Euclid
"Yet in reverse, you are all my symmetry. A parallel I would lay my life on." – Euclid by Sleep Token.
AKA the one where I try to fucking cope with chapter 236. CW - brief suicidal ideation.
"Gojo won," Kusakabe said. His voice was filled with disbelief and the viewing room at the school suddenly erupted with the sounds of whispers, nervous laughs, and cheers at the declaration.
Not that Kaia heard any of it.
She said nothing. She remained silent the way she had from the moment the fight started. She simply stood in front of the screen with her arms tightly crossed over her chest with a carefully crafted blank expression on her face. She hadn't let herself outwardly react to anything in the fight. She hadn't gasped when Satoru's domain had been crushed over and over again by Sukuna, she hadn't winced when his arm had been cut off, and she hadn't breathed a sigh of relief when his final attack hit.
For the entire fight, she just stood there and watched, all while she clenched her jaw so fiercely that she had already chipped two of her molars.
Fuck. She was unraveling. She'd been strung out and fraying at the fabric of her very soul.
Kaia was vaguely aware of the students chatting nearby but she couldn't hear anything they said. Her ears were ringing too loudly for that.
And then her carefully constructed mask got its its first crack when she saw Satoru grinning at Sukuna, not moving.
Her eyes narrowed.
What the hell was he doing? Why was he still standing there? Why wasn't he finishing off Sukuna or putting some distance between them? She couldn't even see any steam coming from his body at a reverse cursed technique being used. What the hell was happening?
She didn't care that Sukuna had been hit by unlimited hollow purple. She didn't care that Mahoraga had been defeated. If she had learned anything from watching the fight, it was that Sukuna was a fucking cockroach and that he had a way of surviving nuclear level attacks. There was no way in fucking hell that he was done after one hollow purple.
No fucking chance.
"Why is he just standing there?" Kaia said through her teeth when she couldn't take it anymore—when she was certain she was going to combust.
"What?" came Yuji's response. She could feel his eyes on her. She could feel all of their eyes on her, actually. She hadn't said a word since the fight started and she knew her silence made the students nervous, but she didn't have it in her to be brave for them. Not then.
"Satoru," she said in a tight voice. She still refused to look away from the screen that showed him standing there in all his glory, cemented as truly the strongest sorcerer to ever exist. "He isn't moving. I don't even see him healing himself. Sukuna could—at any second he could…" Her voice got stuck in her throat when the reality that he might not make it started to dig its claws into her.
The response from Kusakabe was immediate and borderline gentle, but it did nothing for Kaia's nerves. "Sukuna won't be able to fight him in this state. He can't even stand, he can't heal himself, he lost Mahoraga, and can't even fight with amplification. He won, Murakami. You can breathe now."
She kept her lips tightly pursed into a sharp line as she crossed her arms tighter over herself.
She had a bad feeling. It was the same sinking feeling she had right before Satoru had been sealed in Shibuya. She might not have had her cursed moon technique anymore to give her future sight, but part of her wondered if wielding the technique for so long gave her a sort of sixth sense for impending disasters because her 'bad feelings' had yet to be misplaced.
Fuck. She was going to be sick. That horrible feeling only coiled sharper in her gut as she felt each second tick by on Nanami's watch around her wrist.
"I have a bad feeling," she said, holding onto herself so tightly that she could feel bruises forming around her arms. Her shoulders curled in on themselves and a frantic panic started racing through her veins.
"Kaia, breathe," Shoko said. Her fingers brushed Kaia's arm as the nausea from that sinking feeling in her stomach reared its ugly head. She sucked in a short breath but it wasn't enough.
Kaia couldn't pull her eyes away from the screen but she was aware of the wide-eyed look Shoko was giving her.
Kaia bit down on her lower lip as bile started to rise in her throat. She started viciously shaking her head as her body started to tremble.
She started again with a weak, "I have a bad feel—"
The words died on the tip of her tongue.
She would have missed it if she hadn't been staring so intently at the screen. The final moment when Sukuna did something that had Satoru's face suddenly going blank despite his supposed victory.
Kaia sucked in a sharp breath and clenched her hands into fists from where her arms were still crossed. She squeezed tightly enough that she felt a sting in her fingers from where the nails had split due to how hard she was clenching them.
There was an eruption of panicked chatter around her but it faded into nothing but a deep droning in her eardrums.
He'd been hit.
No. That wasn't right. He hadn't just been hit.
He'd been cut in half.
In faster than an eye blink, Satoru was on the ground, his body cleaved in two by Sukuna's cursed technique.
Whispers kicked up around her, though they fizzled out as quickly as they had started. She could barely hear the words exchanged between Sukuna and Satoru. Not when she had lost the ability to breathe.
"You were magnificent. I'll never forget you for as long as I live, Satoru Gojo," Sukuna said with a smirk on his face.
If Kaia hadn't been five seconds away from collapsing to her knees with grief, she would have been furious. She would have raged at how invincible Sukuna was, she would have been angry the way Mitsuki had been in death, she would have been infuriated with Sukuna for having the nerve to gloat, but she couldn't because her grief was too strong. Though maybe that wasn't so surprising. Grief had always been particularly powerful when it came to Kaia's inability to manage her own emotions.
"All right. It's my turn now," Kashimo said.
She didn't offer Kashimo any luck or advice on fighting Sukuna the way the others did. She didn't tell him to do what he could to save Satoru the way she heard Shoko and Yuta do. Hell, she wanted to tell them to stop talking. Tell them it was pointless. Tell them to look at where Satoru was fucking laying there looking up at the sky with fading eyes.
But she couldn't. The words shriveled up on the top of her lungs. Maybe in another life, she would have been able to hold herself together and be strong, but she was too tired.
At the very least, she wished she could have been there to tell him that she loved him one more time so he didn't have to die all alone, accompanied only by the presence of Megumi's possessed body.
But maybe that was how Satoru wanted it. He always said that sorcerers died alone with regrets. Maybe it was a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Against her will, her brain recalled the moment they had first been reunited after he was released from the prison realm.
"I'll come home to you," Satoru murmured. "I promise."
"You don't have to come home, but at least try," Kaia said. And hell, her voice sounded so sad and so broken. Satoru cradled her face in his hands and made her look at him. He shook his head and looked her dead in the eyes so she couldn't doubt his conviction.
"There is no 'try.' I'll come home to you," he insisted.
She blinked dully at him two times and gave a slight head nod as she said a weak, "okay."
He swallowed loud enough for her to hear it.
"I promise. I'll come home."
A lie. He had lied to her.
Liar.
Satoru Gojo was a liar.
Liar. Liar. Liar!
A terrible numbness washed over her. Her vision blurred the way it used to when she still had her cursed moon technique. The ringing in her ears became deafening and her jaw finally relaxed after clenching it for so long.
She felt nothing. She didn't even feel the sting of her own regrets. She didn't feel the frustration and anger at herself for having walked away from Satoru all those years ago and giving up precious time with him.
There was nothing.
Her eyes fluttered shut and she exhaled until the numbness crawled its way inside of her chest cavity and took away the pain before it could sink its teeth into her.
"Kaia?" Yuji all but whispered in a horribly weak voice.
Her eyes snapped open just in time for Kashimo to arrive on the battlefield.
"Are you…" Yuji paused as he struggled to find the right words. "Will you be okay?"
Kaia didn't have the strength to look at him.
"Sorry, if you'll just give me a minute," Kaia said in a voice that didn't sound like her own. She wasn't even sure if she actually spoke or if she just imagined it. She must have, right? Her lips were parted as if she had spoken.
"Kaia?" It was Shoko's turn.
"We'll make this right," Maki promised somewhere behind her.
"We will. I'll personally see to it," Yuta added.
"I will too," Hakari said.
Why did they all sound like that? Why were they all speaking to her so delicately? Why were they all making promises to her? She wasn't broken. Why were they treating her like she was? She had been through enough tragedy in her life. She could handle another one. Of course she could.
At that point, it was simply another drop in the bucket. Another name to add to an ever-growing list that lived somewhere deep inside her chest.
Her parents. Maha. Haibara. Geto. Yaga. Yuki. Nobara. Tsumiki. Megumi. Nanami. Satoru. Everyone she had ever loved or cared about. Everyone who had been someone important to her at one point. Gone. Nothing but names on a list.
Nanami's watch suddenly felt heavy on her wrist.
She felt something inside of her crack. Something deep, deep down that had been patched up once before. Something that had been painstakingly put back together over many years.
She was—she was breaking again, wasn't she?
"I need a minute," Kaia said when she heard more empty promises come from both the students and her peers.
She didn't wait for their approval and stormed out of the room. Her legs carried her through the halls of Jujutsu Tech as she took in sharp little breaths through her nose that weren't deep enough for her lungs. The shallow intakes were just enough to make her feel dizzy and help her disconnect from it all.
Kaia didn't know where she was going. She couldn't leave the school, not with Sukuna out there.
If she could have, she would have gotten on the first flight to Okinawa. If possible, she would have gone back to the ancestral property and begged the special-grade cursed spirit that still roamed the land to kill her. She would have drowned herself in the pond if it was still there. And if neither of those options worked, she would have taken a page out of her father's book and fashioned a noose around her neck and she would have hanged herself from the rafters of the old house.
Fuck!
She seethed through her teeth and a stream of blue flames followed.
If only she had a better handle on reverse cursed technique. If she had a better idea on how to use it properly, she would have used it long enough to make her body susceptible to her cursed fire and she would have let it devour her. She would have let it char her to a fucking crisp the way she had with that curse user in Paris.
A sob slipped through her lips and Kaia clamped a hand over her mouth. She was still in the hallway and anyone could have found her. She couldn't do this where anyone could find her. She needed to be alone.
She shoved open the first door on her left and barreled into an empty classroom. Kaia barred the door behind her and activated an old seal that her father used to use when she was just a kid, placing it over the door so no one would be able to get in without breaking the seal first and alerting her to their presence.
It wasn't until Kaia's back was pressed against the door and she could look into the classroom did she realize where she was.
It wasn't a classroom that she found her way into. It was an empty training room.
It was the same training room that Satoru had taken her into as a second year when she couldn't activate her cursed moon technique without seeing scraps of infinity. It was the unused training room where he had first brought her into his perfected domain.
The room looked just like it had over ten years ago. The wooden floors were bare and there were no windows. Only some rolled up mats propped against the wall and some weapons in a nearby black chest.
She could have laughed.
That had been the night that things changed for them. After he had taken her into his domain and helped her with her cursed moon technique, he'd been kinder to her. He had checked in on her to see how she was doing. They had become friends of sorts after that night, hadn't they?
A laugh finally did escape her mouth as she looked around, remembering the way he had teased her for being such a "good girl" since she was still a virgin. She recalled the way she had snapped at him and how he had simply called her Bunny to get under her skin.
That had been when the stupid nickname first stuck, hadn't it?
The shrill laugh that poured from her lips morphed into something more hysteric as she slid to the floor, back still against the door.
God, she'd been so young then. She'd been so naive. That had been back when Haibara was still alive.
He was her first death, wasn't he?
That was right. He was. Nanami had called her the morning after the mission where she'd been evaluated for a promotion to first-grade. He had broken the news to her while she'd still been in bed with Satoru.
That had been the first time she ever slept with someone. Of course, it had been with Satoru. He'd been her first real kiss too. He'd been her first love.
He'd been her first everything.
Another laugh slipped out. It sounded harsher than the last one.
She wondered if her mother had been happy when she first brought Satoru over for family dinner as her boyfriend. Probably. Ren had always been a climber and she never liked the way jujutsu society treated the Murakami.
Her father hadn't been as amused. He glared at Satoru the whole time and pouted like a five-year-old. He used to always tell Kaia that she had a pouting problem. He blamed it on Maha, saying she learned it from her sister. In retrospect, it had been a learned behavior from Kaito.
Ah and Maha. God, she hated Satoru. They bickered like siblings and she used to love pissing him off. Her favorite way had always been to make smoothies at the crack of dawn as payback for him walking around so loudly late at night after a mission.
A sob came out with the next breath.
Why did she have to leave all those years ago? Why did she have to react so terribly and run away? Why had she given up eight years of happiness? So she could run away and drown her sorrows with drugs, alcohol, and sex?
If she had stuck around, would things have turned out differently? Maybe not. Kenjaku's plans had been in place for a thousand years. There was probably no way to avoid the current state of jujutsu society.
But things probably would have been different with Satoru. They probably would have gotten married younger and had a bunch of kiddos running around. Megumi probably would have been an uncle to three or four kids.
Another sob. A harder one. More violent. One that left her with a headache.
Her arms protectively went across her stomach. She was just about to enter the second trimester of a pregnancy that she'd now have to handle alone.
She stopped fighting the urge to hold back the sobs and let them come freely. It didn't matter, did it? If they couldn't defeat Sukuna then he would kill all of them anyway. And if Satoru couldn't defeat Sukuna then what hope was there? Besides, Kenjaku's plan was pretty much complete anyway. It was just a matter of time until they were all dead, so what did it matter if she cried over Satoru's death?
Tears fogged up her vision as she felt that same part of her crack again. Now that she was all alone in the training room, she identified what part of her it was that was breaking.
It was the part of her that had been painstakingly put back together by Fatima. Fatima, who had been rain in a drought, a gift brought to her in Trinidad—the place Maha always dreamed of going to. Fatima hadn't just been Kaia's friend. She'd been her savior. She had looked at all the ugly, jagged pieces of Kaia's soul and wasn't scared away. There must have been something about Kaia that Fatima deemed worthy of putting back together.
Another sob wracked through Kaia's shaking body.
Fatima was all she had left now. There was no one else. And the chances of seeing her ever again were slim to none.
Kaia pulled her arms away from her stomach and hid her face in her hands as she cried until she couldn't breathe anymore. Her knees came up to her chest as she curled in on herself, letting it all crash over her.
A beautiful numbness touched the edge of her consciousness.
She forced herself to breathe through the sobs until they weren't all consuming. She forced herself to calm down by breathing through the hysteria the way she used to breathe through the nausea from her brutal hangovers.
Instead, she felt for that numbness at the edge of everything. She kept her eyes shut and willed the numbing blackness to take her away from that place. Anywhere would have been better. The pond in Okinawa would have been preferable to where she was slumped over in an empty training room at the school where her grief was threatening to finally do it and overtake her once and for all.
The numbness turned cold and it darkened everything behind her closed eyes. It almost felt reminiscent of what she'd gone through when she'd been dying on the Murakami ancestral property. A distant part of her mind remembered a paralyzing blackness that seeped into her bones when she hugged Mitsuki as the little girl stabbed her in the stomach and back.
She wanted to feel that blackness again, but this time she wanted to feel it completely. Not just a small part of it. It wasn't enough to feel it at the edge of her soul. She wanted it to crawl inside her chest and tightly coil around her heart until she felt nothing at all. She wanted to greet that blackness the same way she hoped to one day greet Maha, Nanami, and Satoru again.
Which was with wide open arms. She wanted to feel the entirety of it. She wanted to feel all of it until there was nothing left.
Until she herself was nothing.
Gojo hoped that it wasn't his imagination. There were worse ways to be greeted in the afterlife after all. All the people he cared about were around him. Riko was up ahead. Haibara was with Nanami. Suguru was by his side.
He did all he could and it still wasn't enough, but at least he died because he finally fought someone stronger. At least in the end, he hadn't died of something not befitting of the strongest.
Gojo grinned and leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes. He couldn't say that he died without regrets, though he wanted to believe he died with as few as possible.
"I can't say I ever expected this."
Gojo's eyes fluttered open when he heard a new voice. When he sat up straight and looked forward, he noticed he was no longer in the airport surrounded by old friends. He also noticed that he was no longer a teenager. He was twenty-nine again, dressed in the clothes he had worn to his fight with Sukuna, eyes bared. But instead of being in an airport, he was in a house, seated at a dining room table that had been set for four people.
He recognized that dining room. It'd been years since he'd seen it, but he recalled the rectangular wooden table with four place settings. He remembered eating dinner at the table and sitting by the window which overlooked the courtyard.
Seated directly across from him was a man with a small build. Small, yet lean and strong. Maybe like a European Formula One driver or a tennis player or rower. His hair was a coppery red, pushed back and off to side like a salaryman's, and his knowing eyes were a warm brown that were filled with wisdom.
Gojo blinked in surprise.
"Kaito," he said.
Kaito Murakami crossed his arms over his chest and nodded in acknowledgment, choosing to glance over his shoulder at one of the windows of the old Murakami house in Saitama.
The last time Gojo had seen Kaito, his throat had been slashed from ear to ear and he was nothing more than a pale corpse tied to a chair.
"I can't say I ever expected to see you of all people in the afterlife," Gojo said.
Kaito didn't look away from the window. "Really? That surprises me. You and I always had an understanding."
Gojo wasn't sure what the universe or his subconscious was trying to tell him by making him talk to Kaito Murakami, but he couldn't exactly go anywhere, so he supposed he would have to listen.
"Did we? I distinctly remember you hating it when I came to family dinner," Gojo said lightly.
Kaito finally looked away from the window, still wearing a smirk, though Gojo thought it looked more bittersweet than it did before.
"We did," Kaito said in a sort of fatherly tone that Gojo had never heard his own father use. "We had an understanding that you would look after Kaia."
A pang shot through Gojo's chest. It hurt worse than Sukuna's killing blow did.
"…That's right," Gojo said softly.
"You did the best you could," Kaito said with a shrug of his small shoulders. "Kaia's always been difficult. Stubborn to a fault, if you will. She's too much like my father. Has been ever since she was just a little girl."
Gojo said nothing.
"She was such a cute kid. You would have loved her even then. Obsessed with the color purple for some reason. Every year for Halloween we had to buy her purple princess dresses even if the princess wore a different color. And then she'd get so offended if someone thought she was the wrong princess. God, she was just like my father. So sure of herself and unyielding," Kaito said. He hummed and smiled softly, brown eyes looking very far away.
"Why are you telling me this?" Gojo asked quietly, letting his eyes fall to the table. The longer he was with Kaito Murakami, the worse he felt about his death. The less peace he experienced.
"Because you're dying and I'm dead." Kaito leaned back in his chair and held his chin up a little higher the way Kaia always did when she was looking for an argument. "And we both happen to love the same person."
A knot twisted in Gojo's stomach as he remembered the weeks leading up to his fight and all of the promises he made.
"I want you, Bunny. I always want you."
"You'd be proud of Kaia today. She broke the family curse," was all Gojo could get out.
"Of course she did," Kaito said. His smirk morphed into a broader smile, one that beamed with pride.
"I married her, you know. Two weeks before today," Gojo said. He rubbed the back of his neck as guilt flooded his chest. "She's having my baby."
"I know," Kaito said. "Why do you think I'm here?"
"I think you're here as a manifestation of the guilt I'm feeling at leaving her behind," Gojo replied. He dared to meet Kaito Murakami's brown eyes with his Six Eyes. Kaito didn't so much as blink or flinch away from the power in Gojo's eyes.
Kaito laughed. "That's probably exactly why I'm here."
Gojo sighed and felt himself deflate.
"I'm afraid of what my death will do to her. She's lost so much already," he admitted.
"Unfortunately, Satoru, the Murakami are horribly self-destructive. Curse or no curse," Kaito said with another shrug of his shoulders. "Perhaps Ren's lineage will help with this loss."
Gojo couldn't help it when he scoffed, "Kaia is a Murakami through and through. I don't think her mother's lineage has much sway with her."
Kaito's smile dampened and he finally uncrossed his arms with a heavy exhale. "That's true. Perhaps the prospect of having a child will keep her going."
Gojo hoped that would be the case. He prayed to a god he didn't believe in that the baby would give her some sort of will to keep going. At least give her enough strength to keep it together long enough to get to Fatima. If she could reach Fatima, she would be fine.
He just didn't know if she would make it that far. The losses had been stacking up for a long time and they had taken their toll. Hell, she had practically been a shell of herself after what happened to Nanami.
"I tried, Kaito. I really did," Gojo said softly, almost feeling ashamed of himself.
"Mm," was all Kaito gave.
Gojo's eyes snapped up from where he'd been staring a hole into the table to glance at the former head of the Murakami.
"What?" Gojo demanded.
This hadn't been what he was waiting for in the afterlife. He wanted to be with Suguru. He wanted to sit in the airport with Nanami and Haibara and Yaga and Riko. He didn't want to sit there with the manifestation of his guilt. He didn't want Kaito Murakami looking at him with those brown eyes full of knowing and understanding.
"I didn't say anything," Kaito said easily. There wasn't even a shred of judgment or disappointment in his expression.
So then why did Gojo feel so small under the gaze of those brown eyes?
"Was this how you got Kaia and Maha to admit to all their transgressions as kids? You stared them down and waited until the silence got to them?"
Kaito smirked again. "I don't know, Satoru. Do you feel like you have transgressions that you'd like to confess to?"
Gojo huffed in an admittedly childish manner. He rubbed the back of his head and pouted as he looked off to the side. His own father had been pretty absent when he was a kid. Same thing with his mother. He had primarily been raised by the clan elders, and if he ever got smart or mouthed off or did something he wasn't supposed to, he just got a light beating. It'd been a way to "teach him respect."
He never had a parent look at him in such a way that made him want to confess to every awful thing he'd ever done.
No one had ever cared enough to try and make that connection with him.
"I know what you want me to say," Gojo started with that same childish pout on his face. "You want me to say that I gave up. That I was tired of fighting and wanted an easy way out. You want me to say that I knew no one would hold it against me if I was killed by the King of Curses. You want me to say that I could have kept going but chose not to even though Sukuna quite literally cut me in half. You want me to say that reverse cursed technique comes from the brain and that I could have found a way to heal myself just enough to keep going even though I was exhausted and at my limit, right?"
Kaito's expression was serene as his brown eyes flickered across Gojo's face.
"You said it yourself. I'm just a manifestation of your guilt. I don't want you to say anything. I'm not really even here," Kaito replied.
Gojo huffed in frustration and raked his hands through his hair.
"I liked it better when I had Suguru and Nanami with me in death," he grumbled.
"Don't be daft, Satoru," Kaito said, tone much sharper than before. "You're not dead yet. You're dying."
"I don't see a difference when death is literally staring me down," Gojo muttered with a frown tugging at the corner of his lips.
"Always so dramatic. I don't know what Kaia sees in you," Kaito said with a snort. He shot Gojo a glare that could have cut glass. "You're more than welcome to go back to your friends. You can go back to your beloved Suguru, but you should know that there's a difference between him and Kaia."
Gojo narrowed his eyes.
"What are you talking about?" he said in exasperation. This was getting tiresome and he wanted to enter the afterlife peacefully. He didn't want to be stuck getting picked apart by Kaito Murakami.
"Suguru Geto is dead. He's gone. You can never bring him back," Kaito said. His voice softened again, speaking to Satoru as if he were just a child. "You can mourn him for the rest of your life the way I mourned my family, but it won't change anything."
"Why are you telling me this?" Gojo snapped when his patience began to wear thin.
"Because my daughter still lives," Kaito said in that sharp voice from moments ago. "That's the difference, Satoru. Suguru is dead but Kaia is alive."
Gojo winced as guilt ripped through his fucking soul.
"You still have time and yet you're so eager to waste it for your friend that's gone. You can't bring him back anymore than Kaia can bring me back, but you don't seem to care. You're willing to give everything up for the dead." Kaito's expression faltered as spoke. He didn't look quite as sure of himself as he did before. His reddish brows knit together and the corners of his lips tugged downward. A crease formed on his forehead with the shift in expression and his shoulders slumped forward.
"I had been so prepared to give up and die for my family. I could have kept fighting but it seemed futile. It was easier to simply lay down and take it." Kaito's breath stuttered. "If I had known that Kaia would have survived? If I had known what would have become of my youngest child at our deaths? I would have fought harder. It might not have made a difference, but maybe it would have. I'll never know because I gave up," he said.
Gojo didn't know if he was hearing more of his own internalized guilt or if the ghost of Kaito Murakami really was sitting before him, but he didn't think that it mattered. The words hit him hard either way.
"I'm tired," Gojo admitted after a moment of silence.
"Wait until you have a child. Then you'll really be tired," Kaito quipped. The ghost of a smile crossed over his face and Satoru smirked in spite of himself.
He wondered if Kaia hated him for leaving her. Maybe she would get rid of the pregnancy now that he was gone.
His heart ached at the thought of never getting to meet his child. He felt sick at the thought of Kaia getting rid of the pregnancy, of the one thing she would have left of him.
A lump formed in his throat.
"I guess I'll never know," Satoru said weakly.
Kaito looked disappointed. "I guess not."
Gojo closed his eyes, hoping that when he reopened them he would be back with his friends.
He held his breath as he looked up again, only to find him still seated in the dining room with Kaito's eyes trained on him.
"You're still here. Sorry to disappoint," Kaito said.
Gojo groaned and started massaging his temples. How the hell did he get out of this place? Wasn't he dead by now? Shouldn't everything be a black void already?
"How do I go back?" Gojo asked.
"Go back where? To Shinjuku?" Kaito asked curiously.
"No!" Gojo said right away. "To Geto! Nanami! Yaga! How do I go back there?"
Kaito frowned. "I don't know. I'm not actually here."
Gojo had enough. The pain in his chest and stomach was becoming too much to handle. The guilt was threatening to eat him alive and he didn't want to pass onto the next life like that. He wanted to pass peacefully as he seemed to be doing earlier. He didn't need the ghost of Kaito Murakami judging him for his mistakes!
"What, am I supposed to confess to you? Tell you that I gave up because I was tired and because I missed Suguru and because I was lonely? Tell you that I was afraid of losing and living in a world where I was no longer the strongest? Is that what you want to hear? Will that suffice? Will you leave me alone now?" Gojo snapped.
Kaito didn't look impressed.
"Move on then, Satoru. I'm not keeping you here," he said.
Frustration coursed through Gojo's veins. He was trying to move on. Couldn't Kaito (or his subconscious) see that?
"I love your daughter," Gojo said when he couldn't take it anymore. When that stupid calm expression on Kaito's face threatened to eat at him until he was nothing but a shell of his former self. "I love Kaia so much that I made her my wife and put everything I own and everything single valuable thing from my clan in her name so that she'll never want for a goddamn thing for the rest of her life. I fought the King of Curses to keep her safe. I can't help that I lost. I didn't want to leave her and my unborn child behind, okay? But it's too late for me and I'm gone now. There is nothing else left for me."
Kaito watched him with that fatherly look in his eyes. The one that made Gojo feel guilty for some reason and the one that made him want to confess to every wrongdoing he had ever committed in his pathetic life.
"So then why are you here?" Kaito asked.
Gojo's brow furrowed and his lips parted.
"What?" he blurted.
"If there's nothing left for you and if you did everything you could, then why are you here talking to a manifestation of your own guilt? Why aren't you with Suguru? Or gone for good yet? You're practically a corpse by now in the living world," Kaito said.
Gojo visibly recoiled at being called a corpse. Surely, he still had a little time left, right? Surely, he could hang on for just a few more minutes?
"I don't know why I'm here," Gojo said a little desperately.
"I think you do," Kaito said, voice light as a feather.
Gojo winced and pinched the bridge of his nose. He guessed that he did know why.
"I'm tired," he finally said, shoulders shaking with the admittance. "I'm so fucking exhausted, Kaito. All I am is a tool. No one even sees me as anything other than the strongest. I just—I can't do it anymore. I want a rest. I deserve one."
Kaito hummed that time, nodding his head and running a hand through his coppery red hair. Though, his hair was more brown than red. It wasn't the same shade that Kaia's was.
He wished it was Kaia sitting with him instead. He wished like hell there was some way to see her one last time. To apologize and beg for forgiveness.
He hadn't meant to give up. He had just been so tired. He had never fought so hard for anything in his life and he kept coming up just short every time. It just became too much. The idea of using reverse curse technique one more time to put his mangled body back together? To fix his arm a second time?
It just seemed insurmountable. It seemed so much easier to simply lie down and say he did the best he could and be done. It seemed better, more noble to accept his death and move on to the next life in peace.
Kaia would never forgive him.
After all that she had been through. After watching her family's slaughter and being unable to do anything to save them? After wasting away and practically throwing her life down the drain for eight years in some vain attempt to forget herself? After all of that, she had come back and still fought. She fought to break her family's curse, she fought to keep Megumi and Yuji safe. She fought through her own heartbreak and sadness to try and help in the fight against Sukuna, going so far as to exile herself to Okinawa for ten days while the kids worked on freeing him from the prison realm?
And he gave up.
His stomach twisted.
What would their future have looked like? He imagined her fully pregnant, hand over her swollen belly as she put the finishing touches on the nursery. He imagined meeting his child. Imagined holding their baby in his arms.
The back of his eyes felt warm.
"I have to see her again," he said suddenly. Gojo pushed himself away from the table, standing up straight and towering over Kaito Murakami's small frame. "Tell me how to go back. I can't—I have to talk to Kaia. I have to see her one last time."
Kaito's brown eyes flickered and he shook his head.
"You're out of time, Satoru."
No. No, he wasn't. He was not out of time.
"You said I'm practically a corpse, not that I actually am one. I can go back. I can heal myself one more time. Reverse curse technique comes from the brain, not the gut. Sukuna didn't cut my head off so I can still—"
"You're done, Satoru. I'm sorry," Kaito said gently.
Gojo sucked in a sharp breath.
"I don't believe you. I can still fight," he said. He walked out of the dining room and over to the front door of the Murakami's Saitama house. His hand landed on the doorknob and he twisted it, pulling it back hard.
The door didn't budge.
"There's nothing for you out there," Kaito said. "It's too late."
Gojo gritted his teeth. "Then how am I still here talking to you? If it's really too late then everything should be dark by now."
He pulled harder, that time using both hands.
No, he was not dead. He was not done. He could keep going. He still had cursed energy he could draw from.
He was Satoru Gojo for fuck's sake! He wasn't going to let a fucking door stop him. Not when he had fought the King of Curses!
"Satoru," Kaito interrupted as Gojo pulled hard enough on the door to feel pain shoot down his back.
"I'm not staying here," Gojo snapped.
"If you go back there, you'll have to keep fighting. You'll be nothing but a tool again," Kaito said. "And there's no guarantee that you'll survive a second time."
He didn't care about that. If Sukuna killed him a second time and if he didn't get to see his friends in the afterlife again, it wouldn't even matter. He wouldn't give up a second time. Not when Kaito Murakami was right.
Suguru, poor Suguru, was dead. Gojo would see him again one day, he knew he would, but it wasn't time for that yet.
Kaia was still alive. Yuji and Yuta and Shoko were still alive.
Megumi was still alive and he needed help.
Gojo looked over his shoulder at Kaito Murakami. He stood on the threshold of the dining room as if there was some invisible line he couldn't cross.
Gojo's stomach twisted and he wondered if the reason Kaito couldn't cross was because his grisly murder happened in that dining room.
"I'm sorry I couldn't save your family," Gojo said.
Kaito looked at him for a long moment, saying nothing at all. But just before Gojo was ready to wrench the front door open, he broke the silence.
"Don't ever come back here, Satoru. This is no place for someone like you," he said, his eyes glimmering with a faint smile.
Gojo could have laughed if he hadn't been so ready to get back. He simply bowed his head respectfully and returned his attention to the door.
He tugged on the doorknob a second time and the door swung open. Twilight lay ahead of him. It wasn't quite bright and it wasn't exactly dark. It was something entirely different.
When he stepped into the twilight, he held his breath. He waited for the pain of the real world to return to him. And despite Kaito, and Nanami, and Suguru all waiting somewhere behind him, he kept walking forward into the pain and hell of the real world that awaited him.
And he did not look back.
Author's note:
Yeah, I don't have a good excuse for not posting other than I just didn't like any of the drabbles I had written.
I was spoiled for chapter 236 several days before it came out and I've been in mourning ever since. This is how I am coping. And if I see Gege? It's fucking hands on SIGHT.
Please drop a review if you're able and let me know if you're also in mourning lmao. Thank you and love you