#i'm aware vows between people aren't typically done. but it was explained that this is because it's difficult not impossible

[ikemenomegas]

Nightmare for Gojo? Because he's kind of a nightmare 😂

He is kind of a nightmare [affectionately] isn't he XD. Hmm how about in a nightmare?

i.

You wake with a quiet gasp, alone in a room that is familiar but not yours.

Throat feeling too thick, you sit up and fumble for the cup of water on the bedside table. It is stale, but it forces you to hold your hands steady and you grip it just a little tighter than normal while you slowly cycle cursed energy through your body.

It warms your limbs and wakes you up. You're unsure whether to be disappointed about that. It's still dark outside and the dull white numbers of the clock in the bookshelf read some time late after one in the morning. Too late to be wandering but you shrug a thick oversized shirt over the clothes you had put on - too wary of being woken by more than your own mind to change into pajamas - and pad out the door, into the chill November night.

You can't sit still while images, real and imagined, tear around your mind. The path before you goes up and around the mountain the school is built around, and you start to climb, lungs tingling with cold.

No one stops you.

You weren't there in the barrier on Halloween. You're not on trial. You're not under arrest or even truly censured. You're just... remanded to the school. Waiting. While they decide whether or not you're enough trouble to execute outright.

Satoru has made enough of a nuisance of himself that you're fairly confident they'll ignore you in comparison. Especially once they won't be able to prove any binding connection. It makes you wonder for a moment how intentional it is the way he pushes away everyone but the college's dozen wayward teenagers, and how much is just his bad personality.

Children he can protect. The world of sorcerer's is a harsh one, but it has still learned to excuse youth and its inexperience.

It makes you wonder again why he has you.

Your nose is cold by the time you run out of road and end up at your destination. Night washes out color and it hasn't helped the constant replay in your head, like the pages of a book flipping back and forth: bodies surrounding a bed, moving the bare figure on it, dead to the world.

When you enter the infirmary, the familiar scent of antiseptic and medicine just makes you shudder. The lights are low, half of them turned off given the late hour, tiled walls and floors gleaming dully. You move deeper into the building, listening, but the only footsteps are yours.

At every corner, you're apprehensive of what you might find.

The infirmary is dim and gray as the vision that woke you where pooling light doesn't touch. You hesitate once, just the tip of your finger on the door to a room you have been in before, and then steel your nerves and slide it open.

The fact Shoko can't describe how to create or use reverse-cursed energy used to frustrate Satoru. You'd thought she was enigmatic, since then you've come to understand.

Even when you can lay out the rules of a technique in perfectly comprehensible terms, the feeling is not so easy to describe.

How does Gojo Satoru make something that literally shouldn't exist? The answer lies in mathematics. The way Shoko repairs the human body is based in biology and physiology. Your own technique is only an answer to certain laws of physics.

Even Suguru, whose power was the closest to the kind of pure and terrible magic that you used to think existed only in storybooks, who didn't want to explain himself...

You'd guessed over a decade ago that his physical form was acting as some kind of barrier but the truth is you still don't understand it.

Even knowing what you know, maybe you don't understand any of the people around you.

Just like how Shoko can't quite explain herself, she can't explain why Nobara hasn't woken up yet. The curse called Mahito should have rent her to ribbons like it had done to Nanami but sorcerers are good at subverting what should happen.

Instead, she like so many other things, is simply a secret here, her injury frozen while Shoko carefully tries to augment whatever technique Nobara discovered at the edge of death.

She'll be fine, that's the verdict, but with nothing else to do, you come here to see her, to remind yourself of what it is you're protecting.

You sit on a hospital's version of a some kind of padded bench, and rest your elbows on your thighs and drift into an uneasy sort of vigil.

ii.

"Nightmare?"

Megumi's voice jolts you out of your doze. You can't have been here long because you don't yet feel the chill, but you hadn't heard him approach the door. He doesn't look convinced when you try and smile at him.

"You always did know. Even as a child."

"You shouldn't try to hide it."

You just give him another smile and Megumi sighs, settling down next to you on the bench. It's familiar the same way you sat down was familiar. The heaviness is a mirror to your own. You've seen him here and have left him alone while he works out whatever he has to at his healing teammate's side, silencing your steps to give him privacy.

"I'm proud of you, you know."

Megumi starts. He's been different, since Shibuya. You all have been, the world has changed, but there's a weight to his steps that's just... different.

Megumi rests his head against the wall, disordered hair even messier at the back than usual. He must have been here before you and stepped out. You must really look worn down if he broke the unspoken rule you'd both been abiding by. Or maybe he just wanted to be around a familiar face for a while.

The light in Nobara's room is turned down, and it's like the scratch of discordant strings, the screech of a train, the way the grey false memory of your dream cuts through your chest.

There's no such thing as prophetic sorcery. Nothing is set that far in stone.

And yet.

"I know what you're trying to do. The strategy is good, but if it's a choice between your lives and accomplishing your mission--"

You trail off while Megumi looks curiously down at where you're still hunched over your folded hands. You have just enough courage to let your hands shake a little in exchange for meeting his eyes and seeing the guard there, and the trust.

You turn away before you can see that most precious thing break.

"Take your lives."

You can feel the way Megumi stiffens beside you. He's been raised by the Strongest sorcerer in the world and told more than once that he has potential to be that equal. He can be forgiven the hope and arrogance that one can win it all.

Although... they'll be with Hakari, so maybe not.

There's always a price to be paid though. If the kids don't come back, if this kid you've known since he was six and far too serious--

"Gojo-sensei has done a lot for everyone," Megumi says, voice dark and low.

He tries to keep you out of it, is what you don't say. There's lines he won't cross. The spirit possessing our old classmate's body found one of them.

Even though the kid's taken up the mantle, clan head at his age, it's still worlds cleaner than it could have been.

"The world needs him," Megumi adds, and you say nothing to the slightly desperate edge. The world needs a lot of adults to do more than they are and some adults to do less than they've done.

"The world might be able to rise to the occasion," you reply, and you're trying for dry but even to your ears you just sound tired.

"Don't you want him back?" Megumi finally asks, quieter. He doesn't talk about the thing between you and Satoru. It's been what he knows most of his life even when he hated the "lanky layabout teenage delinquent" that showed up in front of him like some kind of criminal. He's old enough now to assume what is still, for the time being, true.

"I think that Gojo is a little safer in there than the rest of us out here." It's stupid to be this emotional about it, it was just a dream. "Don't you think?" you try and joke.

He gives you the kind of look he sometimes give Satoru when he does something to try and derail a conversation in the worst way possible.

"Well whatever Megumi-kun is going to do, is what Megumi-kun is going to do," you say, leaning back so your head touches the wall too, the chill seeping through your skin as you speak blithely into the air.

Megumi leans back and sags a little sideways, sighing. "You shouldn't worry so much," he finally says.

I wouldn't worry so much if you valued your own life a little more, but how can he? A sorcerer's life is lived in the service of a world which barely knows they exist, fighting the kind of battles that barely hold the line against curses. Protecting people from their own creeping self destruction.

You had normal friends, once upon a time. Sometimes you still see those people. You make excuses for your absences and fend off well meaning attempts to get you to try and date someone, to come out drinking and catch up, to see them more often than middle school reunions.

Satoru doesn't get it. He's never had any of that. A normal life? It's pointless to try and you don't miss it. Being a sorcerer is what you can do. It's just a hard truth that you have to do it alone.

Satoru wants the students strong enough to be an indispensable threat, to fill the ranks and tip the balance of power. You want them strong enough to stand together.

Sometimes you think that makes you the worse of the two of you.

"You don't have to take it all on your own. I know I'm not around a lot, so it's okay if my words don't carry as much weight. If it makes you feel better though, you all are the plan, so you can't go around dying. Satoru knows you're important to changing the world so--" don't let him ask you to die for him.

The mark between your shoulder blades burns.

"I'll be careful," Megumi says, but his voice is weird, too close, and you know why a second later as his head lands on your shoulder, curling up a little into himself like when he was younger. "I'll make sure Itadori is careful too."

He's hidden his face in the high collar of his jacket but your own embarrassment is harder to hide up close. "Well," you settle in, moving the bare minimum so Megumi can rest a little more comfortably without being embarrassed into leaving completely. "I'll be here. Probably."

His elbow digs into your side hard enough to knock your breath out.

"Ouch. I think Nobara is rubbing off on you. You know she's going to be insufferable about the reverse cursed technique once she wakes up."

Megumi hummed, amused, but went quiet after that. You felt as his breath deepened and more of his weight dropped against you and he eventually fell sleep.

iii.

"You smell like him," Shoko says, leaning against the wall. She doesn't have to say who. You are wearing a piece of clothing you'd left in his room for far too long and your old classmate has always had a sharp nose.

"Hmm," you distracted yourself by checking on Megumi again. You want to smooth the unruly hair from his forehead like you had done when he was a mistrustful boy, tug the wrinkles from his collar like you had when he was an angry middle schooler.

Now he's a sorcerer, somewhere between a man and a child, steady and kind and tired. You can see the dark circles under his eyes and the way he slouches when he walks has to do with that new weight he carries.

When you look up, Shoko is still looking at you. She hasn't given you a look like that since first year when none of you liked or trusted one another further than you had to.

You incline your head towards Nobara's bed anyways, giving her permission to enter the room. She doesn't need it. The infirmary sits squarely in your mind as part of Shoko's territory. When she's administering to her patients, she is the only one in charge.

Still, she gives you a wide berth on her way to check on Nobara and it gives you an odd sense of relief. You want to say it's because you came to talk to her as much as checking on the injured students, but begrudgingly you admit she's treating you like she would treat any Alpha guarding their pups. She comes close only to the one you've granted permission until you feel safe around her again.

They're not your kids, you remind yourself guiltily. You don't have that kind of right, no matter how protective you feel.

If I am ever incapacitated, look under the loose floorboard in his old room. You know the one where he kept Shoko's--

Cigarettes, yeah.

As if any of you could forget. It was so long ago, more years spent apart than together, but that year still haunts you like a ghost.

Earlier in the afternoon, you'd followed those instructions and found your own piece of Satoru's contingency plan. Then you'd watched it burn between your fingertips, turned to less than ash.

You wonder if Shoko is here for Nobara or for you.

She checks the girl's pulse and you watch her close her eyes in concentration, a golden glow filtering through Nobara's veins.

You're glad to see her chest rise and fall a little easier.

When Shoko finishes you use a tiny bit of your technique to draw her scent towards you on a breeze. She smells like smoke.

The scent flashes grey over those old memories of delinquent days.

What the hell are you two doing?

It's disconcerting to be left out of the loop, but as Satoru's letter proved, maybe it's the right thing to do. You do have your own part to play after all. It won't do to die yet.

You don't want to wake Megumi though. It's been a long time since the last time you've been able to take care of him. It's the only thing that's felt right since Satoru was sealed, since Nanami died.

It's not going to be yours much longer in any case. Maybe that's why Shoko quietly sits down at a desk in the corner and starts making notes in Nobara's chart.

He's not your kid. He's not even Satoru's kid, he was never adopted as a ward, the clans just didn't fight the sponsorship. And he's a few years too old to be able to pretend, which is probably a good thing. What kind of parent wants this kind of job for their child, for children to meet early deaths? Some of the students grew up being told there was honor in it, some that this was what they were born to do.

Megumi's smart, loyal. He could have found a way into the world of non-sorcerers and to a normal life. But he would never leave his sister behind or the promise he made. You don't think he's capable of leaving behind the people he's decided to care about. It would carve out his heart.

That more than anything reminds you you're not his Appa. He had a father and Satoru killed him.

"Megumi-kun" you say softly.

He stirs, but doesn't open his eyes. A muffled chuffing chirp is all you get as he turns his head into your arm.

Shoko's pen stills on the paper for a second before restarting. Still it's a second too long and it's probably the tension in your body that makes Megumi blink open his eyes before you call for him again.

"Sorry to wake you," you whisper.

Megumi sits up slowly, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand.

"You should go sleep in a bed. I'll come get you if anything changes."

He tips his head around your body to see Shoko, probably doodling nonsense right now to keep your instincts at bay.

Maybe he gets it because he nods sleepily and stretches when he stands.

You shrug off the oversized shirt, leaving you in your typical sorcerer blacks. The shirt is more like a jacket anyways, with a thick weave and heavy material, and it will help keep him warm on the walk back. "It'll be colder now, so don't linger, okay?"

He takes it with a little bit of red in his cheeks, but you already guessed he was leaning on you at least partly because it smelled like Satoru. Satoru who's always been there no matter how much Megumi didn't want to ask too much. He puts his nose in the collar as if he's cold.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

You hope your expression is a little more convincing this time. "I'll be fine. Get some rest."

When he leaves Shoko stays. She sits heavily beside you, her fingers tapping on her thighs like they want for something to do.

People don't look at Shoko. She is, like the school, a secret kept with silence. She keeps her own counsel the same way.

Once, you thought you would always know where to find her, but sitting here, in the pre-dawn dark, she is both familiar and a stranger.

The dream is fading, as dreams do. Already it has slowed so that it is no longer a familiar body, limp, spare, Hellenic muscle of his naked flank and thighs dimpling under some masked, gowned creature's handling. Turning your mate so that he lies lateral, faced away from you while horror yanks you back like a hook through your navel.

The scene turns to snapshots and the dull, ill feeling remaining to thrum through your body. It's a bitter match to your resolve.

"How's Toge?"

Shoko shrugs. "The wound is sealed but it's still resisting my technique. We have to wait for his blood supply to build back up before anyone tries again."

"I'll see him when he wakes up then."

"You're planning to stay the night?"

"You expect me to sleep after this?"

Shoko sighed, looking suddenly more tired. "You're really going through with it then? It's only been three days."

"They made the declaration this evening. Against any argument that this Getou isn't Suguru, the higher-ups have decided. Satoru's conditions have been met."

"Being his mate could still give you some pull," Shoko said, "even mated to the exiled clan head, you'll carry weight with some of the factions."

"They're already hunting Yaga. If I want to live long enough to make any difference at all, it has to be before they start sincerely going down the list and assigning bounties."

Her lips twist in distaste. She might be aware of sorcerer politics but you've always gotten the distinct impression she tries not to be.

"I didn't expect you to try talking me out of it." Aren't you in on whatever he's planning? Either way you're getting close to dangerous territory.

"It's not exactly a standard procedure but you should still know what your options are."

You carefully pressed the tips your fingers into into your left palm. You'd never thought of yourself as having pride exactly in the bond-mark. People in the non-sorcerer world could show theirs off but it meant something different in the sorcerer world.

Even though both of you typically had it covered, it's been there for almost four years, a constant reassurance of the promise you'd made to him. One hand comes up to grip your own shoulder.

Will he feel it?

"It's what has to be done," you say. You remember Satoru's wide hand coming to rest on your back, steering you clear of the Harajuku crowds. You remember brushing against the mark with the tip of your nose as you leaned over the back of the sofa, arms wrapped around his shoulders. You remember talking with him about it in the weeks before you'd bitten the mark bloody and deep at the very base of his neck. You remembered the way you own spine had bent when he placed his own mark on you.

"Ready?"

When could anybody who has made this choice be ready?

When you nod and Shoko's hand slips down the back of your neck and under the hem of your uniform to where your bond-mark hides.

The three steps of mating in the sorcery world are each a binding vow.

The bond vow is a less formal, more emotional tether, and the fear of loss makes one stronger. The emotional difficulty of leveraging that fear lending a sorcerer increased power. A marriage vow is a declaration, saying that this was someone important to you whom you would protect as family placed a target on each sorcerer in the bond and heightened the sense of risk. In the mating vow, the bond-mark that goes with it claims ownership and power, one over the other, sealing the other two bonds so that no one else could easily break them.

In return, its destruction destroys all physical evidence of the other two.

The bond-mark is a seal and can only be broken by the death contingency or by cursed and reverse-cursed energy being used on the seal at the same time. It's intentionally difficult, meant to protect the powers achieved by sorcerers entangled this way.

Shoko sets her fingers into the faint indented marking of the bond-mark bitten over where your heart chakra would be pierced through.

The mark resists her, but the crawling of your skin lets you know that the scar is already changing.

Better not to draw it out.

With your hand on the other side of your chest, you push cursed energy into the mark, swirling slowly around the elliptic shape. It feels hot and cold and like pins and needles as you break the muscle and collagen apart and Shoko knits it back together.

She presses her fingers into the smooth skin, checking on her work. But you can feel it. The bond-mark is gone.

As if it were never there at all.

It doesn't make any difference. You couldn't feel Satoru's presence before he was sealed or after.

It shouldn't make a difference, but you feel both lighter and heavier, like Gojo's gravity is still rooted somewhere in your body.

You drop your hand back to your knees.

Shoko doesn't leave.

You listen for Nobara, for her still-human breathing.

When you look over at her, Shoko is also looking down at the ground.

"I didn't think you'd do it."

You look back at the black and white pattern on the ground. You weren't sure you would either. It had felt too much like admitting defeat but then...

"I dreamt of him."

You shouldn't be saying anything. Shoko doesn't do this. But she's staying even though she should leave so you can make your confessions to a comatose fifteen year old who won't ever know you've been here.

"A bunch of scientists, rolling him on a table," you say, wry and feeling ridiculous. The dream doesn't sound terrible when you say it aloud. "Just... faceless people manipulating him while he just lies there." Unable to stop it. You, unable to stop it because you'd been as frozen as that day in the city, and then you'd woken up.

The dream might be fading but you feel like it's still happening.

Shoko straightens up and you know she's finally leaving. You know what she's thinking too because you made sure to say it that way, in the way that would make the dream a metaphor of what's happening right now. If you'd hinted at your simply literal horror, she'd be within her rights to laugh at you.

"So it's not like a vow will be useful anyways," you force your voice light and slightly self mocking. "He can't do anything from in there so why not pretend it never happened."

You raise your head only meet Shoko's apprehensive expression and falter. There aren't a lot of people who know for certain that Satoru is your mate. Now your place by his name in the family tree will be burnt away. The sealing ink on the marriage documents will fade to nothing. The bond itself might still exist, but any promises intentionally attached to it are blown away like so much sound in a gale.

There's a pinched edge to Shoko's usually cool expression. It's too bad that even with this, you can't promise not to leave her all alone. "Let me know if you need anything for it," she says before spinning on her heels and clicking away down the hall.

iv.

You bury your face into your folded hands, thinking of that body, his body, knuckles pressed hard to your forehead, while the vision shifts slowly to Shoko, to the dead-limp body of the students, to Nanami's hellbent flesh, and back.

You hadn't told Shoko everything.

The only part you can't shake was the way that grayscale atrocity began - with Gojo Satoru torn open and bloody like that day, something bundled and birthed dead being taken from him, and how you knew even while he was turned away from you that he was back to being as pristine as he was when this began.

Megumi leaves again in the morning and you don't say goodbye from the window where you're watching. You didn't go back to sleep, there's too much to do. Your power courses like a livewire inside of you.

You started cycling it to see if your typical energy was still there. You should feel weaker without the vows and restrictions weighing you down, but for now you don't. Anger pours molten through you, fear slinks under it like ice. Grief lays over it all like it lays over everyone and the black and white terror of truly losing what Megumi really means when he talks about the world needing Gojo Satoru is both more stark and more abstract in the morning.

You've never thought of yourself as living in Satoru's shadow. Suffering that particular misconception was thankfully prevented by having a good insight into the reality. You hated that there were so many things he took care of alone.

Megumi doesn't think you have it in you to burn the world. You'd seen the faint disbelief in his eyes when you'd told him to give up on Satoru if it meant surviving. And maybe he's right.

But what he doesn't see, behind the mask Satoru wears and Shoko's distance and Suguru's death and your silence is that you all became monsters. Maybe Gojo Satoru chose to keep you close because for a while you were the only one left.

If the kids don't come back, you think it might just be enough.

Gojo Satoru isn't the only nightmare in the world after all.