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chaotic-tired-cat · 2 years ago

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Heads up i have posted!!! a new fic!!! but AO3 seems to have eaten it, which is unfortunate. If the link ever works it's Day By Day We Stumble On - Chapter 1 - Sandtalon - 呪術廻戦 | Jujutsu Kaisen (Manga) [Archive of Our Own] Alas. It does not. I am dealing with the results of my own misplaced trust in technology by cross-posting the first chapter here so there will be a copy of it SOMEWHERE (deleted my copy after posting whoops.)

So, for whoever wants it, here is a tumblr-formatted copy of my terrible comedy jjk & naruto crossover where Shoko does exactly what you may expect given the title.

Summary: Every sorcerer has their own way to cope with the stress tremors quaking the jujutsu world. Satoru stomps his way through paper lines in shifting sand. Mei Mei-senpai draws new ones. Utahime cares for who she can, where she can, to keep from being buried. Nanami makes his peace. None of these methods are wrong, but they don't fit Shoko. She is tired, overworked, and so used to a life judged by the service she provides that she can't imagine functioning without it. Satoru's brother is familiar with the concept.

Friendship can look like two people sitting in a tub of misery, side by side. It works for them.

(Reincarnation AU but it's not about reincarnation or dimension travel. No, that's not on anyone's radar except for the guy it happened to. Shoko is in charge of this story, and she has decided this narrative will focus on the local coffee-addict finally catching a break.)

(This fic includes medical issues, chronic illness, and canon-typical child soldier nonsense, as well as topics like overwork, medical malpractice, smoking & alcohol use, and unhealthy work-life balance. It also includes mention of patricide, child abuse, and strangulation.)

Gojo Satoru has the eyes of a Furby and the soul of a slightly drunk hyena.

This isn't a facet of her friend that Shoko needs to be paid to confront, necessarily, right up until it really, really is. Those cursed - and sometimes Cursed - occasions are reserved for the worst possible time, like Satoru's all-seeing luck peered directly through Shoko's life to hand-pick her unluckiest days. It's a talent. The worst talent in the world, and sometimes Shoko understands how Utahime wonders why they get along so well. Then again, that's coming from someone who barely considers herself to be reluctant acquaintances, let alone tentative friends with "the local nuisance."

Utahime would have opinions about a lot of Shoko's life decisions. Most of them would be correct, because it's Utahime. Unfortunately, she’s an unreliable source of wisdom due to losing about half her common sense to Satoru’s baiting on the regular. Shoko can understand it sometimes.

Such as now. Three in the ungodly morning is not a good time to test if Shoko's medical license is just for show.

It's just not.

Satoru knows this.

Just as he knows that the only thing that can get Shoko livid enough to act on her anger is functioning on less than two hours of sleep.

He could probably see that she was awake anyway and contemplating just how many shots of espresso puts her on the ungovernable side of a caffeine addiction, but she's refusing to acknowledge that. It's too early for comprehensive thought processing. Too late. Too far on one end of the sun's presence in the sky, but just tired enough to forget if the rise or setting is closer. Time has lost all meaning. Satoru can probably see her brain trying desperately to fire neurotransmitters to wake her up properly. On top of that, he knows she's frustrated at the higher-ups for pushing her working hours into barely manageable configurations when she complains. It shows in the way his voice stays under the headache threshold of volume. She is so damn tired.

Stop.

Drink the damn coffee.

Breathe.

She won't make his life more difficult than it already is. He didn't intend to test her patience and skill by spontaneously threatening the puppet masters of the jujutsu world, taking on a special grade in Hokkaido, and somehow returning with a mysterious brother. Lost sleep isn't personal. Shoko knows this.

Friends don't press each other into this lukewarm hell of overwork unless the situation is dire, which makes her current conundrum just that extra bit of a headache.

She crosses her arms at the cot.

Did-

Did Satoru spawn via mitosis?

She can never tell with him. This is a legitimate question.

Shoko has had the tentatively arguable displeasure of being his friend for years and is firmly of the belief that things like Conservation of Matter apply to Satoru only because they amuse him. It's her leading theory. Generations have passed since the last holder of the Six Eyes, and every moldy text on the abilities they hold is wrapped up in musty ancient language that relies on metaphors more than actual instruction. There is no recipe card for the Gojo clan's sacred technique. Just confusion and a hyperactive teenager who somehow grew weirder with time. He ages like cheese.

"You've cloned yourself," Shoko diagnoses even as her technique rules out that possibility.

Satoru preens. "The world couldn't handle two of me."

He's not wrong.

She listens to his chatter while she checks over the sibling he has managed to pull from thin air. Honestly. Of all the things to make a man who is harder to pin down than the raccoon in her apartment garage – that kind of person – ask for help… well. She wasn't expecting a brother.

It's impossible to tell if the unconscious brother even looks like Satoru. Satoru covers only his eyes, while this guy covers everything but one of his eyes. A dark mask stretches down from the bridge of his nose, and there's a wide band of fabric pulled over the other eye. Apparently that one got gouged out for some reason Satoru cheerfully seethes over when she notices the old injury. The elder Gojo's got slightly darker grey hair than Satoru’s white, though. A bit more gravity-defying, and thank goodness for that. Identical twins would have snapped her last brain cell clean in half.

Shoko chooses to believe in mitosis. It's easier that way.

Satoru goes quiet when she asks for details as to why his spontaneously new brother is unconscious and needing a doctor. A quiet Satoru is about as good a sign as a harbinger of doom.

"I just need to know what took him out," she assures him. It's Satoru's business what secrets he wants to keep. “That’s it.”

"No." Satoru braces his elbows on his knees and bends over in the uncomfortable chair. He's smiling. Like a kitsune, yeah, but that anger is not her problem. "I'm tired of hiding, and Kakashi has never cared either way."

"Alright."

The story clarifies little.

Gojo Kakashi is three years Satori's elder. Kicked out of the Gojo line of succession due to a weak constitution and being physically incapable of wielding cursed energy, Kakashi should have died from his illness years ago. He did not. As far as Shoko can tell, spite created willpower and that, more than anything, fueled his survival-based cursed technique. It’s very odd. Lupine, lightning-based cursed energy sparks in a blaze of white energy that stitches his health back together like a calamity that is self-sustaining out of luck and little else. It gets tripped up around the eye he keeps covered as if expecting the Six Eyes to spontaneously manifest, but all that's done is fry his optic nerves from the inside out.

In short, Kakashi's body tried so hard to activate a technique it does not have that it blinded him in one eye. He was lucky not to lose both. It probably drained him half to death.

Ouch.

Satoru says in cheerful, acidic words that Kakashi’s worth has always been in his use to the Gojo clan elders. Both brothers have that in common. The crucial difference is that while Satoru got fucked-up eyes, Kakashi got fucked-up cursed energy due to the circle of a family tree the Gojo clan insists on to keep their technique from fading. It puts Satoru's sharp distaste of his own clan's politics in perspective.

Bluntly speaking, the elder brother is considered ‘better off dead’ by those old bastards.

He's bought survival in unnatural talent for every single weapon put into his hands, but even that is shaky ground. He is chronically ill. Satoru’s pretty sure they’re bleeding his older brother dry, because apparently the second Kakashi was able to perform light exercise, marching orders rolled out. There was no regard for the fact that his health was tentative at best. Pricy medical assistance could not make up for self-destructive cursed energy, though patience was bought in the map of scar tissue and poorly-healed old injuries Shoko notices. It seems this has never mattered. Kakashi has apparently spent his entire life quietly training as a good little bodyguard for the Gojo elders to order around.

A little bit of treason in the form of one child soldier, as a treat to themselves.

It explains so much about Satoru. All the gift shopping and refusal to explain who made the dango he sometimes brought to school suddenly makes so much sense. His cute little bento boxes were always a touch too neat to be made by someone so impatient. Yes, Satoru is the kind of person to cut out nori in a ‘you can do it!’ message across bento onigiri for himself, but he wouldn’t be that protective of it. Wouldn’t have cared when Suguru filched one.

Satoru’s hidden temper boils as he tells a story from the impersonal plastic chairs Shoko uses to make unwanted visitors leave faster. His voice is syrup-happy.

Bitter.

He softens when he talks about his brother, though.

Plain as day.

Kakashi has spent the majority of his life wandering through his little section the Gojo compound, safe under a fairly high-powered barrier. It’s like a lethal hermit lifestyle. They apparently instituted it because Kakashi’s cursed energy and trouble attraction abilities had every medical professional saying, "welp. That's weird," before doing absolutely nothing. This led the Gojo clan to further seal away their eldest heir for twenty or so years, except for when they toss him like a pipe bomb at people they dislike.

You know.

As one does.

A weird assassination tactic, but it apparently works. Kakashi seems very talented at surviving despite the concentrated efforts of nearly everyone he's ever met. Shoko reads his vitals and thinks he's good at surviving despite himself as well. This man has not respected his mortal limits if he has that kind of muscle mass while suffering an untreated illness.

…He probably didn't have much choice.

Shoko gets why Satoru has been hiding his brother. The inner workings of his clan must be a nightmare.

Ooh, those politics.

So much backstabbing and old-people gossip exists there. The toxic vibes must boost their cursed energy and explain why the six eyes manifested at all. Disgusting. Never shall she ask for details. It makes a bit of Satoru's squirreliness understandable. Just the littlest bit.

She doesn't know if it justifies keeping a secret this big. They may be antagonistic, and Satoru may be stuck in a shitty situation, but there's no way he'd hide an entire brother without someone manipulating the game. Shoko has been the one member of their weird little trio to see her friend in nearly all the best and worst moments of his life. He’s done the same for her. Even when she crashed into his weird little abode with rattling bottles and insults for every single professor to gift her the workload of a pre-med disaster, Satoru had decency to commiserate together. They’ve always been more alike than anyone wanted to acknowledge. It makes the secrecy a little less surprising, but still.

Satoru, a younger brother.

What?

Who initiated the process of pulling his strings to keep that hidden?

It gets pretty clear as Satoru explains.

Damn.

His father sucks.

Kakashi apparently wasn't meant to survive to adulthood, to ensure Satoru could become the next Gojo head without any opposing factions. It would be logical in a horrible sort of way, if Satoru didn't have the skillset of a mildly over-caffeinated god. There's also the helpful fact that Kakashi is willing and able to kill for his brother.

And he has, though Satoru leaves out what happened. Shoko hears it in the silence anyway. There was a time, when Satoru became clan successor, that Suguru quietly admitted to her that something was wrong. Facts didn't add up. The old Gojo head was decently strong, enough so to win against the curse that supposedly killed him. Satoru was at school when it happened, but… Shoko can guess what Kakashi did.

Patricide.

Lovely.

Kakashi is apparently just as unhinged as Satoru. It must be hereditary.

In response to that cute little murder, the Gojo elders apparently took away medical assistance to help get rid of their former heir faster. This was probably the beginning of the end.

Kakashi's hermit lifestyle lasted a few more years through ailing health out of sheer spite until Satoru had enough and outright threatened his clan elders a week ago. Shoko decides not to ask what caused the escalation, because Kakashi's lungs are ruined from an infection created by his own cursed energy. She already has her answers. It's a marvel he's still alive.

The elders did what they thought was sensible and sent a few special grade curses after Satoru as a slap on the wrist. It had the opposite effect. He met fire with the fire that stunt deserved, and dropped one of the special grades directly into their meeting room.

Right onto the table.

As a gift.

The 'old farts' disliked their brand new centerpiece. They disliked it enough to make sure Satoru was very aware of their big feelings and continued to dislike it while they delt with it. Loudly. Violently. There was allegedly lots of shouting. Satoru gets a little hazy with the details, but apparently his elders came to a quicker decision than he thinks they’d ever managed before in their lives.

They proceeded to take inspiration from Satoru's spite and decided to bait a new curse into Kakashi's cute little hermit abode.

Just for fun.

Kakashi, who is lethal in all ways except for the fact that he cannot handle cursed energy, responded by exorcizing the curse with his bare hands and promptly passing out. He charged reverse-cursed energy into his palms and apparently gave it a mild static shock while he strangled it in his kitchen. Satoru came home from a day out to find his brother dying and a curse already dead, after elders warned him at the gates that he’d find things the other way around.

Shoko wants to dissect that curse so badly. Curiosity itches under her skin.

That leads them to now, after Satoru has followed through on his threat. His clan is short a few elders and one house-arrest heir as of this evening.

Cool.

Shoko's compliant in a revolution now. She is perfectly fine with that.

"Kakashi's cursed energy and reverse-curse are generated at the same time," Satoru says, like he didn't just terraform a feared jujutsu clan's politics in a week. "Normally that should cancel out most of it, but his just kind of doesn't. Like ice cream, you know?"

Shoko does not know. "Ice cream."

"Yeah, like how chocolate and vanilla ice cream swirl!"

"I see," Shoko says, and takes a second to admire the fact that she's not even lying.

Satoru shrugs and hums a nonsensical tune like he isn't willing to burn down the world for those he cares about.

He never really changes in that way.

Shoko runs through the usual procedure and documents it all in the looping scrawl of medical professionals. Satoru is right – cursed energy and reverse-curse energy should cancel itself out slightly. It's why Shoko's technique is so rare: she's able to separate them before that process starts.

Kakashi's does not cancel out or separate.

It combines. The whole process and resulting mixture is, in Shoko's professional opinion, weird as fuck. Curses can probably sense it from across the prefecture. That's outrageous. It’s honestly no wonder he got put under house arrest instead of being exiled when Satoru pissed off the elders. The fallout from Kakashi wandering around outside a barrier would be immense. The Gojo compound would survive his stepping outside their wards, but their family’s reputation would not.

He could probably annihilate a city just by walking through it.

"Well?" Satoru leans over so his chin is propped on her shoulder.

"Congratulations," Shoko says flatly as she taps her clipboard with the pen. "He'll live. I might even be able to make him less of a curse-bait, but he'll need to be awake for that."

She's so tired.

Satoru flutters around her like a gangly, unhinged butterfly who refuses to take his hands out of his pockets. "You can fix it?"

Fix it.

Ha.

Shoko’s pen drums a faster rhythm on the paperwork. She can't even comprehend much beyond that this Cursed Energy nonsense is not killing Kakashi any faster than the blood loss. Satoru takes her clipboard and she barely notices.

"He'll survive the night," Shoko says as she finishes the basic first aid to keep her patient stable. "We'll worry about the rest in the morning."

"Not now?"

Shoko holds up a hand and notes the exact moment Satoru realizes how badly she's shaking. "Tomorrow. Doing anything right now lowers chances of success, and I'm not risking your brother."

He's lost enough.

"There's a line of emergency numbers on the desk," she starts. Satoru lets Shoko run through all the things to do if his brother wakes up, what not to touch in the office, who to call if she is too deep in REM sleep to hear her phone ringing-

She is so tired.

Shoko blinks and finds herself in her apartment, already half-forgetting how she got there. It's possible Satoru dropped her off. That was nice of him.

What a fucking day, she thinks as she flops onto her couch.

The next morning, she barely makes it onto Jujutsu High’s main campus before things get complicated. It happens before she can even get inside - an unexpected and unwanted visitor finds her in the foggy predawn chill between parking lot and building. Shoko stands with her coffee, bag, and exhaustion as a wizened old man tries to manipulate her. It is not an auspicious start to the day.

“I trust you know he is of better use resting than healed,” says the council elder with grey hair and Cursed Energy that eats at the morning silence like acid. Unspoken is a threat: you are of use to us. Do not change this.

Shoko looks down at her coffee, then back at the elder.

She raises an eyebrow.

“Are you telling me to ignore my oath?” Not that she cares about it, but still. If she gives ground now, they’ll never stop asking for more.

“I am telling you to listen to your funding.” A grim smile twists up. “It wouldn’t do to lose that.”

Well. Yeah, she can’t lose the only way she's able to keep sorcerers with the self-preservation instincts of lemmings alive. Shoko’s overworked and understaffed. She’s doing the job of four people all alone. School nurse, mortician, autopsy specialist, and on-call Cursed Energy healer. That’s not even counting her research on far too many projects.

“I am very tired,” Shoko says flatly. “So you’re going to have to spell this out for me. Please use small words.”

“Gojo Satoru needs to be controlled,” the old man says, which shows astronomically bad social awareness on his part. That’s her former classmate they’re talking about blackmailing. Her friend. If Satoru finds out about this he’s going to bait the bastards into a homicidal rage, which is not fun, thrifty, or enjoyable in any way. Then Utahime will have to spend a day watching Shoko lie on the floor contemplating her place in the universe. Nobody will have a halfway decent time, except Meimei-senpai, who may actually enjoy it so long as she gets paid time off while the jujutsu world burns and Satoru dances in the ashes.

This is a terrible marketing pitch. Shoko stares at her coffee and scrambles for any reaction that is not going to make her life harder. She finds nothing in her brain but the most basic rule of surviving a toxic workplace.

“Can you give that to me in writing?” Shoko asks. “In the meantime, I have patients to see. So. Thank you for stopping by.”

She all but forces them to run through the social dance of goodbyes, and walks past him into the building. She has until that email arrives to make her last free move. Better start now.

Shoko climbs the school stairs and texts her med school group chat about the unfairness of the world. One of her friends who went on to be a paramedic immediately sends emoji hearts and commiserating tears in equal measure. It helps.

Those emoji hearts continue helping her all through the paperwork. Help looks like Satoru's hand on her elbow that stops her just shy of walking into a wall. It looks like a filled mug passed into willing hands.

Like unexpected patience.

Shoko wouldn't ask for that last one, so she prioritizes accordingly and shuffles her newest patient to the top of the list. Financial threats and demands of old farts would have her swamped for the week, so Shoko pretends she simply forgot to check her email that morning and gets to work. Her friend has waited long enough.

Besides, Satoru is not a worried person. He stews and giggles like a child attempting to scream defiance. Satoru usually burns the attempts of a world powerless to set him into a nondescript beige box like the rest of them. It is vicious. Spiteful. Petty. Worry on Satoru is a near-imperceptible thing that turns poison into a halberd swung wildly through tightening tripwires. He is uncontrollable, except-

Except.

"You should tell people you care for them," Shoko says lowly as she tugs on blue gloves. Satoru smiles wide and guileless. It is a devastatingly untrustworthy look on him.

"Aw, are you concerned about little old me, Shoko-chan?"

Yes.

Somebody's got to be, but he'll be insufferable if she says that.

Shoko settles for tossing him an unimpressed look, and knows her point is received when his smile grows the tiniest bit more honest. Worry is still settled in the teeth of it. It's almost funny, how there's once again two people Shoko knows of who Satoru can worry like that for. She thought he lost that ability along with Suguru. Turns out, he just learned to hide the lengths to which he can be pushed. It's not her business what alerted Satoru to that danger.

Threats come in many shapes and sizes.

As if to prove that point, Gojo Kakashi's first instinct upon awakening is to try stabbing her with a knife he should not have.

Luckily, Satoru's first instinct upon seeing his brother wake up is to tackle-hug him right off the hospital bed, so the knife goes wide and Shoko remains uninjured to ignore them and return to her paperwork. Those idiots can figure out they're mortal and breakable without her spelling it out for them. Their terrible choices seem to cancel each other out. It makes a humorous kind of sense.

"You brought me to your school," Kakashi notes once he and Satoru have reached a limpet-shaped stalemate on Shoko's thoroughly sanitized tile floors. He pats his brother on the shoulder and executes a bendy maneuver to extract himself from the hug. It is strangely effective. Unfortunately, now Shoko refuses to believe this weirdo possesses bones.

"Aw, are you intimidated?" Satoru reaches out to pinch his older brother's cheeks and nearly gets stabbed. “All these kiddos to corrupt, and so little time! Don’t worry, nii-san. I believe in you.”

"This is an entire school-"

"Such marvelous powers of observation-"

"-Full of very mortal people-"

"-You can tell we're related, it's all in the eyes-

"-And I'm a curse-magnet," Kakashi stresses, inching suspiciously closer to the window. "This is a terrible idea."

"It kind of is," Shoko agrees, pressing her cheek further into her desk and wishing for a vacation. All she gets is paper stuck to her face.

Kakashi shoots her a thankful look. He is now her favorite of the two.

"Maybe. But then I thought, hey, showing up with a clone would be just the thing to throw those old farts into hysterics." Satoru beams. "Do you think the shock will finally take them out?"

"It won't," Shoko tells them before Satoru can make fools of them all or get his hopes up.

“Aww, where’s your ganbaru spirit? Your gaman-suru? You know, the I can do it!” Satoru says with a little hand gesture that practically sounds like a background chorus of children saying ‘yay!’ in some kind of weekend educational television program. The whole thing shows both terrible grammar and energy that’s not remotely as cutesy as he’s trying to make it.

“Killed it,” Shoko says automatically, just as Kakashi says, “Lost it on the road of life.”

“Besides,” Kakashi adds, “I thought the goal was not to make them stab me. That’s going to take some work, because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I am prime knife real estate.”

“It’s the scarecrow energy,” Satoru says. “Come on, nii-san. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

Kakashi goes quiet, and as one, their attention turns to the edge of a lurid orange book, half-hidden in the pile of fabric abandoned on a nearby chair. Shoko hadn't bothered looking at the visibly bulletproof armor Satoru brought his brother in with. It wasn't her business.

Satoru and Kakashi meet eyes - as much as they can with only one of four eyes visible - and Shoko can physically see the clown-to-clown communication transpire in real time.

Oh, no.

There's two of them.

"You're technically an assassin," Satoru notes. Shoko really hates that she's not surprised this is where the conversation is going already.

The lone eye crinkles up as if Kakashi is smiling.

"How many dishes would I have to clean for-"

"Out," Shoko interrupts. When Satoru opens his mouth to confirm something she doesn't want to know about, she adds, "plausible deniability is all I'm asking for. I don't care what's going on so long as it happens outside. Go on."

Kakashi has the utter gall to coyly wave at her while Satoru lifts him up in a princess carry. He is no longer her favorite. She is exhausted by them both equally.

Shoko presses her forehead to the desk and takes a steadying breath.

She wants to sink into the earth. Who invented bones? That was a terrible idea. Actually, who decided they should grow legs and leave the ocean at all? Look at where that’s gotten all of humanity. They have paperwork.

Wait.

The door nearly splinters when she slams it open to point an accusing finger at the brothers. They're only halfway down the hallway. Small mercies.

"Don't walk, don't run, don't do anything more strenuous than eat and breathe, got it?!"

Satoru beams, and Kakashi projects lazy indifference through the mask.

Whatever, they heard her.

Good enough.

It takes three hours for the gossip to reach Shoko that Gojo Kakashi has been instituted as a sorcerer. The movers and shakers of the jujutsu world have found the second Gojo to be steeped in similar potential as his brother. An exhibition match is being planned.

Four hours to know who came up with that bright idea.

Six hours to know they want to test his combat abilities.

Shoko stares through the ink staining her papers and realizes she needs to make a choice.

Shoko's heels click down the hallway's wooden floors like a war anthem. She likes the sound - it's a bit of a reminder to herself that she's allowed to make noise, that her words have worth. After growing up alongside two legends, she carries that with her.

They all used to command attention in different ways.

Satoru and his personality, a noxiously potent force he's crafted as if desperate to be defined by more than the weight of unbeatable power.

Suguru had a kind of danger about him like a riptide current. Hidden and waiting. It dragged him under eventually.

Shoko pushes her limits until they snap, and is very aware this makes her peers view her as terrifyingly impossible to rattle. It's her own brand of danger. A time limit.

Kakashi blinks at her from behind his nearly-neon book, unperturbed despite having been relegated to waiting outside the meeting room like a scolded child. Shoko pauses just long enough to warn him not to stand up from that chair before entering.

"He's not cleared for combat," Shoko announces as she pulls open the door. Yoshinobu-sensei glares up at her from his seat, one eye visible behind drooping white eyebrows. A gnarled hand pauses from stroking his beard, and Shoko knows to the depths of her soul that he's judging her choice of caffeine.

"Shoko-san," Yoshinobu-sensei greets.

Fuck you, old man.

There's a doctorate that goes with that name and owes her at least the sensei suffix. Yeah, she cheated her way through, but it still fucking counts, doesn’t it? If he has a problem, he can give her another raise that will allow actual retirement to maybe happen soon in her lifetime. Then they’ll all be rid of her. Everybody wins.

She offers the slightest of acceptable bows and pulls the door closed.

Satoru tips his head back on his seat to grin at her, upside down and unrepentant. "Oh?"

"Gojo Kakashi can barely stand, let alone fight." Shoko chews over her words before gritting out, "I'm barring him from using cursed techniques and anything more than bedrest. Estimated two weeks 'till walking or light stretching. If he's gotta go up stairs within the month, there damn well better be a railing."

It's something she does less than she should. Usually she just doesn't give a shit, so Shoko can count on being taken seriously.

Satoru whistles lowly, because he must aggravate every situation he is forced into.

The look Yoshinobu-sense gives her makes it clear that Shoko's next words should be offering to speed up the healing timetable, like that's something she can do easily. "He will be required to undergo a performance review to assess his skill level."

“If you’re putting a sorcerer out there,” Shoko says with all the energy of a commuting salaryman who just got rainwater in his crocs, “then I am healing them. That is my oath.”

Yoshinobu-sensei hunches over his cane. "Unfortunate."

For him?

Maybe.

Shoko, however, could not care less. She has paperwork to fill out and an autopsy to do, unless it's Tuesday. Is it Tuesday? She's planning on spilling hot asphalt over her keyboard as an excuse for missing a conference call then.

Shoko drains the last of her cup and tosses it in the trash. "I can't stay long, but that's my say."

"We will take it under advisement."

Sure.

Shoko turns around and leaves. She needs a smoke.

"You heard the doctor," Satoru says with vicious glee as she slides the door closed. "Hey, hey, did you know that-"

Wood clacks shut; sound oddly muted beyond.

Shoko takes a moment to mourn her lack of beverage, then glances to her right at the eldest troublemaker. The reluctance in his shoulders hints that she is rather lucky to find him where he was left. Kakashi meets her apathetic look with steady resignment and raises his book in a silent toast to mutual suffering. It's the first of many similar moments.

In the end, common sense prevails. Kakashi is not required to partake in an exhibition match, which is fun, fantastic, and fortunate. Shoko loves being listened to. Respect is hard to come by. The politics that accompany both Gojo brothers are horrible and best not thought of, so she switches tasks every time her mind wanders too far and tries to keep this problem in the pocket of her lab coat amongst ink stains and soft lint. It’s the wisest choice.

Shoko submerges herself in work. Days pass, crawling by with email after email until Utahime appears to drag her out of the school.

"They're terrible," Utahime says when they find a precious moment of silence at a bus stop. Aching hands curl over coffee, as if Shoko can leach the warmth into her bones. Decaf, for once.

"Pretty sure mine are worse," Shoko grumbles. "There’s a little international shop just outside the school grounds, and for some hellish reason every last student adores their food violations. They put green food coloring in the guacamole. It’s an insult to the meal."

Utahime frowns. "What?"

"Food coloring."

"Why?"

"To hide that it expired."

Shoko's eyes close.

There's an empty sort of quiet in her head, like the seaside ponds undisturbed by crashing waves a little step away. Her jaw is amber, eyes opal, and there is a crystallized stillness that drifts like swamp water through her chest. It will break under this stress. Cracks and impurities lace structural weakness through her cartilage in the form of weight on her shoulders. Exhaustion is familiar. Waking up after a full night's sleep is not.

Caffeine withdrawal, or she just isn't used to having free time not spent desperately clawing back lost hours of sleep.

Or both.

Both is good.

"Alright," Utahime says. "You've got me there."

Shoko smiles into her cup.

Exhaustion is easy, but life is still so, so good. Days like these are nectar and ambrosia, water in the desert or pulled from the tap in her kitchen sink past 3am and all the sweeter for that late hour.

They go back to Utahime's flat, and Shoko manages to claim cooking duty. She starts the rice cooker and starts rustling through the fridge, only to learn that Utahime has placed her firmly in checkmate.

"Bath's ready," is all the warning Shoko has before Utahime all but marches her down the hallway.

Sweatpants and a shirt Utahime has never worn in her life despite buying them new are dumped into her hands. The lights are all shut off but for a soft nightlight Utahime swears isn't because Shoko lives most of her life with a headache. The large rubber duckie in the corner glows like a nightlight with dim ambient color that’s just soft enough to be comfortable. On her way out, Utahime blows a kiss at Shoko like she’d throw a fastball.

The bathroom door is shut.

Mochi promptly raises a racket.

The door is opened, cat let in, and shut again.

Shoko watches Mochi curl up next to the tub and wonders what kind of hubris that must be. Someday that cat is going to slip into bathwater and emerge a tan-white ball of soaking wrath. There will be claws. Complaints. Maybe even some yelling from multiple species, if it's a particularly fancy occasion.

Everyone gets humbled eventually.

The bath is nice. Tension drains as steam rises. Just for a moment, the strain she carries with her eases, though the weight dragging her down stays. Water to marinate in up past her shoulders can only fix so much. Pain is always a dull ache and constant drag, but her burdens seem to float in the bath, at least.

Pressure becomes manageable.

She used to think everyone felt like this: like there were chains reaching from the center of the earth to wrap around her shoulders, her head, her hips. They anchor in her cheekbones and pull her down with exhaustion. Not everyone struggles so much to stand, to walk, to work. Schedules and medication heal only so much. The rest needs careful attention. Care. Effort and discipline.

Shoko closes aching eyes and wishes she were born a fish.

Fish don't have curses.

Actually, that's not true. Some fish are curses, which kind of sucks for them. Shoko pulled the guts out of one a couple months ago and learned quite a bit about how cursed energy can interact with aquatic species. That one used it to replace oxygen. The whole thing is bizarre. Theoretically she could launch one into space and it’d survive just fine beyond issues like a lack of atmospheric pressure.

…Shoko still wishes she were born a fish.

Tomorrow she will go back to work. She isn't even being called in to do her actual job - no, tomorrow is all for office politics.

What a fucking farce.

Ceramic presses into her cheek as Shoko props her face up beside the cat. One brilliant green eye opens, pupil contracting and expanding as it adjusts to warm yellow lamplight. The cat's nose twitches.

"You don't even have a salary," Shoko whispers. Her voice catches and scrapes like thick paint under a palette knife.

One white paw reaches out, toe pads pressing against Shoko's nose. Mochi rolls, one triangle ear nearly brushing the water. Another paw lands on Shoko's chin. Back feet stick straight up, claws extended and toes wiggling with the stretch.

Yeah.

Mochi's too cute to work.

Would that they all be so lucky.

Shoko exits the bathroom in worn sleepwear to the smell of cooking garlic and onion.

After evening has fallen, she flops onto the empty futon by Utahime's occupied one. It's warm, proof Utahime plugged in her hair dryer and swept it under the blankets like a cheap heating pad. The mellow lamp between their beds stays on for a few minutes of precious silence. Mochi arrives to purr and make biscuits on Utahime's blankets.

These are the good moments.

Almost nothing hurts.

Utahime reaches out of her pile of blankets, hand offered across the floor. Shoko stretches out her own arm, braving cold in the apartment air from where her shirt sleeve ends with its promise of warmth. Their fingers lace together like the stitches holding Shoko's heart in one piece.

"Good night, ‘Hime."

Utahime's free hand blindly slaps at the light until it turns off. She has to twist at an awkward angle to do it, all elbows and the soft clumsiness that only appears with this apartment's safety.

"'Night."

The new sorcerer settles in well enough.

He's a terrible patient and a headache to deal with, but Kakashi seems aware she's regularly pulling overtime to get him functional. He never goes too far out of his way to antagonize her, and Shoko repays it by watching her cruel streak. With a little communication they strike a comfortable balance. From the rumors, she is one of the very few people he's not actively trying to tempt into homicide.

That's a misconception she's never quite understood.

Suffering does not breed wisdom. It does not cultivate patience or serenity. Gojo Kakashi is chronically ill and raging against the world. He sulks and thrashes recklessly against his limits, baiting every sorcerer he meets into a fight with poisonous cheer that mirrors his little brother's habit of smiling though anger. Shoko understands from the depths of her soul. She, too, knows what it is to be defined by too-confining limits, to wake up in the night because everything hurts too much to sleep. People like them are screaming inside, but have only headache and heartache to show for the effort. The only difference is that Kakashi turns to trolling and bad literature while Shoko marinates in apathetic smoke-drunk sorrows.

They are mutually poor role models for this kind of thing.

Kakashi sends off several Valentine's Day glitter bombs. Shoko lets him put down her flat as the return address, if only so she can witness the fallout. It goes as expected. Sheer lethality seems to be keeping the remaining Gojo elders from sniping Kakashi at long range.

Utahime watches it all from Kyoto warily. She and the new guy get along disconcertingly well for all that they logically shouldn’t.

Shoko puts it out of her mind and turns to more important matters. The students are sparring with no regard for their health, and the new first year incoming batch has only two potential recruits. Keeping them alive to adulthood is a fool's errand. Still worth a try, though.

At least it seems all the students are enjoying their summer break.

Something Shoko has never really talked about to anyone but her two closest friends in high school is that there’s an empathy component to her technique.

Cursed energy is created out of emotions. It’s a funny thing, how the nature of those components are mixed and compressed into a tangible form that can interact with the spiritual layer of the world. For an introspective technique like hers, Shoko is very aware of what negative and positive emotions are bleeding into that energy. It’s an awareness that can’t be turned off.

And the survival instinct that’s keeping Kakashi together only shuts off when he gets gleeful enough about annoying the higher-ups. It even halts the grief that follows him like a cloud of mold spores, though that’s not surprising for someone who lost the first twenty or so years of their life to an illness that may never be completely cured.

She really could not care less about who he’s tempting into murder, so long as the fallout does not reach her.

So Shoko shoos Kakashi away and stitches him back together through a series of appointments.

They might be something like friends.

Maybe.

He’s less malevolent than Satoru, more willing to let her pass out on the sofa of his ramshackle house in the woods, when leaving campus would go against her contract but staying awake would lead to injury. In return, she drops the formality and occasionally heals him outside the clinic. The big nerd hates the smell of cleaning chemicals. She bullies him into caring for himself, he adjusts his life to allow her a few seconds of sleep, and they keep each other alive.

One night he shows up at her window, Utahime behind him and Nanami hauled over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and demands they roast a wild boar he somehow hunted and killed for fun. Utahime claimed there was no ethical problem with game animals the government is literally advertising to minimize farm damage, but Shoko is already both not sure enough to ask and too tired of the hereditary Gojo nonsense to question it. Nanami later informs them that boar-hunting alone is ill advised. How he sounds regretfully familiar with the process is a mystery Shoko is content to ignore until she forgets it. Besides, if Kakashi can take out an adult wild boar while alone, he can hunt however he wants.

So.

Friends.

He’s like a feral cat.

But when Kakashi wanders through the door to her infirmary with a book practically glued to his face and a little brother skipping at his heels, Shoko isn't expecting thanks. That's not something doctors get in the jujutsu world when they bar sorcerers from fighting. Theirs is the duty of resupplying soldiers in this never-ending war against curses, and any spare time can be spent in more productive ways than loitering around and recovering.

They get complaints from impatient brats. Pleas for help with fallen teammates and friends. Resentment for failure to fix the world. Demands from their superiors.

Not thanks.

"You didn't have to buy us time back then," Kakashi says vaguely, and it's honest and cheeky like the lethal menace Shoko just knows he'll end up becoming once fully healed. "Thanks."

Sounds fake, but okay. Sure. "Is this because I'm about to operate on you?"

Satoru faux-gasps at her cruelty, but Kakashi just crinkles his visible eye.

"Maa, didn't you know? It's good to be on decent terms with your doctor."

Shoko rolls her eyes and checks her own reserves of reverse-cursed energy as she drones, "shut up and lie down. Satoru, you can sit in the chair if Kakashi is fine with that, but one step closer and I'll ruin your life."

Satoru parks himself on the chair, elbows on his knees and grin a bit too wide. "That was almost a decent threat."

"I have blackmail and your brother's phone number."

Satoru makes a sound like she just hit him with a rubber chicken, and Kakashi wheezes a laugh until Shoko shoves a clipboard in his face to fill out.

She's nearly finished coaxing his cursed energy into something a little less noxious, and by all accounts he's capable of entering the field physically. He's got enough of a clean bill of health. At the very least, she's not going to limit his exercise anymore.

The problem is that he's still functionally curse-bait. Stepping outside the barrier will make his presence light up like a beacon.

Last night she scraped together just enough sleep for steady hands. It’s not enough to deal with everything, but… enough to let him go without fighting for his life every second he's outside a barrier. She can grant him subtlety. Mostly. Particularly sensitive curses will still notice that something's wrong, though.

It takes three hours of ridiculously delicate focus on Kakashi's cursed and reverse-cursed energy.

Three hours of mind-numbing details, miniscule adjustments, and use of old techniques that are all but crumbled to dust.

But she does it, tells Satoru to keep an eye on his brother while she passes out for five minutes, and tosses her gloves in the trash. He'll notice if anything is wrong. That's pretty much what his technique was made for, after all. Whether he has to climb onto the cot and wrap his spindly brother in a hug is another matter entirely.

Kakashi endures the obnoxious mother-henning with a resigned grace Shoko is very familiar with. Satoru tends to inspire that reaction in his close friends.

It's fine.

It's done.

She can sleep for a few damn minutes.

Shoko's eyes slip closed the second she collapses at her desk. She wonders, as she notes the heavy pull of drowsiness, how this will come back to bite her.

Technically she shouldn't nod off at work.

Technically.

Satoru has the basic decency to keep his voice at a manageable level as she dozes. It's not behavior anyone expects from a man who does his best to embody a lethal court jester to the utmost degree, but people forget that Satoru knows weakness. He knows how easy bones crack and shatter; how fragile lives are when contrasted with Infinity. Untouchability throws the world into stark comparison. He can probably see the buildup of stress in her mind, the blood flow and developing bags under her eyes, and the red tracing over her sclera as capillaries burst from lack of sleep.

So, no.

Satoru's not going to piss off a doctor. Much less his friend, who he saw go from a grungy kid with an attitude problem to the chain-smoking wine aunt she is now.

It is, Shoko thinks as she accidentally drops into a deeper sleep, his most redeeming quality.

She wakes up eighteen hours later with a killer headache on Satoru’s ridiculously expensive couch. Some merciful deity has encouraged Satoru to keep the lights off and leave a paper napkin on the table next to her in their usual signal. Shoko remembers high school. She remembers collapsing in the back of black cars, both her boys beside her after a mission accomplished. They’d all nod off in the wake of an adrenaline high. She can picture it now - Suguru sitting up straight like some kind of monster, Shoko leaning on his left shoulder, and Satoru drooling on his right.

Good times.

Then one died, one lost his anchor, and one lost her way.

Now she's waking up and her mouth feels like something died in it, her eyes are crusted over, and the blanket tossed over her has slipped away to leave her cold as a frozen hell. At least the lights are off.

Small mercies.

Shoko grabs the napkin and finds her way to the fridge, cracking it open to pour holy light across kitchen tiles and countertops. Squinting past illuminated sweets, Shoko fishes out the takeout.

Yakisoba.

Nice.

Dim streetlights pour illumination in from open windows, helping Shoko stumble towards Satoru’s bedroom door. Luck and little else keep her from tripping on the carpet before finding it nearly closed. He even put a nameplate on it. Cute. She does him the favor of opening it past the carpet to preserve the expensive repairs from this exact scenario, which repeats at least biannually. Habit makes her check there’s no weird knives tucked on top of the door frame before stepping back and kicking the door open with little ceremony. Noodles are shoved into her mouth as she peers in.

Satoru’s not there. Kakashi is passed out like a starfish, but Shoko could care less about that one. She’s looking for her honorary brother. The sweet-tooth dumbass.

Oh, that fucking idiot.

She retreats to the room she was in and yep, there he is, passed out while sitting in the window like the world’s most dandelion-shaped target. Some people make the worst decisions. Worse still, they have the skills to half-way justify it, which only makes the dumbass ideas hit slightly different. This feels like a rosemary-flavored mistake. Satoru has herbs growing in a line of pots by his bedroom, though it's only recently that she discovered he isn't at fault for the little garden at all.

She thinks the rosemary is named Bisuke.

Or Pakkun.

Whatever.

Someday Satoru is going to get sniped.

Shoko considers kicking her former teammate for old time’s sake.

Upsides: he’s near indestructible and wouldn’t be hurt by the fall. He also wouldn't be offended - if anything, it'd be nostalgic given what he and Suguru used to pull when they devolved into wrestling.

Downsides: he’d be loud about it.

She kicks him.

Gently.

Really, it's his own surprise and need for drama that tips him out the window. They both know this, but his squirrel brain loves it for some reason.

Once Satoru has been defenestrated, re-fenestrated, and subsequently complained about the entire process, Shoko is feeling a little better.

She spends the next day at Satoru's apartment, sheltering from her responsibilities like she's sixteen years old again. Sixteen and bright. Sixteen and proud. Sixteen and able to shirk these duties without counting the lives her days off cost on tackily painted nails.

But everyone needs a break.

Overwork is a medical condition.

Shoko lies on the scraggly rug in Satoru's apartment, head on a pillow from the couch and blanket on her lap. She watches the wind blow thin curtains into the room like tidal waves. It is the way of things; this push and pull. Sunlight paints the fabric brilliant white, like it's washed the cotton with water, time, and thyme.

Ceramic clinks.

"A medic's first duty is to heal and keep healing until the job is done," Kakashi says as he sets a cup of tea on the floor somewhere by her elbow. "A medic's second duty is to let their comrades hold the fighting far away from them."

Shoko sighs from the depths of her soul.

"A medic's third duty," he says, "is to die last."

"Which old journal did you pull that from?"

Kakashi smiles behind the mask.

It's such a non-answer.

Shoko looks at him with a doctor's mind and notes how the shadow under his visible eye is already lesser. The other is hidden under fabric, because despite whatever injury cost him it, Kakashi scorns real eye patches. He's so weird. Shoko loves that for him. She also fully supports the healthy color he's already regaining.

"Alright, then," she says, too exhausted and aching to really push this or any other matter. "Keep your secrets."

"Headache?"

"Fading." Shoko eyes him, noting the tension he always holds. It's lesser, yes, but not gone. "You?"

Kakashi tips his head to the side. "Better."

Alright.

Shoko debates hauling herself upright and decides against it. "So, how's Satoru treating your new read?"

Kakashi hacks out an oddly lupine laugh and plops down to sprawl just out of reach. They sit on the ground, forsaking the couch entirely, as he tells her exactly how scandalized his little brother is at his newest choice in smutty romance novels.

Satoru drags Megumi off on a field trip and comes back with a vessel of Sukuna.

Shoko hears about it and mourns all the time she'll have to spend patching up a teenager with that kind of risk assessment skills. The kid looked at a shriveled-up finger that radiated pure evil, and said: wouldn't it be wild if someone ate that? Hey. Hey, is anyone gonna…? Let me just… just put this in my mouth like a toddler.

Then he didn't wait for an answer.

Disgusting.

Who even does that?

Kakashi and Nanami have started a running bet on what kind of monsters Satoru's students will turn into. One of them's already apparently unhinged, and Megumi goes completely wild if he's pushed far enough in a fight. Shinigami users resemble their spirits over time due to the leaking energy of their techniques, and it shows. Kugisaki – the new student Shoko doesn’t know past paperwork – has pride to spare and brutality to match. She's got a technique the higher-ups can market as merciful. Elegant. It hides the blood.

They're going to be world-shakers.

Do we get paid overtime for this, Nanami types into their group chat. Kakashi sends him a reply made only of assorted emoji hearts.

No💖, he adds like an afterthought.

Ugh.

Shoko would bet on Satoru snapping and killing the elders before Itadori Yuuji consumes all ten fingers, but Kakashi is right there. Waiting. Lurking in the rafters like an evil little patch of mold. Her workload is heavy enough without this all boiling over, because if there's no fatalities due to internal squabbling, Shoko will be honestly surprised. Stress bubbles under her skin.

She needs to do her taxes.

Shoko goes home, flops face-first onto her couch, and screams into the cushions.

An email notification pops up, one solitary light in the dark apartment. Shoko glares at her phone from the corner of her eye and wonders who will die if she calls in sick tomorrow.

She won't.

Some days, Shoko's mind and body calls it quits. She saves her sick days for when she physically can't get out the door. It's not worth wasting time off that will be needed unexpectedly later. Burnout is hard to fight when her cursed technique is holding up half the jujutsu world. Doctors don't sleep enough, but sorcerers push their medical teams to the edge daily. Shoko thinks it's part of the exorcist culture.

There are so many people who are irreplaceable and running on fumes all at once.

Mei Mei-senpai would make the list if she weren't expensive enough to make the elders wary. Self-employed and a prodigious sensory technique, combined with perfect awareness of her value. She answers to nobody but her bank account. It's not a fair comparison when the rest of them trudge along through political quagmire.

Rats in a maze.

Mei Mei-senpai made a place for herself. Suguru cracked under the pressure. Satoru kicks the whole maze around until it rearranges to his liking, damn the consequences and everyone else. Shoko wonders who will be next to shift this house of cards.

It's trembling.

Do the elders see?

She passes out on that couch, too tired to heat dinner in the microwave. It takes most of her energy to plug in her phone and snag a blanket from the floor.

Morning sun drifts through the windows.

Screeching music drills into her ears.

Five, Shoko tells herself. Four. Three, two, one- She pushes herself off the couch and smacks into the floor. A bruised hip and elbow chivvy her upright, then through her morning routine.

Email notifications follow her out the door.

She is halfway awake by the train station.

Three-quarters awake and covering a yawn by the time she reaches the school entrance.

A man in a business suit is waiting at her office door. Shoko scans him for injuries out of habit, notes the regulation white dress shirt, black jacket, black slacks, and wonders who she pissed off this time.

He introduces himself but Shoko's coffee burns her hands, and she misses his name. It feels rude to ask again, so she gets a business card. She finds she does not need it when he steps aside, and a wizened old man appears from behind him in the world’s shittiest magic trick.

An esteemed elder.

Not one she's ever spoken to, though.

He has questions about her two least favorite patients.

About what happened to the last Gojo head.

About how strong Kakashi is. Does she know he beat a special grade with his bare hands and no formal training? How did he do it? Did she detect anomalies while healing him?

Confidentiality is something they seem rather intent on ignoring, no matter how often she cites the law. Not like that could hold anyone back in the jujutsu world, but Shoko is still beholden to her oaths.

In all honesty she really doesn't pay them much notice, but they’re useful. Sometimes.

Like now.

"I am delighted to inform you that the Gojo brothers are none of my business," Shoko says flatly as she flicks on the overhead lights. "It's my new favorite motto. The world is weird, and I'm tired, so I've decided that unless given a good reason, I am minding my own business."

"He is nearly a curse-user," the elder notes, which is a captivatingly bold lie. Kakashi is unhinged as a half-rabid wolf, but he hides it right up until someone threatens his brother.

Besides, what’s the definition of curse-user? Someone who has a technique and uses it in a way that’s not perfectly what the old busybodies want? Big fuckin’ whoop. They can call her when she makes the list. Until then, Shoko is going to sit in her lab sharing a smoke with her wine and her misery.

"Oh?" Shoko says, as if distracted by finding gloves. They're in the same place as always, but she rustles through a cabinet to show proper disdain for the authorities. Ignoring him feels delightfully petty. "Is that all?"

"If he refuses to submit his techniques for testing again, we will take measures."

Satoru would have a field day with that.

She kind of wants them to take those cute little ‘measures’ just so everyone getting comfy with their unquestioned power remembers a bit of humility. There's no need for the jujutsu world to resemble a dictatorship quite so closely.

"I simply do not care about that." The curse she needs to inspect makes a heavy splat sound as she drops it on the dissection table.

The old man pointedly lifts a sleeve over his nose.

He is ignored.

If she cycles her technique internally, Shoko can cleanse her lungs of chemical fumes with every inhale. This ability is not replicable. Sooner rather than later, she will be left alone. Shoko pries cartilage loose from a femur and cracks it open to sniff at cursed bone marrow.

Apparently he has no clue how to deal with her apathy, because he rambles on as if she didn't say anything. It's annoying. Shoko guts another curse and spills bleach across the floor until he gets the hint and leaves. Good riddance.

Windows are thrown open, fans turned on, the floor cleaned, and Shoko contentedly settles elbow-deep in her research.

She stays there until her lunch break, which Shoko uses to march into the forest towards a tiny little cottage-like residence Satoru recently pushed, prodded, and bullied his way into securing. The idea of giving a former curse-magnet access to a barrier space that can contain that issue should it resurface was just logical enough for the elders. They chose a little scrap of land in the forest, had the beefiest barriers they could think of built up, and seemed content to forget about it entirely. Whether the building appeared within these barriers before or after barrier creation is unclear. It has a coffee machine, a couch, and an owner that doesn't mind her crashing at his place for five blessed minutes.

Kakashi is good like that, even if he's a menace.

Luckily, her friend is sitting outside like usual these days. He's sharpening blades the old-fashioned way with a whetstone, though Shoko ignores this.

"Is anyone listening in?"

Kakashi turns towards her just enough to watch, likely caught off guard by the bluntness. They tend to poke at each other and complain about whatever inconvenience caught their fraying attention. It’s a habit built out of long hours dragging his health into something manageable. They know each other's boundaries; Shoko complains, Kakashi trolls, and they mutually go easy on each other.

Kakashi leans back until he's leaning on one of the paper ofuda plastered around his little building. "No."

"When this all goes up in flames," Shoko says, "do me a favor? Kill your targets."

Kakashi's hands pause on the blade. "That's treason."

Treason.

What an archaic term for the mercy she's asking.

"I am so tired," Shoko says quietly. "Please. Don't let them push my technique past its limits in the aftermath."

Stone and steel scrape together one last time before Kakashi chooses another blade.

"Some things never change," he says, so quietly Shoko wonders if she's supposed to hear. Then, louder, "alright."

Thank goodness and good riddance.

Shoko could refuse to heal whoever shows up for emergency treatment in the aftermath of that inevitable conflict. She could pick and choose. Doing so would break many rules, though.

Shoko isn't Kakashi or Satoru. Her worth and use fail if she refuses to offer them up for consumption. It is an exhausting way of life that leaves her feeling hollow and beaten, but she is still standing. Despite it all, Shoko is still here. That matters.

"Thanks," is all she says.

A/N: Regarding how/why Kakashi reincarnated: thats really up to you as a reader. I, personally, think the Sage was skipping stones across the tanabata star river and accidentally beaned a ninja in the head with one. A second chance at life is his apology gift. Kakashi remembers none of this. He is living off the goal to someday figure out how to summon his doggos, completely unaware that the ninja world he left is dealing with the fact that several dozen witnesses saw an elite assassin get struck down from the sky. Divine judgement to the extreme. They then saw an old due with horns and unmistakable resemblance to many folktales to show up, scratch his head at the whole aftermath, and go "whoops" before dipping. My basis for this theory is that I think it's funny

#day by day we stumble on #my fic #jjk #naruto #tired cat talks #the next chapter will be posted YEARS after this so im not worried about ao3's team shelving this kind of thing to work on later #wrapped it up in a hazily ok way so there's no cliffhangers or anything bc of that #cheers yall

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