#godmaker

“Gods require isolation.” 

In your vision, colors bleed and bend together in a waterfall of light. You can hardly make out the shape in front of you, can hardly make out the voice. It almost aches, somewhere in your teeth, in the core of you, to try and focus on them.

“Gods cannot have equals, otherwise they wouldn’t be Gods. Do you understand?” 

“But there are so many–” you have a hard time getting out the words, chewing around them strangely, like cotton in your mouth. Your voice is just a croak, “there are so many Gods.” 

“No,” there is a shaking, as if they’re denying you, “forget what you previously knew. Those are myths, not Gods.” 

You blink hard, as if you could clear your vision. You feel like you might be sick, stomach turning over itself, twisting and churning–

“Gods are alone.” 

“Lonely?” 

A pause.

“Yes, lonely, at the top of their world.” The voice hums, like bees in your ears, like the vibrating of cursed energy that simmers low in your hearing, that sizzles to life when used. The person almost feels like–like a curse.

“Gods are lone stars that gaze down upon the earth, they shine brighter, they guide and shower and collapse inwards to become something else entirely.” 

“Stars?” You garble.

“Gods devour everyone around them, so they are the only ones left. Do you hear me?” 

“Yes,” you say and you think tears are pricking your eyes. 

“Don’t cry yet,” coos the voice, lullaby soft, the way a mother sounds, the way you wish a father would sound. “Do you understand, then?”

“Yes,” you hiccup, “Gods are lonely. Gods are very, very lonely.” 

***

You know you will devour Suguru as he walks to you in the garden for a final time. 

The last time you see him before his betrayal, he is in a strangely amiable mood, one that you aren’t often on the receiving end of.

And just as strangely, you allow yourself to indulge him. You aren’t as snappy or harsh, you aren’t posturing and snarling. 

You’re just a friend for him, in his last few hours as a sorcerer and not a curse user. 

“I think I’ll miss visiting you like this when you get married to Satoru.” He says. 

“Satoru wants a garden when we move out. He’s fond of it now, too.” You tell him, “you can visit me in that garden.” 

You know he never will.

(Well—once, he will. But he will not be himself anymore, not really, not ever again. Suguru has always been the type to grow out of his own skin, always chased divinity down until he was stumbling and panting for it, like a starved dog on a futile hunt. 

And when he finally gets it between his teeth, he will have had to die for it, and it will not be him at all, but someone else. 

He will just be the conduit. The possessed. The hollowed out. He’ll gorge himself on it only to still be left starving.

Because maybe that’s all divinity is; the empty stomach, the eternal hunger for something more than yourself. The emptiness of being more than just yourself.) 

“Hm, I won’t have to deal with your father.” Suguru says and he sinks a little heavier into some of the taller, heather soft grass by the pond.

“Tell me about it. I have wanted to escape him for my whole life.” You say.

“Will you?” He asks.

Eventually, you nod. 

Then you admit, “I’ll kill him one day.”

Suguru’s brows dart upwards and he turns his face towards you, towards the sun. He has to squint when he looks at you, he has to shield his eyes a little. The sun hallows you, swallowing you up in its honey bronzed light. 

“You will?” He asks and there’s a strange note in his voice. 

“After he kills my mother.” You don’t know exactly why you tell him this, only that it bubbles out of you, only that you know you are supposed to. 

“How long have you known?” Suguru’s voice is almost gentle for you. 

“Years now. I knew he would kill my mother the moment I received Foresight. And a year or so later, I looked into his future, too.” You lean back on your elbows, tip your face up to the light. 

Suguru swallows. “Is he–I’ve always known he was controlling but–to kill your mother–” 

“He knows.” 

“Knows what?” Suguru asks. 

“That I’ll kill him. I told him after he hit me the first time.” 

You say it so plainly that all Suguru can do is stare for a moment. 

But then he sits up and there is something dark in his eyes, unfathomable, “does Satoru know? And he just let’s this–for all of his fucking power and–” 

A crackling sort of anger spits to life inside him. You’re so surprised that for a moment, all you can do is stare at him now. 

“Suguru,” you say softly and you stop him from standing by catching his wrist in your slight hand, you stop him from going to do who knows what, “Satoru doesn’t know.” 

“Why doesn’t he know?” Suguru hisses, “does Ieri? Anyone?” 

You shake your head. 

“Satoru would kill him if he knew. There is a version where he kills him days before our wedding.” You say and your own voice has taken on a hushed quality, stilling him. 

“A version?” Suguru asks.

You nod. 

“But I want to do it myself.” You admit and the confession is so raw and unkept that it startles you with its truth. “I have wanted to do it myself for a long time, I think.”

Suguru looks at you strangely, changed. 

But when he says, “I always knew there was something horrible in you.” There isn’t any malice in it, rather he sounds deeply fond, a little heartbroken. You sidle up to his side, scoot in close so you can feel the warmth of him. 

He drops an arm around you. He tucks you into his side. 

“Don’t tell Satoru,” you nuzzle down into him, surprisingly compliant. Whenever Suguru has tried to touch you before, you have met him with teeth and nails and all sorts of fight. But now, you melt easily. “Don’t do a thing.” 

You feel his fingers dig into you. 

“How am I supposed to stand idly by and allow you to be–” 

You turn your head against his shoulder, look up at him through your lashes, “please? I don’t ask much of you, do I?” 

Suguru shakes his head. “I don’t like this. Why does it have to be this version? Isn’t there another? Where you’re safe? Where you aren’t–” 

“I don’t think I would be so horrible if there was a different version.” You admit softly to him.  

Suguru goes quiet. 

Then, “I wouldn’t have you any other way, you know.” 

The admittance is surprisingly tender. Your eyes sting with it. 

He catches your chin between large fingers, tilts you up so you can’t hide your shining eyes from him. “Wretched as you are–I think you’re perfect. I only wish–” 

“Suguru,” you almost don’t want him to say this part. You can feel it pulling at you, tugging and tearing at your tender heart, plucking at your insides. 

“There was a version where you were safe. And you didn’t have to be horrible. And I didn’t have to be horrible, either.” 

You’re startled by the tears that he catches, one with his thumb. “What’s this? Tears for me? But you hate me so terribly.” 

You shake your head a little into his hands, “I don’t–” 

“It’s alright,” he hushes, and you think he sees you in a different light now, you think something has shifted massively between you. And so close to the end. “Just tell me if there’s a version where we’re safe and–” 

You swallow hard around the prickly lump in your throat, the sob trapped there. You feel more tears escape from the corner of your eyes, especially as they crinkle up into your sad smile. 

Your vision blurs with him, with the man who wanted to be a god. 

The lie comes easily, almost wistfully, to your trembling lips;

“Yes–somewhere out there is a version where we are safe. My father doesn’t hurt me. And Satoru is more than just a God. Yu Haibara lives. A Zenin boy doesn’t lose his father. Two little girls are not locked in a cage. And you don’t have to be so horrible, either.” 

***

Ieri comes to you in the middle of the night. 

You have not slept, because you know, and you’ve been waiting for her. 

You padded out into the garden, barefoot, awhile ago. The night air has a nip to it. Moonless night. Starless night. Endlessly dark in the heavens tonight. The world seems to be hushed with the violence that’s happened, with the betrayal that has taken place. You wonder if every betrayal made the world go this silent; Set and Osiris, Caesar and Brutus, Jesus and Judas. 

Ieri knows where to find you, knows you’ll know, knows you too well, and she joins you now in your garden. 

She’s been crying. Eyes glassy and lined with red, makeup smeared halfway down her face. 

You fold her into your arms and you can feel her shudder as she holds back another sob.

“You knew,” she gets out, “you knew the whole time.” 

“Yes.” You whisper, holding her tighter to keep her from freeing herself, as if you could wrestle her anger or heartbreak still. 

“Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why wouldn’t you–”

“Was I supposed to condemn him?” 

“Couldn’t you have saved him? You knew–you know all of it.” Ieri is shaking, perhaps terrified, perhaps furious, “will you do this to all of us? What good is your technique if you don’t intervene?” 

“Not everything should be changed.” 

She grabs you by the shoulders suddenly, viciously, nails chipped with burgundy polished digging hard into your skin. She wants to leave torn little half moons. She wants to hurt you. But she’s a doctor. She’s a healer. 

Her eyes fly over your face, tears stream down her ruddy cheeks. Her gaze darkens, digs into you, tries to see what she perhaps missed in you. She tries to find her friend inside of you, tries to find your anguish or heartbreak, too. 

“What am I supposed to do with you?” She asks suddenly and it is not fond but, devastated, “how am I supposed to–” 

Her voice bites off into a strangled whine. 

“Trust me?” 

And when she says, “I don’t know how Gojo does it.” 

It isn’t heated or mean, it’s just–honest. Tired. 

And it hurts worse than you’re anticipating. The ache blossoms so fiercely that your breath catches with it, almost as if she’d struck you. It makes a lump form in your throat. Her eyes like dark moons look at you with a new form of disgust, mistrust. You want to seize her suddenly, you want to cry, you want to do what you do to Satoru where you cling and beg and whine. 

You know it won’t work on her, though.

So you swallow and say, “I loved him, too, you know.” 

And it’s the truth, more than you realized. 

“Then why didn’t you stop him? Why didn’t you save him?” 

Your mind catapults you into a memory of your own and you remember the ancestor of yours who looked too guilty to say he was trying to save you, but stop you. 

Perhaps it is the same, after all. 

“Ieri,” you whisper, strangled, “there was no stopping him.” 

There is no stopping me. 

“No,” she says and her eyes water, filling, “no. The Getou I know wouldn’t have–he killed his parents. He killed–” 

Her hand comes over her mouth and she turns away from you. She holds her stomach with her free hand like she’s trying to keep it all inside of her, like she’s trying to keep all her grief and anger from spilling out. 

You wonder how she will feel when you kill your father. 

Will she understand? Will she hold her stomach again like she’s going to be sick? 

Perhaps for both you and Suguru, you say, “I’m sorry.” 

Perhaps you are admitting to parts of it. “I’m sorry.” You say again and she finally turns to look at you. And then she is grabbing you and she is teetering in your arms as you whisper, “I am sorry. I’m sorry for all of it, I’m so, so–” 

A sob creaks out of her and she falls apart in your arms until Satoru walks to you on wary, unsteady feet, and does the same. 

The three of you don’t sleep and instead sit in a garden that once held four, and watch as the sun breaks over the sky like shattered, red glass reflecting hot and hazy. The day turns on.

Life continues, even if it feels like theirs have ended, even if it feels like you’ve lost something greater than you can name. 

Greater than you ever anticipated.

And you say to no one, perhaps the sky, your voice small like a child’s;

“I’m sorry–I’m sorry–” 

***

Suguru Getou is condemned to execution.

And for all his power, there is nothing that Satoru can do to stop any of this.

(To stop the future you have set into–)

When Suguru kills one hundred and twenty one people, you know why he does it. Maybe he even sees you in them, kept away out of fear of their technique, maybe he is just horrible. You think he must understand then, when you’d mentioned two, little girls. It must've all slid into place for him finally. 

You think he realized his fate in the blink of an eye, the inevitability; perhaps why you despised him and then loved him. He must realize what he is about to do to Satoru. 

Still, Satoru comes to tell you–to seek your counsel. You’ve never seen him quite so lost. So–

You know he won’t listen to you when you tell him, “you will have to kill him.” 

He looks at you hard and long, stricken like you’ve hit him or wounded him, like you’ve pulled a knife out and pushed into the tender parts of him. He looks at you like you’ve betrayed him. 

“How could you say that to me?” He hisses and you can hear it in his voice, thick with emotion, with tears.

“I don’t say it lightly,” you respond and you’re startled to find your own voice failing, the sudden tears you have for the man you apparently hated so badly are still fresh. You don’t know why you’re mourning him like this, why it hurts so bad when you knew–you planned–

“I’m sorry,” you tell him and when he sinks into your embrace, you go down with him, “I’m sorry.” you say again and again and maybe you sound like your mother. Maybe you sound like someone else. 

But you cradle his head to your beating heart, card your fingers through his hair, and let him be just a man in your arms. 

***

Everyone steps in to help Satoru with Megumi and Tsumiki. 

Nanami often is the one who stops by to drop them off to be with you in the morning or evenings, after the kids have gotten done with school. Sometimes Utahime, who is remarkably good with kids. She is also remarkably kind to you, more so than you’d ever imagined or thought. Ieri jokes that she pities you to have to marry Gojo, who is, to her, the most insufferable person alive.  

You think it’s something more, but you can’t place what yet. 

Megumi rushes past Nanami to disappear into the garden. Tsumiki lingers and greets you before loping after her brother.

“How were they?” You ask him.

Nanami pauses before saying, “they miss Gojo, I think. Megumi especially is–” 

His expression pinches for a moment, before he schools it. 

“Well, he’s acting out a little.” 

“I’ll talk to him.” You promise. “What has he done?” 

“He’s picking fights with classmates. His teacher told me and said–well, she said that it would do well for him to have a solid presence in his life and not,” Nanami is careful with what he says now, but it still comes out a little too bluntly, “rotating babysitters.” 

It stings a little, but you swallow, nod around it. You know it’s true. But as they say, it does take a village and you and Satoru are hardly adults yourself. 

You aren’t even yet, technically.

Still, you say, “I’ll see what I can do. Thank you, Nanami, I know it means a lot to Satoru, too.” 

Nanami’s usually stoic features soften barely, before he nods and says, “of course.” And then he inhales slow and asks, “how’s Gojo?” 

In truth, you’ve hardly seen him.

But you’d never let anyone know that, you’d never admit, in any way, that he is untouchable to you. So you look out into the garden to find the kid’s dark heads of shining hair under the sun, bobbing about, moving around the lush green.

The wind eases past you and finally, you say, “he’ll be okay.” 

Nanami seems to understand, so he swallows, and nods. “Tell the kids I’ll see them tomorrow.” 

“I will,” you promise and watch as he walks off, his figure in the spun gold light of the sun and seems to shine through him, almost, as if he were made of light entirely. 

It really is such a shame, you think, as tears prick your eyes, of what will happen to him. 

***

“The wedding is approaching,” your father says over dinner.

“And so is her birthday.” Your mother reminds him. 

They’re planned for the same day–the wedding has been planned for your eighteenth birthday since the vow was created. The days have unspooled before you and turned to years. You have seen how this wedding in too many little futures of others, have known and anticipated it the way hospitals often have temples and churches inside of them 

Your father pays her no mind.

“This is a huge moment for our clan,” he says, “and I have asked countlessly in the past but–” 

“I’ve already seen his future.” You say.

His eyes round with surprise and then hope. The sick sort of excitement that comes from a ravenous sort of hunger. 

“I can’t believe you–” he shakes his head, elated, “finally. What did you see? How can the clan–”

“Did you think I would tell you?” 

His face falters. 

“We want to destroy the clans. Why would I tell you anything that helps them?” 

Your father’s face goes pale. It goes slack with disbelief. And then anger sharpens his eyes, slicing to you. 

He stands from the table abruptly enough that your mother flinches so hard she nearly drops a bowl. “Don’t–” she whimpers, throwing her arm out in front of you to stop him, to keep him from grabbing you. 

It breaks your heart, to see her hand, outcast over you to protect you, trembling like a leaf in a violent wind. She is horrified, but she is still trying to protect you. 

You almost see red. You almost want to kill your father right now. 

“You cannot allow this.” Your father seethes, “did you hear her?” 

“She’s my daughter,” is your mother’s only response, half desperate, chest heaving. 

“Mom–” you beg, but it’s too late, because your father lunges for her first. When he grabs her, all of your world narrows, and her strangled, pained gasp is the only thing you hear. Your father throws her into the wall so harshly that it leaves a dent and he goes for her again, while she is a crumpled mass on the floor and–

And you reach for the knife at the table like it has always belonged in your palm

You grab your father by his hair and yank his head far enough back to expose the fluttering line of his vulnerable throat. You are certain you have looked like this to him before, eyes bugging with his fist in your hair, mouth agape. 

You put the knife to his throat and hiss, “I will do this now if you lay another hand on her.” 

Your father begins to tremble the way your mother did. The way you did as a child. 

“You won’t,” he croaks. 

He doesn’t mean it. 

“I will.” You vow. 

And you wonder how Suguru felt, with his parents or the others he killed in the name of trapped, hurt children, you wonder if it felt like this. If it will be worse or better. You want to run to him now, you think, and ask. Is it worth it? Was it worth it? Will I ever get the smell of blood out from under my nose? 

Your father goes slack, let’s you know he is done. Defeated for now, subdued enough that he will not hit her. 

Your mother watches in horror. 

He slinks away, muttering to himself, grasping at his head, his throat. You think you are driving him mad. You think you are haunting him, that you have grown into a curse and not a girl at all. 

You toss the knife away and throw your arms around your mother and you rock her the way she used to rock you as a child, trying to quiet her cries, trying to soothe what you know will never settle. 

***

Satoru hasn’t been the same since Suguru’s betrayal. 

Though you knew this would pain him, it bothers you that it is able to affect him so greatly. Still, you remain doting, loving. You let him lay with his head in your lap, on your chest. You let him squeeze you too tightly, you let him bruise you. 

Most importantly, you let him believe that you are all he can trust. Over and over again, you murmur it to him when he sleeps in the afternoon sun with his head in your lap, beneath you is a picnic blanket in the garden, you let it infect his mind. 

And still, he pulls away from you. 

He becomes more untouchable than ever. Distant to you the way that stars are, bright in your sky but unreachable, a thousand lightyears away. You sit by your window, waiting for him, hoping he’ll fall back down to earth sometime. 

You think he’s avoiding you. 

It makes you want to curse and scream and cry. It makes you want to throw a tantrum all over again and see if he’ll come running. It makes you want to tear down mountains and carve the moon from the sky. 

You know what you have to do; it will cause a great deal of trouble for you, but you will do it. You will take it for him. Always for him. 

You visit him at Jujutsu Tech for once. 

You show up in his dorm and are mildly surprised that Megumi or Tsumiki aren’t here. You thought you’d at least be able to see them, too.

So instead you sit and wait for him to return in the quiet of his empty room. One hour turns to two, then three. 

The sun settles high in the sky and then begins to sink. 

You doze on his twin bed, in the last rays of the sun that manage to steal through the window, cut through the blinds. 

When you wake, it’s to the shadow of Satoru in his doorway. You sit up, groggy, blinking sleep away. 

“Not that I’m mad to return to a girl in my bed, but, what are you doing here?” He asks and instantly, you can tell he’s tense, on guard. He shuts the door behind him, he wades into the room, avoiding you. He doesn’t greet you with a kiss to the cheek or a secret smile. He falls into the chair at the desk. 

“I haven’t seen you in over a week.” You tell him, voice still hushed with sleep. And then, “where are the kids?”

“With Shoko for a bit. She’s had them for the day, helping them study.” 

“You could’ve brought them to me.” You tell him and perhaps it pains you that he didn’t. 

“Your father let you out of the garden?” He asks in return, avoiding it. Avoiding you. You can feel the distance he is trying to force between you two. His voice is strange. 

You don’t heed his warning. You don’t bother to backtrack. 

“No. I snuck out. I’m sure they’re looking for me.” You tell him and in the dark lavender of evening, you catch a sliver of his smile. A ghost of himself. Your heart trips over itself in blind hope. You press on, “I missed you. I wanted to see you.” 

When he doesn’t respond to that, you add, “I’m worried about you.” 

Now he rises and finally comes to you. He stands, tall and towering over where you’ve sat up on his bed. He lifts a large hand, grown so large since you were kids, and carefully touches the apple of your cheek. 

“No reason to ever worry about me, darling.” He says, but you can tell, even with the blindfold, that his gaze has gone hollow, unseeing you. He pulls his hand away and your cheek tilts, chases after the warmth of his palm; he’s untouchable, so untouchable. “I’m the strongest. You should know better.” 

He turns away from you again, wanders to the window, gazes out at a dark courtyard. 

“Satoru,” you say as gently as you can. 

“I should get you back. Your father will be upset. I’ll take the blame.” 

“Satoru.” 

“I’ll smooth things over with him. I’m sorry to have worried you. Nothing’s wrong, though–” 

“Satoru.” You snap. 

He freezes, finally has the good sense to be quiet for a moment. 

You stand from his bed, rise like a ghost (maybe that’s all you are these days–a ghost of a girl, a vow he can’t shake, the pressing of time that he can only feel, but not see), and drift to him. Your touch doesn’t match your tone or your anger; you are gentle, when you put your hand on his back. 

“Look at me.” You tell him.

When he turns, your fingers skim over his ribs, all the way to his chest. 

You lift your hand to his face, to the blindfold and deftly, you pull at it. 

He frowns and for a moment, you think he might try to pull away and deny you, but he doesn't. 

He goes completely still. 

You tug gently, until the blindfold slips away and hangs uselessly around his neck. 

His eyes are much sadder than you remember, the blue of them all sapphire dark, nightened and deep. 

“Why have you been avoiding me?” You ask, now that you can see all of him. And he can see all of you. 

“I’ve been busy.” 

“Don’t lie to me.” 

A grimace drifts across his features. You have always been able to see through the lies, the masks, the godhood he wears. 

You wait with him, patient, and seemingly careful. You can feel the thrum of his heart beneath your palm, can feel the rise and fall of his chest, the simmer of his cursed energy. Of yours. You look at your hand, small against his broadening chest. 

“I’m not lying,” he murmurs, then tries to sweeten you to him by covering your hand with his. His hand has grown so large since he was young. It engulfs yours now. “I have been busy.” 

You think he realizes he wants affection, you can tell in the way he pulls closer. He’s deprived himself of it recently, so you aren’t surprised that a taste of it would make him suddenly hungry. But if he isn’t going to answer, you aren’t going to give into him. You won’t feed him. 

You slip away from him with a disappointed sigh. Coolness rushes between you, separating you, starving him. 

“You’ve always been busy. You always come to visit me.” 

His eyes flash in the darkness. 

“Have you considered that you can’t be the center of my life?” He asks and his voice is light, but barbed. He sounds like his mother. “That I have far more important responsibilities than visiting and playing house with you?” 

You don’t flinch. He’s being needlessly cruel. You know how this plays out. You always know. 

“Spare me,” you tell him, not particularly cruelly, but tired. “Don’t undermine me like that. And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.” 

He bristles. Opens his mouth like he might say something, then firmly shuts it. 

Speechless. 

(How did you do that? Suguru laughs, how did you get him speechless?)

The memory rushes to you, of that warm day. Satoru must think of it, too. It must settle over him like a phantom, because Satoru goes perfectly still. You watch any anger or frustration seep out of him, like it’d been punctured. It leaks from him now, so that he’s deflated, just a shell of himself. 

“Is this about Suguru?” You ask him gently, when you think he can stomach hearing his name out loud. 

His lashes flutter, a muscle in his jaw feathers, but otherwise he remains unmoved. 

“Don’t you know everything?” He asks, voice cool, trying to remain untouchable, trying to remain frozen and far from you. 

“You know I don’t.” You answer gently and it’s only half-true. You turn back towards him, step into his orbit once more. 

“But did you know this one?“

“Yes.” You answer honestly, tip your chin up to look into his eyes, all dark heaven. 

He moves so fast that you don’t even catch it. You think he may have even used his technique, caught you so fierce and quickly that you gasp, feel the muscles of his hand jump as he squeezes your face in his large palm. 

“Why wouldn’t you tell me?” He begs and he’s trying to shroud himself in anger, but you can hear the grief in its footsteps. The heartache wells inside of you. “Why wouldn’t you try to stop it?” 

“You don’t understand.” You hiss, “You have no idea–” 

“You should’ve told me!” Satoru’s voice catches, “maybe I could’ve–” 

“You couldn’t have.” You tell him. 

“You don’t know that!” He snaps, “he–we–I would’ve done anything–” 

His eyes well with tears and your hands instantly go up to his shoulders, his neck. 

“Satoru–” you try to soothe, but he’s still gripping you so hard you’ll bruise. 

“I would’ve done anything to stop him–” 

When he falls apart, it is always you there to hold him, to put the pieces of a God back together again. You hold him tight around the middle and he curves over you like a drought-driven plant, desperate, bowed. 

And you tell him again and again, that you’re here. He has you. He’s always had you. He always will. A vow made as children that is still carved into the both of you, written into your fates, and imprinted on your beings. 

Your own religion. 

You lay with him on his little twin bed. You run your hands through his hair. He soothes under your touch. He mouths at your throat in a way that makes you flush darkly, that reminds you you’re alone with him, for once. You’re alone with him in a little twin bed made for one, now holding two. 

And when he admits, “I know you did what was best, but I can’t help but resent you a little.” you almost, almost feel guilty. You feel the lump in your throat, the splintering of your heart, that has always been so painfully, willfully, soft and vulnerable for him.

You have half a mind to start wailing, howling like you’re going to shake apart.

“Some days I loathe you so much that I love you more, or love you so much that I loathe you.” He admits, fingers bruising into your ripe skin, into the softest parts of you. 

Instead you curl around him tighter, like a little asp constricting around its prey. You curl around him and think, I did do what’s best. 

I did what’s best for us.

***

Your father is furious, but Satoru takes the blame, as he promised. 

Your father wouldn’t dare lay a hand on you around Satoru. 

But even after he leaves, your father doesn’t touch you. 

He can’t even look at you. 

He flinches when he does. 

And you stand at the end of the hallway like he used to and you wonder if this is how he always felt. 

You wonder if this is how it will always feel to surpass your parents, to take what they were and be more, to swallow them whole. You wonder if you should feel worse for garnering his fear. 

But then you think of yourself as a child, looking up at him, desperate for his love and acceptance, and in the same way that he could not find sympathy for his own daughter–

You have no sympathy for the father that raised her. 

***

Preparations for the wedding are a nightmare for both you and Satoru. Between dealing with higher ups that both of you would rather overthrow, your father, and his mother, the wedding hardly begins to feel like a wedding at all. Just a spectacle, a feat of the century. 

It doesn’t help that in the midst of this, Satoru is still grieving Suguru, who lives and festers and grows. More than that, Megumi and Tsumiki also demand his full attention. Megumi is picking fights in school. Tsumiki is struggling in other, quiet ways. 

You’ve told him to focus on buying a bigger space for the four of you, that you’ll handle the higher ups and the wedding planning and his mother.

You went many years rarely seeing her. As a child, she watched you and Satoru, always gazed at you a little too intensely, followed you the way a predator must watch prey. Or perhaps the way prey must watch a predator– you never know anymore, which you were. Maybe some horrible beast of both; a rabbit with jagged canines, antlers cut sharp and protruding from your poor head, a wolf with large ears and soft paws, a fox, if nothing else. Both hunted and the hunter.

You don’t know when you became accustomed to the taste of blood in your mouth.

But when his mother pushes, you finally push back. No longer a child, no longer fangless.

You’re taking tea with her, discussing further wedding plans, when she says, “you may have my son fooled, but I see right through you.”

She says this very casually, like she might be saying, the sky is blue, or I am the mother of a god. Both, you think, could ring softly in her melodic voice. She does seem like the mother of a god, all icy hair, now going silver, like a star. And oh, her eyes, her eyes are just like diamonds. Like her son’s, the god.

The tea is scalding, you cup it in your palm and let it warm against your skin, wait to bring it to your lips.

“Oh?”

“The moment I saw you, I knew.” She says, eyeing you over the rim of her own tea cup. “I knew you’d be his downfall. A shame, really. It’s too bad I didn’t have a daughter, sons can be so–”

“I have no intention of being Satoru’s downfall. Quite the contrary, I have done everything in my power to ensure that he will not have a downfall.” You respond coolly and you can feel her gaze, the way it tries to dig down into the tender parts of you, like a hawk sinking its talons around the fleshy bits of your heart.

She doesn’t particularly scare you except–

You don’t know this conversation. You know her fate, because Satoru will feel it and you know him. But this is new territory to you.

“I knew when I saw you,” she repeats, “but especially after your binding vow to him, that you were going to burrow yourself underneath his skin. You were going to be his own fault. The only mortal part of him. That’s why you will be his downfall.”

It strikes you as strange that she believes this. Besides, you know you have only seeded him, twisted and molded and shaped him into the boy-god he is now. You know who his real mortal parts are, know who they will always be, and it is the children in his care.Perhaps, Suguru Getou, too.

No, you were never lovely enough to be anything mortal. You were never normal enough to be anything so simple.

“I think you’re mistaken,” you say and the words come to you the way prophecy does, “I shaped him.”

Her eyes flash like the too-hot part of a flame and she says around her teeth, like she’s biting down into it, “I made him. And he almost killed me.” She collects herself then, but her mouth is twisted into this sickle curve of a grimace, “perhaps one day you will understand, what it’s like to be torn in two, and love them either way.”

You think you must know it already, at least a little.

“Do you love your husband?” You ask. “My mother does not love my father.”

Like your parents, she was arranged to marry Satoru’s father.

And easily, she says, “no. I never did. I learned him.”

“My mother fears my father.” You tell her.

“Many women do.” She responds, “I think we are more similar than you are to your own mother. She was always a little too sweet.”

You hum lightly and finally, dare to take a sip of tea.

“I don’t believe we are much alike at all.” You say before finally setting the tea cup down onto the table in front of you, palm still hot from it.

“You have been scheming your whole life. You were never content to be anything other than extraordinary. Trust me, I was once young and full of the same vigor.” She says dryly, gently tossing some of her long, silver hair over her shoulder. “The only thing that makes you special is that you will be Satoru’s wife.”

You can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of you.

“No,” you say.

“No?” she asks.

“Can you see the future?” You ask her. 

Silence. 

“I, too, have a technique–” 

“But can you see the future? Are you invincible?” 

She refuses to say no again. 

“You have a technique, but it’s not like ours. Satoru and I have always been different. I am not like you. I wish the only reason I am special is because of him. I wish all I had to do was learn him.” You think you must’ve always known him, anyways, some part of you. There was no need to learn, when you were so interwoven, so intertwined. 

“Spare me the self-pity, it’s unbecoming of a girl of your stature–”

“I love your son.” You say plainly, like one might say the sky is blue, or I am not only a god’s wife, but his godly wife. “And he loves me, too.”

“I didn’t think you were this naive–”

You set your hands against the table, lean forward in a way that must be vaguely threatening because her gaze sharpens. Predator or prey. Some wretched amalgamation of both.

“He’ll kill for me. That isn’t an exaggeration, that’s just a part of the future. He’ll do anything I ask of him. Would your husband, for you? Is he a god? Would a god do anything for you?” You watch her face carefully, the way it twists. 

“I’m his mother–”

Your voice drops to a hush and the light catches the mismatched color of your eyes;

“More than that, I have killed for him already and no one even knows it. I will again. And that is far, far worse than if I was just some scheming wife.”

She sits back in her chair with a look on her face that might be bitterness. You think she tries to swallow around it. Perhaps, it is more akin to hatred. Maybe even, fear.

“Now,” you continue, and with all the grace of a god, you sweep your tea cup into your hand and take another slow, easy sip. “You wanted to talk about the flowers for the wedding?”

And you think she is smarter than she looks because she does not look at you the same way again. If you thought there was contempt in her gaze before, you have never quite seen loathing like this.

You talk of flowers, like you didn’t just admit murder to her. You’d like something blue. It will look nice, you tell her, with gold and silver. 

When Satoru stops by later, with Megumi and Tsumiki in tow, you brush a kiss to his jaw in greeting in front of his mother. Perhaps to spite her. Tsumiki tucks herself up against your side and Megumi lets you smooth his wild hair down against his pouting face.

She gazes at the two dark haired children around you, at the way her son looks lovingly at the three of you and you smile, slow and knowing, asp-like.

“I will know, by the way, what it’s like to love them either way.” You tell her as Megumi tucks his face into your shoulder and you turn to kiss the top of his small head. 

Usurper that he is, you’ll love him either way.

***

Life keeps turning, but you find yourself clinging to the past in a way you aren’t prepared for. You know you must go on, with the wedding, with adulthood, with what you have made but–

But sometimes, when you touch Ieri or Satoru, you let it drag you into the past. Into sweeter memories and the ghost that now haunts the three of you. 

Suguru is there and he is lighter, before Haibara’s death, and he and Satoru toy and tease and play. 

They follow you and Ieri around the garden like shadows. You burn with these visions of him, can’t understand, couldn’t foresee, why you relive it so much. You knew you cared about him but–

You always thought it’d be easier, since you knew. 

You didn’t think you’d miss him or his half moon smiles. 

The past tastes sickly and in it, he holds a peach over your head and lets you reach and jump and squabble for it. He slyly nudges you right into the pond and then he follows you in a moment later. He stretches out in the tall grass beside you, he lays his arm over you, he laughs when you yell and huff and bite. He talks about your wedding and the bachelor party he will throw. A future you will never see. 

He simmers with a love for you and Satoru and Ieri that you feel as if you didn’t see in the present but can only see now, in Hindsight. 

He says things like, “you’re such a curse of a girl.” with the fondest smile on his lips. 

And he says–

In Satoru’s memories, he tells him–

Satoru asks him, “if anything ever happened to me. You’d look after her, wouldn’t you?”

And Suguru says, “of course. I’d do anything for her.” 

Satoru smiles, boyish, infinitely happy and it guts you so thoroughly for a moment that you forget how to breathe, you forget how to stomach this. 

“Careful,” Satoru laughs, “she is still my fiance.” 

Suguru laughs, low and soft and the memory is souring, curdling inside of you in a way that makes you want to throw it all up.

“I don’t think there’s anything in the world that could keep the two of you apart.” 

Except for you, you think, except for you, you wretch and cry and wail. 

***

Your wedding takes place on the eve of your eighteenth birthday. 

You wish you could say you’re prepared, in some way, for all of it. But you find that even a lifetime can’t prepare you for becoming the wife of a God. The ceremony itself is stuffy, rather tense, with uneasy truces between clans and political talk interwoven and murmured and laced into every other sentence. The only people there that you or Satoru genuinely want are his friends. Your mother. 

Who cried the day previous. She apologized again, that she couldn’t stop any of it for you, that it all turned out this way, like it was her fault at all. 

(Not your fault, it’s never your fault–you want to tell her, but don’t.) 

She said she’s only glad you’re marrying someone like Satoru, someone you know, someone you love. Who loves you. 

She said she takes great comfort in that, that at least you’ll know love like that. 

You have to bite back a laugh–love like this? Oh, what it’s done to you. And oh, what you’ve done for it. 

You are married beneath a setting sun on the top of their mortal world, high above the city. It is fit for what they believe are gods. 

“A monumental day, history being made in front of our very eyes. Two of the most extraordinary sorcerers in hundreds of years, now bound together.” The officiant rattles on and on. 

Satoru makes a face and even beneath the blindfold, you can tell it’s a rolling of his eyes. Your lips twist into a half smile. 

Vows are such a tricky thing, you think. 

There are the official ones they have you repeat. But then there are yours, his, ours that have always been there. The ones that have been etched onto your heart since you were a child. 

And the world as his witness, without an ounce of shame, like he is again a child, he vows;

“I will always have you.” 

And with a flash of your teeth, like you’re biting down into it, you repeat, you curse him, “I will always have you.” 

Easily, he promises, easily, he gives himself to you, “You will always have me.” 

Almost viciously, you vow, “you will always have me.” 

Murmurs ripple. His mother is white knuckled. Your father is lock-jawed in anger. Your clan worries and hushes. His does, too. But you don’t see any of it, just Satoru, when he leans down to seal his lips to yours. 

It’s a little harsh, vicious in the way that love is. In the way that your love is, horrible little thing you are, there is nothing and no one now–

Nothing and no one who will take him from you. Who will stop you now. 

***

The reception afterwards is mostly for politics. You and Satoru are supposed to play nice but–

He’s being a shit. Smarmy. You don’t ask him to stop, so he doesn’t. You don’t particularly care to be polite or good, to not frighten the other sorcerers and the clans. In fact, you think Satoru is flexing a little bit, as if to say ‘you wanted this, you wanted this our whole lives. As if to say, we will not be as obedient as you thought. As you hoped.’ 

In hindsight, you think they regret your arranged marriage. 

You don’t know what they expected, forcing two of the most powerful sorcerers together. Did they think you wouldn’t band together? Did they hope you would still hold loyalty to them above all else, and not each other? 

You spent your whole life being reared and raised to be their perfect weapon, their perfect wife, their perfect god. To fit alongside Satoru. Were you not groomed for this? Are you not perfect for it? 

You can’t fathom their shock. 

Still, you can tell he is trying to enjoy his evening, if only with you, if only for you. 

“It is our wedding,” he’d said to you just days prior. “It’s for us. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be,” he’d said, “but now it is.”

You can tell many disapprove of his blatant affection for you, disapprove of the way he’s teasing them to make you laugh. They hate that you laugh, that you won’t scold him. They hate what they have created. 

His arm has been around you nearly the entire evening. Whether on the crux of your waist or the small of your back, around your shoulders or fitting his fingers to the bend of your torso along the lines of your rib, he has clung impossibly close to you. 

“What do you say?” he asks, dropping kisses like falling stars over your cheek, your jaw, tickling along your neck playfully. “Should we find Shoko and Nanami and the kids? I don’t want to spend anymore time with these geezers.” 

“Yes,” you agree, letting him catch you in a fuller kiss, one that bleeds warmth into you, runs a thrill down your spine as you feel the soft brush of his teeth, a little tongue. 

You pull away before he can deepen and he grins at you, a little raucous, a little knowing, before you can pinch his side and get a little yelp from him, before you can spirit him away to where you know everyone waits for you.

“Finally,” Shoko says, leaning back in her chair, “I was going to die of boredom just watching you two greet all of them.” 

“It’s horrendous,” Satoru agrees before Tsumiki, who’d been in Nanami’s care for the evening, bounds straight into Satoru’s arms for a hug.

He laughs and catches her easily, picks her up even though she’s a little too old for it, and spins her around. 

Megumi leaves his seat next to Nanami to ease himself up to your side, wrap his arms around your waist and peer up at you with those eyes so deep. 

“You look nice,” he mutters into your hip and you know it means a lot coming from him. And then, he peeks up at you through his long lashes, “are you happy?” 

The question catches you by surprise, for some reason, and your heart suddenly swells. Tenderness bundles itself up, knots your heart over itself. You think about the question; are you happy? 

Can you be? 

Are you allowed to be? After everything you’ve done? After everything you will do? 

Tears prick your eyes. 

But you are happy, you decide, you are happy now. You are happy for tonight. 

And you nod to him, running your fingers through his unruly hair, “I’m very happy, Megumi.”  

He studies your face, squeezes just a little tighter around you, and says, “then I’m happy, too.” 

Satoru suddenly gets his big hand on the top of Megumi’s head. “Look at you, Megumi, you look so handsome in your suit.” 

Megumi starts to fuss, like he always does with Satoru, batting at his hand, trying to scrap with him, even when Satoru laughs. Perhaps especially when he laughs. Satrou pushes his little head around in his palm, tormenting him. 

Tsumiki eases up to your side as the boys scrap and you welcome her into your arms as if she could have always belonged there. 

When she looks up at you, you can tell she’s debating on saying something. You smooth out a piece of her hair, swiping it behind her ear, “what is it?” You ask and maybe you remind yourself of your own mother finally. 

“I don’t remember my mother’s wedding to Megumi’s father much. I was really young.” She frowns, “I wish–” 

“I wish I remembered more of it. Of them. I wish Megumi remembered them.” You can sense the tears in her before they even well. You can feel your own caught in the back of your throat for her. 

For everything inside of you, you cannot fathom how an unending well has opened inside of you for this child. For Megumi. You always thought, your whole life, the only space inside of you would be an infinite void and only the one who possesses Infinity could ever control that. 

But it’s as if they’ve made a new space. 

You swipe her tears away with your thumb before they can fall. “Tsumiki,” you try to soothe. What can you say? What would you want to hear? What will you want to hear when your own mother is gone? 

How do you not fall apart for her–for everything–of all that will happen to her, here and now? 

Instead, she says, “I hope we remember this one, at least.” And she gives you her best and brightest smile. The one that sparks and brightens a room. 

You hold her tight to you, you clutch to her, perhaps unsure if it’s her who needs this or you. You hold her until you feel as if you can pull away and won’t burst at the seams, until you are certain that you can smile back at her. 

“You will,” you assure her, voice thicker than you’d like, and then, “and it’s okay–Satoru has already taken far too many pictures.” 

She laughs then, overspilling from her in a way that is lovely and young and beautiful. 

You feel arms wind around you from behind, the smell of tobacco, of plum, and smile when you see Ieri’s manicured fingers fasten themselves around you.

She hooks her chin over your shoulder and smiles at Tsumiki, too. 

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” you respond, turning your cheek into hers. 

“What do you say, Tsumiki? Should we go dance the night away?” Ieri then says, her smile lazy but genuine and you think, perhaps, she sensed, or knew that Tsumiki was feeling tender. 

You find you are grateful for her, not for the first time in your life, but you realize how much and how grandly Ieri has been there. 

“I’d like to dance!” Tsumiki says and you smile as Ieri unwinds herself from you.

“I’ll get a glass of wine.” She says, “and then we can hit the dance floor.” 

“Do I hear dancing?” Satoru perks up, Megumi caught underneath his arm, kicking and thrashing a little. 

“Satoru, put him down,” you tell him.

“Oh, you’re lucky, Megumi, my wife has set you free.” And he sets the boy back down onto his feet, who looks ready to scrap again with the little scowl on his face, but you take hold of his wrist before he can.

“Come on, Megumi, we’re going to dance.” You say to him, tugging lightly and his frown deepens, but he does allow you to pull him towards the dance floor. 

No one is dancing because it’s a stuffy room of jujutsu higher ups, sycophants and clan leaders. There is music, but no one is dancing.

“Nanami, you too!” Satoru cries, throwing his arm around the poor young man. Freshly eighteen as well. 

“I’m going to need a drink,” he mutters and it makes you laugh, blossoming out of you. 

“Where’s Utahime?” Satoru then asks, “let’s get everyone.” 

It is a small struggle to grab everyone, but once done, the dance floor welcomes you. 

Nanami and Utahime need at least two drinks, before they give in and begin to dance, Nanami bobbing along and Utahime beginning to sway and move. Ieri, you think, has been tipsy this whole time and you don’t blame her. Megumi takes a little bit to drag out of his shell–

But you take his hand and you dance with him, letting him lead you, ducking beneath his arm when he spins you. You bring him out and back in, spin around the room with him until he’s cracking a smile, until you’re laughing, genuinely, with all the love inside of you. 

Murmurs spread around you, people gossiping, passing judgment at the group in the center. But Ieri pours wine into your mouth carefully, laughing when some gets on your chin, wiping it away quickly to not fall any further. You and Utahime work to get Nanami to loosen up–you make him dance with you, too, can see the flush of pink high on his cheeks as he looks to Satoru, who only laughs merrily in return.

 And suddenly two drinks have turned to four and perhaps people are scandalized.

By young people, being young for once. 

By the way the kids are running around, laughing, and screaming. Dancing and singing. You and Satoru let them terrorize the place. Satoru bends down to Megumi and tells him to go steal sweets for him, to go trip that man there, and go ahead and bump into her as well.  

They’re mortified by the way Satoru grabs you, curls a broad hand around your waist and pulls you close, sways with you to the upbeat music from the DJ Satoru specifically requested despite everyone’s disapproval. 

The night blooms. 

Your father tries to convince the DJ to stop. Satoru’s mother is scowling from across the room but–

When you catch your mother’s eye, she is smiling. Nodding her head along subtly. 

You pull away from Satoru suddenly.

It was never in your mother’s future, this moment, but you can’t help but feel like you need it now, more than anything. Maybe she needs it more than anything. There’s a questioning look on Satoru’s face, before he sees where you’re already headed off to.

And then your hands are in your mother’s and she’s shaking her head no a little, laughing nervously, but you don’t let her go. 

You don’t want to let her go. 

“I can’t–” she says to you but you don’t listen, dragging her out to the dance floor. 

You know her time is rapidly approaching, quicker than you could’ve ever realized. You’ve blinked and suddenly you are not just a child who knows what will happen to her, but a new adult, on the night of your wedding, not even a year out. 

All at once, you realize how rapidly everything has approached. The world turns and you just wish you could still it, place one hand over Time and capture it between your fingers, wrestle it still. 

Instead, you spin around the room with your mother. She’s shy and it occurs to you that she probably never got this at her own wedding.  

So you give it to her now. 

Satoru dances with her. Let's you dance with her until she laughs a little. 

And she tells you she loves you. She’s happy for you, if you’re happy. 

She still slips from your hands and recedes to the edges again, but she watches you with shining eyes, overjoyed and lovely.

You look at all of your friends as they dance and drink and shout and sing, watch Megumi and Tsumiki, and perhaps at the same time as Satoru, you realize there is one missing. 

(Perhaps three, in total, because you wonder about a future with Suguru and the two little girls. Two little girls like Megumi and Tsumiki. You think they should’ve been friends, that it would’ve been nice to have them around–)

You look at Satoru the moment his face falls a little, as his brows pinch into a sort of mourning that you know well. 

You slip your hand into his. 

“I wish–” he starts.

“I know.” You tell him, “me too.” 

He shudders a little, a rocky inhale, a slow exhale like he’s trying to stabilize himself. 

Grief lingers in both of you, stitched into your existences, melded down to your marrows. 

Perhaps for all gods, it is. Perhaps it is a requirement of godhood. 

You squeeze his hand. 

You pull him back into life, into your friends, and evermoving Time. The world spins and so do you, late into the night, when everyone has gone home.

When the stars sing and Nanami’s tie has been lost and Shoko’s hair is a mess and there are lipstick smudges on Satoru’s cheeks and the kids are tired.

Megumi is sleeping on two chairs put together and Tsumiki is trying her hardest not to nod off as well. 

“I’ll make sure everyone gets home safely,” Utahime promises, a little weary herself, but sober, and still walking. Which is more than the rest can say. And for once, she hugs Satoru and gives him a genuine smile. She tells him she’s happy for him; she’s glad he was able to have fun, at least, on his wedding night. She hugs you, too, and you don’t know Utahime well yet. 

But you will, when Satoru becomes a teacher alongside her. 

Nanami gently wakes Megumi, eases the drowsy boy into standing alongside his sister. Megumi is tired enough that he lets Nanami hold his hand to usher him out. Tsumiki tucks up next to him, too, and your heart aches watching them. 

Ieri kisses your cheek sloppily, and then Satoru’s, who laughs at her antics, who shoos her into Utahime’s waiting arms. 

Until they’re parading out and it is just you and Satoru, always just you and Satoru, at the end of a night. At the beginning of a day. 

Your shadows cast tall and wide behind you in the last lights of the venue. 

He looks at you and smiles and says;

“Let me take you home.” 

***

In front of you sprawls your new home. 

You have yet to see it in person, until tonight. 

Satoru had whined about wanting to surprise you, how it was impossible to do so, since you’d already seen the future.

I’ve already seen the home you will give me, you tell him and you want to tell him, I see it in my dreams. I see it in the softest, most shuddering parts of my heart. 

Still, it is hard to put into words what you feel as you gaze at the front door, at the windows that line the place; wide and glittering and will certainly let in enough light to drown the place in it. 

“Do you like it?” Satoru prompts, nervous, “the outside, anyways?” 

A laugh springs from you, “yes,” you gasp, “of course I do.” 

He unlocks the front door then and before you can take another step, you’re suddenly airborne. 

You yelp.

“It’s tradition somewhere, isn’t it? To carry you over the threshold of our new home?” 

This time your laugh is full and bursting, clutching tight to his neck, the silks of white that drape over your body flutter and twist in his big hands. It hikes up and you can feel the cool brush of night, just before Satoru kicks the door shut behind him.

And then he sets you down and–

You take a few, fawn-like steps, into your new home. It’s open with dark wood but he’s decorated it with soft creams and silky flowers on low tables. It’s surprisingly put together and surprisingly warm. 

Homey, almost. 

You think it looks nothing like his childhood home of marble and steel and clean, shocking white. Nor yours, brooding and stiff and vacant. It looks comfortable, like you build something here. 

It looks painfully, viciously, human.

Your chest tightens. Your vision blurs.

“There’s a garden out back, not quite as big as the one you grew up in but there’s a pond still and–and Tsumiki and Megumi finally have their own rooms upstairs.” Satoru says, watching, enamored, as you move about the space. 

It isn’t huge, not long and sprawling, but it isn’t small, either. And for this area, so close to the campus, you know it was no small lump of money. 

You have seen yourself here for awhile now, in Satoru’s future, living and sleeping and humming to yourself as you move about the space. You have seen your life here already but now it truly blossoms in your vision. 

You turn to him and you realize you’re crying, tears finally brimming over and onto your cheeks. This will be the first time away from your parents, from your garden, from the small world you’d been isolated to all your life. 

It will be your first night with Satoru, the first of many, of forever. 

“Don’t cry,” he hushes but you can tell, perhaps, that his voice has gotten thicker, tighter with emotion. He takes your face in his great, broad hand and curls it around you protectively. There’s an inkling of possession in the act, the sudden firmness, the way he guides your face up to his. 

Then, soft as midnight, dark as the sky, “I always told you I’d take you away, didn’t I?” 

You shiver, feel it race up your spine at the edge he has in his voice. Like he was always planning it, like he’d thought about it so often it turned him inside out, like it was an inevitable part of your future. 

You nod into the warmth of his hand, nuzzle into the cup of his palm. 

“And I have.” He says, “you don’t ever have to see your father again, if you don’t want to. Any of your clan.” 

You know you will see your father once more. 

Satoru swipes away a tear before it can fully cascade down your cheek. 

“Don’t cry,” he says again. 

You reach up to slip your fingers, cool and soft, against his cheek, to dip under the fabric of his blindfold. He wore it the whole night, you missed his eyes the whole night. 

You let your fingers explore the soft part of his under eye, careful as you feel his lashes tickle, as you creep up towards his brow bone. 

The blindfold comes off in a heap. 

His eyes are glassy, too, like he may cry. 

“I love you,” you say, perhaps for the first time so plainly. It falls from your mouth as easily as stars falling from the sky. 

He seems to shudder with it, before he eases forward, brings your face up like a flower seeking sun, and presses tender, little kisses to your cheek. 

I love you, too, they seem to say, to scatter like petals, I love you, too. I’ve always loved you. 

You turn your face, seeking, and his lips catch yours in a deeper kiss. Slow and warm like honey, ambrosia poured hot down the body of you, feeling it slither deeper. You have rarely been truly alone with Satoru throughout all your years; it didn’t stop you from kissing or touching, if not carefully, if not always with one eye open. 

But now there is no one but you two. 

And you feel confident in pressing closer, in tangling your hand in his hair, silky and soft between your fingers. You feel his hand flex, before sliding along your hips, pulling you closer still. 

A soft nip of your teeth, testing, letting you flex your nails in his shoulder. 

You feel his hitch of breath.

Your desire sharpens, digs its claws into you. You’ve always wanted him in some way; wanted him near and to be yours, wanted him weak and strong, wanted him desperate and assured. You have wanted him in the marrow of you, since you were a child. Since the moment he told you that he would always have you. 

“‘Toru,” you murmur and your voice is perhaps softer than you’ve ever heard it, higher in a way that is just shy of a whine. You flush with embarrassment. Heat burns your ears, your neck. 

For all your own strength, you are always rendered horrendously hopeless for him. It’s like an affliction, some illness you can’t shake, something that has overridden you your whole life.

“What is it?” He hushes back, lips hovering over yours, “what do you need?” 

It’s almost mocking, in that sweet, lullaby voice of his.

You seize him, by the hair, by the front of his clothes, “don’t be cruel.” 

Your voice wavers, though.

And he huffs out a laugh, reaches one hand up to untangle it from his shirt, soothes until you release the hold on his hair, too. “I’d never be.” He lies and then he ducks his face to the crook of your neck. 

You’ve felt him here before, felt him nuzzle and kiss softly, felt the tickle of his hair on your cheek. But now you feel the wet warmth of his mouth, open, tongue soft against your skin. The strike of teeth. You always knew he was holding back with you before; in fact he’d done so deliberately at points. 

If you’d crawled over him, he’d pause, and ease you off. His cheeks had always been so pink. He’d had to explain it wasn’t rejection but rather a thread of his control. 

Not to be a traditionalist, he’d say, but I’ll only have you when it’ll only be us and all the time in the world. 

You wish your technique was time bending, rather than sight. You wish you could manipulate it more than you do now, wish you could manipulate the actual length of it. Freeze it. Hold it. 

Rewind it. 

You push at him a little and for a moment, he doesn’t relent, and you are reminded of how strong he’s become. Broad and tall. Lean with muscles, grown into himself in a way that you have always known and yet, are still surprised to feel beneath your hands. 

Finally, he eases away from you and you step away, slip from him to wander further into the house without a word. 

He watches you for a moment, the way he always has, explore the garden, wander around a new place that is yours. His. Each other’s. It’s a strange dance you both know well, this sort of give and take, push and pull where you make him chase. You make him wait. You make him come to heel. 

You ease around the banister of the stairs and slowly begin to climb them when he finally moves from his spot. He comes to the side of the stairs and you are only just as tall as him, two steps up, with the railing between you. 

Just as he had earlier to you, you put your finger beneath his chin and lift his face, tilt it up into looking at you. Pretty boy that he is, he gazes at you from beneath lashes like snowflakes. 

“I want to see the rest of my house,” you say softly. 

His smile is fond, if not amused. 

“Yours?” He asks. 

“Mine.” You agree with a sharp, small smile of your own and his laugh is a welcome sound. 

“Everything is yours.” He agrees. 

“Mine,” you agree again and this time you kiss him soundly as a reward. 

Only briefly though, a lick of heat, before you slip from him and disappear up the stairs. Quicker than before, you take the stairs, as if to run from him. 

In the blink of an eye, Satoru shudders to life in front of your vision. 

(You know this moment, have cherished the memory in his future before it became a memory at all.) 

He catches you before you can get past him and you still yelp in surprise. 

Funny, you think, he’s never done that to you before. He usually lets you lead and run and stray from him. He follows dutifully. 

“Cheater,” you gasp, looking up at him in surprise. 

“I didn’t know there were rules.” He smiles, but you duck out from beneath his hold and he allows you to escape, wandering deeper into the hallway.

You know the first room on your left is Megumi’s. And then Tsumiki’s is on the right. You know they will share the bathroom beside Megumi’s room. And if you go straight down the hallway, at the end of it, will be your bedroom. 

So that is the first one you pick, it’s the first door you open. 

Dark wood and pale blue. Gold. Cream. The bed is set low into its frame, larger than you even thought they made. There is a balcony attached, draped with curtains of off-white, hiding the night sky from you, hiding the small table and chairs he’s placed out there, that you will spend many mornings and evenings on. The room is–

Perhaps a flex of his money, more than the other places of the house (despite the kid’s room, with all the toys in the world he could ever give them, with more than they know what to do with but Satoru has always been a spoiler, an indulger–)

And you can tell now that he is trying to spoil you. 

You turn to face him, just as he comes up behind you, and before he can ask another question, you pull him down into a fierce kiss. 

He makes a startled noise against your lips, before you taste the smile at the corners of his mouth, feel it, perhaps it’s smugness. Satisfaction that he’s pleased you. 

For a moment, you think you have the lead on him, but he suddenly nudges you backwards. Blindly, you let him lead you, steps tentative and small, but he demands more, and he takes the space that you relent eagerly. 

You pull away, to gain your footing, to slip from him again and this time, when you dart away–

You know he will warp in front of you, have seen this moment many times before, so you dance away from him, as if to prove something to him. 

He laughs, “cheater.” 

The smile you give him over your shoulder makes him follow, trail after you as you wander around the room. 

There is an attached bathroom, large and spacious. Luxurious. The tub is deep and wide, overlooking a window of the gardens. It’s beautiful. 

When you turn back to face Satoru once more, he’s seated on the edge of the bed. He’s loosened the top several buttons of his shirt. Opened himself up further to you. You keep away, as if to tempt him. 

“The bath is huge,” you say. 

“Needed to fit both of us.” He says so plainly it takes your breath clear from your lungs. The idea of it, the two of you, bare and in the tub together, force heat down into your face, your neck. 

He laughs a little and if his ears are pink, too, who's to say? 

“Are you shy about it?” He asks, and then, “are you scared?” 

Your fingers twist in the silk white of your kimono, the beading catching against your skin. Carefully, tentatively, you nod.

“Are you?” You ask.

“Not really.” And then, “a little. I want to please you.” 

For a heartbeat, you almost ask if it’s his first time, if he’s sure, since he’s not so nervous. But you know his future better than anyone. You know he means it when he says, “I want to–” 

He swallows around what could be glass or pride or rationality;

“I want to consume you.” 

He laughs but it seems strange, a little off kilter, “I want revenge, with how you make me feel, you know?” 

You can feel your chest quicken its cadence, rise and fall sharply, your heart squeezing and pumping as hard as it can inside of you. 

“I’m sorry,” he shakes his head, “I don’t mean to scare you more.” 

“I don’t believe you.” 

His left eye glints when he tilts his head back to regard you. 

A God will try to consume me tonight. 

A thrill goes through you, vicious and exciting in equal measure. 

“I’ll be good to you,” he promises. “I’d never hurt you.” 

You hum in acknowledgement, but you don’t promise it back, nor do you fully believe him. 

“Come here,” he says and he spreads his legs a little, perhaps subconsciously. 

You realize somewhere along the line he’d become a man. And he’s always kept his desires hidden from you previously, or perhaps far from you, almost untouchable. So to be confronted with them now, you feel a little unstable. Wobbly on your feet. 

You pull at your wedding garments, silky beneath your fingers, but aren’t brave enough to take it off. You swallow hard. You know if you go to him, you’ll be undone. 

“We don’t have to, either, if you don’t want. We’ve never done anything by the book, anyways.” He says and you feel as if he’s peering into you, into the squirming, soft, terrified parts of you. 

You realize you know intimacy with violence; you’ve only been able to express your desire for him with tooth and nail. You have never been able to melt or be delicate, but met his affections with violet bruises and tender-pink scrapes. 

You have never been able to swallow around gentle love. Or…pleasure. 

Shame seeps in at the idea of it, pleasure; your pleasure from him.

I want to please you. 

You always assumed when you had him, it would be a sort of claiming, you always saw it as another way to sink your claws into him. Of course, you want him, perhaps more than anything, but you never saw your own pleasure in it. Just, the pleasure of knowing he was yours, all yours. 

“No,” you blurt, “I want to. I want you.” 

“Then come here,” he says again, slower. 

And the way he says it, low and soft, lilting almost, turns you into just a girl. Disarms you so easily you almost sway with it. 

Instead, you drop to your knees, easy, and plant your hands on the floor. 

The moment you make the first move to crawl to him, he curses softly. You feel your cheeks burn and burn and burn. It isn’t like–

He’s seen you crawl a thousand times before, in the garden, over him and Ieri, roll around in grass and hill. He’s seen you be wild and untempered and free. 

But now you willingly follow his command, no less like this. You force yourself to pick your head up, to catch his eyes, to crawl easy and slow to him like you have a thousand times before. 

And when you get between his legs, he takes you by the face and kisses you fiercely, with more violence you’ve ever felt from him before. 

You rise up to twine your arms around his neck as arms band around your waist and just like that, you are in his lap once more. Just like that, you are kissing a god open mouthed and feeling it burn and twist inside of you. 

His hands slip up your sides, greedy in a way he has never allowed himself to be, catching on fabric and folds. He pulls you tighter to him, so you can feel that he’s–

You flush darkly. Moan softly with the realization and then feel the urge to hide in him, in the crook of his shoulder. He doesn’t let you, though, when you try to shy away, holds you still over him. So you have to feel him, so you have to try and keep from panting. 

“I had no idea you were so shy,” he breathes, almost laughing when you squirm, “I always saw you as unabashed.” 

“I never–” you don’t even know how to say it, and you hate how your voice pitches when you add, “I don’t have any experience with this.” 

“Neither do I, really.” He agrees, “but it’s just me.” He cooes, “it’s always been me.” 

This time he does allow you to hide in his neck, to duck down into him and let him soothe you with a big hand up and down your flank, your back. You’re near trembling with it and he must realize it, because he adds, “you really are nervous.” 

But he isn’t exactly being comforting. 

You sink your nails into him, “you’re enjoying this.” 

He laughs into your hair, “a little. I’ve never seen you this way before.” 

You nip at his throat a little, just the nick of your incisors, and feel him shudder beneath you. You feel his hips flex up into yours and with your legs spread, knees on other sides of his thighs, you can feel him, hot and hard at your center. 

You cling to him.

His hands flex around your waist, squeezing gently, before he suddenly urges the soft rock of your hips against his. 

It makes you gasp, it makes you terrified. 

Again, he moves your hips for you, guiding. Again, it’s startling to feel him, feel and know that there is so little fabric between you two. So little between you; no more clans or parents to stand in your way. 

He kisses you again, hard but sweet, still guiding you, moving your hips back and forth over him. Back and forth, until–

A moan startles out of you and this time, you feel yourself twitch your hips into him on your own accord. 

“That’s it,” he murmurs, “do what feels good. Doesn’t it feel good?” 

Another rock of your own hips, another push of his own and you nod, hovering above him slightly, lips parted over his. 

Then, you don’t need his hands at all, don’t need them to guide you at all. So he lets you learn and explore, lets his own hands wander over places he previously never allowed himself. He lets himself touch you in a way you have never felt; there is a sudden urgency to him now. 

You arch your back a little, encouraging, allowing, and his hands ease up onto your chest, all warmth from his palms seeping into you. It’s a surprise, almost, the heat of him, the way you fill his hands. 

He groans behind his teeth, squeezes lightly, as if afraid to hurt you and then bolder, harder. 

Your breath hitches when his thumb catches on the peaks of your breasts from over the fabric. So he does it again, firmer, and again, until you’re keening softly. Until you’re bucking a little more involuntarily against him. 

He suddenly pulls at the silk ribbon wrapped delicately around your waist, twists it around a hand until you feel the knot come away, feel the fabric give the way your stomach does, dropping slightly. 

You fist your hands in his shirt again, perhaps afraid. 

“Easy,” he murmurs, holding the front of your kimono closed still, if only for you, if only to give you a moment to adjust. The silk in his hands looks small, smaller than all of it swathed around you, drowning you in its starlight. 

When you’ve lessened your grip on him, he opens you up to him, painstakingly slow, bares you to him, pulls it down enough to pool at your waist. 

You feel the urge to hide again, to sink your nails into his skin, to fuss under his gaze. 

But then his bare palms are on your skin, warm hands, solid, real, burning hands that scorch up your torso to cup your breasts again. 

He watches your face now, lips parted, as his thumb sweeps over your nipples again, watches the way your features twist up. The feeling turns lightning hot, burns itself down to the wick inside of you, pooling low in your core. 

And Satoru is–enchanted. Enamored. Eyes a little rounded, hands eager. 

Without warning, he suddenly dips forward, lips parted, and fastens himself to the bud of your breast. 

Your hand disappears into his hair, shocked, fiending for an anchor and he groans against you when you tighten your hand into a fist. You pull, but it only encourages him, tongue laving over you, pink darting out against your flesh. 

You think he’s thought of this before, thought about doing this to you, wanted it for awhile now. You think it’s going to unravel you, as he drags his lips over to your other breast, as he latches on there, too. 

You can’t help but squirm in his embrace, pushing your hips into his, before arching your back into his seeking mouth. You can’t decide what you’d rather have, don’t think it matters because he’s the one in control now, holding you to his mouth, ducked down to your chest. 

You feel the graze of teeth. The sudden littering of kisses, nips. When his eyes flick back up to your face, he looks a little dazed, eyes all blue haze, glassy. 

He suddenly lays back, onto his elbows, hands falling back to your hips and you feel them squeeze, feel them guide you again. 

And he just watches a moment, with you on top of him, half bare, wedding silks petaled and pushed to your lower waist. His cheeks are flushed, lips stung pink, lashes fluttering as he watches you. 

He curses under his breath. 

You don’t think you’ve ever heard him curse this much before. 

“Angel,” he says, unbridled, from some deeper part of him, in a tone of voice that makes you flush. “Angel,” he says again, softer, more loving, breaking open on his lips like ripe fruit, “look at you, angel.” 

You tip forward, unable to keep from him, unable to remain up and so bare. So you press yourself to his chest, press your lips to his frantically, desperately seeking his solace, whatever comfort he’ll give you. Hide your bare chest to his, feel him hum against your lips, big hands all over your lower back, dipping lower still. 

“Lift your hips for me,” he says against you, rewards you by peppering kisses across your cheek, the corner of your mouth, your jaw, when you listen to him. He eases more of the fabric off of you, until his hands are running against pale lace, thumbing along the waist band of your panties. 

You shiver with more skin exposed, with your kimono gone. 

You pull at his own clothes desperately, if uncoordinated, just grabbing and fisting. You feel his laugh, taste it against your mouth, more than you even hear it. And his hands finally come up to help you, to ease off buttons, pull the fabric of his own out of the way until you can feel his bare chest. His bare arms. Muscled beneath soft skin. He’s so—

Sometimes you wonder, when he got so large. When did he become so strong? He was once so lanky. 

You keep pulling, until his entire torso is exposed to you, until you’re perched on his lap with your hands on his bare stomach. 

The dipping of his hips, the sculpted lines, draw your interest, eyes cast down as you finally take him in, too.

You inhale slow, grow brave enough to let your fingers brush against the button of his pants. 

“Go on,” he urges, watching you raptly. Eyes darting between your face and your nimble fingers.

You swallow hard and carefully pull the button through. Let it pop open easily with the tension there, can feel the heat of him, the hardness. Before you can falter, you take the zipper in hand and tug gently as well, until it reveals the dark briefs and—

The outline of him.

You look back up to him, perhaps for guidance, perhaps to gauge his own reaction, and he must sense your sudden uncertainty. 

“C’mere,” he soothes, bringing you to him in another kiss, heated and slow and deep. Tongue dipping against yours, licking softly into you until you’re distracted. 

Too distracted to notice where his hands are going, until you’re suddenly rolled onto your back, underneath him.

He slots his waist against yours. You can feel him more clearly through his briefs now, can feel the way he twitches as he pushes all tight up against you.

When he breaks from this kiss, it’s messier, spit dewy and wet between you. And his mouth eagerly trails down your jaw, sloppy kisses, and drags of his tongue down your throat, back to your chest.

He lingers here again, suckling, humming against you contently. Your hands sink back into his hair, moan bursting from you sweetly when he flicks his tongue just so. His eyes light up with the sound, working over the bud again and again, making your hips arch and ache.

He makes you sore with his own inexperience and eagerness, makes you fuss, until he relents and heads—

Lower.

“Satoru,” you call and the anxiety that picks up your voice doesn’t even make him pause. As if he’s expecting it.

His lips trail over your stomach, scattering wet little kisses.

You tug at his hair, trying to urge him back up, but he doesn’t listen.

He sidles down lower, manhandles you open so he can hook your legs over his shoulder. You try to shut your thighs but he easily keeps you parted, like you’re hardly trying at all.

“Satoru,” you say again, in warning, voice trembling, “don’t—please—“ 

He arches a brow, considers you, before completely disregarding you. 

You make a noise of irritation. 

“Stop being so shy,” he coos, “this is how I want you—this is—“

He glances down between your legs with a reverence that makes you hide your face in your hands, “this is what I’ve dreamt about.” 

He sets his lips to your inner thigh. 

“You’re so embarrassing!” You gasp between your fingers. 

He laughs and you can feel it, against the crux of your leg, so close to where you’re aching and hot and— “I haven’t even done anything yet.” 

He dots warm, open mouthed kisses to your skin, up and down your thighs. The sharp press of his teeth make you jump and squirm away from his hold, but he keeps you still and near. 

He takes his time, too much of it, as you begin to fuss again. You cry out to him, pull at his hair meanly, and all he does is muffle his laugh against you again. 

“I’m being cruel, aren’t I?” He says. 

You don’t know where he’s gotten his confidence, but it makes you want to hide or scream or drag your nails across his skin until it comes away torn and tattered. 

You think it’s something he’s always been rather content with, eager for, brave around—you. Your touch. Touching you. 

As if to say, since I am touchable to you, I will ruin you for any other touch. As if to say, well if I am not allowed to hide from you, you are certainly not allowed to hide from me.

You nod your head, bleary eyed.

“Okay,” he hushes, “okay.” 

The sudden hot press of his mouth to your core, through the pale blue panties, makes you gasp all strangled and tight.

“Satoru—“ you whimper in embarrassment, and you want to close your legs and just disappear. You want to twist away from him and hide. 

He hums against you, low and soft, and you can feel him mouthing and kissing over the fabric, where you’re most sensitive. 

He hooks a finger in the waistband of them and pulls, tugs gently and this time you really do sit up and try to get away from him.

“Calm down,” he says and there’s still an insufferably handsome smile at the corner of his lips, “it feels good, doesn’t it?”

“It’s so—“ 

Vulnerable, terrifying, horrible.

As if he can read your mind, as if he knows this moment the way you do, “what are you scared of?”

You swallow and look down at him and he peers back up at you, eyes all heaven blue, a little lovestruck, a little too hungry. 

You can’t even form the words, shaking your head a little, hands coming up to hide your face again. 

“Ah, come on now,” he muses and he sits up with you now, too. He pulls your hands away from your face and holds them in his, trapping them so you can’t run from him. “Tell me.” 

“Being bare.” You manage to get out, “being so—“

“Open to me?” He asks, “it’s a horrible feeling, isn’t it?” 

You realize he means that you have always been able to see every aspect of him; every aspect of his future and past and know it and have it and claim it. You know perhaps more about himself than he does at points. 

And maybe that’s all intimacy is, is knowing someone, very horribly, in ways that they may never know themselves.

You don’t know yourself like this, desire-driven, flayed open, a live wire of sensitive nerves and squishy, soft terror. You don’t know and won’t know what he sees or feels or tastes, you don’t know what he thinks.

In the same way that he has never known what you see or feel, what you tasted when you bit down on his future, what you think or know. 

I want revenge.

There’s a certain delight in his eyes, when he says, “I think you’ve gotten away with being very guarded for a long time. And I won’t have you guarded with me anymore.” 

You try to move your hands, take them back, or maybe suddenly cling to him and beg and simper and remain guarded. You want to try and manipulate him, you realize sharply, so that he’ll do this your way.

But he holds fast. 

“Lay back down,” 

“Satoru—“

“I’ll only ask once more.”

Tentatively, you lay back onto your elbows and he allows your hands to slip from his because you’ve obeyed him. 

You feel strange, experiencing this moment where you had previously only seen in the future, skipped over it almost, out of—

Shyness. 

He settles back down into the crux of your hips and this time, when he pulls the sweet, lace panties from your hips, all you do is let out a shuddering breath. Defeat, maybe, or anticipation, you can’t tell. 

His hand comes up, soothing, giving you the smallest comfort, before you feel his thumb, as careful as ever—

Slipping through ribbons of silky flesh, slick with desire, so sensitive that you squeeze your eyes shut.

He makes a soft noise, intrigue or affection, and adds a little more pressure.

“How do you touch yourself?” He asks and when you chance a glance down to him, you feel as if you’ll shake apart. 

His eyes are so dark and lust-blown, pools of blue ink. 

“I don’t know—“ you gasp.

His eyebrows quirk upwards in surprise, “you don’t know?” 

“Satoru—“ It comes out as a warning.

Don’t tease, don’t be mean, don’t be cruel.

“Don’t you touch yourself?” He asks and he glances back down to the way his thumb moves through you slowly, up and down, easy, with its slick glide.

In truth, not often. Or much at all. You explored, a little, you know, technically. 

But you just—neglected yourself. Your desire. You thought, in the scheme of things, there was so much more to worry about than pleasure. 

You don’t know when, but you became shy of your own body unless it was pain, unless it bloomed to bruise or fit to bleed or made you cry. You thought it strange to chase pleasure, especially at your own hands.

Did you even deserve it?

“Not really—“ you get out.

“You know what sex is, don’t you?” He teases and this time you flick his ear and make him laugh, warm and blossoming into the skin of your thigh. 

“I just didn’t—I don’t know!” You snap and now he sees that he’s pushing you perhaps a little too far because he softens. 

“Alright,” he says, “then we’ll find out.” And then his eyes catch yours, glittering in low light, “but you have to tell me what feels good. Can’t get shy on me.”

And then as gently as possible, you feel his thumb press fractionally inside you. His hands and fingers are bigger than yours so the sensation is strange and a little startling. 

You gasp.

He draws out, then gently back in. His eyes fixed on where your body swallows around his finger. 

Again, he repeats it and this time, pushes a little deeper.

To feel someone inside you is horribly vulnerable. Especially with his gaze fixed so squarely on where you’ve hardly seen yourself—

You always understood that this opening was a little unreachable. Even to yourself.

It’s why we keep our children there, isn’t it?

So as the feeling blossoms and Satoru murmurs softly to you, you find your hips twitching a little towards him. 

“There,” he coos, “does it feel good?” 

You nod, soft, small, and are rewarded by getting more of him. You throb, can feel it, the little pulse in your body and catch the cry that threatens to burst out of your throat behind your teeth. Trap it. You’re still scared to let it out or to give into pleasure. 

His thumb disappears to run outside of you again and you think he’s being a little indulgent now. He’s exploring, gently, watching, fixated.

Until he finds the bundle of nerves that makes you jolt.

He laughs a little, “right there?” 

“Yes,” you breathe, chest tight, knowing this is where, of any place you’ve felt pleasure, it was from here. And you know, technically, what he’s found and what he wants with how he sets his attention there now. 

Your body tenses but you don’t know—

When he dips forward to lave his tongue gently over your folds, you finally let go of that cry. 

You aren’t expecting it, can hardly process the wet heat of his mouth, as he makes another noise, low and needy and presses his mouth to you again.

Again, his tongue rolls out, and then he kisses, and then he’s open mouthed again and he’s experimenting. Tasting. Testing. And you’re just forced to bear it, your desire and his, in the small space between your legs.

You can tell he’s inexperienced, if not infinitely earnest and enthusiastic. And perhaps with your own inexperience and sensitivity, it makes it all worse. Or better. It feels—

You tangle a hand in his hair again and he groans against you when you pull on silver strands. You can feel the sound in your core and you tremble with it, shudder. 

His mouth is slick and shining and pink. 

He looks a little wrecked, a little uncertain and wobbly finally, too. 

“So good,” he murmurs, almost to himself, “you’re so good. Better than I imagined. How does it feel?” 

You whine a little, throwing your free arm over your eyes as you flop back onto the bed and he makes a displeased sound. You’re trying to hide from him. And he won’t stand for it, just like you never stood for it with him. 

“Use your words for me, angel.” He torments, he just about sings in that stupid, lovely voice of his. 

“It—“ you get out, “it feels good.” 

And then his mouth is back on you, bolder, a flash of wet tongue opening against you, messily devouring you as a reward. His eyes go soft lidded, desire-filled, all hazy newfound lust. 

You realize, dazedly, that his hips are pressing into the mattress, his own desire on a tight leash. 

“It feels good—“ your voice pitches, hips arching up into his grasp as everything turns molten and—and—

Good. 

It feels so good, you realize with a jolt, this strange heat. 

Like nothing you’ve ever felt before.

You feel his finger then, easy and slow, dip back inside you. Feel yourself cling to it. You can feel the way his tongue comes back up to that bundle of nerves to lick broad and slow over it.

Sloppy, but determined, eyes pitching back up to watch your face contort. 

You’re a fragile thing in his hands, you realize, teetering towards a precipice that frightens you, but that you know will—

It’ll feel good. 

“Toru—“ kitten soft, pulling fitfully at his hair, “I’m going to—“ you can’t even say it, can’t get the word to form in your mouth because it feels so strange there, but he groans against you and pushes a little deeper, gets a little more firm with you.

Your breath gets caught in the tangle of your throat, all knotted up, and the pleasure crashes on you swiftly and firmly. Takes you in it’s jaws and makes you squirm and cry out, whimpering as you feel—

You can feel the pulsing in your core against his eager mouth, feel the way it tightens and sucks at his finger. 

You try to shut your legs again, involuntarily, and he keeps you open.

Forces you open.

It is a horrible feeling.

Even worse when he’s being—lewd, licking broad stripes, letting translucent spit and, and—

Your desire drip and fall from his shining mouth.

You whimper, try to squirm away from him now as your pleasure gains a sharp edge and a vicious side to it. He must finally take enough pity on you or come out of his own haze, to notice, and finally draw away. 

And he looks at your face, perhaps disheveled, perhaps a little hazy in your own way, seeking and lost and desperate and he smiles. 

“Look at you,” he murmurs, coming up the length of your body, pressing his lips against yours before you can even think about it. Doubt it. Fret about it. You taste yourself on his mouth and it makes your heart trip up over itself, messy kiss that it is, it makes you shy again. But he doesn’t allow you to be. Still, you duck your face into his throat, peppering kisses there, nuzzling up against him, desperate for his affection suddenly. To be praised and stroked and adored. “So sweet when I strip you bare.” 

As if to counter him, you sink your teeth into his neck, and he laughs against your temple. 

You feel a little braver now or perhaps, needier, because you wrap your legs around his waist. Fix yourselves together like you were always meant to be, let him feel you, bare and warm and sticky, through the last bit of his clothes. 

He moans, a little shamelessly, and presses his hips into yours even more. 

And since he’s been so desperate for your desires, you murmur, “want you–I want you.” 

You can feel his chest heave a little with it, the weight, the sound of your voice against his ear. 

“How do you want me?” He murmurs back, though, as if to make it worse. “How did you think of this night?” 

In truth, you’ve always known it. So you know, when you twine your arms around his neck and hitch your legs a little higher on his waist, it will be just like this. 

Belly up and vulnerable, pliant on your back for him, for once in all your life. 

“Like this,” you murmur, pulling him in tighter, little vice grip that you’ve got, “just like this.” 

“Okay,” he breathes, maybe at the desperation in your voice, the sort of raw honesty that could break him apart, break him open. “Okay.” He says again, as if he could ever truly deny you. 

There’s some fumbling then, to get the rest of his clothes off, to reveal milky skin and the corded muscles of his thighs, his–

Your hands, uncertain, but desperate to please him, wrap delicately around his cock. 

He shudders a little, surprised, but hips push into your hand eagerly. 

He’s longer than you expected, but smooth in your palm, hot to the touch. 

“Getting brave?” He asks but you kiss at his jaw, his throat. 

“I want you to–” you unstick the words from your mouth, syrupy, and earnest, “I want you to feel good, too.” 

He makes a strangled noise, lets his head drop against your shoulder. 

“Listen,” he murmurs, “I’m not–” he laughs a little, trembling when you squeeze around him, when you fumble and stroke him. “I’m not going to last long.” 

And this time, you laugh, and it shakes some of  your fear off of you, opens you even further to him somehow. 

“That’s okay,” you sigh, wiggling your hips, suddenly eager to know he wants you this badly. You guide him until he’s found the heat of you, slippery and soft. “We have all night.” 

You can taste his smile, taste the groan, and can imagine the way his brows pinch together in pleasure. 

“We have our whole lives.” You tell him when he pulls away from the kiss.

“I have so much I want to do with you,” he says and though it makes you flush deeply, it also feels as if he’s saying–in life, I have so much I want to do with you. 

I have so much of you, and so much of life, and I want them both. I want it all. 

He takes himself in hand, lets your own hands fall away, slips himself, back and forth, between your legs. His face slackens a little, blissed out, and a higher noise gets pulled from him. 

“I’m really not gonna last long, angel.” He says again even as you let your head fall back, laughing, and his lips immediately follow to your throat. 

You buck your hips a little and the head of him catches and it makes you both freeze. 

You seize up. 

“Satoru–” you get out, nervous again, seeking, but this time he doesn’t deny you. 

“I know,” he hushes, “I know–you’re so tight. Just breathe.” 

You suck in a sharp breath as you feel his hips flex, feel the way you part around the tip of him, muscles so foreign, now being stretched, fitting snug around the shape of him. 

Your walls flutter.

“Relax,” he breathes, and it’s almost a hiss against your lips, and you don’t think it’s for you this time, but for himself. 

You try to breathe, though, in through your nose, try to loosen your legs a little around him enough to let himself press a little deeper. A hiccuped breath. 

Satoru kisses you hard, perhaps as a distraction, as you squeeze around him. As you feel the real burn and stretch of him, feel the way it carves inside of you and–

Tears prick your eyes. You don’t know how anyone does this easily or without someone like Satoru to you. Someone to call your own, who calls you his. Always has. 

He presses all the way into the hilt of him and you swear you can feel him in your stomach, feel your muscles clench and throb around him in painful little squeezes. He pulls away from your lips to let you breathe, to let his forehead drop to yours, his hair tickling against your cheeks. 

You whimper and he immediately coos at the sound, instinctive, as he’s done his whole life for you. You realize, perhaps dumbly, that this position is a familiar one in the sense that you bury yourself in the crooks of his body, cling to him like a child, and cry. And he has always soothed you. 

And right now seems, in many ways, no different. 

“Wrap your arms around me,” he murmurs and you wind yourself around his neck, wind yourself tight so that he might never untangle you. So that you might choke him.

And then he lifts you, sits back, and settles you gingerly in his lap. 

You’re stretched wide over him, holding yourself up desperately, and he’s aiding, hands at your waist. 

But then, gently, he lets you slip down. 

You hiss, but then find the back of your legs kissing his thighs, sitting snug.

“There,” he conjoles, letting you sit with him deep, deep inside you. Still. He kisses at your tear-stained cheeks, wet and soft, “that’s it. Just sit still for a moment.” 

You feel his tongue against your jaw, your throat, the flint strike of his teeth, of pain. You whimper into his shoulder and he continues to hush you, calm you, pull you closer so that he can run a broad hand over your sides, over your back. 

He pets through your hair, carefully, pushing it from your face to see your tears. The way you sniffle. He forces you to peer down your nose at him, lashes fluttering. 

You nuzzle into his cheek now, scattering wet, little kisses along his skin. He hums and you feel him twitch inside of you, feel the way his hands flex on your waist. 

“So sweet now, aren’t you? Usually so mean, suddenly so good for me.” He says against your jaw, “just falls apart in my arms, don’t you?” 

“Stop,” you mutter, pushing your face back into his neck to hide. 

“You just melt with my cock inside of you, huh? Is that it?” His voice goes soft and low and–

This time, you bury your nails in his shoulders. “Satoru!” 

But he can feel you flutter around him and he can feel the way your breath catches against his throat. 

“Why don’t you try moving, angel?” He coaxes, “just like earlier.” 

You shake your head, if only to spite him, so he begins to kiss you again. Hands dipping over your skin, moving up to your chest once more where he cups and squeezes. You can feel him again, deep inside you, throbbing. So desperate himself, held back by his own control. 

And then his mouth is again dipping down, to the peak of your breast, and he groans when he latches onto your nipple again. 

If you were braver, you’d have half a mind to comment on how he needs to keep his mouth busy. 

But for now, it only makes you loosen up finally, warmth a slow roll in the depths of you. 

You can feel yourself, dripping over him, rooted so deeply inside of you. It’s horrible but it’s–

It feels good, you tell yourself again, it feels good. 

Through the haze of the initial pain, there is pleasure that blooms. 

Your hips rock towards his, keeping him buried to the hilt, but you watch as his lashes flutter against your skin, cheeks hollowing with a suck that makes you keen and it’s–

It’s like lightning. 

You move again, squirm in his lap, until he pulls off your chest with a ragged groan, disheveled and half out of his mind. His hands help your hips, guide you slow, up and down over him until you’re dropping them all on your own. 

And he’s half mad with it, letting his head fall back, letting his hands grab and squeeze greedily. Greedy. 

Gods are greedy. And they will devour you.

You moan, clutching at his hair, his shoulders, feeling yourself become something else entirely–someone else entirely.

New being, new creature born out of something more than your pain, and the guilt, and the violence. New god, with the roll of your hips, and the way you feel him in the depths of you, all around you.

Satoru suddenly pushes you back again, so you’re belly up once more, finally sets his own pace and it’s a little more desperate. Teeth sink hard into your neck, capture you, make a high noise come out of you that you haven’t quite heard before. 

He grabs at you, pulls your hips up, hits somewhere deeper that makes you yelp. It makes tears well again and he can’t help himself anymore, hips beginning to stutter, lose their rhythm.

When you tip your head back, he suddenly grabs your face, bringing you back to face him. 

“Say it for more,” he gets out, voice wrecked and cracking at the end and–

Of course you know. 

“You will always have me,” you tell him, against his lips, spit slick and the whine caught in his throat. 

“You will always have me,” he promises.

You sink your nails into his shoulder as if to emphasize your next words, feel him keen now, “I will always have you.” 

And he gives you a harder thrust, as if to retaliate, just to feel you whimper, just to feel you cling to him. Settles himself deep inside of you, almost cruelly, as he gets out, his voice darker than you’ve ever heard it before;

“I will always have you.” 

Your cry is almost strangled, a hiccup of it, as you pulse and shatter around him like you were always meant to. 

He can’t help himself then, can’t help the bitten off groan that’s turned half into a whine, or the way he keeps himself buried, snuggly inside of you, as he fills you with warmth. 

It’s more soothing than you thought it’d be, the feeling of him like this. 

He leans heavier into you, mouths at your chest again, gentler now, more content. 

And he tips his head up, so you can see the catch of his starlight eyes, and he murmurs, “I love you. More than you’ll ever understand, I think. In a way I can’t even properly express.” 

But you sift your hands through his hair and look down at the man you’ve known all your life and think, I changed all of time for you. 

You smile softly, watery, and he leans up to clear your tears away again. And again. Like he always has. 

I did everything for you, you think.

Then you say, gently, and you think your voice has a newer quality to it, more honeyed–it almost sounds familiar to your own ears;

“I think I understand more than you’d know.” 

 And he laughs a little, but it’s off kilter all over again, and he’s kissing you and you swear you’ll let him devour you in every way he likes, for the rest of your life. 

You realize it isn’t so bad– to be devoured by a God. 

***

Your life has transformed before your eyes. 

At once, it was an endless cycle of your childhood home; your father’s violence and your mother’s scurrying and you, somewhere between them. You, some horrible form of both. 

But now you live with Satoru and Megumi and Tsumiki. And Ieri visits and Nanami pretends he doesn’t want to visit, but does, and Utahime brings flowers. 

Satoru and her become teachers together. 

And you walk Megumi and Tsumiki to school and walk them back home, too. You watch the sun in the sky and you think about trying to preserve this time forever. You think about trying to get the sun to stop. Or to swallow it whole. 

You fall into bed with Satoru, (in countless ways, over and over, like you’ve discovered a new world together, another part of yourself, of him, that yawns open inside of you), and miss him tremendously when he’s away. 

Megumi, as if he knows, always seems to ask for movie nights when Satoru’s gone, or perhaps he just misses him, too. You think Megumi struggles more than Tsumiki or Tsumiki is better at hiding it. You can only imagine, with what they’ve been through, how they’re doing. Their life has been unstable, uprooted, and now they finally have a home. A place that they will reside for longer than a few weeks, a few months, a few years. You know it might be hard, though, and you know they’ll struggle. You and Satoru watch them closely, perhaps too closely. 

“How do you think they’re doing?” You ask Satoru one night after putting them in bed, as you begin to strip your clothes of the day. Immediately, you feel Satoru’s hands sliding along your stomach, eagerly pulling you pack into his chest. He’s warm, his hands, his body. 

“I think Tsumiki is doing alright. Megumi is…” He trails off but you understand, “I don’t think he’s doing as well.” 

“He struggles with change.” You respond, “but I think it will be good for him, to finally have a stable home.” 

Satoru looks at you for a moment in his arms, against his chest, his eyes softened, before he says, “I never thanked you, you know.” 

“For what?” You ask, turning your face to find his eyes. 

“For taking them in, without a second thought.” 

“I’ve always known them, Satoru.” You tell him, “I’ve always known that we’d–”

He nods like he knows, but he still says, “it’s a lot to ask of you.” 

“It’s not a lot to ask to love them.” You tell him, “it’s hard not to.” 

“I know,” he agrees and he swallows around something. And then he asks, “you wouldn’t let anything happen to them, would you?” 

You tilt your head and hear the real question in his words, the way he trembles with it. 

“Never.” You agree. 

“Even over me?” He insists, “I want you to pick them–over me.” 

You think Satoru has always known more than he tends to let on. 

You swallow hard. You don’t even want to think of it, don’t want to think about–

“I won’t have to.” You tell him softly, shaking your head as if to clear your mind of the memory, the version of this life where you have to pick. But you’ve been so careful and you’ve played it all so well, so perfectly that there’s no way now. Is there?

You have the urge to suddenly reach for your necklace, swing the pendant in front of your gaze and tear through time, just to be sure. 

“Say you did,” he murmurs, “I want you to–I want you to say you’d pick them.”

“Okay,” you say, if only to get him to leave it, let it drop from you. You want to forget. You want to shake your head, harder, until it all rattles out of you.

“No,” Satoru says softly, holding you to him before you can dart away, “I need to hear you say it.” 

Something inside of you squirms. 

You glance upwards to find the mirror hanging across the room as decoration, catch the way he’s holding you, the look in his eyes. His reflection looks strange to you now, towering, darker than ever before. 

He fastens himself tighter to you, “I know that you’ve put me before everyone until now.” He says softly, “that between me or Suguru, it would always be me. If it came down to it, I think you would let everyone burn, so long as it saved me. I know it’s–” 

He stops himself. 

And then he says, “but it can’t be for them. Do you understand?”

You can feel tears welling in your eyes. 

“So just say it for me now,” he soothes, “promise me, you’ll put them first.” 

You feel as if two intrinsic things inside of you stretch and pull, struggle with one another. The urge to do as he asks, or the urge to finally, after everything, put others before him, when there’d been no one else. 

Both feel counterintuitive. Confusing. Your head begins to throb and if you didn’t know better, you’d think–it almost tastes like cursed energy, the air tangy with it, sharp. 

Satoru turns you towards him and he takes your chin in between his fingers delicately and forces you to look up at him. “Promise me,” he murmurs. 

You swallow around the hard lump forming in your throat. You don’t know why you’re crying. It’s not as if–

It’s not as if you don’t love Megumi or Tsumiki. 

It’s just–you’ve only ever known Satoru, in the deepest, most ruthless, most tender parts of you. 

“I promise,” you whisper, “I promise to put Megumi and Tsumiki before you.” 

“No matter what–” He urges. And even though it burns and aches, sticks like thorns in your throat, Satoru Gojo makes you give him your second binding vow;

“No matter what.” You choke out, “no matter what.” 

***

The day your mother dies, you spend the morning holding Tsumiki. She’d had a nightmare. She said she used to always sleep with her mother when she had this dream and now she is in your bed. And you are holding her the way your mother used to hold you when you had visions. 

Satoru has gone away on a mission. Your bed had been empty until she’d filled it. 

You try not to cry or let her know you’re crying, but you lay in bed with her beside you and you think of your own mother. 

And this was–the fixed point. The one you could never fix. In countless versions, you tried to stop this day, and in all, you failed.

You wonder then, if there are moments that are so certain, no one can touch. Not you, not fate, not a thing. 

You think the inception of you created her death, in the way that you are forcing it to create your father’s. 

If there is anyone truly damned, you think it must be your mother. 

You wonder if Tsumiki will think the same of you one day. If Megumi will look at you and realize, at some point, you were never going to be anything other than damned. 

After you walk the kids to school, you return to your childhood home. 

You stand outside its doors and know what will meet you beyond them. For a moment, you feel like screaming, screaming bloody and howling, wailing in the streets, crying out to the heavens. You think about what is on the other side of that door and you wish you’d never seen it all. Out of all the lives you’d peered into, you wish your mother was not one of them. You wish you had no idea what will meet you or what you will do.

You think of Suguru suddenly, if he stood outside his parents door and knew, too, that he brought death. That the creation of him, brought the death of them. 

You suddenly miss him so sharply and keenly that you want to run to him. You wonder if he would open his arms to you now, or if it’s all over, so torn to shreds that there is not anything he could want from you anymore. Perhaps not anything but your divinity. 

You stand outside their door like a reaper. 

You know you have to enter. And that time will not stop, you can never force it still. 

You inhale. 

You push open doors that have never felt heavier. 

The bloody tilt of your mother’s head makes you feel like a child again, terrified all over, and sick to your stomach. She is still alive now, gasping, and shaking. 

When she finds your eyes, she is almost relieved to see you, like you were the only and last thing she could’ve ever wanted to see. 

You feel something inside of you, already splitting, come away from its seams. 

“Mom,” you say, like you’re a child again, crawling to her on bloody floors. 

Still, she reaches her hand out to touch your cheek, as if she may comfort you. Even during death, she tries to comfort you. You choke hard on the sob working its way out of you. 

“You s-shouldn’t be here,” she whispers, mouth cut open with blood. “You need to–” 

She’s trying to save you from your father. 

But you couldn’t leave her like this, couldn’t leave her to die alone. 

You shake your head, cupping her palm to your face, keeping it there, “it’s okay, mom. I’ll be okay.” 

And I want you to be okay, you want to say, I want you to live longer. I want to have you for longer. You feel the tears rush hard and hot down your face.

At least you had longer than Tsumiki or Megumi. At least you had her this long. 

But for all your power, for everything that could’ve happened, you just couldn’t. Save. Her. 

You’ve known from the first moment you opened a gold bled eye. 

“I love you,” your mother gets out, as clearly as she can, as if she needs you to know, “I love you.” 

“I love you, too,” you whisper, squeezing tighter to her hand. 

You can hear your father’s footsteps, somewhere down the hall. As if you’ve heard them a thousand times and for this final time. 

“You are the best thing i-in my life. Always.” Her voice is hoarse, it looks like it hurts her, to get the words out, but for you, always for you, she does, “always.” 

Your mind burns and blurs and there are a thousand things you wish you could say to her now. A life that you wish you could unwind and reverse, a life you wish you could’ve saved, a child you wish you could’ve been. 

Your father opens the door to the living room for the final time.

And when he sees you, it’s as if he knows now, too, that it is the time. 

He doesn’t tell you he loves you, when you kill him, he doesn’t say a word, when you are covered in his blood, too. 

(You gut him, the way Zeus did to Kronos, and crawl back to your mother, bloodied.)

And all you can think to do is press up against her, like you are a child again in the home you grew up in. To be held by her for the last time of your entire life. 

You don’t know how long you stay like that, only that at some point, the sun is setting, and smolders bronze, casts all the world in a fiery glow. 

And eventually, your husband lifts you, bloody and silent, from your mother’s arms, to carry you out of that house for the final time.

You watch, quiet as the dead, in his arms, as it slowly rises to flames. 

(When the higher ups of the sorcery world investigate, they will say your father killed your mother, and then himself, by burning the place down. They will say he couldn’t handle your disgrace, that he was never well, anyways. He was a haunted man.)

And the garden you grew up in burns and the house you called a home cracks beneath hungry flame. Your father’s body burns away and releases you and your mother’s body falling to ash makes you want to tear out your own heart. 

It all burns and you watch, silent, knowing that your mother or father will never turn to curses now, they will never haunt you or hunt you again, knowing that you are the last curse left of that house. 

And it will be a long, long time until you are burned with them, too. No, now you are born anew, born again, covered once more in your mother's blood. You do not scream this time. The fire burns hot and bright in your vision.

Gods are very lonely, you think again, and you watch your childhood go up in flames.

***

Satoru stands lonesome against the sky, head haloed by the last rays of golden sun. 

He is only fourteen but holds all the world on his shoulders. He’s growing into his sharp tongue and wicked smile. His eyes are too bright, hopeful for a future he thinks he can still change and shape to his own vision. 

He visits you weekly. You’re confined to your family’s grounds. You’re kept on a tight leash by your father as per requested by the clan. They can’t have you running off or forming your own thoughts quite yet. 

You train your technique with other members of your clan, you learn from your aunt on how to be a good wife, your mother tries to shield you from it all. You wander around the garden when you want peace. 

Satoru always meets you in the garden.

He has become your friend. Perhaps your only friend at this age. Perhaps yours, only. 

He doesn’t greet you with a kiss (you are still twelve, still so young and clueless in so many ways), he doesn’t hug or reach for you. 

But he does walk with you, follow you around trees and stone, dogs your steps. He does sit beside you, knee to knee, elbow to elbow.

You call him Satoru by this age. He calls you by your first name. 

(By fifteen, you will start shortening his name to Toru. When he is sixteen he begins to call you darling, dear, honey—a joke, in the beginning, for your ever approaching marriage, but then not.) 

You go to him now, so he isn’t so lonely against the massive sky behind him. 

“You walk so lightly. Like a rabbit. Or a doe.” He says when you brush up against him. 

“My father says I should wear a bell.” You reply, “did I startle you?” 

But you know the answer before you even ask it. You just want to see his lips lift at the corners. 

“No, but you would be cute in a bell.” 

Heat engulfs the round slope of your cheeks. 

You slug his arm hard enough that he gives an undignified yelp. 

He never puts up his guards around you. He lets you hit him and push him and pinch him and tug on his hair. He lets you nudge him and lean against him and play with his hands. At this age, it is still a little childish, rounded with playfulness–flirting, perhaps, but in the way children do, uncertain and wobbly and with a pinch of pain. 

You wonder if he’ll bruise beneath his sleeve. You think about leaving a mark on him. 

“You’re getting meaner,” Satoru tells you, rubbing his arm, “sharper. More prickly. You’re going to be absolutely evil by the time we’re married–” 

“I thought I was a sweet, little rabbit? Or a doe?” You counter, moving past him to the stone steps that will lead down to a small, winding path. He watches you for a moment, before following. 

“I take it back. You’re something mean and vicious and quiet.” He says, shoving his hands into his pockets. He is boyish at this age, a little gangly, not quite grown into his ears or his hands. “A fox or a leopard. Something with teeth.” 

As you walk ahead of him, you smile, feeling your own teeth emerge behind a tender lip. You turn to stick your tongue out at him from over your shoulder. 

He picks up his pace to finally fall into step beside you. 

A small stream of water bubbles softly. Koi swim lazily in the wide dip of water. 

“I start school in a few weeks.” He says, “I’ve decided I want to move into the dorms to get away from my family a little.”

Your face twists, unsatisfied, a pinch of irritation. 

The idea of losing him to high school–to new friends and somewhere further away, where you certainly won’t be able to visit per your father’s strict rules—is horrible to you. 

You feel jealousy rise in you like a mountain at the thought that others will have him day in and day out. Jealousy that he will go and you will not; that he can escape his family and you will never be able to. The freedom of a man.

(Of a god–)

More than that, possessiveness steals your breath for a moment. At this age, you can’t name it. 

Later, it will sink its claws into you; mine, mine, mine. He is only mine. 

“I’ll still visit you,” Satoru says quickly, attempting to soothe you, appease whatever beast he’s awoken in you. 

You think he must’ve done this with his mother, too, you think that’s why he knows how to do it. 

You’re young and not quite done being hurt. You want to pout. You want all the world to know your pain. You turn away from him, walk a little further off. He follows again and it begins a chase that you lead. 

“It’s not too far,” he says, and you continue to wander from him. A sigh leaves you. You pass over a small, wooden bridge. 

He follows. 

“I said I’d still visit you–” 

You lope around a willow tree, careful of its roots. 

He cuts to the other side. He stops you from running. 

He catches you. 

“Every week.” He adds. 

You look up into his face, eyes flitting along the glasses over his eyes. He rarely takes them off. In fact, you’ve only seen his eyes a handful of times as he’s gotten older. You know them more from your dreams, from memories that you hold tight to, from the sky at a particular point in the day. 

You lift your hand and without a second thought, you tug on the glasses until they fall into your waiting hands.

“Do you promise?” Your voice has an edge that he might catch himself on. 

His eyes are all cosmic sapphires, too blue, too bright, too beautiful. 

White lashes flutter. He is so soft looking at this age, pretty, with a dash of pink on his cheeks. His wind-chapped lips. Your boy. Yours. 

“I promise.” 

The world turns, but you think time must stop for you. For him. For just a moment. And you wish it always would, wish you could just keep him and trap him for yourself. 

(Time must stop, for gods–) 

He encircles your wrist with a big hand and you let him pull you towards him.

He isn’t so tall yet. It’s easy for you to get up into his face. 

“Repeat after me,” you say.

And he smiles, “repeat after me.” 

“I will always have you,” you say and it’s almost a hiss, almost with teeth. A little heat. Maybe it’s a threat, halfway to a vicious promise. 

And he soothes, “I will always have you.” 

You feel him squeeze around your wrist, anticipating your next words, craving them, “you will always have me.” 

And he promises now, voice gaining a stronger note, “you will always have me.” 

You sniff, as if you’re deciding whether to accept him or not. Then;

“And I’ll never forgive you if you don’t keep your promise. I’ll bite you with the sharp teeth you think I have.” 

Satoru tosses his head back and laughs, the sun slipping through pearl locks, drenching him in its light. Always so light. His laugh so full and blooming that you want to hold fast to him, to cling to his shoulders, dig your nails into his chest. You want to hear his laugh forever. You want to shout at him because it makes heat blot your cheeks. Because it makes you angry. Because it makes you unreasonably happy. 

 You push him again. He laughs harder. Chases you when you dart off. 

And he never misses a week–but he’ll still let you bite him with your sharp, sharp teeth.

***

Your training intensifies. So does Satoru’s in preparation for school. When you see each other, it’s a brief reprieve. Bags grow beneath your eyes. You don’t think you’ve slept well in days but everything begins to feel like a dream. 

Satoru comes up with bruises and scrapes and things his mother says–

“She told me I should be untouchable without my technique.” And, “it’s just the way she shows her love–she says, sometimes it hurts a little. She says, you hurt me, when I gave birth to you, and I still love you.” 

And you tell him things your father tells you, “he says it’s all I was born for. All I was made for, was to decipher Time. To know it.” And, “he’s harsh because he has to be, because the world is, and Time will be harsher still.” 

But Satoru can make you laugh at least, until your sides hurt. He can drive you crazy, too, until your head spins. At least you are young with him, though, at least he makes you feel your age.

Your mother tells the two of you, watching as you shriek and chase each other in the garden, that it’s good. 

That no one should take youth away from young people. 

But they will anyway, she knows, they always will anyway. 

***

You scour time with your amulet. Some days, you think you are mindless with it, the shell of a girl with swimming eyes that keeps darting in and out of the past. You push for the future and come up empty handed. You push for–

You can’t seem to find the person you first found. They’ve slipped through your fingers, through time. 

Still, you’re relentless. 

Your mother tries to pull you from your trances. Yanks the amulet from your hands until your eyes clear. You become stronger, though, unwilling to bend to her. Even when she pulls the amulet from your hands, you can still see it, time, swimming in front of you and you hold fast to its untempered currents. 

It’s so old, has such a large future, too, that it is nothing like looking into a human’s lifespan. Humans become so quick for you. A blink and you’ve swallowed their whole life. 

You snap at your mother, sometimes, wrench the amulet back into your clutches from her. 

“It’s mine,” you seethe, “it’s mine.”

She looks as if you’ve struck her, when you act this way. Sometimes she yells back until all the house is filled with it. Until your father intervenes, until he hands you the amulet again. 

Until he says, leave her. 

(Hindsight is a funny thing. But you’re just a child now and you don’t understand half of it.)

You spend your days in and out of dazes, fever dreams of the past, of the haunting future. Some days you can hardly speak, your mind on fire, your eyes burning. 

You cry out of frustration. Your temples throb. Some days you vomit, wretch because you’ve hardly eaten. Some days you end up barefoot, in the back garden, while it storms, staring into this amulet endlessly. 

On one of the worst days, your mother calls for Satoru. 

And he is the one to pull you from your stupor, yank you from all of time only for you to be met with the skyblaze of his eyes. 

And you hiss at him, too. 

“Don’t you understand?” You crow, “you know what this is like!” 

He pulls the amulet clear from your neck and keeps it from you. You scream and shout and throw a fuss. 

The one time he uses his Infinity on you to hold it far from your grasp, your sudden shouts of anger go unearthly quiet. 

Tears well in your eyes. 

You must look betrayed, because he drops it immediately. But it’s too late and you’re crying like a baby and he’s trying to coo and shush you. 

You’re crying like your heart has been broken, like something inside of you, huge and otherworldly, has just split open and ruptured. It gushes, overflows, nearly drowns you at the idea that he would–

That’d he’d use it on you. 

Untouchable. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m sorry–look, it’s down.” And he touches your shoulders. Your arms. He lets you take his hands as if to prove to you that you are above his Infinity, you have collapsed it. 

You sink your claws into his wrists, dig into them until blood wells to the surface and say through your hitching sobs, through your bared teeth;

“Don’t ever do that to me again.” 

***

Your father is desperate for you to look into Satoru’s future. Everyone expects you to. Including Satoru, you think. Especially his mother, who watches you with all the contempt in her heart.  Your whole family awaits it, the card you could hold above him, above everyone, all of the world. Your mother, who defends you at every turn, is the only one who does not press you for it. She has never pressed you for dealings of the past or the future. 

You can hear your parents argue for the thousandth time about you. 

“She has every right not to, if she doesn’t want to.” Your mother’s voice is strong. It’s always been strong. You hope you’ll have her voice one day. 

(But you’ll realize no one listens to her still, that it doesn’t matter how great the bark if–)

“Don’t be naive.” Your father snaps. 

“Do you want her to go insane?” You can hear your mother’s low hiss of a threat. “She’ll go insane if she sees too many peoples’ future–if she sees his–” 

(If there isn’t any bite.)

“I told you she shouldn’t be spending so much time with him.” 

“Don’t you want her to be happy?” Your mother pleads, “don’t you want her to be as safe and cared for and loved as she can be with him?” 

“I keep her safe here!” Your father’s voice raises. “She has a responsibility!” 

“She’s a child!” Your mother shouts back. You can hear the tears in her voice. “She’s just a child! So is he!”

There’s a slam. The pictures on the wall of your room rattle. You have already seen this. And all of their fights, you have seen your mother’s fate. 

(He didn’t hit her, if it soothes you, just the wall beside her head. But it scares her enough into quieting, into hiding her teeth–all bark, no bite.)

Your father will lecture you again tomorrow morning. You will bow your head and lie, tell him that Satoru doesn’t let you touch him yet, that he always keeps up his Infinity still. It will buy you time.

Oh, time. 

***

“I can’t stand you!” You scream before lobbing the apple in your hand at Satoru’s head. 

It doesn’t touch him, thanks to his Infinity. 

“You’re so touchy today.” Satoru muses.

“And you’re so annoying!” 

“That’s right, because you’re such a dream to deal with–” he says before he can stop himself. 

You freeze and he can tell he’s said something he perhaps shouldn’t have. You can tell he regrets it, by the way his mouth opens, then shuts. He’s always been good for this, little one liners that are snippy, snarky.

He’s like his mother in that way. 

You have tea with her, on occasion. 

And she’s beautiful like him and untouchable. She says things like, you’re a scrappy little thing, aren’t you? Like, your hair could use a trim. And, didn’t your mother teach you to dress? 

You can feel tears welling in your eyes. But before they can fall, you snap at him, “get away from me.” Before he can see you crying, you turn away from him and storm off, deeper into your garden. Your garden that has always cradled you. 

Instead, he lurches towards you, “don’t be like that–” 

You can feel him hot on your heels, taking quick strides to try and catch up with you. 

You want to make it hurt worse. You want to reduce him to these tears that prick your eyes. It isn’t fair, you think, to have this heart, and this boy who you’d do anything for–

You turn sharply and he almost runs into you, hard stops and comes up short. And before he can open his mouth again, you hiss, “it’s not a dream being stuck with you, either.” 

He rears back a little. 

“You’re being mean.” 

“I’m being honest.” You sneer. 

So fast your eyes don’t even catch it, he’s got your wrist in his hand, pulling you towards him. “Then let’s break the vow,” he threatens, “if that’s how you feel. I’m sure I could figure it out.” 

You squirm in his hold, pull a little, but he tightens his grip. The look in his eyes, above his glasses, is strange. Otherworldly. Challenging in a way that makes a thrill go up your spine. 

“Is that how you feel?” You demand, all teeth. 

He softens a little, and then;

 “I haven’t figured it out yet, have I?” 

You glare up into his face, “have you tried?” 

“A little.” He admits and it hurts worse than it should, a wound to the chest, a sudden stinging in your eyes. 

“Because I’m just so awful–”

“Because I’m so awful.” He says softer than you anticipate, “I’m not stupid–we’re both young. Neither of us had much of a say in it. And I know–I know your life would be easier without being tied to me.” 

You glance down at your wrist still in his hand. You don’t try to fight him anymore, though. 

“Do you want out?” You ask tentatively, terrified of the answer, your heart like glass in his hands, ready to be shattered. 

“I don’t try very hard,” he admits, “selfishly,” he pulls you a little closer to him and perhaps it’s the first time you’ve been this close to him. “I want to keep you. I don’t want to be alone. And I don’t think–” 

His thumb, tender, gentle, rubs against the pulse point of your wrist. You hold your breath. 

“I don’t think there’s anyone else.” 

You sink your nails into his tender hand, stilling his movement, and look up at him with all the venom in the world. And you vow, voice sweeter than the look in your eyes, disarmingly so;

“There isn’t.”

***

“It’s you.” 

The person who greets you in the amulet this time is different from the first one, you can tell by their voice, by the shape of them that slowly comes into focus. 

You clutch your amulet tight. 

Their face is clearer, a man that must, in some way, be an ancestor of yours. You can tell because his eyes are like yours, the base of his are brown, but then a slash of silver in one, a speck of gold in the other. 

You are peering into the past at someone who is peering into the future at you–it makes your temples throb to think about. 

“I don’t understand how you know me–” You get out, “I don’t understand how we can speak to each other.” 

The man eyes you, brows furrowing, almost into a glare. “You’re the only one who ever figured it out,” his voice is smoky, soft and old. “You’re the one that figured out we could communicate by finding the exact moments in time when we peer at each other; right now, you are looking into the past, at this exact moment, at me through the amulet, while I look into the future at this exact moment, at you through the amulet.” 

“But I didn’t–” 

“Imagine folding paper in half and stabbing your pen through both sides at once.” He continues. 

“I didn’t figure that out.” 

Your voice is quiet. Just a child’s voice. 

“Not yet.” He says and it’s accusatory. In the tense silence, you feel guilt for something you have not yet done. You can feel his judgment. Eventually, his face softens fractionally, “you’re still young now. Still innocent, huh? I forget–”

His voice catches. 

“I forgot that you were once this young and unknowing.” 

You don’t know what to do with that, how to feel. “So you know me differently?” 

“Very differently.”  

“When I’m older?” You ask, “can you tell me more?” 

He shakes his head, “I don’t think I should.” 

“You’re supposed to teach me.” You respond and perhaps it is accusatory. His eyes flash, a flickering of recognition. As if to say there you are, the one I know. 

Regretfully, he nods. “I will. We all will. Until you surpass us and then we’ll spend the rest of our days peeling through time to try and catch up to you.” 

You aren’t sure what to say or how to respond, you’re not sure what you should feel or do. You frown. 

“Do you ever catch up to me?” You ask when you can think of nothing else.

He smiles now, a little bitterly, but almost fondly, “no. You leave us all in the dust.” 

“Does that make me your best student, then? Out of all the other Hindsight and Foresight users?” 

A laugh is startled out of him and the hand that is holding up the amulet, the same hand of yours, lifts so you’re both eye to eye. Amulet to amulet. Hand to hand in two different places and two different times. 

Past to future. 

“The very best of us all.” 

***

Satoru begins school. 

He upholds his promise and tells you about his new classmates. He gushes about their potential; a girl with the ability to reverse her cursed technique and a boy who can swallow curses to control them. 

Not to mention his seniors, all so shiny and exciting to him. 

Jealousy curdles inside of you, bubbling and ugly. You can’t quite swallow around it. You can’t quite stomach it. 

But he wants you to meet his other first years, Ieri Shoko and Suguru Getou. He wants them to know you, he wants you to know them. He wants those important to him to get along. 

He brings them to you in the garden and you can’t help but feel as if they’re intruding on this little world you and Satoru have created since you were young. Since you first became engaged. 

When you see them with Satoru, flanking his sides, you have to fight the urge to glare, to bare your teeth to them. 

Satoru sings your name, though, excited, so you slip out from your hiding place among the trees and flowers. You’re quiet as you approach, one foot carefully over the other, like a predator watching. Waiting. 

It is only Satoru who senses you behind them, who turns sharply and laughs when he finally spots you. 

“Trying to surprise us?” He asks.

“Something like that,” you answer, eyes flickering over the two beside him. 

He smiles nonetheless and introduces you proudly, introduces you as his fiance. 

“So strange to think you have a fiance at your age.” The girl, Ieri, says. 

Satoru shrugs, “we’ve known since we were young–plenty of time to accept our fates, huh?” 

You hum, “funny choice of words.” 

The dark-haired boy who's been watching you a little too closely finally says, “your technique is with time, isn’t it? Satoru was telling us–”

You finally approach and it’s a little too close, enough that it makes Ieri shift uncomfortably. But to his credit, Suguru doesn’t budge, even as you look up into his face and ask, “what else does Satoru tell you?”  

Suguru smiles slowly, disarmingly so, like a cat. “That you’re pretty. And smart. I can tell he likes you a great deal.” 

And despite it all, you can see Satoru’s cheeks flush darkly out of the corner of your eyes. He fidgets, “I think I said–”

 “What has he said about me?” Suguru asks and the darkness of his eyes is mesmerizing. The exact opposite of Satoru, where his eyes seem to reflect light, Suguru’s consume it. 

You hold his gaze for a fraction more before severing it. You turn away, wander a little further off as you say over your shoulder, “he hasn’t.” 

Suguru laughs as Satoru squawks, beginning to deny you but Suguru interrupts him cooly, “you’re a poor liar.” 

“He’s mentioned Shoko, though–you can reverse your cursed technique, can’t you?” You respond, just to get under his skin. This time, it’s Ieri that laughs, an amused huff. 

“That’s me.” Her eyes, sly and tired, slip to Satoru, “anything else he’s said about me?”

“That you smoke too much.” You say and this time, you’re being truthful, perhaps too truthful. Enough that you can feel Satoru’s eyes on you. You’re trying to cause trouble and he can tell. Your smile is knowing, just a little too barbed, “those things’ll kill you, ya know.” 

The irony is not lost on them. 

You wander further away to test Satoru, see if he will follow you or stay with his friends. You can feel his draw, his uncertainty for a moment. But surprisingly, it is Suguru who moves after you first. 

“Will you come to school with us? When you’re old enough?” Suguru asks and Satoru is on his heels. Ieri lollygags behind. 

You can feel the heat and attention of Suguru and for whatever reason, it makes warmth bloom deep in your cheeks and for all your trouble and bravado, you are perhaps still just young. You bite the inside of your cheek to keep from smiling at his attention, at the way they follow you. You face resolutely forward and don’t allow them to see the full scope of your face. 

“No, my father forbids it.” You tell him, leading them through a maze of lush flowers and small trees that lope over your heads. 

“I told you, I’ll fight for you to go.” Satoru pipes up and because he knows the garden well, he takes a sharper left, beats you around a hedge to stop you in your tracks. Suguru almost runs into you. “I’ll tell him I want an educated and trained wife.” 

“Gross,” Ieri scoffs, and then she says dryly, “who knew you were such a traditionalist, Gojo?” 

“I’m not! But I have to speak his language!” Satoru protests, “you two don’t know her father. The clans. They’re impossible and archaic.” 

You think of your mother, at one point, in your position; betrothed to a man at your small age. But she didn’t know the future and your father was no revolutionary. No, he didn’t shake heaven and earth with his birth. He was not meant for greatness. 

The only greatness he would achieve is you. You think he resents you for it, you think that is why you are kept so firmly beneath his thumb. 

You think your mother should resent you for getting more, for being her warped reflection of could’ve been and should’ve beens. You wish you saw more of yourself in her, sometimes, that you weren’t growing into such a beast. That you weren’t so gifted or strange or burning. 

You have learned, though, that the difference between you and your mother will be her life. Lamb-hearted woman she is, you resent her for not being you. For not having bigger teeth, for not resenting you more. 

“But you’re going to change it all, is that right?” 

Suguru’s voice slices through your thoughts, cool and cleanly.The way he says it, like it’s hardly a question but an accusation, sends a shiver rippling through you. There is an undercurrent to his voice that makes you go completely still, the way a predator does when it senses danger. “That’s what you said, isn’t it?” 

You know now that you will have to lay your hands on Suguru. For Satoru, you will dig into the pits of his future and pull it out with your own trembling fingers. 

Satoru looks at you, “I’m trying to. We’re trying to.” 

“We have our work cut out for us.” You tell Satoru and with your back to Suguru, you mean it only for him. 

We, as in just us. Just us two, always. 

You try to shut Suguru out, maybe, you try to shut them both out. But it is hard and as they talk and joke and amble with you in your garden, as you watch them interact with Satoru and with each other, you understand horribly what it is that Satoru likes so much about them. 

Unfortunately, there will be no ridding Satoru of them. Unfortunately, they will stick and stay and bleed into your life. 

So unfortunately, you will get attached. And worse than that, you will then need to learn how to get unattached, because you will know exactly the path they will walk and it isn’t one you are interested in enduring to love them. 

But still you will love them. 

Even though you know. 

You will always know. 

***

When you are fourteen and it comes time for you to enroll in school, Satoru fights tooth and nail to get your father, your clan, to allow you to join him. He hems and haws, he bickers and makes scathing comments, he acts out. He tries to pull every card that he has. 

None of it works. 

And for the millionth time, Satoru comes storming out of the room he’d been speaking with your father in again. You are never allowed in, even though all they do is discuss you. You are their centerpoint and yet you remain outside the doorway, lingering, listening faintly to your name pass between their lips. 

They are very naive, to think you don’t know all of this already. For how miraculous your technique has been treated, they have the strangest tendency to forget how it works, what it implies for you. Even Satoru at times forgets, perhaps purposefully, what you know, what it must mean. You don’t think he wants to think about what it might imply about you or who you are becoming, at least not yet. 

Still, you follow after him quickly, leaving your father behind, “I told you—“ 

“I’ll keep trying.” He clips, heading through the winding halls, towards the front entrance. You want to reach out and grab him, stop him in his tracks, force yourself in front of him, but you wouldn’t dare touch him where you know your father watches closely. 

Instead you say his name, sharply, a little ringing.

It has the same effect. He stops. His back is to you, shoulders raised slightly in tension. 

“I told you, my father will not change his mind. He never will.” 

Satoru’s shoulders drop with a hard exhale. 

“Do you know this for certain? Is this—“ 

The future? 

“Yes.” You respond coolly, “I will never go to school with you. I have known this for a while.” 

“Well, now it must be a self-fulfilling prophecy because you told me this. If you’d never have told me, would it still happen? Or would I keep trying until they let you come to school with me? In telling me this, does it make me give up? So you never do?” He asks, turning finally to face you. “Why tell me this? Whose future did you see to know this?” 

So many questions. You can feel the sudden tension between you—the surge of distrust or inkling in the back of his mind about you. It must be all of his doubts rushing forward.

He must be wondering why you told him this, why you won’t tell him more then. 

“My mother’s.” You respond, “she argues with my father about this, too, and to no avail.” 

Satoru stares hard at you. And you hate the look on his face, the sudden unease as he gazes at you, like he doesn’t quite recognize you. Upset and anger prickle inside of you.

“Why do you look at me like that?” 

“Like what?” Satoru asks. 

You narrow your eyes, “don’t play dumb.”

He pauses. And then, as if hesitantly, he decides to ask, “can you change the future once you know it?” 

And right now you are only fourteen, still rather naive, if not growing sharper and quicker, slicker. You have an inkling. You could share it with him; I think you can. I think, if I play everything correctly, I could. I think if I–

Instead, you say, “I’m not sure yet. I’m still learning.” 

“Are you experimenting with me?” He asks and it surprises a laugh out of you. 

“Well, now that you say it–” 

Finally, his smile crooks up in the corner. The tension in him snaps and gives out, deflating him. He takes a few steps towards you. He is lanky at sixteen and stands a head over you (he’ll keep growing, taller and a little broader, muscled beneath your future hands).

“You’ll tell me, won’t you?” He asks, “when you figure it out?”

Now it’s your turn to stare hard at him. 

“Of course.” You say and instantly, you recognize it for what it is;

The first lie you’ll ever tell Satoru Gojo. 

***

Over the years, Ieri and Suguru will visit you frequently. With Satoru and without. With each other and without. Ieri will let you take drags of her cigarettes, put it up to your lips, let her fingers press there, too. Suguru will wander around the garden with you aimlessly, he will playfully flirt, he will tease you. Both will confide in you. Both you will love and hate; love them for who they are, who they could be and hate them for having pieces of Satoru. Hate Suguru for who he will become. 

You hate him for what he will do to Satoru. 

You decide relatively quickly that on an instance where one of them allows you to touch them, or touches you, that you will peer into their futures. 

Ieri’s comes easily, she is always leaning and draping herself over you. She is always sharing candy and cigarettes and swigs of alcohol she sneaks past your father to you. You have learned that if you don’t want people to suspect you have peered into their future, you must do it at a time that seems light-hearted, simple, fleeting. 

She leans her head on your shoulder one night as the sun slips easily beneath the trees. It’s a Friday night. 

She says, “I wish you could come out with me. The boys are pissing me off.” 

And you are barely able to get out a very plain, far away, “me, too,” before your vision tunnels. You are careful to breathe through it. You are careful not to make a sound as her life begins to play out in your mind’s eye. Cursed energy that takes her shape shimmers to life in front of you. 

At once, you see her very plainly. 

But what you care about most, is that she will always be loyal to Satoru. That is what you sought and what you found. A knot unravels inside of you, unspools easily and your suspicion of Ieri dissipates. Momentarily, you sink into the feeling–but in peering into her future, you’ve caughten another glimpse of Satoru’s. 

Another piece to the puzzle of his future that you are slowly attaining. 

(One day, you will know all of it, one day you will guard all of it, one day you will swallow all of it and stomach what comes with it.) 

But today, you sink into Ieri’s side, back in the present, and let the smell of smoke cloud your mind. You breathe it deep, only for her to press the cigarette up to your lips, soft fingers and all. You inhale and let it burn. 

You sputter out a cough, which gives way to Ieri’s rough laugh, her head tipping onto your shoulder, and the sun drenching you in its last light. 

You’ll let her curl herself around some part of you. She’ll ask you one day, as everyone does, “did you ever look into my future?” 

And they’re never sure if they want the truth. 

You’ll smile, though, an asp’s clever grin, and drawl, “we’re still friends, aren’t we?” 

***

Nanami Kento and Yu Haibara are your age. You would be in their grade, if Satoru had gotten his way and your father had allowed you to attend Jujutsu Tech. You meet them only briefly, but even then, Satoru catches the way you create a reason to touch each of them. For Haibara, it is just to brush past him, knocking elbows a little. 

(At the time, it wasn't so bad. It doesn’t startle you. He is not a domino effect. But he can be–you know he is the perfect sacrifice.) 

For Nanami, you are braver. You sweep his hair from his face, “I want to see your eyes.” You say boldly and though Nanami recoils back slightly, glancing quickly at Satoru, you have already gotten what you need.

(Nanami, you think with a slight sigh, you like a great deal. Both loyal and caring. Enough so that he would give his life for Satoru, for what Satoru wants. Martyr-boy, golden-hearted, he is perhaps the best of them.)

Afterwards, you can tell Satoru is displeased in some way, prickly. 

“You’re upset,” you say when it is only the two of you in the garden again. 

He opens his mouth to deny you, you think, but then promptly shuts it. 

“Do you do that with everyone now?” He asks carefully. 

Your eyes flash to him, “do you want the truth?” 

He stutters a step towards you, but holds himself back, careful, unsure. “Always.” 

“Then ask again, as if you actually want it.” Your voice doesn’t sound quite like your own. It’s beginning to slip from you, become someone else’s, you think. You’re losing whatever cadence you had as a child, losing the tone that used to reflect your mother’s. 

You see the furrow of his brows, but don’t see his eyes behind the wrappings. He frowns. “What has gotten into you?”

You, something inside of you hisses, but it’s older, a little foreign. It almost sounds like–

“Do you want to know or not?” You ask instead, flippant, but your eyes burning, hot. 

“I don’t like what you’re becoming,” he says suddenly, and once he’s said it, he doesn’t stop, “I knew you should’ve come to school with me, I knew it wasn’t good for you to be stuck here with your father and the clan–is this their doing?” 

Your laugh is sharp, tittering, almost, a little off-kilter. 

It’s so ironic, isn’t it? To think he knows what’s best. People think they know everything and they think you know so little. 

You step towards him, have to tip your chin up, rock onto the tips of your toes just to get into his face now. 

“You know what’s best for me now, do you?” The wind picks up like your voice has agitated it, rushing past, between, around you two. “My fiance knows what’s best for me?” 

 “I didn’t say that,” he replies and the sudden inability to see his eyes makes your anger spark and break into a fire. 

You reach up, snatch the bandage from his eyes so quickly that your nails catch the delicate skin of his face. It unspools around his neck. He doesn’t flinch, though, his eyes now finally finding yours without the barrier, looking you over like he’s trying to root around inside you. 

The wind is sharper this time, colder, it whips past both of you, pulls at your clothes. 

“Ask. Me. Again.” You bite out, the flash of your teeth make his eyes skip down to your mouth, back up. 

When he asks, something in his voice has changed. It isn’t the voice of the boy you grew up beside, but someone stepping into godhood. Satoru Gojo the Untouchable. 

Regret pulls inside you like a dog at the end of its leash, don’t be untouchable to me. Not me. Never me. 

“Do you do that with everyone now?” He asks again and he needs to know. 

“Yes,” you breathe, just a hiss of your breath through your teeth. And because he suddenly feels far from you, you reach up, and lay your palm to his cheek. He never put up his Infinity, he never blocked you out. Your shoulders ease, you can feel relief hit you like a rush of cool water. 

Still yours. Still close. 

He swallows hard, like he isn’t quite sure what to do with that information. You know he is weighing his next question carefully. 

You thumb the little scratch you left on his cheek, streaked pink against his pale skin, let your nail drag featherlight over it again, like you’re thinking of making it deeper. Oh, to scar the Untouchable. 

“For your clan?” He forces himself to ask. 

You shake your head fractionally, make an irritated little noise, “you think so little of me? I thought you knew me so well? We hate the clans.” 

Satoru finally brings his hand up to cradle yours, lets his cheek sink into your palm, even with the threat of your nails. Maybe especially. 

“Then for who?”

You, a voice inside of you howls like the wind, oh, you, you, you. 

“For us.” You say instead, “for our future.”

When he remains silent, you press on, “isn’t this what I’m supposed to do? This is my technique–should I never use it?” You turn on him, and then when you’ve got it between your teeth, you shake hard, “are you scared of it? Scared of me?” 

“No,” Satoru says quickly, “never you.” 

“Then why are you upset?” You snap, low and hot. Your fingers begin to dig a little more desperately into his skin, angle his face so he can’t look away, so he can’t run, “why do you look at me like that?” 

 Satoru is silent for a long moment. 

You let him be. 

Eventually, he turns his face into your palm and you feel the brush of his lips, soft, a little shy. 

It brings a surge of warmth to your cheeks. 

(You’ve never even kissed yet, only poked and prodded and tickled and held and brushed and scraped. Never felt his lips like this. Never felt his words on the inside of your wrist–)

“Would you tell me? If what you saw was–” he won’t finish the sentence. 

“Do you want to know?” You ask again. “Do you want to know the future?” 

He weighs it, you can feel the way he gets heavier in your hands with the decision, let your fingers slip down his jaw, brush over the pulse that thuds at his throat. 

“Say I did,” he murmurs, “would you tell me?” 

“Yes,” you answer, but as you study his face, you know he doesn’t want it. “If you could stomach it.” 

“Can you?” 

“I was fed it until I could.” You let him go finally, “I can tell you can’t.” 

You turn away. 

The wind rushes through you, carves its distance between you two. 

When you move to walk away, Satoru follows you as if compelled, jerks forward to you as if pulled by a string. “Do you want me to?” 

“Would you learn to stomach it for me?” Make yourself sick with it? Make yourself mad with it? Would you do it all for me, too? 

“You’ve learned to stomach it for me.” He answers and so you pause to let him catch up to you as a reward. 

When you look at him this time, something inside you softens, “I will only feed you what you can stomach, if you want it.” 

You are not lying. 

Satoru lets out a slow breath and chooses to allow you to decide what he can swallow around. He decides he can trust what you feed him, that it will go down easy and not poison him, that you won’t make him regret it. 

He nods, agreeing. 

His trust blossoms hot and sweet inside of you. You have to hold back a satisfied grin; a cat with a canary, beautiful white feathers fluttering by your feet. 

You look ahead, let the wind catch your hair, cut across your cheeks. 

You summon the vows that now feel like an ancient part of you, old words, soothing words;

“Repeat after me.”

As if possessed, he says, “repeat after me.” 

You smile, slow and knowing, “I will always have you.” 

He leans into it, takes it easily from you, “I will always have you.” 

“You will always have me.”

Like prayer, he finishes, “you will always have me.” 

And after, when the wind gusts and pulls at you, you dare to admit to him, “Keep Nanami close. He will always be loyal to you.” 

You don’t turn to look at him, but you can tell he has gone inhumanly still. After a moment, he dares to ask, “and Haibara?” 

Your lips twist, just a flash of a grimace like the quick arch of a bat’s wing. 

You refuse to look at him when you say, “just leave Haibara to me.” 

When he swallows around that, too, you know now that you’ll always have him eating from the palm of your hand. 

***

Suguru only visits alone at dusk. Twilight suits him in the same way that you think dawn suits Satoru. 

Usually, Suguru comes to you pensive, almost irritable. You imagine he can’t decide what to do or think of you, you imagine he can sense your animosity or jealousy, you imagine he is too clever to not know what it means if you, a user of Foresight, do not like or trust him. 

You know his future intimately. You see it behind your eyelids at night, hot and simmering, too brutal, too brilliant. You have memorized it the moment that you saw it, replayed it over and over and over until it no longer made you sick. Until you could look him in the eyes again. You know it so well that you think you could recite it to someone who asked, could say Suguru’s words to him before he ever even thinks of them himself. 

You think that must mean you know him intimately, too. 

When he finds you, you frown, and then ask, “what are you doing here?” 

“Delightful, as usual.” He responds lazily. 

You grin at him, “where’s Satoru?” 

“Mission.” He responds a little too bluntly. 

You sink your claws into it, “without you?” 

He doesn’t rise to your bait this time, “your father’s in a bad mood.” 

You pause. 

Your father isn’t happy with you. He never is, though, he never will be. 

“Why are you here, Suguru?” You ask instead, drifting around the trunk of a tree to emerge on the other side of him. 

“I can’t visit a friend?” He counters. 

“Are we friends?” You ask. “I don’t like you.” 

He laughs then, warm and low and in a way that reminds you that he is just shy of being a man. “You wound me.” He says, turning over his shoulder to face you, to let you come up to his chest. 

There is something magnetic about Suguru, you can feel the pull of him, like he’s ready to swallow you whole, too. Ingest you if you aren’t careful. 

He reaches out suddenly and you force yourself to remain very, very still. Suguru’s hand, careful, graceful, tucks a strand of loose hair behind your ear. 

“Satoru asked me to check on you while he was away.” He admits and at the mention of his name, you allow Suguru’s fingers to linger at your jaw.

“When will he be home?” You ask instead, uncharacteristically subdued for the moment. Suguru must realize it, because he becomes bolder, steps closer. 

You let Ieri touch you and wrap her arms around you, lean her head against your shoulders and pull you into her lap. You let her drape herself across you, crawl over top of you. Tuck up against you. Satoru knows. He doesn’t mind, rather, you think he’s pleased that you’ve found a friend in Ieri. 

But with Suguru–

“When will he be home?” 

“You don’t know?” Suguru asks and something in your expression must give you away, because it is his turn to dig into wounds, “he didn’t tell you?” Faux sympathy touches his voice, like you’re a cat to coo at. His knuckle traces lightly along the line of your jaw. 

His brow arches fractionally as his thumb traces over the line of your chin, to your bottom lip, “or better yet, you didn’t look into his future? Know when he will return to you? That he would return safely?” 

Anger is a slow rumbling beast inside of you, raising its weary head, cracking open an eye. 

“I thought you knew everything.” He insists. 

When his thumb parts your lips, you sink your teeth down onto his thumb, hard and quick. 

But he laughs again, surprised, delighted. 

He squirms his thumb out from between your teeth, wretches it away, letting you swallow around the faint taste of his skin once it’s gone. 

“It’s always been so amusing to me, to see bruises and scratches and bite marks in Satoru’s skin. He is supposed to be untouchable and yet–” 

“What do you want?” 

(You know what he wants.)

“–he isn’t. Not to you.” 

“Never to me.” You agree, if only to spite him. 

“I’m only here to check on you,” he says, but his voice is strange, always setting off alarm bells in your mind. “Just as he asked.” 

“Aren’t you a good friend?” You sneer, because you know what he will do, you know how this ends. You know because–

“The very best,” he answers and it is almost sad, voice losing some of its bravado, its oil. All water now. It pulls at you. You swallow hard. “I only came to check on you.” 

He means it this time. 

You look at him, hard and long, before you say, “did you enjoy it?” 

“What?” 

“Walking in his footsteps? Coming here like you’re him? Trying to touch me like you’re him?” You ask and your voice isn’t mean, but honest, genuinely curious. “Do you want me to treat you like him, too?” 

Surprise parts his lips, rounding out his eyes fractionally.

“Do you want to be him? Or have him the way I do?” 

But then his surprise sloughs off, melts away into a slow revelation. His face transforms, suddenly open.

“You’re jealous of me,” he realizes. 

“In the same way you’re jealous of me.” You answer him and his smile is a slow, confident curl. 

“In the same way that we’re both jealous of him.” Suguru says and his voice is just a rasp, caught somewhere in the space between you two, in the horrible truth of it all. 

You turn your head away from him, give him your profile, but he snatches your jaw back quickly and forces you to look at him. 

“If I was him, I would marry you and make another garden to keep you trapped in. I would perfect a veil you could never get through. I would keep you safe somewhere. I would keep you on a leash somewhere.” The admittance frees from his mouth and makes you squirm and fuss, suddenly struggling in his hold, “I would never let you out of my sight.” 

You claw a little at him, jerk your head free enough from his grasp to bite out, “it’s a good thing you aren’t–”

“I think he underestimates you. I think you’re his blind spot.” Suguru says, eyeing you, almost glaring at you, trying to unravel you with his gaze alone and pull you apart. “I think you have something horrible inside of you.” 

It’s your turn to laugh, wildly, letting your head fall back a little in his grasp. Crowing up to the sky. 

“Suguru,” you say his name, “Suguru,” you sing it, clawing at his clothes, his arms, up to his chest and shoulders, “Suguru,” you purr, laughing again, looking up into his face until the clash of your eyes could have sparked and burned a whole forest down. You look at each other, horrid reflections of one another, a wretched mirror, and smile the way he does, like a lazy cat that’s caught the truth between its teeth;

“I think the same of you.” 

***

Your amulet winks in the sun. You let your eyes flutter, let it pull you throughout time. 

One of your ancestors is on the other side; the man who you’ve seen several times. Who sees you now and frowns as if you’re a bad omen. 

“Hello, again,” he still says. 

“You don’t look pleased to see me.” You say, and then before you can stop yourself, “my father looks at me like that.” 

His face instantly crumples, “I’m sorry–I’m sorry.” He shakes his head, “sometimes, I think you just needed someone to treat you like your age, to treat you kindly.” 

“My mother does.” You say, almost defensively. Infinitely, you are defensive of your mother, you wish you could covet her. You wish you could be her. You wish the world hadn’t been so cruel to her. And then you speak, “but my father will kill her.” 

You think about Zeus, sometimes, and how his father swallowed him whole. How he had to gut him to get out. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again, “we’ve tried countless versions to–”

Slowly, you realize, “you’re trying to save me.” 

He looks too guilty for that. 

“No,” you say carefully, “you’re trying to stop me.” 

You wonder if they should’ve stopped Zeus, too. 

Formidable you are, they can’t quite seem to do it, though, somehow, someway, it is always you. 

“I often think it’s the same thing.” He says gently, “but at every turn, we’re stopped.” 

“By who?” You ask. 

He goes silent now and the vision begins to bend and run, like watercolors washing together on a page, it’s all going sideways. 

“By the person who orchestrated this all from the beginning, the one we can’t–” 

Stop.

***

You plant seeds now. 

You begin to throw fits, as your clan calls them. Whatever that means. 

Tantrums, is what your father bemoans about, warning your mother that if you don’t cut this shit out, he’d do it for you. 

But you have days where you won’t stop screaming and crying. When you start, you realize sometimes it just won’t stop, like there is a beast howling inside of you. Agonized. It burns and aches in the pit of you, to get on all fours and cry and cry.

To sob wretchedly. To wail until it fills your whole house with that sorrowful noise. 

You thought, at first, you were only doing it for yourself. For what you needed. It’s realer than you can understand, the tears are real, cutting down your face, the anger is real. The heartbreak. 

You break things. You and your father scream at each other. 

He slams hands against walls beside your head. 

He grabs you too harshly, shakes you so hard that your teeth click in your head, and all you do is fight and kick. Moan and cry. Growl and hiss through clenched teeth. 

At some point, you always beg for Satoru. 

And at some point, your mother always sends for him.

And he always comes. 

Always. 

It happens once, twice, three times, until there are too many to count.

He always comes. 

Your father won’t hurt you in front of him. Your clan, everyone, leaves you to him, since he is the only one who is able to calm you. 

(You plant the seeds now, so when you need them–they’ve already grown.)

Behind closed doors, he holds you, cradles you to his chest and coos until you can calm down. You’re reminded of being children like this, puppying up next to his side, against him. 

You think he loves it, being needed by you. Being the only one who could soothe you. 

(The only one who can ruin you.) 

Possession blossoms in him and tenderly, you nurture it. 

Until one day he looks at you, with your tear stained face and sniffling nose, thumb brushing beneath your eyes, along your faded little scars, and says;

“I think I owe you an apology.” 

You pick your head up a little, tilt it to the side. 

He gives you a sad smile, loving, and doting, but infinitely sad.

“I think I made you–” he murmurs, “I think I made you like this.”

And when he says he’s sorry again, you can’t help but feel he isn’t that sorry, after all. 

You know you aren’t, at least.  

***

Your side is slammed into the wall, hard enough to make your teeth clink together, but slow enough that you knew it was coming. You know how this argument goes. You know everything your father is about to say before he even says it. 

Your mother is pounding on the locked door. It is best she doesn’t see this. 

She screams and scratches at the wood for you, wailing, begging him not to hurt you in any way. Her whole life she has begged for you. 

You think Rhea must’ve begged Kronos like this, too. 

A knot aches in your throat, tears blurring your eyes as you listen to her scream, and scream, and scream. You refocus on your father. 

He approaches you again, lifting you by the front of your clothes, up from the ground. “I’m sick of your excuses,” he hisses to you. “I know you have had opportunities to look into this future.” 

“He keeps his Infinity up around me–” 

“Bullshit.” Your father slams you again against the wall, the back of your head colliding hard enough with the wall that it leaves a dent. Pain radiates up the back and you think you can feel the slow warmth of blood blossom there. 

Something inside of you goes completely still and quiet. 

Then it roars forward like an animal at the end of its leash. 

“You refuse to look into his future–I will not have raised a weak, sentimental–” Your father drops you in a heap, turns away from you as he rakes a hand through his hair, “you’re just like your mother.” 

You can feel blood slide down the back of your neck. You reach around to touch tentatively at the wound, your fingers returning to you slick and shining with it. You rub it between your fingers before peering up at your father. 

With everything inside you, you wish you were like your mother. 

“I am not,” you say simply and he rounds on you again. 

“Then prove it to me that–” 

“I will kill you one day.” You tell him and there isn’t a threat in your voice. 

He freezes, hovering above you. 

You smile at him, slow, all teeth. 

“What did you say?” He asks and maybe he’s trying to intimidate you, but you can hear the note of fear in the question, the tremble that he can’t contain.

So you say again, slowly, so he can understand you perfectly, “I will kill you one day.” 

“How dare you threaten me–” 

He raises his hand like he will strike you. 

“It isn’t a threat, father.” You tell him, “it’s just the future.” 

The slap stings but it only makes you laugh. Barking. Hysterical. Your mother has gone quiet. 

All the world has gone quiet, you think, with what you’ve said. 

You pick yourself up from the ground and rise, a little unsteady, as more blood rushes from the wound in your head. But your father doesn’t move, doesn’t budge, frozen in shock, maybe fear, as you return to the door and open it slowly. 

You will gut him one day, crawl out of his belly victorious. 

Your mother falls into your arms in a heap. You hold her, let her hold you, let her fold you into her arms and cradle the wound at the back of your head like you’re a child again. You look at your father over her shoulder and the look on his face is nothing short of horror. 

You must have proved to him that you are nothing like your mother, after all. 

***

“You haven’t kissed yet?” Ieri asks, stretching her legs out on the blanket you’d laid out beside the creek. 

You shake your head, lying on your stomach with a book half-hazerdly lying open to your current page. There’s a bowl of berries between you two, the fading sun slowly slides away from where it’d warmed your back, now leaving a chill in its wake. The sky is bruised and tender. 

“Aren’t you going to be married–” she does the math in her head, “–in two years or something?” 

You turn onto your back, looking up at the tops of trees, a little vignette of your world. 

“Yes,” you sigh, “as soon as I turn eighteen.” 

“Have you ever kissed anyone before?” Ieri then asks and she eases down so she’s on her side, elbow propped up, hand holding up her head. 

You can feel heat prickle your cheeks. You think about lying for a moment. But the pause must give you away because Ieri’s brows cock upwards in surprise. 

“Has he?” you dare to ask. 

“You haven’t asked him?” She questions, “I just figured you two were so close–” 

Anger is a sharp, mean little thing inside of you. You’ve never asked because you’re not sure you want to know the answer and you are always telling people not to ask if they don’t actually want to know. 

But now that you’ve acknowledged it, you know it will not let you rest unless you know, unless you force yourself to swallow around it. 

“Has he?” you demand now, stubbornly fixing your eyes on the sky, blue as his eyes, slipping away into night. 

“He’s an eighteen-year-old boy.” Ieri responds with a shrug. “He’s not as bad as Suguru but,” she reaches for a berry, pops it into her mouth and you watch as it blossoms purple red against her tongue and teeth. “He’s certainly not as chaste as you.” 

Jealousy curdles in your gut, the feeling of it sickly and sour. Inadequacy drops like a stone inside of you, too. Why wouldn’t he want to kiss you? Be with you? 

“Do you consider it–” Ieri chooses to rephrase, “are you two even dating? Or just–engaged?” 

The irony isn’t lost on either of you. It’s so backwards. You’ve never really talked about it before, always just assumed (known) that Satoru was yours. And you were his. In your mind, that’s all there has been, all there will ever be. 

“I don’t know.” You answer, but your voice has gotten thick, childishly, tears prick at your eyes. 

“Don’t cry over him yet,” Ieri tells you, “it’s not like he’s ever really seen anyone. I think you mean more to him than any little kiss would.” 

“I don’t care. I want to–” it comes out of you before you can stop it, “I want to kill him.” 

Ieri barks out a laugh, “I’m sure it won’t be the last time you feel that way about him; you have your whole lives.” 

When you don’t laugh with her, she nudges you, “I’m serious.” She says, “I know you mean the most to him. Suguru knows it. Everyone knows it. If someone wants to get under his skin, they bring you up.” 

“I still want to kill him. I want to–I want to trap him, so no one else can have him.” You say, but it has less heat, a little more subdued. Placated by what she’s said. 

“You should talk to him about it.” Ieri says, “if it bothers you so bad–if you don’t want to do the same.” 

“Do the same?” 

She leans over you, lazily smiling, “you know, kiss someone else–be with someone else, before him.” 

“I could never get away with it–” you answer, “it would have to be someone who my father allows me to see here.” 

Ieri’s smile turns more into a smirk, “I know Suguru would–” 

“I would sooner kill him, too,” you tell her and she laughs again, throwing her head back, “besides, that would really hurt Satoru.” 

“Would it? Might be his wet dre–” 

You lurch upwards, throwing yourself into tackling Ieri before she can finish the sentence. Your book lands in a heap beside you. Her laugh gets choked on as she struggles with you, as you roll around on the blanket beneath the growing stars. You bite her hard enough to leave a ring of teeth bruised into the skin of her bicep. She’ll show Satoru tomorrow. She takes you in a headlock, letting you squirm and kick and struggle against her. 

Eventually you both settle and she’s still got her arm thrown around the back of your neck, your shoulders. You are still half atop her, curled up at her side, head tucked into the crook of her neck. 

She reaches blindly for her pack of cigarettes. Slips one out with deft fingers. 

“Hand me my lighter.” She says and you know it’s in her right pocket, so your hand slips easily down into the folds of fabric against her hip, against her thigh. Your little fingers close around its smooth shape, fish it out, and hold it up to her. 

 “Light it for me,” she says, the cigarette dangling from her lips. 

You sit up a little, enough to bring the lighter up to the end, strike it, let it catch. Her free hand cups around yours, around the flame, and you can feel her slim fingers brush over your knuckles. She breathes deeply and you settle back into her side. You become aware of the dips of her body that you fold yourself into.

Smoke unfurls slowly from above you. 

You don’t know what possesses you–

(Maybe the knowledge that you already know this conversation, as if you are reading lines from a script and you suppose you could swallow them down if you wanted to, change the script now but–but you love this part with Ieri. You wouldn’t change it. You’ve come to find that there are just some moments that you would never, in a million years, change. You understand now why they happened. How. What you felt. How she felt against you. You don’t just see the outlines but feel it. So you don’t know what possesses you but you say–)

“I sometimes wish I was more normal. I don’t feel like a teenager at all. I don’t feel like myself at all.” Your voice is soft, hushed against the column of her throat. 

Her fingers slip into your hair, against your scalp, you can feel them tangle and soothe. 

“That’s the most teenager thing I think you’ve ever said to me.” Ieri responds and you pick your head up to see the curl of her lip, her heavy eyelids smeared with mascara. 

And she laughs at the look on your face, smokey and soft against you, laughs when her hands move and flex in your sides, tickling your ribs to send you squealing and laughing with her. 

To make you feel like a teenager again, to remind you why sometimes seeing the moment isn’t enough to know, but feeling it, being in it, is what gives you most understanding. 

***

The rain comes down cold and hard, slanting in its harshness, beating down on the earth and drenching it. Your garden bends and drips with it, all blue-dark leaves curling with the rain’s torrent. 

Satoru calls your name. 

You shiver in the branch of your favorite tree, watch him from above, see the halo of his head as he wanders further into your garden. 

You’ve been out here all day. Your mother must’ve called him. She’s taken to calling him when she’s worried about you. You don’t know this because he’s told you, rather, you know this because you know your mother’s path as it lays out before you. 

You will use it to change everything one day. You will use it to carve a new path into the future. 

But for now, you let him look. 

He’s taken his glasses off, face uncharacteristically bare and his Infinity is not up, so his hair sticks to his forehead, the nape of his neck. He drenches himself in the rain for you, comes to you with his hands empty and his walls down. He comes to you open, ripe for the taking. 

His eyes slide up towards you, until you can tell they’ve picked you out. 

And still, he smiles, “come down from there. Come down to me.”  

“No,” you answer, “I don’t want to see you.” 

“What have I done?” He asks and he seems genuinely surprised this time, “should I have bought you flowers? Jewelry? Have I been neglecting you?” 

“Yes,” you answer stubbornly. 

Satoru wipes the rain from his face, “come down from there so we can talk.” He says again, a little smile still playing on his lips. He’s amused by your temperament. 

You turn your nose up at him and then lift yourself up onto the next branch. It creeks and sways with your weight, with the wind. The rain is cool and a little prickly as it hits your skin. 

“Aw, don’t be like that–” he coos, “what’ll it take for you to come down?” 

“Depends,” you call down to him, “how many people have you kissed?” 

There’s a furious heat in your cheeks, you feel so juvenile, so petulant, and yet, it still takes the smirk off of his face for all of ten seconds. It’s replaced by surprise. His eyes widen, his pink lips part. 

“Did Suguru mention it to you?” He asks, “you two are always–” 

“Ieri.” 

Satoru goes quiet again. 

“They really don’t mean anything. I don’t–I didn’t think we were actually–” 

“Dating?” You sneer, “no, just engaged.” 

“We’ve been engaged our whole lives!” He protests, “you’re being purposefully stubborn, you know it isn’t like a genuine engagement–” 

“No, it’s only worse, we’re divinely bound to each other!” You snap at him. 

“Come down from there!” He snaps back “come down from there so I don’t have to shout up at you!” 

“No!” Your voice is a little more hurt than you’d like, a little more wobbly, and then you lie to him for a second time, “I don’t want you near me!” 

He goes quiet. 

“I won’t touch you.” He promises after a silent moment that the rain fills. 

You make a strangled noise, “no, I–I want you to touch me!” Warmth flares so bright and hot in your cheeks, over top your ears, your chest, “why will you–why will you kiss others, but not me?” 

He has the audacity to smile a little, “come down from there.” 

“Come up to me!” You bite, white-knuckling the bark of the tree, letting it dig and scrape into the tender parts of your palms. 

In an instant, he’s in the air, not very far for him at all, to hover in front of you. His hands, grown so large since he was a boy, grip the branches near your face to steady himself. His lips quirk at the corners when he reaches you and you pull away from him ever so slightly, duck into the tree, suddenly shy. 

“I didn’t think you’d be upset by it,” he admits. 

“Would you be upset if I had done it?” You counter. Water drips into your eyes, on your lashes, the slope of your nose. You’re getting chilled finally. 

His eyes darken, all cobalt and thunder blue, “I wouldn’t want people to hurt you. I don’t know what I’d do if someone—” 

“I feel the same about you!” You hiss, and it flies out of your mouth before you can think about it, “The thought of it makes me—I’d kill someone for you.” 

It sounds like your own damnation. 

He catches on.

“Will you?” He asks. He wants to know.

“Yes.” You breathe. And then, “so will you, for me.” 

He swallows around that. Tries to decide on the taste of it in his mouth. Digests it. Then he nods as he accepts it. 

He asks, and he doesn’t want to know now, “so you’ve—you’ve looked into my future?” 

But you shake your head fractionally, just the barest movement.

“No?” he murmurs and you almost don’t hear it, more just watch his mouth form the word, the slight noise. “You haven’t-?” 

You shake your head again, more certain this time, “not yet.” 

“What are you waiting for?” He asks, a little taken back, surprised that you hadn’t already torn into his future. 

“Courage.” You answer, “I don’t know if I can take it.” 

“I’ve never known you to be scared.” He says softly and tentatively, he reaches out to peel a strand of your hair away from your cheek, smooth it back behind your ear. He draws in a slow breath. Lightning flashes faintly, illuminating him in a neon shock, a brilliant light. Heavenly. Godly. 

When you don’t pull away from him, when you can’t stop looking at him, he asks, “then how do you know? About us?”

“Others,” you answer. “I have a tapestry of futures that have given me glimpses into our own.” 

“Will you ever–” Look into mine? 

“Yes,” you answer, “when I can stomach it, when–” it won’t break me. 

He pauses for a long moment, studying you, rain coming down on him, slicking his silver hair to his forehead, to his cheek, to his neck. 

You can tell he understands you, in ways that only he has been able to, in ways that you have only been able to understand him. You look at each other the way children do, very honestly, wholly, and unhindered. The rain washes most of your anger away, maybe, and leaves something larger, more encompassing. 

As if he can feel it, he finally speaks and when he does, it is in a tone you have perhaps never heard; a certain fear in being vulnerable, a waiver of imperativeness–that you must know this, that he has to tell you, that he’ll wrestle it out of himself for you, force it still, lay it before you. Spit it out at your feet. 

Distantly, thunder rumbles. 

“You must know it’ll only ever be yours.” 

Your heart stutters, young and naive, and you try to be tough, “you better be.”

His lips lift at the corner, but he presses on. 

“You must know that all my future will ever be–is yours.” 

(It’s a little startling, to be told the future by someone else. You think maybe you won’t even need to peer into his future anymore. Maybe this is all the glimpse you’ll need.) 

You shake your head fractionally, the barest movement. 

“Let me do the future-telling for once; I’ve only ever known you.”

You don’t dare stop him now–

“When I see myself, I always see you with me. I don’t have a version of me without you. I don’t have a future without you. You have always been and will always be the fate that I walk towards.” 

He lets the words unspool him, let the rain drown his voice, “I’ve thought endlessly about it and I used to despise you maybe but now–now I know–all my life points to you.” 

And then he smiles, a little sheepish, a little regretful, sad at the corners, “I just thought you knew. I thought you’d–you’re so high above everyone that I’d thought you’d understand…they’re nothing compared to you.” 

(To be above the highest is its own complement and curse.) 

You stare hard at him, search to see if he might be lying to you, might be trying to placate you. You have the sudden rush of bravery to peer into his future now, as if to test him. You don’t, you hold back like a dog on a leash, you watch him carefully, and he watches you back. 

Finally, you say, “I’ll kill you if you kiss anyone else again. I’ll never let you leave my sights.” 

He barks out a laugh, short, and sharp and sweet. A little wet. “I won’t. Cross my heart.”

And finally, you touch him, reach your finger out to draw the cross across his heart. You have half a mind to make it hurt a little, to sink your nail in and really draw it, half a mind to think of that cross permanently on his skin for you. 

(You think he’d let you–he’ll let you get away with murder. You think he’d let you do anything, everything.)  

He catches your wrist, fingers slipping over your pulse, over the lines of your palm. 

“Do you want me to kiss you?” He asks. 

You don’t have it in you to be proud now, “yes,” you answer, hungry, greedy with him. 

His lips slip up into that boyish grin of his, far too charming for his own good, so handsome that you never want him to share it with anyone but you, “all you had to do was ask. If I had known–” 

“Toru–” 

“I would never have kept a lady in waiting–” 

“Kiss me.” 

Commanded, possessed, he lists forward. His hand finds your jaw, bringing you halfway, bringing you into a slow kiss. Gentle. Appeasing. 

His lips are warm compared to the rain, almost feverish. 

I’m sorry, he seems to say, you have me, he nudges further into it, I have the rest of my life to give you, he hums against your lips. 

Strange, you think, with heat licking up your neck, how soft, how wet, how warm–

Your hand on his chest tightens into a little fist of the fabric of his uniform. Maybe you’re trembling. Maybe you’re putty in his hands for once, subdued, gentle the way the world wanted you to be. 

And tucked away in your garden, hidden from the world, you kiss a god, and swallow it down. 

Tucked away in your garden, hidden from the world, you burn and burn and burn at the taste of his divinity. 

And in your garden, hidden from the world, Satoru thinks he just might be kissing a god, too. Because he burns and burns and burns almost as bright as you. 

***

“You seem tired.” 

Your mother’s voice is gentle. She smoothes your hair from your forehead as she approaches you. But she startles when she feels you, before turning her hand over to lay the back of it along your forehead. Then her palm again.  

“Oh, that’s why–you’re burning up.” 

“‘M fine.” You tell her, “just tired. I was training late into the night.” 

You’d been scouring through the future of your amulet, searching it’s corners to try and find someone on the other side, to try and find the person you’d encountered the first time you’d ever peered into the amulet–

The blurry face. The melodic voice. You’ve dug for it ever since, more than anything, you’ve sought them again. You’ve met previous users, learned from them, sat through their lesson out of time, on time. 

But the first was never like the others. Not quite. You’d hardly slept. 

Your mother’s eyes skip down to the amulet at your throat. She eyes it suspiciously, almost glares at it, before she looks at you again. “You’re running a fever.” She replies, “come on, I’ll help you to your room.” 

She dotes on you. She makes sure you’re comfortable in bed. She fluffs the pillows. She retrieves a thermometer to confirm it. She treats you like a child and you let her. Maybe some part of you will always feel a little like a child around her. 

She moves a little skittishly around you now, a little unsure; she knows you best. She knows what you are becoming. You wonder if she always knew. You wonder if she hoped for it or if she hates it. 

Still, she mothers you. Still, despite what you are becoming, she loves you. But she–

You don’t think she likes you anymore. 

She’s never said it, only indicated it in the small moments, only looked at you a little too long like she can’t believe she raised such a–such a–

Monster. Abomination. Wretched girl. 

When she gets a cool cloth to lay across your forehead, you say, “I’m fine. I think it’s just overuse of my technique–” 

She goes quiet, busies her hands. You watch her mouth turn down in a splinter of a frown. Distaste, disgust, that she tries to bury quickly. 

“What?” you snap, because you know her face, the first face you ever saw, blurry in your infant vision. 

She shakes her head–nothing, she seems to say. 

“What?” you say again, tilting away from her touch. 

It’s quiet for a moment, just the sound of birdsong, the little chimes outside your window. It’s a beautiful day. 

When she has the courage, she asks, “what are you searching so frantically for?” 

And she’s pulling on something that few have guessed at, that even Satoru seems to dance around, “I feel like I–I feel like I lost you somewhere, to everyone else, to time. I feel like–”

I don’t know you anymore.

She won’t quite look at you. 

“Are you scared of me?” You ask, careful to ungrit your teeth. Careful to not start growling and biting back so soon. You try so hard with your mother, to be more than your father’s daughter, to be more than they wanted. 

Your mother shakes her head, short and quick, “no,” she says, almost coos, “no. Never. I’m scared for you.” 

“Why?” 

“You make everyone nervous with your technique. And you’ve stopped hiding it as much–how strong you’re getting. They’re getting scared and when they get scared–” 

She tucks a strand of your hair behind your ear. Her eyes finally find yours. 

“Well, it’s a little like your father–they’re all a little like dogs. If they get scared, they may bite. And I don’t want to see you bitten.” 

Torn to shreds, maybe. 

And when you look at her face, it is crestfallen but attempting to be brave, there is a wobble in her lip. A tightness in her throat. Her eyes are blurry with unshed tears and you know that all mothers must look like this in front of their daughters at some point; attempting to still be a mother, to still be your mother, braver than you, stronger than you, but not. Not anymore.  She sniffles with it, tries to keep all her grief for you carefully tucked inside. You look at your mother and see her wrinkles and her gray hair and her worried face for you. You look at your mother and see a woman who has tried her best, but maybe it wasn’t quite enough. 

Who never could bite back enough, avoided their bite so long that her own teeth fell out and her back curled and her skin grew thin and saggy. Easy to hurt. Easy to break. 

You swallow tight around the lump in your own throat. 

“Mom,” you whisper, and you reach out to smooth her brow now, too, to trade places with her. Your turn to soothe, to comfort, to tend. And you get out, your own tears caught the crux of your lashes, heart in your throat;

“Mom, it’s okay–” your voice is just a breath, trying to keep out the sob, just a gasp, “it’s okay– I have the bigger bite in the end.” 

***

When you look into Satoru’s future, it is a cloudless day, and it is as easy as his head in your lap. 

You don’t even pause from carding your fingers through the silky strands of his white hair. You don’t tense or gasp or scream or cry. You settle into his future like you were always meant to be there, carved your own path long before you even knew it, and made it yours so when you see it–

When you see it, it feels more like coming home. 

You don’t even miss a beat. You don’t stutter or misstep. Satoru is none the wiser, eyes fluttered shut as he enjoys the breeze, white lashes like moth wings against his cheek. 

“Satoru,” you say his name in a new way, in the way of reverence and adoration, in the way of ownership and pride. 

“Satoru–” 

“Hm?” 

He cracks an eye open to peek at you. 

“What?” he asks with a slight laugh, at the look on your face. 

You tug at his hair and he yelps a little. 

“Satoru–” you laugh when he sits up, when he tackles you back into the wildflowers. “Satoru, Satoru–” you sing his name like a bird, high on the rush of your technique. 

He must notice, maybe, the residuals of cursed energy, because he looks at you underneath him for a moment. He stares hard at your face. But it isn’t suspicious just–

“Is it good?” He asks, “is it okay?” 

You smile at him, lovely and so warm that he’s almost taken back, torn asunder by the radiance, the love. 

“It could be great.” 

“And you know it? You know how to–” 

“I know what to do. I know what I have to do.” 

And when he kisses you sweet and hard and excited, you laugh a little, dazed, shocked. 

Oh, God, you know what you have to do. 

***

It begins the day before Satoru and Suguru are to receive their mission to protect the star plasma vessel. Satoru visits you. 

And before he leaves, you snag his wrist, pull him back to you.

You say his name with a heaviness he recognizes instantly, worry pulling at his features, at just the tone of your voice. He knows you so thoroughly at such a young age that you almost fear he could pull the thoughts from your head–take comfort that he could recognize any part of you anywhere. Your voice. Your steps. Your bite. 

And somehow, you think you know him more. 

“Don’t be scared of it–when it comes.” You tell him gently, like it’ll somehow soften the blow of what he has tried to fight his whole life. You know he has run from this in the same way that you have run straight towards it, faced it with brashness, perhaps too much harshness. 

Divinity is something that you wrestled still and tamed, bit down into it until it became all yours. 

Divinity is something that he has hid from and denied and ran from like prey. 

Soon, it will catch him by the throat, by the quivering heart. 

“When what comes?” He asks and he draws back to you for comfort. So you touch his face. You cup his cheek in your holy palm. 

“You’ll know,” you soothe gently, “and you have to accept it, when it does.” 

“You’re making me nervous,” he tries to laugh. It’s hollow. All hollow. 

“It’ll be okay.” You murmur, and then you lean up onto your toes to kiss him with a sweetness he isn’t ready for. One that you rarely use on him. “I’ll see you soon.” You say against his lips, before slowly parting from him. 

He blinks at you. 

“Can’t I stomach it?” He asks. 

“You’ll be forced to.” You answer. “And I’ll be here to help you through it.” 

He stares hard at you; you can tell he doesn’t like what you’ve said. He doesn’t like how cryptic it is, but you know if you tell him now, he’ll only fight it harder. 

If you tell him now what any of the future holds, he will die at the hands of a non-sorcerer. 

So again, you remind him, you almost beg, “just don’t be afraid. Accept it when it comes. Promise me?” 

And something in your face must frighten him, it must seize him, because he nods quickly. Sharply. Resolutely. 

“For you? Anything.” And then he smiles in the way that you think heaven made, “I promise. I promise–besides,” he tilts his head down so you see the flint strike blue of his eyes, “have you ever known me to be afraid of anything?” 

***

Satoru stumbles into your arms after everything. A God realized returns to the arms of his own God. 

“I’ve got you,” you say and it almost seems like he’s running a fever, “I know.” You hush. 

And as you hold him in your twilight-dark garden, the lush fauna shrouding your forms, your brush your lips against the shell of his ear. You tangle your hands in his hair. You touch him and soothe him and say over and over again in a thousand different ways, just like you have all your lives;

“It’s just you and me and what we have to carry. I have you. I have you–you have me. It’s okay–I’ve got you, I’ve got you.” 

And he takes it and swallows it and stomachs it as true. 

***

Satoru presents you with two children before you’re even married. 

Megumi and Tsumiki Fushiguro stare up at you with wide eyes. 

Megumi is wary and jaded. Tsumiki is overly polite and helpful. You realize both are attempting to protect themselves in their own way, protect each other. 

“This is my fiance,” Satoru tells the kids, “I’m sure you’ll get to know her well.” 

Tsumiki bows politely and thumps her younger brother on the back of the head when he doesn’t. You glance over top of their  heads at Satoru who grins fondly at them. 

It strikes you very suddenly that you never asked if he wanted children. If you two were ever going to–

You knew about Megumi and Tsumiki, of course. 

Children favored by Gods. Raised in your care. 

Megumi, the son of one in his own right. 

But as you watch Satoru look at the kids now, you realize perhaps he did always want this. Children. Them. You think maybe in another world entirely, he would’ve wanted a big family. You were both only children. Too blessed to be anything but alone in your childhood. 

You try to imagine yourself as a mother, as your own mother, with a daughter sitting between your legs, clinging to you, reaching for you. 

You try to imagine yourself with a daughter like yourself and the image curdles and sours. 

You don’t think you could do it–

You wonder how your mother did it. You wonder how it didn’t break her heart, rip her apart, you wonder how she stomached it, how she didn’t despise you. 

But then one evening Tsumiki sits in front of you and you comb her long hair out. And you ask her to pick a beautiful clip from your vanity. 

She picks a light blue one, the color of the sky, and you begin to understand. 

(And over the years, you’ll realize, you’ll think, I suppose I really would do anything. I suppose she really could become anything, and I would still love her.)

And Megumi, oh Megumi–

He seems to despise everyone but you. He sidles up to your side and he nudges his small head against your ribs, makes his hair staticky and mussed and clings to you the way he must want to do with his mother.  

 You begin to understand how she could stomach all of it, how every mother must in some way. How she could do it a thousand times over–

When they doze at your sides in the sun, on a blanket in your garden, and you know their futures, and all the tragedy and all the love, you begin to understand it all. 

***

Your amulet shutters in your vision, before pushing you into–

Into the future. You know it’s taste now. Sulfur and ash. Bitter and heavy on your tongue. The past is sweeter, like rotten fruit, sickly. 

Your vision swims with your successor. 

This time, they are veiled, because you can see clearly now. 

It’s the one you saw when you were younger, the one you’ve searched for countlessly–

You jolt. 

Their face is a wash beneath the shimmering veil, adorned in silks and gold and jewels. They look half phantom, half-god, the hues of their world too-bright, lush like Eden. 

“It’s you,” you say this time. 

And they must be smiling beneath their veil.

You wish you could pull it from their face, reach all the way through time, and rip it from them the way you pull away Satoru’s blindfold. You wish to see them clearly, for who they are. 

“We meet again finally,” it’s a feminine voice. Silky. Lovely in a way that is otherworldly. A shiver rips up your spine because–

“I’ve searched for you since–” 

“I know.” 

“Will you teach me?” You ask, you nearly beg. 

“Aren’t you the one from the past? Shouldn’t you be teaching me?” Their voice is almost teasing. 

“No,” you say defiantly, “you know this. You’re supposed to teach me.” 

“Yes,” 

“Then–” 

“But I have little teaching to do. You know it.” The figure cants their head beneath the veil, twitches ever so slightly, “I know you do. It’s been festering, hasn’t it? The dreams, the thoughts, the plan that has unspooled inside of you.” 

“It’s horrible.” You admit, “it’s–” 

“Unforgivable?” 

“Yes,” and then suddenly the pressure of tears that you weren’t prepared for, “I don’t want to do it. I didn’t–” want this. 

Stillness.

“It’s worse if you don’t.” The voice like god says. 

“I know,” you gasp, “I know–but it doesn’t make it any easier.” 

“It will be easier than you think,” it’s a coo, like a mother’s voice, “for them. For your love.” 

You fight the sob that crawls its way from the depths of you, a whimper coming out in its stead. Tears blur the heavenly vision in front of you so that it sways and swims in flushed pinks, tangerine, all gold light, honeydew greens and melancholy blues. 

“What would you do for it? For love? For the future you want?” 

“Anything,” you gasp, “everything.” 

The figure raises their chin beneath their veil and you think maybe they’ve damned you. You think maybe it’s all their fault, from the beginning, it was always them, this god, leading you down the path they have created. Was it ever yours to begin with? 

Like a curse, they condemn you;

“Then you know exactly what you have to do.” 

***

When the day comes, you begin with breaking a plate against the wall. 

You throw it near your father’s head so hard that it bursts on impact into thousands of shards that go pinging across the room in little flames of colorful ceramic. 

Your mother gasps your name. 

Your father reaches across the table at you in a fury, “you little shit–” and he grabs you by the collar hard enough to haul you halfway across the table. The other plates and glasses go crashing to the floor, clattering around. 

Your mother tries to stop it. 

But the moment your father has got you, you put your hands around his throat. 

“Shall we do this now, father?” You hiss in some strange voice that does not feel like your own. “Running straight towards your fate, are you?” 

(He is not–he has several years still. But the look on his face, the fear that shadows his eyes briefly is enough to make you start laughing.) 

“What has gotten into you?” He growls, “I made you–why do you turn against me?” You squeeze at his throat, testing, testing–

“Satoru says you’re scared of me.” You whisper, “he wants to take me away from you. I think it would save your life if he did–” 

Your fingers flex tighter. Your father grits his teeth. 

Your father curses, cuts out the name Gojo so viciously from his mouth you wonder if blood will fall out onto you. “I’m not scared of you,” he spits, shaking you, wrestling until he’s got you over the table entirely. Your feet barely touch the floor with how he holds you up. 

“No?” You ask, “I don’t haunt your dreams? I’m not driving you mad?” 

(You know you are, it’s why you say it.) 

“Shut up,” he snaps and when he slams you to the ground, it is enough to knock the wind out of you. “Shut up! You are my daughter and you will respect me–” 

The peeling laugh that scrapes out of you sounds more hyena than human. It splinters off into a screaming, grating sort of laugh. 

(And even still, you tremble like a child in his grasp. But you press on–)

“You are my father and you will respect me.” You tell him, “you are my father and you will fear me like I used to fear you.” 

He stares down at you hard, searching frantically in your face for something, anything–

“I want Satoru.” You demand. “I want to go with him and maybe it’ll change everything.” 

“No.” 

“I want Satoru!” You snap, thrashing in his hold now, twisting and arching. He bears down hard enough to make you bleat in pain, to make your chest ache and compress hard underneath the weight of his forearm. “He’d kill you if he knew how you treat me–if I told him–” 

Your father seizes the top of your hair so cruelly that it wrenches all the words from your mouth a moment. 

Your mother is begging. Neither of you hear her. 

You look hard at your father, searching frantically for something, anything–

“I am your daughter and you have made me. I am your daughter and I will be your death. I am your daughter and you have made your own death.” 

You think the look of fear that transforms his face must be what you looked like as a child. 

“You babble insanities–this is what I get, then, for pushing you too young–they say Foresight users always lose their mind and–” Your father tries to get it all out before you can say more, pushes the words out like he’s angry, like he’s trying to drown you out. 

“Am I not the prophet you begged for?” You ask on a half-sob, almost pleading, “didn’t you wish for me? Pray for power? I know you did, at the shrines of our ancestors–” 

“Stop it!” He snaps, horrified that you’ve touched upon a memory. That you know him, know it all. “Enough!” 

“It’s why you chose my mother!” You crow, tears catching, “because you thought she would bear you a powerful child! Because you read the journal of an earlier Foresight user and–and what did it say?” Your voice drops, “what did it say, father? About which wife to chose?” 

He is trembling now, you can feel it all over, like he’s a frightened child. 

“You chose her because a Foresight user told you to in a journal from two-hundred-years ago–because it would give you me–” 

Because I told them to put it down. Because I am my own maker. I am my own God.

When he hits you this time, you go howling like a beast, crying and crying and crying. Your mother pulls him off of you. But you don’t stop turning and twisting and holding the blood in your mouth and in your hands and feeling it all slip down your chin. The sob catches and surprises you, works it’s way out of you on a raw, animal note. 

“I want Satoru–” 

You wail at what you’re doing, what you will do, what you have always known to do. You wail at what’s been done to you, what will be done to you. 

Your head swims; when did it all–how did it all come to this? How did it get so twisted up? 

You were innocent once, weren’t you? 

You lurch away from your mother when she tries to comfort you. You throw more glass at your father. You scream and kick and destroy the dining room. You break china and splash water and hot tea everywhere. It burns your hands. It cuts your bare feet. 

You look at the sky out the window for the time. You can’t stop now–

So you go down the hall, running and howling, flitting to and fro like a trapped, shrieking bird. You break a window. You bloody your palms. You scratch at the wallpaper until it tears beneath your ruined fingernails. 

You do this for hours. Your mother can not calm you. Your father has gone away. 

“Please, please–” your mother begs, “how can I help you? What can I do–anything–I would do anything for you–I would–” tears trek down her cheeks as she pulls at your skirts, as she tries to stop your bleeding or soothe your cries. 

And finally, you say again;

“I want Satoru.” 

You breathe hard. Your mother’s hitching sobs quiet. 

“I want Satoru.” You say again, and then you shout it, “I want Satoru!” 

And you sound like a child, you sound like a warbling little curse saying the same thing over and over again. 

But that is who your mother finally calls. 

And that is who comes flying into your home, into your room.

(“Where is she?” He’d asked the moment he got there, the moment he saw your mother, hand over her mouth, still crying. 

“Her room–” your mother hiccups. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry–”)

And your room is where he finds you in hysterics still. Your mouth is swelling, blood sticky and half-dried all over your lip, your chin, your whole body. 

You glance out the window, at the sun in the sky, to see what time of the day it is. 

You need more time. 

Still, you collide into his chest, let him immediately pull you from your torn up feet to be cradled in his arms. “What have they done? What’s wrong–” 

“I called for you for hours–” you whimper, arms tightening around his neck, “where were you? Where were you-”

You sob hard into his shoulder, so he shuts the door behind him, sealing you away from the world before he moves deeper into the disaster of your room. His large hand pets over your hitching back, over your spine, as if he’s trying to iron out all your trembling. 

“I came as soon as I was called.” He responds, holding the back of your head, pressing you into him. “I’d never lea–” 

“But you did leave me.” You realize and you lift your head from his shoulder to look at him, “you left me to go to school. And now you’re gone and I’m stuck here–” 

“I’m here now, aren’t I?”

Something tightens and then bursts inside of you. 

When you strike him, you do so with your nails against his pretty, unmarred face. Blood swells to the little cut. 

“And it wasn’t soon enough.” 

When you reach for his face again, he doesn’t even flinch away and you think he would accept anything from you at this point. Regardless, you pull his blindfold off. His eyes are glazed, watery. 

“I’m sorry,” he hushes. 

Your face twists up in pain, in hurt, “no, you don’t–” understand. The tears come harder. Years of your agony come rushing forward, “I never wanted–” this. “It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair–”

Your voice hitches on a sob. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again, even as you begin fussing and twisting in his arms, as you begin to fight him. 

You push and shove and scratch and bite.

And he never puts up his Infinity. 

You throw glass at him and yell at him about how he’ll never understand, how he left you, how you hate him and resent him and need him. You beg him to take you away. You yell at him to stay away. You cry until your dry heaving, until you’re near sick with it all, with what you’re doing. 

Someone knocks. Your mother’s wobbling voice, “someone is here for Gojo–they say it’s important. That he needs to go–” 

And then you grab him and you beg him not to leave. You’re going to be sick. You grab his wrist, you fall to your knees, you push your head into his thigh. You sob into his stomach, clinging desperately, fingers tightened like a small child’s fist. You beg him to forgive you. You beg him to stay, stay, stay. 

“I won’t leave you,” he soothes, coming down to your level, letting you crawl into his lap. He’s all torn up from you, but he still lets you nuzzle your damp cheek to his, lets you cry and whine and whimper into his shoulder. 

(And some part of you knows that he loves this. Needs you to need him—like all gods do.) 

He holds you as someone pounds on the door and begs for him to come. You dig your nails into him as if it might keep him still, keep him in your arms. 

“I’ve got you now,” he whispers, over and over again, “and I’m going to take you away from everyone–” he vows the words into your throat, along your pulse. “And then it will only be us and you’ll always have me.” 

The knocking never seems to end. 

(It’ll pound in your head the rest of your life—)

You look up at him, in all your raw bloodlines, your tears and your fever hot godhood. 

“You’ll always have me.” You repeat. 

“And I’ll always have you.” He soothes, hushes with such love that you start to cry harder. 

(You know it’s coming. So you hold tighter. Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me—)

Until finally someone says through the door;

“Gojo! Gojo–Haibara is dead. A first year is dead–they need you–” 

Suguru Getou stands in a morgue over the body of a fifteen-year-old as his world turns on its axis, as everything shifts onto a new path. A thought burns into his mind the way they will soon burn Haibara. 

(Shortly after, he will massacre one hundred and twelve people. You have seen that number in your mind a thousand times. You hold Satoru when he can’t stand anymore, when he admits he couldn’t kill his best friend. You soothe him, you tell him that this is the only way forward, there was nothing he could’ve done, you tell him–you did everything right. 

You recognize your third lie to him the way you recognize his heart; easily, readily, simply.)

All because Satoru Gojo was too late to save Haibara—too late because he simply just wouldn’t leave you. 

“And I’ll always have you.” 

***