Hoping Then (Part 2)

AKA a continuation of the previous chapter. Set in between chapters 221 and 223. There aren't really any true spoilers per se, but since this one is set later in the story, I included a spoiler warning just to be safe for people who are really careful to avoid them.

"You haven't told him."

Kaia withheld a sigh and didn't even bother looking at the source of the voice because Shoko was already walking across the faculty room and sitting down on the couch opposite of Kaia's. She smelled of tobacco, but Kaia noticed she held a cigarette that was only halfway smoked between her fingers. Not only that, but the little white cancer stick had been snuffed out.

"You stop smoking that because of me?" Kaia asked, her eyes flickering to the cigarette before they returned to Shoko.

"Yep," Shoko said a little too casually.

Kaia put down the book she'd been reading about the Heian era and the time of Sukuna's prime. She set the book on the tiled floor and sat up, crossing both legs underneath her.

The faculty room was even more bare than usual. Instead of papers and student evaluations thrown around the room, there were books on old jujutsu legends, the Heian era, Sukuna, and the Sugawara clan. The two old blue couches with scratchy cushions weren't even free from the research Kaia had been doing, as both of them had scrolls and large tomes thrown on top when she'd run out of space on the tables in the room.

"How are you feeling? I'm worried about you. You're getting awfully thin again," Shoko noticed.

"I'm fine," Kaia said.

It'd almost become a mantra for her at that point. How many times had she said "I'm fine" since Shibuya and the start of the culling games? Probably more than she could count.

"You've lost weight," Shoko said. She gave a disapproving once over of Kaia's frame. "You can't keep doing that."

"I can't help it. Every time I try to eat something, I end up puking it all up. What's the point?" Kaia said. She could feel her lower lip pouting ever so slightly, not that her expression did anything to lessen Shoko's scrutiny.

"It should pass when you reach the second trimester. So not too far from now," she replied.

Kaia knew all the blood from her face drained because she started feeling very woozy again. Almost like she stood up too fast and had a bad bout of vertigo.

"Right. Second trimester," she said under her breath. She looked down at where her hands were folded together in her lap and started to pick at the corners of her fingernails. Shoko had been trying to talk to Kaia about this for days now but Kaia would always change the subject. She didn't know how to talk about it. She didn't know how to grapple with the fact that she wasn't ready for it. That she wasn't ready to be pregnant or to be a mother. That she didn't even know how to properly feed herself, so she highly doubted that she'd be able to care for another human being. That she wished her mother was still alive so she could walk Kaia through the whole thing. That she was terrified and didn't want to be stuck with a child all on her own if something bad happened.

…That if something bad did happen and she was left alone that she would never forgive herself for not keeping the pregnancy.

"You haven't told him," Shoko said again. It wasn't a question or even a statement. It was an assertion.

Kaia wasn't able to withhold her sigh that time. It came out of her with heavy frustration and left behind a full-blown pout in its wake.

"No," Kaia said.

"Why? Don't you think he should know?"

"It'd be a distraction. He needs to be focused going into this fight with Sukuna. He doesn't need to be thinking about anything else other than that," Kaia hissed, trying to keep her voice lowered even though no one else was in the room with them.

Shoko rolled her eyes and fiddled with the unlit cigarette.

"You're so ridiculous," she muttered. "He's already distracted. He's distracted by Kenjaku defiling Suguru's body. He's distracted by Sukuna using Fushiguro as a puppet. He's distracted by the thought of coming home to you after all of this is over."

Kaia's fingers twitched from where she picked at them and her jaw locked, clenching it until her molars started to hurt.

"The last time he got distracted, he ended up in the prison realm," she started. "And sure, you're probably right about everything else but why would I take that chance and give him something even bigger to worry about? I'm not doing that. I won't."

"He has a right to know," Shoko said firmly, her voice rising just slightly in volume.

"I don't even know if I'm keeping it!" Kaia hissed.

"We both know you're going to keep it."

"Are you kidding me?" Kaia scoffed. "Why would I? So I can be a fucking incubator for jujutsu society? The same society that exiled my family and wanted us dead?"

"Kaia, no one thinks that of you. You're going to keep it because you love Satoru and want a life with him."

"Exactly! I do want a life with him! And in order to get that, I need him to survive this fight!" she snapped through her teeth.

"But you have to accept the fact that he might not—"

It was too much all at once. Kaia's heart was threatening to burst out of her chest, her head was spinning with anxiety, and a wave of nausea rolled over her all at once. The combination of the three proved to be too powerful for Kaia to simply breathe through it and she ended up having to throw herself off the couch and run to the trash can that was situated right beside the door to the faculty room. She fell to her knees just in time for a burning retch to come over her.

She was vaguely aware of Shoko cursing quietly to herself and the soft patter of footsteps making their way over to her. Kaia continued retching, but nothing other than bitter bile came up.

Shoko's hands gathered Kaia's hair and held it back as she continued to gag and heave until everything became downright painful and she was groaning miserably.

God. Why did they call it morning sickness when she had it all day long?

The door directly on Kaia's left suddenly opened but she couldn't get her head out of the trash can long enough to look up and see who walked in.

"Oh!" Ijichi gasped. "Kaia, are you ok—"

"Bunny?"

Fuck.

Kaia breathed in as deeply as she could through her nose to try and push down the bile that was rapidly clawing its way up her esophagus so she could assure everyone that she was just fine, but her body had other plans because bile was suddenly already in her mouth and she was puking for what was probably the sixth time that day.

"Nothing's even coming up," Shoko muttered in a very disappointed tone that echoed Nanami's sentiment of 'disappointed but not surprised.' "Haven't you eaten anything today?"

"Sho," Kaia groaned when the gagging finally came to an end. She spit into the garbage a few more times and breathed in deeply through her nose until the nausea was placated for a moment. She spat a second time and shakily pulled her head out of the bin.

A large hand immediately came to rest on Kaia's clammy forehead to clearly check for a fever, and she didn't even have to look up to know who it belonged to.

"You threw up this morning too," Satoru said with a deep frown. "Are you sick with something?"

"I'm fine," Kaia said.

There it was again. The mantra that had kept her going since Shibuya. She was fine. She was always fine.

"It doesn't feel like you have a fever. Did you eat something bad?" Satoru asked, still frowning deeply at her.

"I'm fine," Kaia reiterated, a little harder that time. "Sorry, I need to go brush my teeth."

She hurried herself out of the room without so much as another word or glance at anyone, Satoru included.

She was fine. She was fine.

She was fine.

Gojo's frown only deepened when he saw Kaia retreating away from him and going down the hall. She'd been doing a lot of that lately. From the moment they reunited in November to that day, she'd been dodging him at every opportunity. It really seemed like the only time he got to have with her was at night when they shared their bed.

It wasn't enough.

"She's avoiding me," he said.

"I don't think she's doing that on purpose. She's had a rough time since Shibuya," Ijichi offered. "Nanami's death was really hard on her and then she went to Okinawa until you were released. I think she's just tired and a little frustrated that she hasn't been fighting."

Gojo raised an eyebrow and looked between Ijichi and Ieiri.

"She went to Okinawa?"

"…Did she not tell you that?" Ijichi squeaked, slinking away from Gojo and standing just behind Ieiri.

"No, she didn't," he muttered.

Why would she go to Okinawa when all of the fighting was on the mainland? Better yet. Why would she go to Okinawa at all? She hadn't been there since they broke her curse and he didn't exactly think that she wanted to ever go back there.

But that wasn't the only thing he thought was odd.

"Why wasn't she fighting?" he asked.

"It was a strategic decision," Ieiri said. "The students wanted to fight, we were on damage control, and Kaia went to Okinawa to see if her family had any information on Sukuna or Kenjaku since the Murakami have been around for a thousand years. We needed bodies here and she's the only person who can set foot on her family's property, so it made sense."

"Why wouldn't she tell me that?" Gojo asked, more to himself than to anyone else.

"Who knows. It's been a weird couple of weeks," Ieiri said.

He didn't disagree. And as much as he wanted to find Kaia to check on her and make sure she was okay, he had to get back to his training. There was only about two weeks or so until December 24th and while he didn't think he needed to hone his skills, he did want to work on his conditioning. Every little bit helped since he was about to fight the King of Curses.

"Well, I guess I'll talk to her later tonight," he said, even though he desperately wanted to talk to her now.

"Hey, before you go," Ieiri said, putting a half-smoked cigarette to her lips and relighting it. "You can see people's cursed energy output, right?"

Gojo adjusted his sunglasses.

"Yeah, if my eyes are uncovered. Why?"

"Ieiri…" Ijichi said in a low voice that almost sounded like a warning.

"How has Kaia's cursed energy looked?" she asked casually, sucking on her cigarette and twisting a lock of brown hair around her finger.

Gojo stared at her for a brief second before shrugging.

"It looks the way it always looks. Maybe a little more chaotic right now, but stress will do that. Why?"

"No reason. I was just wondering because I've been worried about her," Ieiri said. She blew out rings of smoke after taking a puff of her cigarette. "Did you need something?"

"We were actually looking for Iori. She has the keys to the private training ground and we think it would be better for Gojo to practice over there with some privacy," Ijichi said.

"Ah. She was with the Kyoto students in the cafeteria last time I saw her," Ieiri said.

"Sounds good. Thanks," Ijichi said.

They left the faculty room and went back down the corridor toward the cafeteria. Gojo's mind had been racing a million miles per minute since he'd gotten out of the prison realm. He was constantly thinking about the best way to beat Sukuna and to save Megumi, how to free Suguru's body from Kenjaku's control, and how to come out of it still breathing.

But now he was worried about Kaia. He'd been worried about her since they reunited, but that interaction with Ieiri didn't help anything. It only made it worse.

"Ijichi," Gojo said on their way down the corridor.

"Um. Yes?" Ijichi asked nervously.

"What's wrong with Kaia?" he asked very seriously.

"What?"

"You heard me. What's wrong with her? She's been acting weird from the moment I got out of the prison realm," Gojo said.

"Um. I really—I don't know," Ijichi stuttered. He cleared his throat and started to walk faster in an attempt to get away from Gojo, but Gojo simply lengthened his stride and caught up without any trouble. "I'm not kidding when I say that Nanami's death was hard on her. She hasn't been the same since."

Gojo frowned. "Ijichi, if you keep lying to me then expect a forehead flick."

"Stop that!" Ijichi shrieked. "I'm being serious! Ask Iori if you don't believe me how hard his death was on her. She was the one who showed Kaia the body. Between that and you getting sealed, she wasn't the same. And then having to spend like ten days by herself in Okinawa? No wonder she's acting weird. Who knows what she saw there."

The best lies were the ones that were riddled with bits of truth. It wasn't that Gojo didn't believe Ijichi. He did. He was sure that Nanami's death rocked Kaia to her core. And he was sure that spending extended time in Okinawa alone was also hard on her mind.

But with that being said, he didn't believe Ijichi's explanation. Just enough was missing from it that Gojo was still skeptical. It didn't explain why Kaia neglected to tell him she went to Okinawa. It didn't explain why she was so tirelessly avoiding him. And it didn't explain why she suddenly had bouts of vertigo, nausea, and headaches all the time.

"You know I'm going to find out eventually, right?" Gojo asked.

Ijichi sighed deeply.

"Yeah. I know."

None of the food in the school's café looked even a little appetizing. All of the sorcerers were currently hunkered down at the Tokyo campus until December 24th, and Kaia was no exception. She sat at a table with Shoko, Ijichi, and Utahime with a plate of white rice in front of her and a side of edamame. The rest of them were eating the salmon, vegetables, and rice. And while it typically would have been a meal Kaia was excited to have, her stomach churned the longer she looked at it.

"You have to eat something," Shoko said.

"She's right, you know," Utahime added.

"I'm not hungry," Kaia mumbled.

"You haven't eaten anything substantial in days," Shoko said, this time scowling.

"At least have some of the edamame," Ijichi said. "You love edamame."

She did love it. Not that it mattered because looking at the little green pods didn't make her any more excited to eat. In fact, the longer she looked at them, the more nauseous she became.

"Hey," Satoru chirped. He sat down in the empty seat beside Kaia and shot an easy grin at everyone. "Did everyone miss me? I know it's been a while."

"That joke wasn't funny the first time you told it and it's not funny the twentieth time," Utahime said as she rolled her eyes.

"You've also been back for what? A month now?" Shoko added.

Kaia tried picking at her rice but the act of chewing and swallowing it most definitely did not agree with her stomach and she huffed in frustration.

"What's wrong?" Satoru asked immediately, his hand ghosting over her lower back.

"Nothing," Kaia said as casually as she could. "I'm just not hungry."

He had his sunglasses on, but she knew his eyes were flickering across her, looking for any sign of what was actually bothering her.

"You don't even want the edamame?" Satoru asked, frowning at her. "It's your favorite. You're always making me run out and get more."

"It's okay, I'm not—" she stopped herself when she caught sight of the disapproving glances coming from Shoko, Ijichi, and Utahime. God damnit. She had to at least pretend like things were normal. And doing something as small and stupid as turning down edamame would definitely not be normal, especially not when she usually had the habit of snagging bits of the dish from everyone else at community meals.

She held back a sigh and grabbed a green pod to pop it into her mouth.

Logically, Kaia knew that the taste was exactly the same as it always had been. But at that moment? It tasted like a foul cross between rust and dirty pond water, and nausea reared its ugly head in response.

"And now she's turning green," Ijichi noticed the second she bit down.

Before she could throw up all over herself, Kaia's hand darted out and snatched up a napkin to spit the food into, squeezing her eyes shut and taking in a very deep, very slow breath through her nose. She then breathed out through her mouth and repeated the gesture three or four more times before she finally felt like she wasn't going to be sick in front of everyone.

"…are you okay?" Satoru asked, all silliness gone from his voice in an instant. He didn't even sound particularly gentle. The tone that came out of his mouth was actually both incredibly exasperated and clearly very concerned.

"I'm f—"

"Fine. Yes, I know 'you're fine.' You've been telling me how 'fine' you are for weeks, even though I have eyes and can clearly see you're not fine at all," he said flatly.

His words stung.

She knew he wasn't trying to be a dick or even aggressive. She knew that he genuinely was growing more and more concerned about her state, but it was getting exceptionally difficult to be open with him when everyone around them knew about her stupid fucking secret and when they were all expecting her to come clean to Satoru any day now. As if he needed one more thing to worry about when his fight with Sukuna was looming over all of their heads.

It just seemed easier to retreat within herself than to address the elephant in the room.

"Satoru," she started, wincing at how weak her voice sounded and rubbing her forehead nervously. "Everything is fine. I've just been feeling a little off, that's all. You don't need to worry about me. Just focus on your fight."

"How am I supposed to not worry about you when you're keeping secrets from me?" he said right back.

Her muscles locked in a rigid place. Her eyes shot over to Shoko, but Shoko looked just as surprised as Kaia did. Her eyes were wide and she seemed far more interested in her food than the current conversation at hand.

In fact, everyone did. Utahime and Ijichi both awkwardly pushed their food around their plates and refused to make eye contact with her.

"I'm not keeping secrets from you," Kaia said.

"No?" Satoru asked. He let his sunglasses slide down the bridge of his nose until she saw a blaze of blue. He was challenging her.

He knew something.

"No," she said, frowning and shooting him a glare.

"So when were you going to tell me that you went to Okinawa by yourself for ten days?"

Silence.

She blinked helplessly at him but his expression was smug and knowing. On one hand, she was relieved that he didn't know about the pregnancy. On the other hand, she felt an immense amount of guilt for not telling him about Okinawa. She hadn't meant to withhold it from him. There just hadn't been a good time to bring it up.

"That's not—" she tripped over her words and had some vague hope that someone would come to her defense, but no one came to her rescue. Not that she blamed her friends. She wouldn't have gotten involved in any of their lovers' quarrels either. "It seemed insignificant, all things considered."

Satoru's eyes widened for a brief moment. "Insignificant? Kaia, that place messes with your head and you have this weird little tendency to try and kill yourself when you're there. How could you think that's insignificant? What if something happened to you while you were there? Alone, too? You have a death wish or something?"

She was starting to get sweaty and the anxiety was swirling around her head in a way that was starting to give her a headache.

"We broke my curse," she said weakly as she pinched the bridge of her nose when her head started hurting. "It doesn't affect me the way it used to."

Satoru scoffed, "it clearly still affected you. Something's off with you and has been from the second I got out of the prison realm. You're going out of your way to avoid me, you constantly have headaches and vertigo, and now you suddenly can't eat edamame? Your favorite food? What's going on with you?"

She clenched her jaw and pulled her hand away from her face as she scowled at him.

"Stop worrying so much about me. I'm fine, okay? You need to worry about December 24th. Not about whether or not I can eat edamame," she snapped, loud enough to draw attention from some of the students at their tables on the other side of the cafeteria.

Satoru's frown broke her heart in two but she tried not to dwell on it. She kept telling herself that his ignorance on the subject was for the best. If being kept in the dark meant his odds against Sukuna were better, then so be it.

He frowned and reached out, his hand hovering just above her back.

"Kaia, what's going on?" he asked in an incredibly soft and downright patient voice. A stark contrast from how agitated he'd been a second ago.

It was too much and her emotions got the better of her.

"Nothing! Nothing's going on!" she snapped, standing up from the table and pushing her food away. "I wish everyone would stop asking what's wrong with me. There's nothing fucking wrong with me!"

She stormed out like some petulant child after her outburst and all but ran to her room, slamming the door shut, burying her face into her pillow, and letting out a frustrated scream.

Gojo stared in shock and disbelief as Kaia stalked out of the cafeteria. He remained seated for a moment too long before he gave a heavy sigh that wracked through his entire body and started raking his fingers aggressively through his hair.

"…that was awkward," Shoko muttered after the silence in the room broke when the students started quietly chattering again, probably commenting on Kaia's outburst.

"I hate fighting with her," Gojo said under his breath as he continued to nervously fiddle with his hair.

"Try not to let it get to you. She's been like that with everyone lately, not just you," Utahime said. Gojo glanced up at her and she tried to give him a reassuring smile, though it didn't make him feel any better. "You didn't see her when she saw Nanami's body. It was like someone snuffed all the light out of her. She's been trying to get it back ever since."

"She was also on her own when we got word you were sealed," Shoko added between bites of fish. "Then immediately she had to start fighting. She didn't get any time to process what happened to you until after the incident, and that was when she had to also process that her best friend died in a really horrible way."

"And then add being alone in her family's haunted ancestral home on an isolated island for over a week? That would affect anybody," Ijichi said.

Why were they all trying to make him feel better? Better yet, why were they all excusing her behavior, as if she was acting totally normal?

Gojo split his gaze between the three of them.

"So you're all telling me that grief is to blame for all of this?" he asked lowly.

And there it was. Silence paired with nervous glances at each other which gave them away.

"Thought not," he drawled. "So, what is it? Is she sick with something serious? Because if she is, I need to know. I can't—" his voice got caught on something in his throat and his chest tightened. "I can't have something awful happen to her because she didn't get treatment for it. She can't—she has to be okay. She has to be."

Back when Kaia was still cursed and Gojo was doing research on the Murakami, he didn't come across one single record of anyone in the family getting any illnesses. And he definitely didn't see anything about cursed moon technique holders getting sick. Holders of the cursed moon technique lived long, healthy lives up until the little girl killed them.

But maybe the curse kept them healthy and without it, Kaia was susceptible to illness.

The thought made him feel like a caged animal and he bounced his knee quickly as he tried to process it and think of potential solutions.

The three of his friends all looked like they felt bad for him and he hated that. He was Satoru Gojo. People didn't feel bad for him. He was the strongest and people didn't feel bad for someone with his ability and notoriety.

"She's not sick," Shoko said. Her expression shifted. No longer did she have a deep frown or furrowed brows. Instead, her mouth was pursed into a tight line and her brows were arched. "I can promise you that, but you're right. She's keeping something from you."

"Shoko," Utahime said as if she was trying to get Shoko to stop talking. It was a bit like earlier that morning when Ijichi had done the same thing.

Well, at least someone was finally being honest.

"Okay, what is it?" he asked.

"I can't tell you," Shoko said. "But you should go to her now and ask. You can throw me under the bus if she gets mad. I don't care. You should know."

He didn't need to be told twice.

Gojo got up from the table and wasted no time going to their room, hellbent on getting answers.

There were three knocks at the door followed by a soft, "Bunny?"

Kaia huffed and waited for Satoru to push the door open. She supposed this moment was inevitable. She'd been acting like a brat from the moment he got unsealed and it was only a matter of time before he got fed up with it and cornered her.

She just wished it didn't have to happen on the heels of freaking out in front of their friends.

"Yeah," she called out.

Satoru walked in, looking handsome as always. She hadn't noticed it in the cafeteria because she'd been too busy trying to not vomit, but he looked good. Better than usual, and that was saying something. His black t-shirt fit him a little too well and it hugged his biceps and chest in a way that would have made anyone stare at him. His grey sweatpants didn't really help with that either because they were tight around his muscled thighs and slung low on his hips. Then there was the fact that he also ditched his sunglasses for some reason?

He knew what he was doing. He was trying to disarm her any way he could, and if looking like a goddamn chiseled Greek god helped with that, then he had no shame and would gladly use his looks to his advantage.

"I think we need to talk," he said.

They did, but that didn't make her any more eager to do so. Her heart was racing to the point that it was almost painful and she still had a headache pounding away in the back of her skull.

Why now? Why did this have to happen to her on the brink of the actual end of the world? Why did she have to tell Satoru right before he walked into a fight where his odds of survival were a complete and total crapshoot to predict?

"You're probably right," she said. "Better to do it here than in front of an audience."

He walked over to the bed. It was slightly smaller than a queen-sized mattress since it was the school's property after all, and it was a little tight for two people to comfortably sleep in, not that Satoru cared. He specifically said he didn't want a separate room and insisted on staying with Kaia during their stay at the school with the others.

It really was the only time they'd spent together since he was unsealed. They spent their nights together, wrapped up in each other, and then he went off to train in the morning and she would busy herself with futile research. He usually tried to find her during lunch or dinner, but she'd gotten excellent at avoiding him, so she hadn't even seen him very much during meal breaks.

"Bunny, please tell me what's going on. I'm worried," he said. And damn. He sounded downright wrecked.

It was like a reflex. Completely unintentional as she started to say, "I'm fin—"

"Don't lie to me," Satoru interrupted. His voice was deliciously low and it gave her chills in a way that he absolutely had to have noticed.

She exhaled and sat up straighter, leaning against the wall that the bed was pressed against and bringing one knee to her chest that she rested her elbow on.

"It's not a lie. I am fine. Maybe not good, but fine," she conceded.

He joined her, leaning against the wall as well and crossing his arms as he listened. Their thighs touched and so did their arms. He was so warm even through the material of his clothes and it only made her want to curl up with him and hide away from the reality of the situation.

She couldn't decide if Satoru sitting so close was because it was another tactic to disarm her or if he simply wanted to touch her.

"Things were hard for those three weeks. You were sealed, Nanami was dead, and I was in Okinawa," she said. "And before you freak out, Okinawa was fine. It didn't mess with my head the way it usually does."

"But it did mess with you," he noticed.

She rubbed her hands together to try and dissolve some of the mounting tension in her gut. She didn't really want to tell him about what happened on the island, but she didn't want to lie to him either.

"A little, but it wasn't really the land that messed with me." She took a deep breath. "It was the special-grade cursed spirit on the land that did. The woman who sleeps in Northern rain."

It felt weird to reference the words inscribed on the shrines of the property now that the curse was broken.

"What?" he said, utterly dumbfounded.

"She said the locals have been calling her Akemi for hundreds of years. Means 'bright' or 'beauty.' Ironic, right?"

"Did she hurt you?" he asked very seriously as his sky-bright blue eyes flitted across her body and face.

"No. She didn't touch me. She can't because of your binding vow. We just… Talked."

"You talked?" he repeated.

"She knew about Sukuna and Kenjaku. Thought I'd press her for information," Kaia said. She shrugged, trying to make it seem like it wasn't a big deal. As if pumping a thousand-year-old unregistered special-grade cursed spirit for information was a daily occurrence.

Satoru bristled beside her and Kaia watched him mess with his hair to expel some of his frantic energy through her peripheral vision.

"Did she at least give you anything useful?" he asked in a strained voice.

"…No," Kaia said after a moment. "She just taunted me and talked about my family."

He nodded and placed a large hand on her thigh. He was so warm and she found herself leaning into his side without realizing it until he moved his hand and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, kissing her temple.

"Did you get anything useful out of Okinawa?" he asked.

Well, she got protection from the hellscape that was Tokyo and some old texts about Sukuna during the Heian period, but probably nothing worth the stress it caused.

"I don't know," she admitted.

He hummed but didn't press her further for information on Okinawa. He simply sat there quietly and let her steer the conversation at her own pace, which Kaia greatly appreciated.

"I'm just happy you're safe," he said after a moment of silence. "I don't know what I would have done if I got out of the prison realm and you were hurt."

She shrank in on herself. He wasn't even being overbearing about the whole situation. She'd been a brat to him and he just sat back and took it, simply concerned about her health.

"You're not hurt, right?" he asked.

"No," she said. Maybe she was hurt emotionally, but physically she was fine.

"There's more you're not telling me, isn't there?" he asked.

Well. Now or never. She was out of all other ways to stall.

"Yeah," she said, starting to pick at the corner of her fingernails. She pulled away from him and turned her hips so she was no longer leaning against the wall and instead was facing him directly. His eyes flickered between where she was aggressively picking at her fingernails and where she started to rake her teeth over her lower lip.

The corners of his lips twitched down as he pushed himself away from the wall and sat opposite of her so they faced each other directly.

"Bunny, please. What's going on? Are you sick? Or injured? Did someone hurt you?"

He wasn't even asking anymore. He was begging—pleading with her to be honest. His pretty eyes were borderline glassy and he kept pushing his hair out of his face as if he didn't know what to do with his hands.

"No. No, of course not," she assured. She reached forward, taking his hands in hers so she would stop picking her nails and so he would stop fidgeting. Her stomach twisted to the point of pain and she started sweating once again, but she did the best she could to put it out of her head and focus on the conversation.

She cleared her throat and looked down at where their fingers were intertwined in the space between them.

"After Shibuya, several of us ended up meeting with Master Tengen," she started. "Yuji, Megumi, Maki, and Yuta were there. We talked with him about the Culling Game and Kenjaku's overall goals and came up with a plan to get you out of the prison realm. The students were going to enter the Culling Game, Choso and Yuki were going to stay back and guard Tengen, and I—well, I decided I would go to Okinawa and see if my family had any texts about Sukuna or Kenjaku since the Murakami were around for a thousand years and might have had some information we didn't have."

Kaia might not have been looking him in the eye, but she didn't need to. She could feel Satoru tracking her every movement. Every breath. Every flutter of her eyes. He saw it all and sat still, completely silent as she went on.

"It seemed like a good plan. I didn't want to go on damage control with Shoko and the others because staying back and waiting while the students risked their lives would have driven me insane. And I um… I wasn't able to join the Culling Game, so that was how I wanted to help."

She stopped and risked a look at Satoru. He was frowning and watching her with a very serious expression on his face. It wasn't until she failed to go on any further that Satoru spoke up.

"Why weren't you able to join the Culling Game?" he asked.

There it was. The question that would lead to all the answers.

She felt sick.

"I uh…" she bit down on the inside of her cheek and pulled her hands away from his, crossing her arms over herself as a sort of shield and biting down on the corner of her thumbnail.

"Kaia?" Satoru asked when she remained silent. "Why weren't you able to join the Culling Game?"

"Tengen forbade it," she answered.

Fuck, she was stalling and Satoru could tell.

He just stared. His face was a blank mask and he leaned forward ever so slightly, waiting for an explanation.

"Okay, why?" he finally asked.

"Because um. Well… I mean…" she tried to find the right words. Was there a euphemism for what she was trying to say? Was there an easy way to deliver this type of news to the strongest sorcerer who was about to fight the King of Curses in a few days?

"You're killing me here," he finally said when she still hadn't told him.

She huffed and interlocked her fingers behind her neck and bit down as hard as she possibly could on the back of her bottom lip until she tasted something metallic on her tongue.

"Because I'm… Um…" she cleared her throat. Fuck! She had to just do it. She needed to. She held her breath and said a rushed, "becauseI'mpregnantSatoru."

She was terrified to look at him. Absolutely, positively, fucking terrified to see his face. He was probably going to throw up. He was probably going to panic and leave her all alone and immediately start training again. He was probably—

"…What?" he asked, voice breathy and soft and barely audible.

She couldn't even look at him. She just kept staring at the bed beneath them and furiously rubbing the back of her neck.

"Tengen didn't allow me to join the Culling Game because I'm pregnant. He said that I had to avoid the fighting at all costs because we didn't know what was going to happen to you and that in the event you didn't make it out of this, I was carrying the heir to the Gojo clan."

She grimaced. Hard too. But she had to see his face. Had to see if he was pissed off or if he was ready to storm out of there.

Kaia slowly looked up to see Satoru's unbelieving expression. His lips were slightly parted, his eyes were wide, and for probably the first time in his entire life, he was speechless.

"Please say something," she said under her breath, almost afraid of speaking too loudly.

"You—you're pregnant?" he stammered.

She nodded, still gritting her teeth and wincing, bracing for the worst.

"How?" he asked in a voice that was way louder than she expected. "Don't you get shots for that?"

"Uh yeah. Guess I got a defective batch?" she said as nervous laughter started to bubble up in her chest.

He kept staring at her with that same bewildered look on his face and honestly? It did nothing for Kaia's nerves. It only made them worse.

"So that's why—" he stopped talking, clearly putting the pieces together all at once. "That's why you've been sick the last couple of mornings and why you couldn't stomach the edamame."

"Yeah," she said. She started laughing again. It wasn't a pretty sounding laugh either, but a nervous, high-pitched, hysteric one that brought tears to her eyes. "I'm sorry, Satoru. I didn't want to tell you and give you one more thing to worry about before the fight, but everyone keeps treating me like I'm made of glass when I'm not." Her stressed-out giggles started to die down and slowly became replaced with quiet tears. "I can get rid of it if you want. I'm still a few weeks away from the second trimester, so it wouldn't be a big deal. I just—I didn't want to get rid of it on the off chance that you don't come back."

She was full-on crying. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks faster than she could wipe them away. She sniffled and tried to stop the tears but they were so fucking persistent. They'd been persistent ever since Shibuya and she was sick of them. She didn't even know if she was crying because she was pregnant or if she was crying because the thought of a future without Satoru was so horrifying she couldn't stand to keep it together.

"What? You think I want you to get rid of it? Why?"

He reached out and pulled her hands away from her eyes and cradled her face, leaning forward and kissing her forehead and temples, choosing to eventually pull her against his chest.

"Because it's too much for you right now. It's one more thing to distract you from your fight and if you're distracted, you might not come back," she said as quickly as the tears allowed her. "So I can get rid of it if you want. I probably should."

"That's not what I want," he said firmly. He wiped her tears away with his thumbs and kissed her face over and over and over again until it was becoming borderline ridiculous she was weakly laughing and swatting him away.

"What do you want then?" she finally asked when he stopped hovering and fretting over her crying.

He chuckled. The sound was pleasantly low and accompanied by an easy smile that would have flustered anyone who got to see it.

"I want you, Bunny," he said. "I always want you."

"I meant the pregnancy," she deadpanned.

"I'm getting there," he said, still smiling. "I'd love for you to keep it. I want to see you all cute when you're nine months along. I want to see what our child looks like. I want to see whether they have your red hair and green eyes or my devilishly handsome good looks."

She couldn't help it when she laughed and rolled her eyes.

"Seriously?" she asked.

"Of course. Why are you surprised? You've always known that I wanted to marry you and start a family together. I know you found the ring I hid at home."

She blinked at him in disbelief while a coy smile slid across his face.

"You're not slick. I knew you found it the whole time," he said.

"If you knew I found it then why didn't you propose?" she asked, feeling her lips start to form a pout despite her best attempts not to.

He grinned and crawled closer to her on the bed so he could curl his hand around her neck and kiss her hard on the lips.

"Because I was trying to find a way to surprise you," he murmured between kisses.

"So then," she tangled her fingers in his soft white hair as he started to kiss his way down her neck. "You're not upset?"

"No, Bunny," he said. His voice was low and steady, and suddenly he was crowding her just enough that she had to recline all the way back until she was completely beneath him and he hovered over her. "You have no idea how fuckin' happy this makes me."

She could feel his grin as he kissed her. He made his way lower down her neck until he was kissing his way across her collar and over her clothed breasts. He kissed lower until he reached her abdomen and pressed a series of gentle kisses there.

"I can't believe you're pregnant," he said so softly, almost like a prayer. "You're always beautiful but you're going to be so fucking gorgeous when you start showing. Everyone will know that you're all mine."

As much as she wanted to enjoy his undivided attention, there was still too much on her mind.

"Hate to break it to you, but everyone already knew that," she said with a weak smile. She ran her fingers through his soft hair as he continued to press affectionate kisses to her stomach. "What about your fight? This is just another thing for you to worry about and I don't want—what if something happens to you and then—" her breath got trapped at the top of her lungs and her fingers stuttered.

"Hey." He came back up to kiss her softly on the lips. "I'll win."

"And if you don't? What then? Sukuna is a thousand years old and his stupid servants probably have almost all of his fingers. What if—"

"Shh," he hushed. Satoru hovered over her and lingered close enough that their noses brushed against each other. "I'll win."

It wasn't good enough.

It wasn't that she didn't believe in his strength. She did. She truly did, but she also could recognize the gravity of the situation. And then all of this coming on the heels of Satoru being sealed? His sealing was proof that things could go wrong and that he wasn't invincible. And that only made things worse and the fear seized her by the fucking throat and threatened to freeze her to death.

"But what if you're wrong?" she quietly asked as those persistent tears pricked at the back of her eyes again.

His icy eyes bore directly into hers. He said nothing for a heavy moment and then stroked his thumb across her cheekbone.

"Marry me," was all he said.

She stared at him and planted a hand on his chest to push him away just enough so that she could see him better.

"What?"

"I'm serious. Marry me," he said again without any further explanation.

Kaia wasn't sure if she was hallucinating but she felt like she might have been because how was that the place where his mind went? There she was. A goddamn mess over the possibility of him not coming back and that was his solution?

"I don't follow," she admitted.

"You know that I've wanted to propose for a while now. You even found the ring I got you," he started. "I know this isn't the romantic proposal either of us wanted, but I'm serious. Marry me. It'll clean up some of the loose ends in the event I don't make it back."

Kaia pushed herself up into a seated position. Her back was straight and she could feel how taut her shoulders were suddenly pulled. She started to shake her head very slowly, her mouth getting dry.

"Satoru, don't. I don't want to marry you as a goodbye," she said in a voice so low it was almost a whisper.

He reached out for her again, seemingly unable to go more than a few seconds without touching her, and cradled her face. He pulled her closer until their foreheads touched and she was completely overwhelmed with everything about him. Everything from the warmth of his touch, the smell of his sandalwood soap, to the rough calluses of his palms overpowered all of her senses until he was the only thing in the world that mattered.

"It's not a goodbye," he promised. "I'm going to win, but I know it'll be a tough fight. If you're my wife and something happens to me, then I know you're taken care of. You'll get everything. The penthouse, the money, support from the clan. You'll need all of that to take care of yourself and our child."

There were too many emotions that crested over Kaia for her to be able to name them all. Something lodged itself in her throat when he referred to the pregnancy as their child. Then there was the relief that Satoru was taking her concerns seriously.

And there was the horrible reality that there was a very real possibility he wouldn't come back. She wasn't sure if she could be by herself again. She had no family left. Her best friend who had practically been her brother was dead. Her other best friend lived on the other side of the world and was (rightfully) far removed from jujutsu society. And then there was Satoru who might not be around for much longer either.

It may have been selfish, but she didn't want to be alone again. It almost killed her last time and she didn't think she had it in her to go through that a second time. And to bring a child into that loneliness?

Kaia wasn't sure that she was strong enough for that.

"So a shotgun wedding," she croaked out in a poor attempt to lighten the mood.

He chuckled and said, "call it what you want, but I was going to marry you anyway. So what if it happens a little faster than either of us originally planned?"

"Yeah, but I don't want you to feel like you have to do this because I got pregnant at the worst possible time," Kaia said, pursing her lips to hold back a frown.

"I don't," he said very seriously. "I want to make you my wife as soon as possible."

She pursed her lips tighter.

"Yeah, but—"

Satoru cut her off before she could barely get any words out, clearly not up for listening to her half-hearted excuses.

"You're worried about me being distracted during my fight. I'll be distracted if you're not taken care of. This will give me the reassurance I need so I can focus on Sukuna," he said right away.

She let out a weak laugh. "Now you're just being manipulative."

"Am I?" he asked, smiling brightly at her. "I disagree. It's only manipulative if you don't actually want to marry me."

She laughed a little harder. "You know I want to."

"Great, so let's do it. It can just be the two of us if you want. One of the auxiliary managers can officiate. Maybe Ijichi could," Satoru said. He spoke casually. His eyes glittered with excitement and his bright smile turned into an endearing boyish one that was still able to give her butterflies.

Her words started to fail her, so Kaia didn't bother trying to respond. She instead curled her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly, burying her face in the crook of his neck. In response, he laid down on his side and wrapped his arms around her waist, simply holding her against his chest.

"We'll do a big, ridiculous, over the top wedding when this is all over. We'll even fly your friends out and make it a huge event. Whatever you want," he said softly.

"I want you," she said, echoing his sentiments from earlier. "I always want you."

"You've got me," Satoru said lightly. She could just hear the cheeky smile in his voice and she laughed softly under her breath.

"Right," she murmured.

He wasn't wrong. She did have him. She had him for the next two weeks at least. He'd continue training, she'd continue doing research as a way to kill time, and at some point, they'd apparently get married. She had about two more weeks where Satoru was hers.

She just hoped that he would still be hers after December 24th.

Author's note:

Each new chapter of JJK has me more stressed out than the last, so I'm going to continue posting these depraved drabbles each Sunday to distract myself from that. Drop a review if you feel like it! Thank you!