face. Their faces are nearly identical, so much so they could probably pass as twins if it wasn't for her hair and eyes being a warm brown, in contrast to Megumi's cold blue and stark black.
"Stay back, Tsumiki! These people, they— they want to hurt us—!"
Tsumiki very bravely ignores the intense warning and comes right up next to Megumi's side, already trying to wrestle the gun out of their hands, but they don't fight for very long before Gojo frantically snatches the gun away from both of them. He lets the bullet clatter to the ground when he unloads the chamber before he sets it down behind him.
"Ooookay, let's all calm down." Ieiri's voice is steady when she speaks, but her hand is shaking when she puts a hand on his shoulder. Gojo was so caught up in the conversation that he didn't even realize that Ieiri and Nanami were surely thinking they were about to watch another friend die again. "It's been a long day, we're all tired. I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to fight."
Megumi huffs but doesn't argue, maybe thanks to Tsumiki holding them tight by the arm and pulling them back into the doorway. Gojo only notices now that there isn't a shotgun in his face that the kids aren't dressed nearly warm enough for the rapidly chilling weather, both only in thin long sleeves and jeans that were looking worse for wear. Now that the adrenaline is wearing off, the cold is definitely starting to sink deep into their bones. Tsumiki would no doubt be shaking soon, too, and she'd only just gotten here.
The interior of the lodge is rapidly getting darker as the sun is just now fully setting, the only source of light flickering and tucked into a corner out of his view. That must be the fire, but that very quickly hit the bottom of his list of priorities, so he pays it no mind. He's got a bigger question that needs answering.
"Are you two… alone?" Gojo asks. Getting this late, he'd expect a patrol or excursion to have made it back to the settlement by now, but there's nobody inside. "Where's the rest of your group? Your parents?"
"That's none of your—"
"They're gone," Tsumiki answers. "Me and my brother—" she gestures towards Megumi, whose eyes widen for just a second at the word, sparkling with joy, before he can school his face back to indifference— "are the only ones here after our dad left a few weeks ago. He hasn't come back yet. Everyone else either left like him or died."
"Not that there's any difference," Megumi mutters.
There isn't any difference, Satoru.
Satoru can't hear them when he sees the glow of lamplight disappearing into the trees. No matter how much he wills his feet to move, they won't. He can't. There is a difference. The difference is that you would've been here with me now. You would've known what to do. You would've known how to fix everything.
"Gojo."
Gojo turns to the voice, Nanami, and breathes in the warm touch of his hand wrapping around Gojo's wrist. Only then was Gojo out of those woods, away from his grave. "What do you want to do?"
Gojo searches for the answer in Nanami's eyes for a while, and when he can't find it there he turns to Ieiri to see if her eyes could tell him, but all he can see is his own reflection. They're waiting for him to decide. It's up to him. He isn't good with decisions. Not when he can't trust himself to make the right one anymore.
"Let's make a deal," Gojo finally decides. "It's cold and dark out here. I imagine you know by now that those conditions aren't great for traveling. Let us stay, just for tonight. We'll be gone when it's light, before you even wake up."
"How do we know you won't just kill us and take our stuff before then?" Megumi accuses. He's got guts, for sure, Gojo has to give him that. If he learned to have a bite like his bark, he'd be going places.
"No offense, kid," Gojo says, "but I don't pick fights with people who can't take it. That'd just be unfair."
Megumi doesn't even bother arguing with that. He has to acknowledge that any fight he tries to pick with three adults is going to be over fast, even if he does have weapons at his disposal. Instead, he looks over to Tsumiki, some silent conversation passing between them before they turn back to the group.
"Okay," Megumi surrenders, even though he doesn't sound too happy about it. "You can stay. But just for tonight. And— and you have to give your shit to us."
Megumi gestures down to the knife Gojo dropped and hadn’t bothered to pick up. His gaze flickers between the boy and the knife a few times before he shrugs and picks it up, spinning it around to point the handle towards Megumi for him to grab. Gojo gestures for the other two to follow suit, and though they hesitate, they eventually hand over the weapons they were holding, too.
"As long as you give them back in the morning," Gojo says. Megumi nods as he cautiously takes the weapons. Gojo picks up the shotgun still lying between them and makes sure it's unloaded and the safety is on before he hands it to Tsumiki. "And as long as you find someone to teach you to use that thing."
Megumi scowls but still steps aside to let the group in, careful to keep his sister behind them as they pass through the entryway.
Immediately inside there's a large open room with a dining table, and just past it, a modest but well-equipped kitchen with a small bar. It looks lived in, well preserved and clean despite the circumstances, just like a kitchen you'd see in somebody's apartment. On the left, there's a lounge area fit with a massive couch lining the entirety of the walls, a large knit rug, and several leather chairs that were starting to see some wear and tear. That's where the fireplace is.
Tsumiki gives a tour as best she can in the dark, only a few scant lit candles guiding their way through the lodge. To the left of the entryway there's stairs and a door to one of the master bedrooms, and down the hall there's a second main room after passing a pantry and a bathroom. The second main room is considerably smaller than the first, and has a lot of storage racks where ski and snowboarding equipment would've been stored while people were staying here. There's a door here leading to the backyard.
Upstairs there's a very small lounge area, just a normal couch and a single chair, acting as the foyer. There's halls leading left and right, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms down each — two master bedrooms at the end, and two smaller two-bed rooms next to the bathrooms. The kids had taken one of the two-bed rooms, likely where they were staying when there was a group living here and they just hadn't bothered to move to one of the nicer rooms when everybody left.
All things considered, the place is extremely nice.
Though there isn't any plumbing or electricity, which leaves the place pretty chilly inside, it isn't anything like outside at this time of night. The fireplace in the lounge downstairs provides enough warmth when you aren't huddled in the thick blankets and quilts on the beds or hanging on racks at just about every corner. There's no doubt a colony of people would thrive here.
The group is eager to claim their bedrooms for the night. Sleeping alone isn't possible when traveling out in the woods, nevermind sleeping in an actual bed. Ieiri takes one of the smaller rooms, and Nanami takes the master bedroom next to it, leaving Gojo with either the master bedroom next to the kids or the one downstairs. He stays upstairs with the rest of the group just in case. Suguru prefers bigger beds, anyways.
When Tsumiki asks if they're hungry, their stomachs might as well comically growl in response. They haven't had a good meal in days. She insists that the adults stay upstairs while her and her brother went and and started making something from the cans of food they have stocked in the pantry, since they were just about to make dinner anyways. And, well, Gojo isn't one to turn down free food, so he lets the two scamper away as he makes his way down the hall.
The bedroom is in near complete darkness, only the slightest hint of sun creeping in through the large windows on the back wall. He can only barely make out the interior. The king-sized bed is neatly made with thick wool blankets, quilts, and soft pillows, and Gojo would be eager to tuck himself in immediately if his empty stomach wouldn't protest. There's a small chair tucked into the corner with a footrest and small side table, probably used for reading, but Gojo still snickers at the way it faces the bed.
He shrugs his backpack off of his shoulders and gets to work unpacking his (admittedly very few) belongings — a spare dagger wrapped in cloth, an extra jacket, some granola bars and an empty flask — and he tosses the contents onto the bed as he takes inventory until he reaches the bottom and grazes something cold and sharp.
A pair of scissors. The red handle has begun to fade from its original bright color, well-loved. Though it isn't as sharp as it probably used to be, it still slices through Gojo's skin when he presses his thumb onto the sharp edge, smearing blood across the blade. When he reaches the end, he pulls from in between the two blades a long strand of black hair.
Maybe it's selfish to think, but that day might have been the worst day of his life. Worse than when Haibara died. Maybe even worse than when Suguru left.
It was when they had to acknowledge that everything had changed, that it would never go back to the way that it was. The day they stopped recognizing themselves in their reflection.
The day they stopped recognizing each other, too.
Suguru had insisted that he wanted to do it, and that he wanted to do it alone.
Nobody argued with him. They let him take the scissors from Satoru's shaking hand and wander off into another room of the building they'd made camp in. They pretended not to hear the thud of the last remnant of his past life hitting the floor. They turned a blind eye when Satoru went to find him.
Nobody else knew how much Suguru cried. He was always somebody who felt the emotions of everyone around him. He cried when he was sad, when he was angry, when he was happy. He cried when saw videos of people's dead pets, in the graveyard over people who died a century ago, in abandoned houses with forgotten family portraits that had dusted over. One time, they had wandered into a department store where just about everything was empty except for the baby clothes in the kids section. Suguru cried more that night they spent in the store than he had at his mother's funeral.
Suguru wasn't crying.
He sat quietly curled into himself, holding and stroking the ponytail of his severed hair. He had a faraway look in his eyes. He didn't even look up when Satoru came and sat next to him, amongst the remnants of strands that had fallen out when he cut them off.
Suguru's hair didn't look… great. It was uneven and jagged, divided into chunks of different lengths, awkwardly short as he no doubt sawed the ponytail off when it was pulled as tight as it would go at the nape of his neck.
Maybe not your best work, Satoru had joked, a serious gamble on his part, one that paid off when Suguru let out a watery chuckle. Satoru looked down at the scissors abandoned on the floor and reached for them, but stopped short. I can— do you want me to fix it up a bit? I mean, I'm not as good as you, but…
Satoru trailed off when Suguru looked up at him with those red-rimmed eyes. He was silent for a moment, gazing down at the scissors on the floor, before he nodded and scooted back so Satoru had some room to work. Satoru didn't really know what he was doing, only working off of the memory of times he'd sat in the shop and watched Suguru work on the days he had the free time and wanted to bring lunch. Chunks of black hair cascaded around them, but Suguru didn't watch them fall. He was just watching Satoru.
When Satoru was done, Suguru's hair was objectively in a much better state. It still wasn't perfect by any means, but he had some longer strands that framed his face nicely. Shorn a little shorter on the sides, longer in the back. It suited him. He always looked beautiful.
Beautiful, Satoru told him, because he deserved to hear it more times than Satoru could say in a lifetime. Suguru's eyes disappeared when his smile turned into a laugh.
You're so egotistical, Sa-to-ru, he'd said. It can't possibly be that good.
I didn't mean your hair, Satoru replied.
Suguru went quiet again, his grin dropping into a more subtle smile. He let his hands come up to feel his hair then, running his hands through the hair at the nape of his neck and looking down at all the hair framing them on the dusty floor. When he looked back up at Satoru and their eyes met, well. Maybe that's when it all became real.
It was sudden, when Suguru's lip started to quiver and his eyes welled up. Satoru reached up to cup Suguru's face in a panic, wipe away the tears that had begun to spill down his cheeks and leave streaks where they washed away the dirt building up on his face. Suguru tried desperately for a few painful moments to keep that grief at bay, willing the feeling down with heaving gasps of air before he collapsed forward into Satoru's shoulder with a choked cry.
Satoru wrapped his arms around Suguru immediately and pulled him up into his lap to carry the weight of him for a little while. Suguru let those sobs escape freely into the fabric of the hoodie Satoru was wearing, staining the blue dark with tears and snot. Satoru held him anyway, because he didn't care. The hoodie wasn't even his.
He doesn't know how long he held Suguru like that, rocking him back and forth gently and whispering love into his shorn hair. He knows that when he helped Suguru up to his feet shakily and wiped the remnants of his grief off of his face, he could smell dinner cooking in the other room.
They had to rejoin the others eventually, but Suguru had to have known that Satoru would've stayed for as long as he needed. Suguru had to have known he would've stayed forever.
Satoru, Suguru began. I—
A knock on the door stole Suguru away from him again.
The door creaks loudly as it's pushed open, and on the other side Tsumiki stands with a large blue plastic bucket that’s smeared with dirt and grime and a strong gust of wind away from splitting every which way.
When Satoru looks back at his hand, the strand of hair that had been resting on his finger isn’t there, and the blood has dried brown. He doesn't bother looking for it. He knows it's gone.
"What's up, kid?" Gojo asks when he turns back to Tsumiki, who was already moving the bucket into a corner of the room and shuffling it back and forth while looking up at the ceiling. "Did you, uh, need something?"
When she's apparently satisfied with her work, she turns back to Gojo with a kind look in her eyes. "The upstairs can get sort of leaky when it starts raining. I don't know how much it'll rain tonight, but I brought this just in case it's a lot. Is that okay?"
"That's— yeah." The ceiling at some point had started to steadily drip little droplets of water that were now thumping into the bucket below. He didn't even notice it had started raining, but now he can hear the thunder rumbling in the distance. "Yeah, thank you. That's perfect."
"Of course!" Tsumiki's smile grows wider, and it shows off her crooked teeth and dimples. It tugs Gojo's heartstrings in a sudden way he isn't ready for. "Dinner will be ready in a few minutes. Everyone else is downstairs already— but come down whenever! It's no rush, really."
Gojo stays upstairs a while longer.
⤝❖⤞
At the dinner table, Gojo can pretend he's somewhere else.
Well, almost. Were it not for the few seconds Gojo finds himself standing in front of the kitchen sink, fiddling with the taps only to remember there isn't any running water or parasite-free world or voice in his ear telling him to wash your hands, 'toru. But nobody is looking at him when he turns around, or at least mercifully wasn't saying anything, so he can keep pretending.
The kids made some sort of amalgamation soup with the food cans they have stocked in their pantry. Ieiri mentions to Gojo that their dad was some kind of survivalist type, the lucky guy who spent his life preparing for the apocalypse and was actually right about that bullshit. It was incredibly convenient, that's for sure. If Gojo has any feeling of FOMO hearing that they were all down here cooking together while he was sulking upstairs, he doesn't say anything. He's grieved enough for the day. For a whole lifetime, probably.
Tsumiki is unsurprisingly very talkative at the table, unlike her brother who only contributes when Tsumiki turns to ask him about some detail she'd forgotten. He otherwise spends his time picking at his food and looking at her like she hung the moon.
Apparently, the compound here wasn't so much a group of people who were stronger for living together and more so a group of people who happened to want to live in the place with the guy who had the food, but generally had no interest in talking to anybody else. The free-for-all nature of the compound caused a lot of in-fighting, which wasn't surprising, but it was still unnerving to hear two young children talk about watching people beat each other to death like they were talking about Saturday morning cartoons.
Even with that disturbing topic of conversation, the adults have no problem shoveling food into their mouths and making plans to go back for seconds and thirds. Gojo didn't even realize how hungry he was until the warm bowl of soup was in his hands and he was drinking straight from it before he could be handed a spoon. It's the best food he's had in his life, and he was— used to— had once lived with an incredibly talented chef.
At some point between eating so fast he forgets he's supposed to put his fork down after every bite and getting up for seconds, the conversation has fallen into a… silence. It isn't tense, per se. More uncertain. Like maybe everyone knew they would eventually have to discuss what they'd do tomorrow, and after that. Gojo is willing to just table that conversation until the morning, but when Nanami clears his throat he knows that isn't happening.
"Tomorrow we should start cleaning up," he says, putting his fork down so everyone knows he means business. "The shacks will do for now, but it won't be long before that fence starts deteriorating beyond repair. I suggest we start there."
Thoughtful nods all about the table. Gojo doesn’t know when the agreement happened that they were staying indefinitely, but apparently it had happened, so he just nodded along to keep up appearances.
"If we're gonna rebuild the fence anyways, should we expand?" Ieiri asks. "It won't be long before people start seeking refuge here. The quicker we can start sheltering people, the better, right?"
"Refuge?" Gojo sneers. "That seems a bit like jumping the gun to me. This place isn't in any state to start just letting people in."
"We were just let in, Gojo. They had plenty of room for us."
"Well, yeah, but—"
"I think," Tsumiki cuts him off, "if somebody shows up, we should let them in. No matter what. People used to show up here sick and hurt… and we would just turn them away. I don't want to do that anymore."
Gojo chews on his lip while he tries to find the right words. "I get how you feel, but, like, you can't just let everybody in. You don't know what they're sick with or how much they're hurt."
"You're hurt, aren't you?" Megumi asks. "Your voice."
Gojo wants to defend himself, but he can't.
He knows how he sounds. His voice is hoarse and breathy like he'd been screaming all day and night. His friends have to lean in to hear him now, when he used to love annoying them with his obnoxiously loud voice.
He knows how he looks, too. The way the scars never really healed right on his face and arms, how they mold and stretch his skin in strange, uneven ways. The way his left pupil is huge compared to the right, dilated so much that his eyes look two different colors with the way the black swallows the blue.
He swallows hard.
He's always hated that word. The way it made him feel. Being hurt was something that was supposed to happen to other people. People with different lives and short-cut strings. It was never him, until the day it was.
"We aren't ready," Gojo says, and everybody knows the conversation is over. "Besides, I've still gotta take Megumi under my wings."
Ieiri laughs at the glare Megumi shoots his way, far too sour for someone who can't be older than 13. "Gojo was studying to be a teacher, you know," she says.
Tsumiki perks up at that. "What did you teach?"
"Well, I wasn't a full-on teacher yet, but I was studying history," Gojo explains, tone easy. "I was still getting through school when everything happened. I wasn't super sure what I wanted to do, but I always liked kids, so why not? Was thinking of maybe teaching high school for a bit."
"And why you'd wanna voluntarily spend your days in high school again beats me." Ieiri smacks Gojo's hand away when he reaches over to steal some of her food just to bother her. "Getting through high school with you once was enough. I can't imagine what you'd be like if you went back."
"I am charming, and handsome," Gojo laughs through the words while fighting with Ieiri over her food, fighting only because she put up a fight first, "and my students would have loved me, thank you very much."
"You should teach us!" Tsumiki suggests, her excitement bright and contagious. Megumi doesn't look quite as ecstatic about the idea.
"I should! Shoko, you could teach science, right?" Gojo smacks Nanami hard on the back, and he chokes on his food. "And Nanami could teach math."
Nanami bristles. "I'm not sure if crafting a school curriculum is the best course of action right now."
Gojo frowns and shakes his head solemnly, saying something like but what about the youth? before Megumi interrupts to ask what the other two did before the outbreak.
Nanami explains that he was an architect, which prompts Tsumiki to offer the paper and colored pencils she has upstairs so he can design a new layout for the compound. He politely clears his throat and nods. Ieiri says that she was also studying, but she was working on becoming a doctor. That got Megumi the most animated he's been all night, eyes going wide and sparkly the way a kid that age should always look.
"You wanted to be a doctor, then?" Ieiri asks with a lazy smile. They've all started growing fond of the kids.
Megumi shrugs and nods, trying his damnedest to seem like he isn't as excited as he actually is. "I don't know," he says eventually, which makes Gojo snort, which makes Ieiri stomp on his foot under the table. "I want to help people. That seemed like the next logical step to me."
Ieiri hums thoughtfully and reaches over to pat Megumi gently on the shoulder. "I wanted to help people, too. I've saved this idiot more times than I can count—" Megumi can't quite hide his laugh when Gojo whips his head around with a deeply offended expression— "and it's worth it every time. It's good to want to help people."
Megumi smiles and nods along, and it's nice to see the kids with those smiles on their faces. They have matching dimples. Suguru would've loved them.
"If you finish your food," Gojo says, fondness lacing his tone, "she'll teach you everything she knows."
Megumi looks over at Ieiri, wide-eyed, and she just shrugs something like a well, go ahead. He looks down solemnly at his bowl.
"You know, Gojo, I've always wanted to ask," Ieiri starts once Megumi begins to eat. "How's it feel knowing you're living through a historical event? This'll probably get added to the curriculum in the future, huh?"
"Well, technically," Gojo says, "we're always living through historical even—"
"You know what I meant."
Gojo laughs. He loves talking to Ieiri, if not for how easy she is to anger, then for how she's always good at riffing off of him.
"I don't know," he admits with a shrug. "It's just— I've spent my whole life reading about and studying all this crazy shit people have lived through, but it all feels so… far away, y'know? You never think it'll be you.
"I mean, I guess to answer your question from an— I don't know, academic standpoint—" Gojo pauses when Ieiri mimes someone pushing up their glasses, and he has to take a deep breath so he doesn't get distracted with more banter. "I can only hope I end up in a museum or something in the future. Like, how cool would that be? People years and years from now talking about me and all the cool stuff I did. All the people I loved."
"If they were gonna put you in a museum," Ieiri asks, "what artifact would you want them to display?"
Gojo mulls it over for a moment, but Tsumiki beats him to it.
"I'd want them to put my art!" She raises her hand emphatically. "Some big wall where they labelled what all of the art was, when they guessed it was made— oh, should I start dating things? What's the date, Megumi?"
"I'unno," Megumi answers through a mouthful of food. The kid is really determined to get through it now.
"So their guess is as good as mine," Tsumiki laments with a mournful shake of her head. "Maybe I could just put the season?"
Two kids, sitting and thinking about how they'll be in a museum in some distant future when all of this is over. About how people will look at their drawings and clothes and bones and think, wow, poor kids, but would never know them.
It’s not fair. It's not fair that they had their youth taken from them. It’s not fair that they have to worry about if their water is safe or where they'll get their next meal when the biggest concern they should have at this age is scraping their knees playing outside or studying for a math test. They deserve to be kids. They deserve it more than anyone.
When he looks over at Nanami, he has the same furrowed brow and pained eyes. Gojo grabs his hand and squeezes it under the table, and Nanami squeezes back.
"It's getting late," Nanami says. "We should go to bed."
Tsumiki is the one to gather all their dishes despite the protests, insisting that she was always the one who cleaned up and she was happy to do it. Megumi isn't helping much, but is still following her around. Maybe he's still feeling protective of her. Gojo doesn't blame him.
The adults discuss the possibility of taking night watches, despite the place's relatively secluded location. They end up deciding that the defenses aren't enough to let them sleep comfortably. When Gojo offers to take first watch, Ieiri and Nanami look at him with this— look. He doesn't really understand what he did, but he doesn't argue.
His bedroom is nearly pitch black when he walks in, and he has to walk around the room with his arms out in front of him during his nightly routine while his eyes try to adjust to the darkness. He changes out of the clothes he's been wearing for far too long, the ones caked in mud and blood and who knows what else. He uses the rain that's gathered in the bucket to try and feel clean and human again.
The bed is as comfortable as it looks. The blankets are thick like the ones Suguru preferred back at home. He can remember all those times he'd wake up to an empty bed in the middle of the night. He had to go and find wherever Suguru had cooped himself up with his laptop and coax him back to bed. Suguru would let Satoru drag him back to their bedroom, indulge when Satoru would lie him down and pull the blankets over him and tuck them under his body to trap him like a mummy. Satoru never liked those heavy blankets, how they made him feel trapped under their weight. The feeling always went away when he would climb in next to Suguru while he was untangling himself from the blankets, and Suguru would turn over with that toothy smile and lay his head on Satoru's chest.
Gojo closes his eyes and tries to sleep. He wants to dream of Suguru.
He can't sleep.
When he goes downstairs, still undressed and wrapped in a quilt, Nanami is sitting on the front porch. He turns when he hears the door open, takes in the sight for just a moment before turning back around. A silent invitation.
Gojo sits down on the steps next to him. "Do you think he's alive?"
When Nanami answers, he answers the real question.
"You have to forgive yourself," he says, "for everything you've ever done."
Nanami doesn't say anything when Gojo cries. Doesn't hold him, either. Gojo is thankful for it. He doesn't want comfort, he doesn't need help. He needs a witness. Someone to look at his tear-stained cheeks and the snot on the inside of his shirt collar and know him.
Nanami sends him away eventually, when Gojo is scraped down to hiccuping breaths and chattering teeth. Gojo doesn't thank Nanami when he leaves, just wishes him goodnight and accepts Nanami's nod as an answer.
When Ieiri sees him in the doorway, she doesn't ask what's wrong. Gojo is thankful for that, too. He needs someone to pump his heart and expand his lungs for him, just for a little while. She lets him drop the quilt he'd been dragging along with him and climb into bed with her. She doesn't complain when he's far too big for both of them to fit and she ends up semi-crushed between him and the wall. He can't cry any more tears but he still hides his face in her shirt.
He dozes in and out of sleep for a little bit, never fully resting. When Nanami comes knocking to wake Ieiri up for her shift, she insists that Gojo can stay, but when he's left alone in her bed he ends up just going back to his room anyways.
Megumi is standing out in the hallway when he opens the door.
"What are you doing awake?" Gojo asks.
"Couldn't sleep," Megumi responds. He doesn't sound like he's slept at all. "You?"
"Couldn't sleep."
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know. Where are you going?"
Megumi shrugs. They blink at each other.
"Who is it?" Megumi asks some time between one minute and one hour of their staring contest.
"Who— what?" Gojo grimaces, trying to blink past the darkness to gauge Megumi's expression, but he's only met with his shadow. "Who is… what?"
"Your— you know." Gojo can see Megumi vaguely gesture towards his hand.
Gojo looks down at the silver band adorning his left hand. It's dirty, but the grime smears off easily when he swipes his thumb over the cool metal. He used to be able to see his reflection in it, it was so shiny — but now, when he lifts it to his face, it's too scratched up to see anything at all.
He hadn't considered that this is now a world where he has to explain where the other half of his soul went.
"He isn't around anymore," he manages.
He can't see Megumi's face, but he can still feel the way the air around them changes. It makes Gojo feel guilty enough that he wishes he just lied. Ieiri would've gone along with it. Nanami could've been convinced. Gojo is stumbling his way through getting out an apology, because Megumi didn't know what he was asking, didn't know about the weird baggage Gojo was carrying with him and bringing into his home, when he just says,
"Oh."
Which is— fine. It's fine. Gojo understands that that's just how you react when you hear about somebody dying. But then he says,
"What was he like?"
And it's not that he knew exactly what to expect, because, well, this was his first time having a fiancé die on him. Nobody ever prepares you for this kind of situation. Nobody stops you when you're wedding planning and says you never know. They don't stop you when you're sneaking through jewelry boxes to find a ring size to tell you about the conversation you'll have with everybody you ever meet. They don't catch you when you're falling head over heels for a stranger at the beach and ask what if.
He knew he wasn't ready for What happened? or How long ago? or, like, Are you over it by now or is that some shit that still bothers you? or something. He didn't know that he wasn't ready for What was he like?
Everyone who knew Suguru knew Satoru, and everyone who knew Satoru knew Suguru. But here he is, talking to somebody who only knew one half of the pair. Where should he start? What can he even say? He feels like the only way he could ever get somebody to understand would be to saw through his ribcage and slice his heart out, still pumping and gushing blood when he holds it out in front of him and says, Look. Can you see him? Can you feel him? This is my Suguru.
Gojo can't do that, so he starts at the beginning.
"His name was Suguru Geto," he says. "He would've loved you."