#nazgulwrites

The Red Hood stops in his tracks and goes dangerously still. “...What?”

One of the two guards gestures wildly at the child, shoulder-length blond hair swinging with his aggravation. “You heard me! Put him back, man! Joker's gonna feed us to Croc if he finds out that his pet isn't where it's supposed to be.”

Red Hood doesn't tense. Doesn't squeeze the frail thing in his arms. He just slowly turns his head to look at the offending creature yapping in his direction. “‘Pet?’”

“Yeah,” the guard says. “One of those dehumanizing things. We aren't supposed to treat h- shit, fuck, treat it like a person.”

“‘It,’” Red Hood flatly repeats back to him. It's not a question.

The second guard, a Black man maybe in his mid-forties, flickers his gaze between Red Hood and the child, before leaning over to murmur quietly to his colleague, “Nikolai, I think this is one of those times where I would shut up.”

“I'd like to keep my goddamn innards, Elijah. You know what happened last time.” The blond guard turns back to Red Hood. “Unless the Joker told you to move him, he's not allowed to leave his room. Are you new or suicidal?”

The Red Hood glides past them, unbothered by them reaching for their weapons, and gently sets the bleeding bird down in the long hollow beneath the desk. “Neither,” he says, standing.

‘Nikolai’ gestures at the door with his gun. “Then go put him back, or it's our ass as well as yours.”

Red Hood draws his own gun and shoots Nikolai's firearm from his hand with a single, casual, almost bored shot. “It's your ass anyway, Fuckface. Shut up.” He looks at the second guard, ‘Elijah.’ “‘Last time?’”

Elijah drops his own gun and puts his hands up, kicking at his buddy until he raises his hands above his head too. Smart. “Last time one of us — staff, I mean — tried to rescue that kid,” he explains, “they got caught,” he says, n’Joker… sorta peeled the guy when he caught up. Fed the leftovers to that big green dude, Waylon.”

Red Hood hums, haunting through the distortion of the modulator. “I see. When was this?”

“Six weeks ago. ‘S the first time anyone tried. And the last.”

“Interesting,” Red Hood murmurs. He taps the side of his gun against his chin, pondering. “So you've been complicit. You knew the kid was here, and did nothing.”

Nikolai's eyes widen. “Wh- Huh? Wait, no!”

Elijah looks at the floor, eyes low, and mutters, “Yes, we did.” He sounds ashamed, and if Red Hood was in a better mood, maybe he'd have cared. “We knew.”

“...You seem smart,” Red Hood says consideringly. “Smarter than your buddy.”

“Hey!”

“Nikolai, man, shut the fuck up. Close your goddamn mouth before y'get us both killed.”

“See?” Red Hood says, amused. “Much smarter. You know when lying won't help.”

Elijah forces a smile and ignores his friend’s glare. “Yeah, I, uh. I try.”

“Mm. Tell me, how long’s he been here?”

“The kid? Winter, I think.” Elijah shifts his weight anxiously. “I try not to think about it. Have enough trouble sleeping as it is, knowing he's here.”

Red Hood turns his gaze away from them. He hears Nikolai get kicked in the leg again, presumably for reaching for one of the guns on the floor, but he doesn't pay them any mind, instead tracing his gaze over the child once more. He's so thin. Wide shoulders, like he grew up eating alright, but now so, so thin. The calendar had said September.

He glances at the wall of security feed screens. This is going to take some planning.

“Yo, chief,” Elijah hedges, “I hate to pry, but uhh… What's your plan?”

“Hm?” He turns back to Elijah.

“You're trying to save the kid, yeah?”

Red Hood doesn't nod. He doesn't shake his head, either.

“There's a lot of other guards here,” Elijah says. “Plus a mercenary who's job is to keep the kid from getting out. And to bring him back if he does.”

“And?”

“Um. And if you're here alone, you're outnumbered.”

“Why should I care? And why do you?”

Elijah hunches his shoulders. “Nikolai’s wife got a baby on the way. I got a daughter. Joker ain't afraid of fuckin’ with family, n’I only took this shit job so i could have custody. I ain't proud’a my silence, but… assumin’ you have a shot at this, I'd rather you make it, for the kid's sake.”

Red Hood sneers under his helmet. “Playin’ for sympathy and backpedaling ain't changin’ that you took part in allowing this.”

“Believe me,” Elijah grits out, “I fuckin’ know. Shit keeps me up at night, but that merc's been hired to retrieve the kid if he ever gets outta here, and Joker'll hurt my kid, and even if he don't, I will not let my daughter go back to her mama on my death.”

“Oh?” Red Hood prompts, taking note of the Alley accent slipping out. He's not lying.

“Crazy bitch keeps lurkin’ around near the school,” Nikolai mutters from where he stands. “Girl’s only six.”

Elijah nods, looking at the ground again. “I wanna make it home to my baby girl, s'all. Don't want her gettin’ caught up in this mess.”

Red Hod stares him down. “There are eight workarounds I could name right now.”

“Not everyone’s as competent as you!*” Elijah blurts, before snapping his mouth shut. He waits to be shot, but when he isn't, he hesitantly continues. “I have a kid. I cannot imagine my daughter, my baby girl, six, in that kid's place. If Joker gets his hands on her because I decide to get involved, he will make that kid's condition look like a skinned knee, and even if he just goes after me, I don't wanna orphan my girl. I've seen what happens to kids in this city with no parents, and I can't let that happen to her. Please.”

Red Hood feels his jaw pop with how hard he clenches his teeth. “Kick over your radios and guns.”

Obediently, Elijah drops his walkie-talkie and kicks it over, as well as both guns. He glowers at Nikolai until he drops his radio too, albeit more hesitantly.

“Great.” Red Hood spares another glance at the kid, who's still out cold. He gives it an hour tops before the feisty little shit wakes up, which means he's in a bit of a rush. Planning takes time, but better to have a plan and have things go smooth than get screwed over because you rushed. He looks back at the guards. “Who else is Joker working with?”

“What?” the blond guard asks.

“Who is he paying to let him out of solitary? Who gave him access to the rest of the asylum and a private room for the kid? Who fuckin’—” Red Hood points at the child tucked into the hollow of the desk. “Who permitted this?”

Elijah and Nikolai share a sour glance. “Boles,” they say in unison.

“Who?”

“Frank Boles,” Elijah elaborates, and starts ticking off factoids on his fingers. “Senior officer, sorta the Clown's lieutenant. Nobody likes him. He's violent, he gambles, he hits patients and fellow staff…”

“Ah, shit, and Quinn,” Nikolai says, eyes widening and face going pale. “She's goddamn eager to participate so long as Paperface is in the room to praise her.”

“Delightful,” Red Hood says flatly. “Who else?”

“Nobody important as far as I'm aware, but I'll bet money the warden knows.”

“Hugo.” It's not a question.

Elijah nods. “Yeah. Strange ain't exactly subtle with his own projects. It's upsetting how many of the staff here ought to be inmates themselves, and the big boss's experiments are honestly comparable to Pyg's nonsense.”

“He wouldn't have cared if he did know,” Nikolai spits. “At least we feel bad that we're prioritizing our own asses, but the same can't be said for anybody else.”

Red Hood taps one finger. “And how many else knew about this but didn't have a hand in it?”

“Too many to count. Uh, for names, though… Robert, maybe?” Elijah asks Nikolai.

“He's not here today,” Nikolai replies.

“Wonderful,” Red Hood says, turning to scan the monitors. His eyes catch on one of the staff lounge areas, where Joker is eating chips on a couch across from Deathstroke, who himself is drinking something out of a paper cup. “Oh. That's convenient.”

“What is?” Elijah asks.

“They're right next to each other,” Red Hood hums darkly. “I do love me a good hunt, but today it's much safer to get them both in one go than go chasing one while the other gets away.”

Nikolai blinks, wide-eyed. “Well, uh. Good luck? But, um, if-slash-when y’get caught, can you leave us outta your story?”

Red Hood pauses. “I'm not fond of you,” he says blandly, and then he shoots Nikolai in the leg, whereupon the man shrieks like scraping metal and falls to the floor, clutching his wound.

Elijah drops to his friend's side, bewildered and frantic. “Fuck! Mother'a God, man!”

“Quiet the hell down,” Red Hood orders. “Occupy yourself by keeping him from dying and don't try anything fuckin’ stupid.”

Then he turns to the wall of security camera footage, and gets to work.

“You said ‘kids’, plural,” Suguru says, still smiling genially at the boy, and asks, “Are you telling me you're keeping a monkey?” Then he squints. “Wait— Satoru, is the other one a propagated Fushiguro?” 

“Did you just call her a monkey?”

Whoops. “Don't dodge my question!”

“Don't dodge mine! I knew you lost your marbles, but I didn't know it was a slur kind of genocidal crashout!”

“Say what you want, shithead, but why am I looking at a chibi version of the man who killed you?”

If she hides in here long enough, Gojo and Getou will come and drag her to dinner.

If she doesn't go into their rooms, there's a chance that they'll be in there.

If she doesn't look at the moving silhouettes in her periphery, they won't be real.

Right?

The Satoru that can't be pokes at her shoulder with ceramic, doll-jointed fingers, and the Suguru that's not bends down a little to try and look at her face, hands on its knees. Shoko keeps her eyes on the ground, because they can't be real, can they?

Shoko covers her face with her hands. “You two were supposed to be untouchable,” she whispers. “Sorcerers die all the time, but you two were so strong, you— you were supposed to be the ones I could get to grow up with.”

The ghosts twitch in her periphery.

“I'm supposed to be the one who dies, aren't I?” she continues. “Out of the three of us, I'm the one who can't fight. I'm the one who's not allowed on solo jobs, I'm the healer, the one who—” A heaving, shaky breath rips its way out of her. “I'm the one who was supposed to make sure you stayed alive. I failed you. I'm so sorry.”

Gojo and Getou are dead. There's no ignoring that. She saw their bodies, touched their greyed skin, kissed their cold foreheads as she gave them her final goodbyes. And yet, their shapes stand in front of her now — shifting around uncertainly as if they're genuinely worried about her.

The two of them seem to have a wordless conversation over Shoko's head based entirely on eye contact (or maybe body language, actually, since one of them has too many eyes and the other has none). Once they come to a consensus, they turn their own backs to the door and plop down onto the ground on either side of her. Suguru pats the ground at her feet, and Satoru tugs at the hem of her shirt. Sit down with us, they mean.

Despite Shoko's repeated protests, Satoru and Suguru always liked sidling up on either side of her like they were making a human sandwich. She's not even small, they're just huge; they tower over everything, even her, as if their larger-than-life power showed itself in even their bone structure. She used to hate being smothered between two behemoths. Now, though… They're dead, and while it's only been a few days since she saw them last, she feels like she hasn't been smushed by them in months. There's a gaping black hole in her chest where they used to be, and, real or not, they're offering it now. She misses them with a startling ferocity, and her resolve to stay distant from these two creatures crumbles.

Shoko drops, curling into a ball and burying her face in her elbows while her hands curl up and over her face to the back of her head. One chilly arm slides gently over her shoulders while another reaches across her body to rest on her knee. A third hand, this one almost uncomfortably hot, curls over the first arm and wraps around her back, and its own second rests on her other knee. A face that feels like a warm teacup bumps into the side of her head, and the cold fingers on her upper back shift so they can fiddle with her hair. A pair of warm legs tilts into hers, and a pair of cold ones do the same on her other side. They hold her carefully, cradling, and hell— Shoko shatters.

She's never been a crier, but she's never grieved like this, either, and against her will, her breath comes out in short little bursts while warm salt streams uncomfortably from her eyes.

The cold hand in her hair cards carefully through her hair, and the warm one on her back slides down to soothingly rub over her back. They're comforting her. They've never done that before. Are they doing it because they're spirits that she brought into existence, doing what she wants them to, or are they doing it because they are who they used to be, and because they legitimately want her to feel better?

Curses aren't people. Curses don't have souls, and they almost never have sentience. That's common knowledge.

Vengeful spirits, though… For centuries, sorcerers have debated whether vengeful cursed spirits are actually the people they come from, or if they're only the negative energy. Debates over if they were functionally ghosts or if they were only someone's dying misery and rage given form had caused more than one sorcerer's death.

These things holding her can't seem to talk. They don't fight like they used to. They even move differently, all marionette-jank and smoke-smoothness and they're goddamn uncanny. Are these things actually her friends? Are they really the people she remembers, or are they just echoes, afterimages going through familiar motions?

…Shit, and this makes her such a bad person, but… Does any of that even matter to her? Whether or not it really is them inside these unfamiliar shapes, does that make a difference from an outside perspective? If she pretends hard enough, will that make them real? Can she selfishly choose to act like they are who the bodies in the morgue used to be? Suguru and Satoru were the sort of sorcerers that only appeared once every few hundred years, and if anyone could will their identities into the echoes they left behind, it'd probably be them. Can she let herself think that?

I will find whoever did this to you, she'd told their bodies. Wake up, she'd quietly begged inside her own mind. Come back to me.

But then… If— If this is them— then it's her fault. She pulled them back through the veil, and now, because of her, they can't move on.

There's no answer that doesn't make her cry more, no choice that doesn't result in her shaking harder in the arms of these two things shaped like her dead friends.

Hell, the first thing Megumi knew of Gojo, the first thing he learned that day was that the gangly weirdo was a liar. A good liar, cheeky and theatrical and convincing, but a liar nonetheless, and his favorite lie was smiling. His suspicion of this solidified into fact when Gojo stopped smiling upon Megumi asking if Tsumiki would be okay. He'd dropped his grin, his sing-songing cadence, his stupid poses. He'd dropped the entire act like a stone in a pond and suddenly seemed to gain the ability to act normal for a brief second.

Besides that, he's never really talked about his own life. Sure, he's blabbed for hours about what he's doing on any given day, talked about his favorite sweets and sports he thinks Megumi should try, even complained about sorcerer work and how dumb his superiors were, but Megumi doesn't really know the first thing about who Gojo is.

-

Or, Megumi snoops and finds some photos from Gojo's time in high-school.

Suguru chokes out a horrible, raspy, wet little laugh. “Worse,” he rasps, shutting his eyes. “So much worse. And I can't— They need me now, and beyond that, I can't let any of this continue.”

Satoru boxes up the unimportant burst of jealousy over the fact that there's apparently several someones he's never met that Suguru is willing to leave him everything behind for, and instead shakes him by the jaw a little for emphasis. “Then we go together, jackass. If you've got a hit on your head, or if a curse you can't handle is coming to eat you or something, your death will burden me far more than whatever this is. We did not survive that creepy old man and his stupid magic knife and his ugly inventory worm for whatever is going on with you to split us up now. I'm stronger than I was when we lost Riko. I can—” He swallows, refusing to let his voice break. “I can protect you now.”

Suguru scowls like there's something wrong with that idea, but he shakes his head and instead says, “Not all of us. Not everyone.”

“Fucking watch me,” Satoru snaps. It doesn't matter who Suguru is talking about; Satoru can guard a continent if he has to. What's a nuke to the Six Eyes? What's a Clan head's order to his Limitless?

“I will not.”

“Everything gets cold when I stay somewhere for too long,” Uraume insists. “When I sleep, it gets even worse, and then everyone nearby goes cold.”

“I'm not everyone. I don't get cold.”

“But that’s—”

Sukuna squats his giant form down to look Uraume in the face. “Look at me,” he orders.

Uraume anxiously pulls his sleeves around his arms a little tighter and tries to work up the nerve to obey, but he apparently takes too long, because a hand the size of his head is grabbing his jaw and forcing him to look up. His big fingers smush Uraume's face slightly.

“Do you get cold?” Sukuna asks.

“Yeush,” Uraume manages through his squished mouth.

Sukuna rolls all four of his eyes. “Has the cold ever hurt you the way it hurts others?”

Ah, that's what he meant. “Nouh.”

“The cold doesn't hurt me, either,” Sukuna states firmly, giving Uraume's face a little shake. “Neither does the heat. Lying is for cowards and weaklings who can't meet anything head-on, so when I say something, I mean it. Do you understand?”

Uraume nods as best he can.

“Good.” Sukuna lets go, and then heavily drops himself the rest of the way down onto the ground at Uraume's side. He rests one of his upper arms on his folded up knee, rests his lower arm and other upper hand on the ground to hold himself upright, and then uses the lower arm on that side, the one closest to Uraume, to hold out one end of his robe.

Confused, Uraume blinks up at Sukuna. Context suggests the man is offering Uraume a spot under the fabric, but no one has ever…

Once again, Uraume takes too long, and once again, impatient, Sukuna reaches out to grab him rather than wait. A very large, very warm arm holding a handful of fabric wraps around Uraume's shoulders, and the hand attached to it tugs him inwards so he's held against Sukuna's side. It's… comfortable, but almost painful, too. Uraume is used to the cold. It feels like the sensation of his own perpetually frigid hands being dunked in hot water, except for his whole body. Sukuna himself is like a blazing hearth, and when was the last time Uraume felt this warm?

Boys aren't supposed to cry.

The man before her tilts his head. “Can I help you?”

Shoko blinks at him, slowly, like he's one of her lab rats. “You killed my boys,” she informs him.

His mouth twitches a little. “I've killed a lot of sorcerers, little miss; you'll have to narrow it down for me.”

“Gojo Satoru and Getou Suguru,” she says. “You killed them today.”

He frowns a little. “Was that the second boy's name? I swear I left him alive.”

Shoko tilts her head at him. “Why did you do it?” she asks.

A grin starts to grow across his face, intrigued and a little manic. “I was hired to kill the Plasma girl. Those two were in the way. Why do you ask?”

“In the way,” Shoko repeats. A ripple of cold drapes across her back like a cape. She doesn't know what her face is doing, but whatever this man sees in her expression has his smile growing into something wicked.

“In the way,” he confirms. “What are you going to do about it?”

Shoko feels something ugly growing in her lungs. “Pardon?”

“I'm sorry for your loss, little girl,” he croons with false pity. “Are you here to avenge them?”

He's mocking her. He slaughtered her boys and he's mocking her.

Shoko smiles at him pleasantly. “No. I'm not really a fighter, and I'm certainly nowhere near their level. If you bested them, I sincerely doubt there's anything I could do to you.”

The man absent-mindedly pets his strange worm creature. “Then what can I do for you?”

“I don't have the ability to hurt you,” Shoko admits again, “but I don't need to.”

The Sorcerer Killer raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

The icy cape over her back grows colder. She feels the presence of dark, agonized shadow crawl over her skin, and hears bright, glaring glee ghost through her hair. Shoko spreads her hands where they rest at her sides, and feels incorporeal fingers fold into each one. “They'll do it for me,” she says, squeezing the invisible hands she's holding.

The Sorcerer Killer blinks widely at the two things that have come into existence behind her.

On Shoko's right is a wolflike creature of shadow and long, silky, shiny hair the color of spilled ink that curtains its face and brushes the ground. Its maw extends too far back across its face, almost to its ears. More mouths are dotted across its body like moles, sharp-toothed and unsettling, and wisps of black smoke drift off of its obsidian form like steam. Saliva drools from its mouth. A huge metal collar wraps over its neck, almost like a brace.

On her left, the first creature's polar opposite sits. If the first one was the Chinese yin, this is yang. It's a six-legged, somewhat canine-looking beast with a human head, both of which are bright, paper-white, making it almost blinding to look at in the golden glow of the sunset. The fresh snowfall of the thing’s color palette is only interrupted by the black, empty eye sockets from where it weeps a dark purple fluid dotted with stars. Its first set of limbs end in huge, black clawed (but otherwise human) hands, too long to look like human arms but too human to look only animal. A second set of not-quite arms, also sprouted from the shoulders, rest at its side. Its legs are long, feet cat-like except for the black, almost bird-like talons scraping the stone it stands on.

Each beast is the size of a train car, and they sit behind her like sentinels. Their bloodlust is tangible in the air, though; they're desperate to lunge and rip this man to bits, and really, who is Shoko to tell the dead whether or not they can avenge themselves?

The Sorcerer Killer draws his sword.

Shoko squeezes the invisible hands she's holding.

The beasts rush.

-

When it's all over and done with, Shoko walks over to the shredded remnants of the man on the ground. Her two hounds loom, casting them both in shade.

“Last words? Final wishes?” She has no intention of fulfilling whatever requests he has, but it seems right to ask.

The man on the ground gags on the blood filling his lungs, twitches as he tries to sit up with limbs that aren't there or that aren't shaped right anymore. He gives up after a few seconds, landing on his back in the puddle of his own life with a pained grunt. “I've got a kid.”

Shoko raises an eyebrow. Her black shadow growls, and her white one bares its teeth. “Oh?”

He coughs weakly. “I have a contract with the Zen'ins. In a couple years, they get custody of him.”

Shoko frowns at the man on the ground. “Why do they want him?”

“I used to be one of them,” he admits. “He's inherited the Ten Shadows, and they want that in their arsenal.”

Shoko's white beast hunches its shoulders uncomfortably, eyeless sockets oozing more purple fluid. The air around it shifts, growing colder and hotter at once, enigmatic in the way the person it used to be always was: contradictory and impossible. It's sad, behind her, and angry.

Shoko herself is not much better. “Why would you give him to them?” she asks.

The dying man gives her a bloody grin. “Who knows?” he asks, and then exhales a creaky, heavy sigh.

“What, you think you could've?” Satoru snaps without thinking.

Suguru, for a split second, looks like he's been slapped, and his Energy flickers unstably. Then his eyes dull, like he's finally accepted something depressing that'd been confusing him lately. “Oh.”

Satoru’s blood goes cold. Something is wrong.

I didn't realize you thought so little of me, Suguru’s expression seems to say. He looks like he's finally processed a truth as basic as ‘the sky is blue’ or ‘blankets are warm’ and is wondering how he didn't understand it before now. I didn't realize you saw me as beneath you, now.

Shit. “Suguru—”

“I understand. You're the strongest, now. Not us.” Suguru starts to turn away, and when Satoru goes to grab his elbow, his hand is immediately and sharply smacked away. In contrast, Suguru is smiling that horrible smile again, the empty one that he uses to hide inside himself when he's angry.

“No, Suguru, stop.”

Suguru keeps walking.

[In another life, Satoru watches him go. Maybe he just needs time. Three days later, Yaga is handing him Suguru’s execution order.]

Satoru lunges, grabs his shoulder and wrenches him around to slam him into the wall. “No. That's not what I meant and you know it.”

Suguru blinks at him emptily. “Let go of me.” It's almost a request. He sounds bland, like paper and wood grain.

Don't look at me like that. Satoru grabs him by the collar and yanks him up so they're nose to nose. “Shut up. Shut up. Don't you fucking dare walk out like that after implying that—” He hears his voice break and he feels his lips tighten. Why is his face hot? Why is he trembling? “Fuck, implying that I think so little of you as to— to fucking—” to reduce you to your strength and nothing else.

Suguru blinks at him a little, two quick beats of his eyelashes shortly followed by a third. He looks at Satoru like he's a particularly strange animal.

Satoru feels something ugly trying to crawl up his throat. “You of all people don't get to think that about me.”

“...Think what?” Suguru asks quietly. His voice is still guarded, his expression still careful, but at least it's not that passive, horrible, apathetic mask that he uses when lying to other people.

“Think that I— That I view you as lesser, that I'd leave you behind over this.”

“I know you don't think less of me,” Suguru murmurs, not unkindly, but it sounds like pity. It sounds like he's explaining the concept of death to a small child. “In terms of raw power, I simply am. Everyone is. That's not your fault.”

“Don't say it like that!” Satoru shouts, shaking his grip on Suguru's shirt. “Don't say it like that's the only thing that matters to me!”

“Isn't it?” Suguru asks, and he sounds like he earnestly believes it.

Satoru lets go and stumbles back. His vision is wobbly and he doesn't know why. “Amanai had no power. She mattered to me.”

“Technically, neither did Fushiguro.”