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She had not been allowed to prepare Geto’s body, Shoko knows, because Gojo knew it would have gone like this:
Scalpel in hand, prying him apart as he had lain there, draped across the table like an offering to some god. To Gojo, maybe, inasmuch as he was like a god, not that she’d ever say as much, given the complexes he already had.
No, she had not been allowed to prepare Geto’s body. She has Gojo’s laid out before her now, though, his students crowded around it, all wide eyes and morbid fascination and anxiety. She shoos them away. Normally an autopsy could have an audience, but not this one, and certainly not this many. They shuffle off, all but Okkotsu, who lingers in the doorway until she closes it in his face. She supposes he has more right to it than most anyone else, but it’s not his burden to bear.
“Out. Yes, even you,” she says, and can practically hear him frown from the other side of the door.
Shoko’s weakness had always been those she cared for. You’d think that most of them being dead would solve Shoko’s problems, but this fact has agitated them instead. She doesn’t really have a right to be angry at Gojo, but a lot of other people do, so… there’s that. And anyway Gojo dying seems to have made her love him more, which is stupid. She did the same thing with Geto, too, though, hadn’t she? When he died, she had forgiven him, as her mind softened faults and reminded her of better times and made her accept him, made her love him again. But she will not turn her agitation on herself, because there’s no point.
She can’t bring herself to turn it toward her—toward one of the men she—toward the corpse on the table either.
The words weak and pitiful echo in her brain, in Gojo’s voice. It makes her grit her teeth as she looks at his body before her. The frustrating part about Gojo Satoru is that he’s tangled up in everything. He’s in her head even now. His laugh, echoing. Like someone with nothing to lose, like someone who had already lost everything. He used to laugh like someone who had something to lose and hadn’t lost it yet, but that hadn’t been true in a very long time.
Shoko never laughed like that, or she didn’t think she had. Should she be crying now? A woman weeping over a man’s body is easy for others to understand. Shoko has never been fond of making things easier for others, though. But really, Gojo’s not worth those kinds of tears. Instead, she stares at the top of his head and thinks: Geto . So, there’s that.
Scalpel in hand, she cuts.
—
She only slept with Gojo once. Maybe it’s mortifying to think she did it at all (if you asked Utahime, you’d get an affirmative, so Shoko doesn’t) and maybe it’s not. It was a hot September night. Shoko’s single bed was just not built for two. Naked, sweaty, Shoko had reached out her arms and he (hands on her tits) had kissed her.
He had tasted like peaches. Somehow, that fruity gloss had clung to his lips despite everything they’d done that night. Their clothes had lain on the ground where he had first fallen to his knees, ferocious, pressed his head to her stomach and lips to her thigh.
The worst part of this is that she remembers all of it. Now she has to walk around all the damn time thinking: one day I’m going to die in the world you never knew how to love me in.
Shoko gets so jealous of the dead sorcerers on her cold metal tables.
—
She goes out drinking after. She sits with Utahime and has two more beers than she said she would, and then two more after that. She’ll be bloated and have a headache tomorrow, but she can’t really bring herself to care all that much.
She should probably eat something when she gets home, she thinks, distantly, but then she remembers there’s nothing in her fridge besides half a bottle of hot sauce and a full bottle of gin, that’s gonna stay full because she can’t stand that flowery taste.
“Damn it, I can’t believe I almost cried over him,” she sighs, pinching the skin between her eyebrows. Utahime frowns at that, opens her mouth to say something, clearly decides against it, even in her tipsy state (three beers in, slower than Shoko but able to keep going longer).
“‘Almost’ is a great word, right?” she says instead. “Like how the first place we drank at was almost closed, but we got two drinks in before they kicked us out. And speaking of drinks, I’ll get us another round!”
Shoko smiles at that. Her jaw throbs, aching from how tight she’s clenching it. Utahime probably notices but she’s got enough grace not to say anything and Shoko loves her for it.
She finishes the drink in front of her, not wanting it full when the next arrives, and stares out at nothing. Utahime gives her that much at least before speaking again.
“So, do you hate him yet?”
Shoko wants to say I’m working on it but instead she drops her gaze and shakes her head. “No.”
“No kidding? Why not? I’d totally hate him in your position.”
“You hate him in yours,” Shoko says, with no judgement or venom.
“Yeah but—hey, he was always looking down on me!”
“He was,” she agrees, and doesn’t say he looked down on me, too . There are a lot of things she isn’t saying tonight.
“Acted like we weren’t real sorcerers!”
“Well, I wasn’t exactly fit for combat,” Shoko sighs. She doesn’t want to argue this. Utahime’s right, after all.
“All of us had to be fit for combat. Some of us were just better at it,” Utahime retorts. Shoko nods, because this is true. Every dead friend and comrade had been combat-ready until the moment they died.
“Yeah,” Shoko agrees, and tilts her head back to down the next beer.
—
Shoko’s a sorcerer, even if they keep her off the front lines. She’s a sorcerer . The amount of fear and grief that this means she must be okay with is immense.
It feels like she has a mass of ice in her hands. She doesn’t know where to put it down.
She remembers a day from her youth, clear as if it was yesterday. She and Geto, they’d walked to the train station together, and a wasp had landed on his shoulder. It’s stupid to think about him still. He’s dead and gone and resurrected and paraded around like a doll. What is there even left of him to mourn? But before they’d gotten on the train, they’d wandered through the wet city streets and done some window shopping, pointing out mannequins, their fingers laced together.
She used to bring up his name for years anytime she’d go window shopping with anyone who wasn’t him.
They’d met up with Gojo later. Geto's smile had been bright, lighting up his whole face, as he’d yelled, “Satoru! Over here!”
—
Shoko had cared for them.
(Weak.)
Damn it, Shoko missed them.
(Stupid.)
Lying in bed that night, she allows herself to contemplate all that they were.
(The first thing you’re supposed to do is bury your loved ones. But you fucked that right up, didn’t you, Gojo? If you fuck it up, they come back .)
Gojo, dragging Geto’s carcass behind him like an animal. You know, metaphorically. Wretchedly.
She contemplates them, before she sleeps. This is probably why she ends up fucking dreaming about all this.
“Shoko,” says a voice from behind her.
“Geto,” she replies. “What are you doing here?”
A dozen thoughts, quick, echoing: you died, Gojo killed you, I missed you, I’m alive and you’re not, you were a puppet, I’m dreaming, you died, you died , Geto.
“Yeah,” he says, which is a shit answer if you ask her (not that anyone ever does). “Pretty much.”
She touches his face, and he leans into the touch with a tenderness he probably never really showed her in life and that she probably never deserved besides. “Don’t go this time,” she says, quietly, because this is a dream, and so she can say something stupid. A person’s desire for love guides their every action.
Dream-Geto laughs at her. “Oh, Shoko. And here I thought there was hope for you.”
—
The only time she’d slept with Geto was when they were still in school, before he’d walked away. Sneaking beers and drinking outside, pushing him down in the grass. He’d looked at her, and then up at the stars. Eyes wide, like something she could fall into.
“What’s the matter?” she’d asked, and he’d just laughed, like she had said something funny. That startled, anxious look on his face had vanished just like that, and he was laughing as he pulled her down, until her lips met his lips and she had dirt on her tights from how she was sitting on his lap.
It felt like the next thing she knew, he was gone. She had not spoken to him in years. If she could see him again, she’d tell him that she was never in love with him. But he’d probably just say he knew that. And she’d say she knew he knew.
“I won’t be any good for you, Shoko,” he’d said. And he was right, wasn’t he? She knows, that what she’s feeling now is only because he’s dead.
—
The two of them could have been laid out on operating tables, side by side. Bones touching each other. She could have arranged that, if the circumstances were right. They weren’t, but if they were…
Maybe they’d like that. Muscle to muscle, bone to bone.
They look like people she used to care about, only colder.