#questionable morals

Those thoughts are almost enough to drown out what Suguru is saying but Satoru forces himself to pay attention.

Suguru is opening up to him; he needs to listen, for once.

Suguru is talking about what Yuki said to him, what she entertained as a valid idea and while Satoru sees the merit of that thought, it’s also impossible for more than one reason.

“—and I’m going to burn it all down, starting with this village!” Suguru yells out at the end, breathing harshly and Satoru steps forward, tightly gripping Suguru’s arm.

“You’re not going to do that,” Satoru tells him, because if Suguru does any of that then that means he can never come back home and Satoru can’t have that.

And besides—

“It’s not going to work, Suguru,” Satoru tells him, because it’s not.

“Oh, right, of course you’d say that,” Suguru bitterly says and scoffs. “I’m not strong enough, right? Is that it?”

“That’s not it at all, Suguru, let me explain,” Satoru bursts out because how dare Suguru think that he’s not as strong as Satoru. “It’s not a good way to go about this. You want to take those girls with you, yeah? And then kill every non-sorcerer so that no curses can be born again?” he sums up Suguru’s big talk and only goes on when Suguru nods. “So you want to make breeding machines out of the girls?” Satoru asks then, deliberately blunt and cruel and Suguru flinches.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Where do you think new sorcerers are going to come from when you kill off every human? You’d need to breed new ones and who is going to do that? It’s not as if the pool is going to be very big, especially not at first. That would mean those girls there? They’d have to have at least a couple of kids each.”

“Satoru,” Suguru says, clearly appalled by what Satoru says.

“No, listen to me. Listen, Suguru,” Satoru implores him because there’s a better way to go about this. It might just take just as long as what Suguru is currently entertaining but it wouldn’t take Suguru from his side. “Some sorcerer parents birth normal humans. What are you going to do if that happens to them?” He nods towards the girls. “Are you going to take their kids and kill them, too? And you know better than anyone that sorcerers can be born to non-sorcerer parents. It happens like that more often than not, outside of the big Clans. You’re going to slow down our growth like that!”

“Then what would you have me do?” Suguru screams right in his face and Satoru thinks he prefers this anger over whatever manic energy was driving him before.

Satoru takes a few deep breaths before he lays out his own plan. He didn’t think to share it yet, wasn’t sure if Suguru would be on board and so he kept quiet about it but Satoru now sees where he went wrong.

He should have told Suguru from the very start, to let him know that he wasn’t alone, that the system is fucked all the way up and that Satoru intended to change things.

Maybe it would have helped with Suguru’s agony.

“The higher-ups—”

“Gods, Satoru, give me a break,” Suguru interrupts him, not even letting him finish his first sentence. “They don’t care about you. They are not going to listen.”

“—need to go,” Satoru goes on as if Suguru hadn’t just interrupted him.

He gives him a mean smile when Suguru gapes at him.

“What? You think I don’t know that they don’t care? I know it better than anyone, Suguru. The higher-ups, the clans—they are all rotten down to the core. They don’t see the person. They just see what you can do for them. They see me as the bearer of the Six Eyes, as the one who inherited both techniques. My family very rarely sees me as a Gojo and even that only because it allows them to boast with the fact that I am one of them. No one there has ever seen me as Satoru, has seen me as human. And they are not going to start any time soon; not with me and certainly not with anyone else.”

“So what? You want to kill them?” Suguru sneers out, clearly not believing that Satoru could go down that path.

“Yes,” Satoru simply says and holds Suguru’s gaze. “They have to go. The higher-ups at least. The Clans we’d have to see. Some of the younger members might be open to our cause, that needs to be checked out first. But the older ones? They all have to go.”

“It would wage war,” Suguru says and Satoru shrugs.

“We just have to time it right. I’m not saying we do it right now. It will take some time still. We have to see who would support us, which older sorcerers would be on our side. We can’t build it all up from scratch, we need experienced people.”

“And the school?” Suguru asks and Satoru is glad to see that he at least seems to have some sort of attachment to it.

“It has to stay,” Satoru gives back. “We need it for training, for education. But things have to change there, too.”

“The grading system of curses,” Suguru slowly says, clearly getting into the idea now as well and Satoru breathes a little bit easier to see him lose some of that manic energy, turning it into something more productive, the cogs in his brain starting to turn.

“It’s dog-shit,” Satoru agrees and sees the corner of Suguru’s mouth twitch. “I mean, come on, how many Grade 2 curses or lower have you been sent after this month?”

“Too many,” Suguru agrees, because of course.

Sometimes Satoru wonders if the higher-ups are misgrading the curses on purpose but he can’t figure out why they would do that.

“It’s not acceptable that we’re being sent after curses everyone else can handle while—” Satoru briefly stumbles over the name and he sees Suguru flinch, too “—Haibara has to go up against a local deity. It’s not right and there has to be a more accurate way to grade them. Or missions should only ever be carried out in teams, one lower grade sorcerer and one higher grade. There have to be ways to prevent these stupid useless losses.”

“Teaming up sounds like a good idea; it would mitigate any potential misgrading and it would allow them to get away if things go to shit,” Suguru nods, now clearly completely focused on what Satoru is saying.

Satoru wants to weep with how relieved he is, but he has to make sure that he’s not going to lose Suguru again.

“And we need a more reliable way to find sorcerers born to non-sorcerers,” Suguru says, already skipping ahead to Satoru’s next point.

He’s going to point out just how alike they think with glee later, because right now he’s too scared to interrupt Suguru and make him spiral again.

“There either has to be a way to detect them somehow or we have to subtly let the public know about curses so that kids who can see them don’t feel ashamed or scared and know where to go.”

Satoru winces when Suguru raises an eyebrow at him.

“It’s a work in progress, shut up. I wasn’t ready to talk about any of this yet,” Satoru defends himself and Suguru’s face softens the slightest bit.

“Then why did you?” he wants to know and Satoru blinks incredulously at him, as if the answer isn’t entirely obvious.

“Because I was losing you,” he plainly gives back. “I should have known you weren’t happy with the system either, but I didn’t expect you to go down such a different path. And I can’t lose you, ever,” he states, because he can’t.

Despite everything, Suguru is the only one who has ever seen him as human, who has ever been his friend, his partner, his everything, and there is no way in hell Satoru is going to let him go down a path that would separate them.

“I wasn’t—” Suguru starts as if he didn’t plan to level this entire village to the ground just mere minutes ago and he bites his tongue, clearly noticing his slip up when his eyes fall on the cowered humans in the corner. “Okay, yeah, I was,” he breathes out and slumps where he stands.

Satoru allows himself to step forward, so Suguru can rest against him, his head heavy on Satoru’s shoulder.

“The girls are sorcerers, I gather?” Satoru whispers, reaching up to scratch at Suguru’s neck and he hums when Suguru nods. “Case in point, then. We fucking need a better way to find them,” Satoru hisses out, his eyes sliding over to the silently crying kids.

“Suguru, we have to get them out of here.”

While Satoru is looking at the kids, Suguru is looking at the adults, Satoru can tell. There’s a hatred rolling off him that he isn’t used to and in all honesty, Satoru isn’t sure he wants to stop Suguru from what he’s going to say next.

“These two—I can’t let them go,” Suguru mutters, confessing it to Satoru as if this is his gravest sin and Satoru huffs out a laugh because he couldn’t care less about these two.

They don’t matter in the grand scheme of things and non-sorcerers die all the time during their fights with curses.

“A second curse, attacking us while we’re trying to get the kids to safety is not out of the realm of possibility,” Satoru carelessly says. “And who knows what we have to do to protect the girls, right?”

It’s a peace offering as much as everything else Satoru has said today; he hopes he can make Suguru understand his own rage, his own feeling of helplessness in face of the rules of the higher-ups and he knows Suguru understands when he turns his head, buries it into Satoru’s throat.

“You don’t mind?”

Now that really makes Satoru laugh.

“Suguru, might I remind you that I was this close to slaughtering many more people than these measly two and that I only didn’t do it because you said no? I would not have hesitated had you even so much as faltered in your answer,” Satoru honestly replies, because it’s nothing but the truth.

He wouldn’t have held back and he wouldn’t have felt bad about it, either.

Just like Suguru won’t feel bad about these two.

“So, not everyone but—some?” Suguru asks and Satoru sighs.

“Suguru, did you not listen? I said the higher-ups and most of the Clan members have to go. Where do you think they are supposed to go? A happy little island? I intend to send them straight to hell, so please. I’m not going to lose any sleep over those two over there. Are you?”

“Hell no,” Suguru decides and Satoru briefly feels cold when Suguru pulls away, but that feeling is quickly chased away when Suguru leans in to press a kiss to the corner of Satoru’s mouth. “Thank you,” he breathes out just as he lets out one of his curses who swallows the non-sorcerers whole.

“You always clean up so nicely after yourself,” Satoru notes as he moves over to the cage and breaks the lock.

“Gonna keep the fussing to a minimum,” Suguru says as he comes after Satoru, briefly carding his fingers through his hair before he crouches down to meet the girls. “You’re going to come with us, is that alright?” he softly asks and Satoru could weep because this is the Suguru he knows now.

He can’t help himself, he just as to lean in and press a kiss to Suguru’s cheek because mere minutes ago he was certain he’d lose Suguru and now they are finally on the same page. About more than one thing it seems, judging by the sly smile Suguru throws him but for now Satoru decides to concentrate on the girls.

They need medical attention and most of all they need to get out of the cage and out of this village.