a lot can change in 17 days.
17 days of blindness. 17 days of isolation. 17 days of utter helplessness, a horrifying, disgusting inability to do anything, a feeling gojo satoru has only felt once before and swore he would never, not ever experience again. 17 days alone. 17 days of waiting, not watching, just waiting.
sick. sick to his stomach. that's how he felt, seeing the campus of jujutsu high again for the first time since those long, long 17 days ago. only to grow sicker still when he sees what's missing.
a lot can change in 17 days. especially when you live a life like his. his students, so prized, so close to his heart- only fractions remain. one, the one he raised with an angry scowl and messy dark hair and eyes that looked too much like his fathers' is gone altogether. gojo hates uncertainty but he doesn't know what to expect from anything anymore. and maybe the biggest change of all is the lack of your presence.
he's known you since high school. the fourth of the four, the final member of his graduating year, you've always been there. always. with a shoulder to cry on, not that he ever took you up on it. with a kind smile. with a teasing remark, a jest that was just so alive, too alive, too good to be alive. he's ashamed to admit it but upon your original arrival, all those years ago, he didn't think you'd make it.
a warmth followed you. your movements, your actions, your words- unintentional. beautiful. never wavering. you were too good to be there, too good to live there. so he expected you to die there instead.
"don't tell me you're tired already?"
you'd been quick to deliver a wake-up call. egotistical, hot-headed, 15-year-old gojo satoru hadn't appreciated it then, not as much as he did now, when you'd thoroughly outmatched him in one of your first spars. not with physicality but stamina- he'd never had an opponent he couldn't beat within a minute. you tired him out, a moving target, untouchable.
he dreamt of you that night. sharp movements, almost a blur. gone in a blink, offering a hand. warm, sweaty palms. skin. he woke up the next morning to you offering him a blueberry muffin for breakfast and he thinks that's when he began to like you.
even later came the realisation that he loved you. torrents of rain poured down on the forested campus, tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousand. it seemed never-ending, as gojo stared up at the sky through the windows. dark, angry clouds swathed the sun. he looked right through them.
"what're you looking at?" your voice is rough. you had just woken up from a nap after returning from an assignment. he doesn't need to turn to see you- wet hair, clinging to your face, warm pajamas, arms crossed over your chest. curious. he likes it when you want to know what he's thinking.
with a dramatic huff, gojo falls back onto the common room's couch. "it's so rainy outside. and i wanted to go get something from that new bakery, too," he laments.
he can see you now. you adorn that same expression that always manages to make his stomach churn and his heart twist and stop and stall and burn like a comet in his chest. "i can't believe it."
"the gojo satoru. stopped by a little rain? how preposterous."
it was decidedly not just a little rain. but with your arms crossed and your smile sharper than steel, he knows he can't turn down a challenge.
that evening, the both of you returned from a very successful bakery trip with leftover pastries in hand and dripping wet, covering the floors of your school with a thin layer of water. he had been freezing but pretending he wasn't because he hoped you'd think he was cooler.
how long ago was that, now? he had been around 18 then. 18 and foolish, because he allowed himself to fall in love with you that day. with your smile, your challenges. your rain-soaked hair and your cunning words. you, who he thought wouldn't last. you, who proved him wrong then. you, who proved him right now.
shoko's morgue is cold. it always has been. for a place so full of death the air smells oddly clean, in the way a hospital does. he supposes that makes sense. your body is no longer there. nothing remains of you.
what shoko tells him is that it was a typical mission where you were blindsided by a curse. he doesn't want to believe it but shoko wouldn't lie, not about this. she looks sadder, smaller, thinner. eyes trained on the silver table where you presumably lay, once. (someone else he loved was there too. his best friend. and then you. why was it never him?)
shoko leaves and he's left to his own devices. he stands there, for a while. because he never got to tell you he loved you.
maybe he was avoiding it this whole time. love was a connection, love was a curse. those he loved, died. he had lived 13 years knowing you, loving you in his loud silence. he has lived 13 years with that unspoken bond. but even if he never said it, it didn't make it less true. he supposes that he might be the curse, after all.
he has loved you for 13 years. and all those years were gone, just like that, in 17 days.
gojo satoru guesses that he was never meant to love, never at all.
