In Your Eyes

We didn't leave your room after that. We stayed there through afternoon class, until the sun grew low. For hours, I loved you with a desperation bordering on madness. I explored every perfect, radiant inch of you. I surprised you that day. There had been a growing distance between us after all. I knew you had noticed it. But in this room, in this moment, it was as if nothing had changed between us. We were together again. And I anchored myself to you physically to keep my mind from wandering into darkness, into chaos.

Even as I drew my fingers through the wisps of hair at the nape of your neck..

Ran my tongue over the gentle slope of your ear…

Stared into the shimmering sky in your eyes…

I knew I was fixing this moment, this memory, in time. I was saving it, holding it close, cherishing the details. For later, for what came next. For when things became difficult. Lying behind you with my arms wrapped around you, talking low, I whispered truths, whispered lies.

You…my one and only…

I give you my heart…

I give you what was, what I used to be…

I leave it all with you…

"Hey, Satoru, do you ever wonder why we exorcise curses?" The breath of my low musings tickled your hairline as I nuzzled the back of your neck in the dusky afternoon light. "Why we really do it? I mean, a curse itself isn't created by sorcerers, so why—"

"—Why? Are you lecturing me again, Suguru? You said it yourself, it's because it is the role of the strong to protect the weak. Sorcerers protect humans, how many time have you told me that—"

"—But what if it's wrong? What if I got it wrong? What if—"

A rude banging sounded at your door. Then Shoko's voice as she slammed the door open: "Gojo where have you been hiding all day? Yaga is looking for you, it's—" Her eyes fell on me in your bed and a twitch of annoyance lifted her brow. "Tch, should have known" it said.

"Go away Shoko," I heard the petulant tone in your voice. "Can't you see I'm…busy."

"I can see just fine," she snapped. Then her tone grew more serious as she continued, "It's…it's Haibara…he didn't…he didn't complete his mission, Gojo. Yaga wants you to go there now." She spoke to you but looked at me as she said it. Her mouth quivered in its delivery.

He didn't complete his mission…

Such a strange way to describe a friend's death…

Was that all we were in the end, I thought, just a casual list of 'incomplete missions'? A bunch of curses left unexorcised? I felt a rage begin to simmer inside me. At the unfairness of it all. At the waste of it all. And for what? For the nonexistent gratitude of people who didn't—couldn't—know we even existed.

I stared off into space as I felt you pulling away from me. I heard the rasp of fabric as you put on your uniform. Shoko silently closed the door, giving us privacy. You looked at me sadly and said, "I have to go." I said nothing. I knew you would be fine. You were the strongest, after all.

But I…

I was not fine.

I thought of Haibara's smiling face, asking me about souvenirs just hours earlier—

I thought of Riko's shining eyes, holding out her hand for me to take her home, and—

I thought of that man, Riko's killer, taunting me, bringing me low, with his brutal human hands and sneering laugh, showing me exactly what I was worth.

CLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP

For days after Haibara's death I felt my mental faculties darkening, hardening. My gift for human empathy crumbled like a siege tower built on silt, on sand. My view of the world shifted. Resentment and anger twisted it, growing around my heart like invasive, entangling vines. I felt the light strangled out of me. You were gone and I foundered. And when Yaga finally sent me on a mission to exorcise some curses hanging around a small village out in the province, I took it as a means of escape.

But instead, it proved fatal.

The moment I walked into that shabby little room in that far away backwoods town. The moment I saw those two little girls, wedged like rats into a wired cage, my struggle was over. Their frightened, blackened eyes, their thin, bruised limbs. How desperately they clung to each other. I saw them and I lost all reason. I lost all hope. I lost you.

I lost my mind at the filthy, ignorant words spewing from the elders' mouths…

They did it! Those two! They caused the incidents!

They're monsters! They have evil powers! Both of them! We should have drowned them in the river! It's all their fault!

CLACLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP

A candle flickered and went out, casting shadows on the barren wall. I calmly explained how I had taken care of the source of the incidents, and that these children were innocent. Even as the villagers shouted me down, insisting on them being monsters. So I did the only thing I could do in that moment. I straightened my back and plastered a true monster's smile on my face and said to them:

"Alright, let's all just step out for a moment. We can resolve this."

And I did.

I resolved it.

I resolved it by burning the whole village to the ground…

To be continued…