#Godmaker

[aimfor-theheart]

Chapter Four: Serpents

Masterlist | <- Satoru's Interlude: Bigger God | Chapter Five: coming soon! -> | Read on Ao3

Pairing: Satoru Gojo x f!reader

Summary: And the form leans down, closer, as their voice drops to a murmur, all honey and thorns, the promise of something far greater than you. A storm to come. The future that you will bear upon the slant of your shoulders. And when they speak, you know they’ve cursed you;

“I will teach you how to make a God.” 

(Arranged marriage, angst, hurt/comfort, dark content)

Warnings (specifically for this chapter): Vomiting, dry heaving, blood, possessive behavior and dynamics, unhealthy and toxic relationships, character death technically (its canon), smut; rough sex, prone position, biting, hair pulling, fingers in mouth, little prep and reader experiences some pain, emotionally charged/hurt sex. Please be wary of overarching story warnings, too. Let me know if you think I should add any other warnings! **Please mind warnings overall and for each chapter**

Word Count: 4k

A/N: im sorry this is two days late pls forgive me <33 another somewhat smaller chapter.,.,but it felt big to me. you know. lol. i have a feeling next chapter will likely be bigger.,.final chapter, technically. can you believe it! i think there will still be an epilogue. we'll see how this shakes out lol. BUT AS ALWAYS, thank you so much to my beta @lorelune who always is wonderful and takes the time to parse through my nonsense to give me lovely feedback! as always, i deeply appreciate anyone still reading and would love to hear any of your thoughts! love it, hate it, confused, or other, let me know!! thank you all so much again and i hope you enjoy!!

· · ───────── ·𖥸· ──────── · ·

In your amulet, your ancestor nearly jumps out of his skin when he sees you. He begins muttering. He looks far more disheveled than he ever has. He’s pulling at his hair and beginning to say, oh no, oh no, oh no. 

“Am I such a horrible sight?” You ask.

This pulls him from his stupor, “it’s too late again, isn’t it?” 

“It depends,” you say, “too late for what?”

“Tell me,” he says raggedly, “what part of your life are you in? How old is the Ten Shadows user?”

Your mouth goes dry at the mention of Megumi. 

For a moment, you consider lying, as if that might protect him somehow. You want to rip the mention of Megumi from this man’s mouth, you want to fish it out and make him bleed. You want him to never mention him again. 

“He’s fourteen now.” You say tightly.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no–” 

“I’ll leave you to your babbling, if you won’t be of any use to me.” You say sharply, perhaps with too much vitriol. 

He lurches towards the amulet like he might try and grab hold of you, make you stay. 

“You could–you could change everything. You could alter all of it still, horrendously, massively. You could stop him.” 

There is a name that pulls at you at the mention of him. 

You’ve known it for years and years and years. The one who will give you exactly what you want, the one who will be so kind as to wrap it in a bow for you. 

You swallow. 

“Go with the betrayer when he calls for you.” 

Your heart stops.

“What?” 

He shakes the amulet and your whole world wobbles, like he’s holding you by the shoulders and trying to shove it into you, like he’s at his knees pulling at you, begging, “please, please go with him when he calls for you. It would change everything.” 

You don’t know why, but you tear yourself away from the amulet, rip back into the present with a ragged gasp. Your stomach rolls then, like you might be sick, like you might vomit up the breakfast Satoru had made you. 

You clutch your middle like your insides are falling out, you clutch your head like your brain might, too. You imagine it all falling out of you, you imagine all of time bleeding from your body, unspooling until you can no longer control it. 

You stumble. 

You barely make it to the sink before you vomit. All burning and red with berry, with all your insides. 

Behind you, Megumi watches, silent as a shadow. 

And when you wipe at your mouth, it’s him at your side. And it’s him who gets you water and him who carefully pushes the hair from your sweaty forehead. 

You start to cry. Bawl. Endlessly. It startles Megumi so badly that he calls for Satoru but for a moment, you are looking at an endless loop, a mother with their child, a child with their mother. Your mother and your child and you see yourself in your mother caring for him as a child. You see yourself in him caring for you as you cared for your mother. 

Your mind burns and burns and burns. 

Satoru carries you to bed, murmuring, and he tries to bring down your fever.

But all you can do is cry for your mother. And Megumi.

He doesn’t leave your side. 

You don’t want him to ever leave your side. 

***

He visits when Satoru is away and Megumi is at school. 

He approaches you like he’s always belonged here, in your garden, and your mind flashes sharply to another time entirely. 

“Hello, serpent.” You say.

And his smile is a moon dark curve of affection, of wry knowing. 

You have half a mind to throw your arms around him. You have half a mind to hold him tight enough to never let him go. You have half a mind to let such a serpent strangle you. 

The sight of him in your new garden is a burning ache in the pit of your chest, all of that longing and pain vying for your attention, for you to cry or smile or laugh bitterly. For you to wail or scream or claw at him. 

Suguru Getou stands before you as a new man in your new garden. 

“Hello, my curse of a girl.” 

Your throat tightens, a lump balling itself up in the center of it, making it hard to breathe. Hard to swallow. 

“Why are you here, Suguru?” You hear yourself say as a teen, as an adult, and once more in your life. Three of your voices harmonize into one. 

“I can’t visit a friend?” He counters. He will only say this twice to you. 

“Are we friends?” You ask.

You don’t dare say that you don’t like him this time. 

He inclines his head fractionally, “I’d like to be.” 

“Satoru will never forgive you–I–” 

“I’m not here for Satoru.” He says. 

You freeze. 

“I’m here for you.” He then nods towards the winding path of your garden, “will you walk with me?” 

“You shouldn’t be here.” You say.

“No,” he agrees.

“How did you get past the barrier?” You ask then because you know that Satoru doesn’t leave you for a mission without one. He would never leave you or Megumi without protection. 

“Oh, don’t pretend you’re surprised now.” He says and you can see it now, the change in him, the shadow in his eyes. He tries to smile again, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes the way it used to. Still, his voice is maddeningly calm when he asks again, “will you walk with me?” 

You stare hard at him.

“Surely, you aren’t scared. You know what happens, don’t you?” He then says. 

Tears suddenly sting your eyes. But you nod, chin dipping, breath tight in your lungs. 

“Then walk with me.” He says again, gentler this time, and you finally listen to the command. 

You step towards him and just like that, you are walking through your garden with him once more. 

He leads you far in silence. He wanders down to the small koi pond. He pauses right beneath the mikan tree, ripe with their little, orange fruits. Dappled sunlight falls over the water and stones and Suguru. 

“You’ve led me to the fruit, serpent.” You say and your voice is thick with emotions, rugged.

Suguru nods slowly, “I am here to set you free.” 

The tears break from your waterline as easily and quiet as the sun breaks over the horizon every morning. You start to cry in earnest. 

Suguru takes your face in his hands and swipes his thumbs across your cheeks, cooing softly. “Don’t cry,” he shushes softly, “don’t cry.” 

You shake your head fractionally, “you know I can’t–” you choke out. 

Go with the betrayer when he calls for you.

“But do you want to?” Suguru presses, hands firm in their hold, like he can’t let you slip from his grasp. 

Your tears fall harder, hands coming up to cling to his wrists, to fasten themselves there. You lean into him almost, like you’ll collapse if you don’t. There is a strange, horrifying part of you that–

You just don’t want to lose him again, maybe? 

You just don’t want to–

You don’t want to see the end of all this.

You don’t want to watch him–

“Suguru,” you eek out, voice cracking. 

“Just say the word,” he almost begs you, “and I will take you away. I will set you free.” 

Your head spins sharply and you can hardly breathe, a sob forcing its way out of you. 

With everything in you, you could never say that you would choose him. 

Even if you–wanted to–you don’t think you could. Something seizes tightly around your chest, crawling up your throat to stop you, to squeeze out any words that may have escaped. It kills them before they can get past the gate of your teeth, strangled. 

“I ca–n’t.” 

Suguru frowns, brows furrowing, and he really does look heartbroken. 

“My poor cursed girl.” He murmurs, stroking gently at your wet cheeks. “I know you can’t.” He agrees softly, “I knew you wouldn’t.” 

“I’m sorry–”

“No,” he soothes, “I’m sorry. I should’ve figured it out sooner.” 

You don’t know what he’s referring to–

“I’d always wished I had someone like you. To have a god’s love is to be immortal.” He says and you can tell that he has thought about this endlessly, like he is finally freeing the words from his mouth, tossing them to the wind. Maybe they won’t plague him anymore. 

But you cry harder. Because he will be immortal, he won’t die, the corpse of a man that will haunt you forever. 

And it was your love that did it, after all. 

He slips from you like a shadow, a wraith, and just like that, all his touch leeches from you slowly. 

Your serpent slithers from Eden and you half want to follow, maybe, feel the urge somewhere in your legs. But you stay rooted, beneath the fruit tree, untouched and whole. Heavy in the emerald leaves. 

Go with the betrayer when he calls for you.

You watch him go and you don’t follow. 

***

Satoru returns in the earliest part of morning, when the sun has just begun to transform the sky. You are still asleep, dreaming hot and bright beneath fluttering lids. The peach of a tree, the sweet green of a pond, and the endless violet of a sky. 

You twitch and turn with your nightmares. Dreams. Memories of the past and future. 

You can feel someone, at your back, and in your ribs, curling around you like a snake, constricting. 

When you come to, there are teeth in your throat. 

Satoru wakes you purposefully. 

“You’re back early,” you get out, thick with sleep, head slow and foggy. 

“You knew I would be.” He says, half accusation, half hurt.

You’re on your stomach and he’s fit himself half above you, slotted himself over the curve of your body. Your hands slide beneath the sheets, under your pillow. He feels heavier than usual, but his hands are like ice, like he’s been out in the cold. You can feel them around your sides, slowing over your back, your hips. 

You drift again, head nodding back against the pillows, but he settles his teeth back into your neck, at the juncture of your shoulder. He hollows his cheeks. He marks you deeply.

Your eyes flutter again. 

“Why won’t you let me sleep?” You murmur, “what do you want?” 

You peak over your shoulder at him. 

He lifts his head and the pale, early morning light slashes against an inhuman blue eye. It burns silver almost, star bright. 

Your god, your monster. 

“Nothing,” he says lightly, but he bites harder like he wants everything, anything. It's enough to make you cry out this time, hurt and aching. 

Blearily, you can feel his hands beneath the shirt of his you’d worn to bed, fingers cold and burning against your sleep warm body. They cascade up to palm at your chest, goosebumps erupting over your skin, prickling, as he deftly fits the bud between thumb and finger. 

“Is this what you want?” You murmur and you arch into the touch, into his body at your back, hips pushing flush to his navel. 

A warmth seeps through you, meandering and growing.

“Did you miss me?” He rasps in the half-dark. His hands are curling and urging your body to morph to his. You can feel his desire, the desperate touch of his like a beast, a man starved. 

So strangely strangled is his voice, so strangely high. 

“I always miss you,” you soothe, voice bedroom soft, but earnest. 

He hitches your hips up, if only to slip your panties down your body. He replaces them with the pad of his finger, where you’re wet and soft, whole body shivering at the haunt of a touch. The ghost of it. 

You drop your head into your folded arms, whimpering. 

They fall away as quickly as they came. 

Your head is still foggy, slow on the uptake, but when he returns to you, you feel him bare between your legs. 

The head of him slips slowly against warm folds. 

His hand, large and overpowering, covers your mouth when he fits himself inside of you with an agonizingly slow thrust. The noise you make is a painful whine, a burst of a sound from some deep part of you, startled, part ragged gasp. 

“Sshh,” he hushes, your lips parted against his open palm, eyes fluttering as the pain sears hot, as he settles himself to the hilt. 

You can feel yourself flutter desperately around him, fit too snug, too deep, tears blurring your eyes in a haze. 

This isn’t like him; he has always taken his time with you, even if he’s in a rush.He has always been sweet on you, even if he is being half-mean. 

But this is–

This is almost cruel. 

He doesn’t allow you much time to adjust, his first thrust is a mean little flexing of his hips. 

You make another noise behind his hand, pained and needy. 

As if to make it up to you, he dots loving kisses along your neck, the corner of your jaw. His mouth is soft, all tongue and warmth. All desperate man. 

“Sorry for being rough,” he murmurs, but he doesn’t sound very sorry at all, rather he has that unaffected touch to his voice, airy, “bite my palm if you need to, angel. Don’t wake the house.” 

He laughs when you sink your teeth down into him hard. 

It tapers off into a soft, husky groan. You taste skin. Taste blood in your mouth. His thrusts deepen and despite it all, you arch your back to open yourself up to him more. 

“I’d say I missed you, too, but it’s something worse than that.” He admits to you, voice still soft and light. He unlatches his palm from between your teeth, only to slide his fingers against your slippery, parted lips. 

 “Wouldn’t it be sweet?” He rambles and you let him press his fingers into your mouth, wrap your lips around them, press your tongue up against them until saliva dampens them. Copper still in your mouth, the taste of his blood on your tongue. “To miss my wife? And not feel half mad at the idea of leaving her?” 

You finally feel the pleasure strike of his thrusts, feel the way you’ve grown slippery and desperate, walls sucking sweetly at where he buries himself inside you. 

You moan around his fingers, soft, catching desperate. Catching the tail ends of pleasure. 

He pulls his fingers from your mouth in a mess of drool, suddenly grabbing your jaw to tip your head back in a crescent moon of an arch. 

His lips are at your ear, at your cheek, when he says;

“Especially when I know who's been here.” 

“Satoru–” 

He squeezes your cheeks into a harsh pout, choking off your words. 

“You knew I’d know,” he accuses, cock dragging roughly through where you cling to him. He bares down on you, closes in on you, like he’s trying to capture and strangle you. “I would never forget his residuals–”

And finally, his voice is a hiss, a burning press of words against your skin. 

You feel your tears gush hot down your cheeks again, feel the stubborn furrow of your brows, and the heady storm-dark feeling in the pit of you. Your head swims. You have the sudden desire to face him, to cling to him, to have him hold you.

But he keeps you pinned and vulnerable beneath him

He keeps your hips high and your head back, as if he could control you, possess you. 

When his grip on your face slackens enough with his chasing pleasure, you bite out, “I didn’t invite him.” 

He laughs softly, meanly, and switches to seizing your hair in a tight fist, your head tipping back on his shoulder. You yelp softly. 

“How would I know?” He rasps, teeth at your neck again, “I wasn’t here.” 

“You’re being cruel,” you get out. 

“Forgive me,” he hums, hand detangling from your hair and allowing your head to fall back against the pillows, “shall I be sweeter?” 

His fingers find themselves skipping over your ribs, down to the bend of your waist, around to dip between your legs. With a practiced ease, he feels himself splitting you open, fingers eager to know the way you take him, burn for him.

Then they dance around the bundle of  nerves that make your breath hitch. 

“I want to feel you come around me, anyways.” He coos, finally setting his fingers against you with intention. 

You bury your tear-stricken face into the pillow, heat scorching across your cheeks at his words, still, that manage to embarrass and strike you. Your moan is a guttural one this time, muffled, but wounded and desperate and half-mad with pleasure. 

For your own ego, you wish you’d lasted longer, for your own sanity, you wish you didn’t love him like this. 

You think at once, this is how you have felt, delirious with the need to possess him, to have him, to claim him. 

Especially over Suguru. So much so that you’d–

You cry more earnestly now, too, when your peak collapses inward on itself like a dying star, before burning out, spreading like a headrush, a bloom through your body. 

“That’s it,” Satoru groans softly against your shoulder, hips stuttering, “love to feel you like that,” he gets out, “love to know I have you like this.” 

He groans, burying himself into you until it hurts, until you’re filling with him. 

You sniffle and this time, he does soften, lips settling in little apologies against your shoulders. Your cheeks, where he can reach you. You can feel his heart begin to slow finally, limbs growing heavy as the high seeps from him.

You’re expecting him to pull out, but he doesn’t. 

He rolls you onto your sides, keeps himself inside your warmth, and buries his face in the crook of your neck.

“Were you going to tell me?” He dares to ask. 

The sun is beginning to pull itself up into the sky. 

“You were never going to give me the chance to,” you murmur back. 

He turns your head to face him and finally, finally, slots his mouth against yours. 

You kiss him back tenderly, because it seems he needs it, the way you once did, too. 

“I can’t–” he croaks.

And there is a version where he gets out, I can’t lose you, too. 

But you cut him off with another kiss, searing, more certain. 

“I know,” you hush after and keep him inside of you, somewhere deep, where none of the world can reach. 

Where none of the world can touch him. 

***

Your dreams turn crimson and nightdark. They simmer and yawn into full nightmares. 

You watch futures that you tried desperately to avoid; Satoru bloody. Megumi and Satoru against a russet sky, standing at odds, like he once did with Suguru. 

You see versions where all that's left is your grief. 

Not your mother or father or husband. Not the children you have claimed as yours, either. 

You see versions where you are cursed to bear the future alone. 

You wake up and dry heave. 

You wake up and know you must hold all the more tighter to what you have now. 

***

Yuuta Okkotsu visits you like a crow, like a bad omen. 

Satoru has brought him. 

The boy has just started at Jujutsu Tech. 

You have half a mind to keep Megumi away from him, you want to snap at Satoru for even bringing him here. 

Doesn’t he know what this means? Doesn’t he know what Yuuta symbolizes? 

The beginning of the end. 

Still, you must know him. You must touch him. 

(You wonder if this is why Satoru has brought him, you wonder if this is why he is in your home now, this cursed boy.) 

You sit with the boy in the garden while Satoru claims he is readying a dessert. You know better, though. 

“I was surprised to find out Gojo is married!” Yuuta says and then quickly follows it up with, “not because–I just didn’t–he’s so–” 

“It’s alright,” you soothe, “Satoru seems mysterious to his students, I’m sure.” You look out across the garden, “we were vowed to marry each other at a very young age. It was an arranged marriage.”

Yuuta frowns, glancing out, too, if only to follow your gaze. If only so he doesn’t have to look directly at you. 

“Rika and I vowed to marry each other when we were kids.” He admits after a moment.

You glance to him, wry smile touching your lips, “no wonder she haunts you, then.” 

Yuuta lets out a forced laugh, “I’m not sure she is.” 

“No?” you prompt gently.

“I think I’m the one that can’t let go of her.”

You hum softly, “I don’t think I’ve let go of anything in my entire life.” 

“It feels impossible,” Yuuta says.

“It may as well be,” you agree. 

And for as much as you’d like to hate Yuuta, because his presence means a certain end, you find that you can’t hate him much at all. You realize he is just a boy who loved someone more than death, more than anything in the world.

That, you can relate to quite well.

You reach to place your hand over his and just like that, you have scoured his life in an instant; past and future devoured. Overtaken by you. 

He has a good heart. He has a lot to learn. He has all the world before him. 

More than that—he’s—

He’s family, you realize. Satoru’s family. 

You almost laugh, but hold it in, keep it tucked somewhere in the depths of you. 

You smile faintly and finally turn to look at him;

“Well, I hope you’ll be better than me, Yuuta Okkotsu, and do the impossible.” 

***

On the day that Suguru is to die, you take Satoru’s hand before he can go. 

You know he’ll be fine, physically, but you know what awaits him outside that door. 

You know he will come home to you grieving, aching. You know he will return changed. 

He will return to you in agony.  

And you will hold him like you are trying to keep the pieces of him from coming apart. You will be the only one in the world who knows how human he is, how fragile he is. 

“Satoru,” you say, voice thick with emotion, squeezing tight to him. You will cry after he leaves, as everything falls apart, so by the time he returns, your face will be nothing but dry with your tears. 

For a moment, you have no idea what to say to him, how to say, you are walking into your heartbreak. You are walking into the future I have laid out and it was paved with good intentions but—but—

The words free from your mouth before you can stop them, tumble recklessly;

“Burn his body.”

Satoru’s face immediately crumples.

A last ditch effort to change everything.

Perhaps, to set Satoru free, if nothing else.

“Burn his body.” You say again, almost beg him.

But even as you hold him, as you peer into the strings of his fate, you know he won’t.

You know he won’t be able to stomach it. 

And when Suguru Getou dies with his best friend, his one and only, at his feet, you know it is not really the end.

You realize, with a delirious laugh while you mourn him alone, that with all your meddling of the future—

You have made him a god, after all. 

And maybe worst of all, you have turned Satoru into just a man.

Masterlist | <- Satoru's Interlude: Bigger God | Chapter Five: coming soon! ->

[skull-bearer]

Chapters: 17/17 Fandom: Dragonlance - Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Dalamar the Dark/Raistlin Majere Characters: Raistlin Majere, Dalamar the Dark, Fistandantilus (Dragonlance), Caramon Majere, Tasslehoff Burrfoot, Bupu (Dragonlance), Ladonna (Dragonlance), Justarius (Dragonlance), Dunbar Mastersmate, The Kingpriest, Quarath, Arak Additional Tags: Deicide, Emotional Manipulation, Lies, bastards, Utter total bastards all around, Everyone is irredeeamble, Maybe not Caramon, But he's on thin ice, Fucked Up Relationships, adoration, Jealousy, Possessive Behavior, BDSM, Dom/sub, Fucked Up Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Trauma, for everyone!, Trauma for you! Trauma for you!, Trauma All Round, Murder, Murder Husbands, Mental Instability, Minor Character Death Series: Part 4 of Agony and Ecstasy and Magic Summary:

Raistlin and Dalamar attempt godhood.

Chapter 17 And in the end.

[rabbithaver]

i don't even know if what i'm making here would be considered an AU since it's literally just something that could take place in main canon. whatever i'm calling it the Godmaker AU

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played GODMAKERS ?

By SmallRedRobin13

Godmakers is a 2-player game and worldbuilding tool designed to help you create a god.

With this game, you have everything you need to create and flesh out a god, as well as the beings that worship them. There are also additional rules for if the god is a part of a pantheon, so why not get out there and make a god today!

[leveebreak-s]

And all around was wonder, and all around the great unknown, with eyes that slowly opened, I set about the wisdom for it to know, and living out of language, before one word I spoke, I heard the call

Led Zeppelin, 1969

[smbhax]

Cover illustration by Paul Alexander

[thehauntedrocket]

The Godmakers by Dan Britain

Art by Frank Frazetta

Pinnacle Books (1970)

[nadekofannumber1]

i think ZokuNade is supposed to be literally Kuchinawa considering the other versions of characters Koyomi meets are directly their associated oddities (Suruga is only the Rainy Devil, Tsubasa is only the cat, and I've always maintained that the small Tsubasa is Kako, the youngest sister)

Mayoi and Tsukihi are already oddities, and so stay much the same, while Karen never experienced a true oddity, and Sodachi nothing at all

Tbh yeah zokunade is probably kuchinawa, but also there’s like 2 kuchinawas. The one Nadeko manifested, and the one Nadeko revived. Zokunade is probably both, but if it was just revived kuchinawa mixed with the looks of Nadeko and the regrets of Koyomi that would also make sense. Some characters are more reversed internal oddity and some others are more on regrets. (And he really really regrets the Nadeko incident)

The lesser example for a sole regrets one is Karen who’s like, supposed to be an extension of the idea that araragi feels like he’s been ignoring the femininity and personhood of his sister but also that arc works in an odd way bc idk how many people actually mentally internalized karen as masculine before nise 2. It’s an odd one to discuss bc Karen’s character arc is kinda messy (even in its closing statement of Karen ogre.)

Sodachi based regret is a more easy to pinpoint.

Kuchinawa of the shrine and Kuchinawa of the Nadeko have been kinda fused in a way so perhaps zokunade is only 1/4 Nadeko.

Regardless people don’t post kuchinawa enough.

Regardless of if one sees him as just the oddity or a sort of black hanekawa fused new identity situation.

[ks1971]

Had some ancient-greek god tech thoughts after reading The Coronation's God by RomanticExperiements on AO3

[ssketchexx]

,,,,ocs,,,,k,onvir

[aimfor-theheart]

Satoru's Interlude: Bigger God

Masterlist | <- Chapter Three: Anew | Chapter Four: Serpents -> | Read on Ao3

Pairings: Satoru Gojo x f!reader

Summary: And the form leans down, closer, as their voice drops to a murmur, all honey and thorns, the promise of something far greater than you. A storm to come. The future that you will bear upon the slant of your shoulders. And when they speak, you know they’ve cursed you;

“I will teach you how to make a God.” 

(Arranged marriage, angst, hurt/comfort, dark content)

Warnings (specifically for this chapter): Possessive behavior, unhealthy relationships, toxic dynamics, manipulation. Please be wary of overarching story warnings, too. Let me know if you think I should add any other warnings! **Please mind warnings overall and for each chapter**

Word Count: 2.6k

A/N: a much shorter chapter than last week! i was very excited to write gojo's POV. as always, thank you to the incredible @lorelune for beta reading!! it is greatly appreciated!! i hope you all enjoy this lil snippet of gojo's POV! i would love to hear your thoughts on it!! thank you for reading!!

· · ───────── ·𖥸· ──────── · ·

Satoru knows something you don’t. 

That is incredibly, devastatingly rare. 

He has known, since the moment you peered into him, since the moment he always allowed you to touch him, that you would always know everything about him. Every moment, every memory, every future. His life unspools into your hands and he has never had a say in it. 

He could’ve. He could’ve held up his Infinity, always, around you. 

He could’ve been untouchable, even to you. 

But in the smallest corner of his heart, he had one wish. 

He wanted to be human. Mortal. Man. 

Satoru believes that this time in your lives; when he is a teacher and you take Megumi and Tsumiki to school and Nanami is a sorcerer still and Utahime is a reluctant friend and Shoko comes around like a stray cat, is perhaps the best of it. 

He can tell you’re trying to savor it.

He knows. 

Megumi and Tsumiki are toeing into young teenagehood and although they don’t play like they used to, they still spend evenings in the garden with you and Satoru. Nanami and Shoko and Utahime join on nice nights like this, where you serve them iced, sweet drinks. Satoru’s doesn’t have alcohol in it, but extra peach juice. Honey. 

The evening sky is rosy, tufts of soft pink clouds and dreamy orange brush across the horizon. The sun is a fireburst in the center of his world and everything feels surreal. Sublime. 

Normal. 

As if he might have two kids and a wife and friends that come over for dinner in a garden that bursts with life. 

“How’s your new class?” Utahime asks and she picks at a strawberry that Tsumiki helped you cut up and set out. They look like small flowers, the way the apple slices look like bunnies. 

“Good,” Satoru says, leaning back in his chair, “I think they show a lot of potential–two of them are quite powerful.” 

“And the third?” Utahime asks. 

Satoru doesn’t know how to say he knows, even without future-telling abilities, that this student won’t make it without a great deal of help. But Satoru is determined.

And perhaps a little too hopeful at this age (with his kids and his wife and his friends in his garden). 

“He needs a little help but that’s why he’s a student.” Satoru smiles but he can feel it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, “besides, he’s got the best teacher.” 

Utahime rolls her eyes so hard that Shoko snorts into her drink and it makes you laugh, the sound of it like a balm to whatever thorn he might’ve just gotten stuck on. 

Shoko pulls out a cigarette and Satoru nudges her with his foot beneath the table, “not in front of the kids.” 

With it between her lips she says, “the kids are over there.” 

They’re out in the garden together, throwing sticks and chasing around Megumi’s divine dogs. Occasionally, he can hear Tsumiki’s laughter or Megumi’s soft voice calling for his dogs. 

“Besides,” she says as she lights it, “they’re old enough. Compared to everything else they’ll see in this world, a cigarette is nothing.” 

The scent of it when she lights it is almost nostalgic for Satoru. 

(It reminds him of Suguru and her and late nights in dorms, looking at stars, and night walks he misses more than he’ll ever admit.)

Maybe he’s feeling sentimental, soft, so he lets her get away with it. The kids are in the garden. And the sun is setting. 

Shoko eyes Nanami and with a laugh, she asks, “do you want one, too, Nanami? You’re eyeing mine.” 

Satoru laughs a little when he notices the tips of his ears have gone pink. 

He says, “thank you,” when Shoko leans across the table to hand him one. 

And the night bleeds with a sort of carelessness and love he so rarely gets to have. Normalcy in a way that makes him ache. He’s got his hand on the back of your chair and he’s tormenting Utahime from across the table. And Nanami is talking a little bit more, amused here and there, and Shoko is starting to get loud but it’s making you laugh so hard that you can hardly breathe.

Megumi and Tsumiki ask if they can stay up later as the sky softens to blue, blue, blue. 

“I want to catch fireflies,” Tsumiki says hopefully.

“What’s your excuse, Megumi?” Satoru asks, just to rile him up. 

But to his surprise, the boy glances upwards, his eyes as darkly blue as the sky, and says, “I want to see the stars.” 

And how could he say no? 

“Sounds like a pretty good excuse to me,” you say, turning to Satoru, impish smile tugging at the corner of your mouth. He has half a mind to kiss you right now. But he knows Megumi would yell at him and Nanami would sigh deeply and Utahime would avert her eyes. 

He looks back to the kids and says, “I was going to let you stay up anyways, excuses or not.” 

“Pushover.” Utahime says with a shake of her head, but there is a smile there.

Megumi and Tsumiki go bounding off and one of the divine dogs barks excitedly, perhaps with Megumi’s own excitement. 

And the sound of it, glasses clinking and Tsumiki’s yelps of surprise when a firefly flutters from her hands, and Shoko’s smoky laugh all blend together. You’re tucked up against his side and Nanami tries to show some constellations to Megumi. 

At the end of the night, when it is far too late, and the kids are asleep on their feet, and he’s bidding friends goodbye, you have tears in your eyes. 

Instantly, Satoru is at your side, large hands curled around your cheeks.

“What’s wrong?” He presses softly, “what is it?” He coos. 

You shake your head fractionally and try to smile but it’s–

“Please,” he murmurs, thumbs sweeping away your tears and he wishes he could sweep all of it away for you. 

“Nothing,” you get out, swallowing around the emotion, “I’m just happy.” 

He knows what it looks like to cry from happiness and it is not quite this. Rather, there is a certain, deep, horrible despair that he sees now, that he can–

He can feel. 

“I’m just happy,” you tell him, “and I wish I could stay here forever. I wish I didn’t–” 

You stop yourself, choke on it a little. 

“I know,” he hushes, and he pulls you into his arms, bundles you up the way he always has and lets you cry. And cry and cry. 

This is different, though, different than your youth; infinitely more morose. There are no tantrums now, but just your attempt at stifling a sob so you don’t wake the kids. So that you don’t entirely fall apart. 

Satoru knows then that this is the best of it. And that his life will not always look like this. 

And that he wishes it would; normal. Human. Imperfect.

 

He knew, if he held up his Infinity and kept you at some maddening distance, he would never be a man. But if you could touch him, and see everything, then he was just a man to you. There would then be at least one person in his life who could destroy him. There would be, at least one person, who could treat him like a man and not a God. 

Are you ever mortal to him? To anyone? 

He doesn’t think so. 

It’s his fault, he knows. You’re his to bear. 

Because what you don’t know is that he cursed you. 

Megumi and Tsumiki grow and selfishly, Satoru wishes they would stop. 

When Megumi is twelve, he begins to act strangely around you. Not badly, Megumi has always quietly adored you and sought out your comfort, but he watches you a little more closely. He treats you a little more delicately than he treats anyone else; he quarrels with Tsumiki and he has always been prickly with Satoru. He rarely ever acts up with you, though. In fact, if anyone can make Megumi do anything, it is you. 

(In fact, the one time Megumi ever snaps at you, is after Tsumiki has fallen into a coma.

Why didn’t you stop it? He’d yelled, you knew! You knew and you didn’t stop it!

Even more concerning, you’d said to Satoru later as you gently carded your hands through Tsumiki’s hair;

She’s safer like this, with me. Asleep. In my care.) 

And finally, one night, Satoru understands. 

“Something clings to her,” Megumi says to him. 

They watch you from across the room with Tsumiki. You’re baking cookies with her. 

“It’s always been there.” Satoru exhales. He shouldn’t be surprised that Megumi has finally seen it but he is. Every day, Megumi shows signs of being a powerful sorcerer. More powerful than most are even aware of. 

(A God, Satoru knows, he could be a God, if he pushed him. If he pressed for it. If he made one out of him.)

Megumi is quiet for a moment. 

But then he asks, “can’t you get rid of it? If it’s a curse or–” 

“Megumi,” Satoru says now and though his voice is light as it always is, there is a small edge in it. He tilts his head, “it’s a part of her.” 

He can tell Megumi dislikes this answer. 

And before Megumi can do something foolish like ask him another question, he stands and makes his way to the kitchen under the guise of helping you. Or perhaps pestering you. 

But Megumi watches and he doesn’t stop watching, silent and keen, and with eyes that see more than they should. 

Satoru had an inkling when he was a teenager, but after Suguru he knew it to be true. 

You carry his curse in the crux of your body.

He knows now, very clearly, that you operate only to possess him, possessed by him. You will always choose him, over everything, over all of time, all of humanity. 

He also knows–

He knows he could break the curse and set you free.

Just as he could have broken the binding vow. 

But he didn’t, doesn’t. Won’t. 

His hand cards carefully through your hair, petting gently at your head. In your sleep, you nuzzle deeper into his chest and he feels a fond smile at the corner of his lips. Like this, you are just a girl, maybe. Like this, without your eyes open, you dream atop his heart. 

Suguru used to call you a curse of a girl. Sometimes, Satoru thought he wanted to devour you, too. He always wonders if Suguru knew there was a curse placed on you, if anyone knows, besides him. 

Sometimes, if he’s being dishonest with himself, he says he found out too late. Undoing the curse would be more painful for you now than it would be to just keep it. Sometimes, when he tries to justify it all, he thinks that you’d want the curse, anyways. Who would you be without it? 

Would you love him still, if you knew what he’d done? And how he’d known all these years? 

You stir finally and he can tell you’ve awoken by the way your breathing changes on his bare skin. 

Gently, he runs his knuckle over the shell of your ear, your cheek, tender and careful, like he’s touching spun glass. It tickles and maybe he can feel your smile against his skin, feel you shift and turn away from the featherlight touch. 

(Horribly, he thinks you would still love him. Maybe you do know, he tells himself, too, maybe you’ve known all along.)

Sometimes, he’s certain you do know. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t break the curse, because you’ve always known, and maybe, it was all a part of your plan anyways. 

He knows all of this has been, since the beginning. He knows you are exceedingly clever and bright and vicious. He knows the world has made you to be. 

More than that, he has made you to be. Made you run and see and devour and stomach it all ten times over. 

He’s made you his curse. 

Yuuta Okkotsu shatters the dream of his world, fractures it like a mirror to reflect a thousand, warped versions of himself. Of you. And your world. 

(Yuuta, you’d said when he told you, already? And there were tears in your eyes when you asked, frantic, terrified, he’s already arrived?)

And now the boy sits beside him in a sea of white. 

He says the words that Satoru has never been able to say out loud, “maybe Rika’s not cursing me…” he gazes at the ring on his finger and Satoru feels his own burn, “maybe I’m the one cursing Rika instead.” 

Satoru goes silent, feels the brag of his own heart, the breath that catches somewhere in his throat. He can feel irony, perhaps, the reckoning he is supposed to have. He has the absurd notion to laugh for a moment. 

But the thought of it all sobers him quickly. 

He didn’t just curse you to be his, or to need him to be yours forever and ever.

No, he thinks, trying to treat you like just a girl now, trying to treat you like something you’re not. 

He cursed you to be a bigger God than him. 

Yuuta lets his theory hang in the air. Desperate, perhaps, for an answer, or comfort. 

And finally, Satoru inhales slowly, and lets go of the words like he’s confessing to a sin, “I’ve always believed that love is the most twisted curse of all.” 

You lift your head finally, and Satrou’s hand slips down to the nape of your neck, as you find his eyes with your own mismatched ones; the slice of silver in one like a blade, the flower bloom of gold in the other. 

You smile at him, soft, adoringly. 

He smiles in return, leaning down to press a kiss to your cheek, a ticklish one to your ear and it makes you squirm. Another to your jaw. Your neck, when he catches it. You giggle, twisting in his hold. 

He cursed you to be his God, so in your arms–well, in your arms, divine and with more reach than his, enough to hold everyone’s world and your own, enough to hold all of time–

He would always be just a man. 

Masterlist | <- Chapter Three: Anew | Chapter Four: Serpents ->

[geekynerfherder]

'The Godmakers' by Frank Frazetta.

Cover art for the 1970 edition of the novel 'The Godmakers' written by Dan Britain.

[rush-the-stars]

vash and wolfwood both going down on you

[that-dinopunk-guy]

I recently went on another depression-fueled rampage buying cheap sci-fi paperbacks on eBay, and the first batch just showed up today.

That Godmakers cover is amazing.

[phantastragoria]

X-Men Red spoilers watch out !!!

I know Ewing obviously has a plan with Richard dying and it'll be great and cool and interesting and crazy and it'll make complete sense when he comes back as whatever entity or role he has in mind. But I need to get a small thought off my chest... This is a similar issue I initially/still partly have with what he did with Quill during his GotG run. In that personally, and this is definitely my mental illness talking I know, I don't like the concept of seemingly killing off a realistically written suicidal character as though it's needed for their arc, regardless of whether it's guaranteed they'll come back. Even if they come back as more than they were as an aspect of something or a godly being.

It's definitely not meant to come off in such a way and it's just comics being comics so it's nothing new or meant to be taken so seriously, but I don't like the thought that no matter what such characters -HAVE- to die before they're able to gain the perspective of wanting to live and getting better... :x

[ostrichmonkey-games]

More Riverlands thoughts

So as I slowly work on more Riverlands Stuff (hexcrawl, rule conversions, etc), general survey - which of the original Riverlands backgrounds (excluding the Empire and Further Afield backgrounds for right this second), would you want to see expanded into a full Archetype (basically a class in my Ostrichmonkey Hack ruleset). Not all of them necessarily would work as archetypes, but I'm interested to see which ones might resonate with people.

Basically based entirely on vibes, pick your favorite, but feel free to ask for more info on any in the notes.