#i'm not too fussed about word count for chapters tbh

[thecodeveronica]

It's not a long chapter by any means, but I actually HAVE just about finished up a chapter for that zombie AA fic idea I mentioned, and boy does it feel GOOD feeling like I'm making some legitimate progress for once on something that could be a long project

SO SO GOOD, like a reminder that "oh yeah, I very much do enjoy writing actually"

Now, unfortunately, this is a stray middle chapter without any context before or after it beyond what is in my haphazard notes tab lmfao, but I have something and I think this is working out okay trying to write out of order this time!

[aimfor-theheart]

Prologue: Godlings

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Masterlist | Chapter One: Swallow -> | 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): Blood, slight gore, migraine-like pain, pain, introduction to unhealthy parental relationships, notes of sexism, arranged marriage between children, mention of parental death. **Please mind warnings overall and for each chapter**

Word Count: 4.7k

A/N: finally, it begins :,) it's been a long time coming. i'm pretty nervous for this one!! but i hope you enjoy!! let me know what you're thinking/feeling, if you love it, hate it, or otherwise!! lots of this went on the cutting room floor tbh so feel free to ask questions, come chat, etc.!! endless thanks to my lovely @lorelune who beta read this prologue, listened to me ramble for months, and has been an overall dear to me in general <3 without further ado, the prologue!

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Your mother is careful with your hair. She knows how to tend to it. 

You are young, still a child, sitting in front of a mirror, in the crux of your mother’s lap. You are still and silent for her, lest she gently scold you. 

She hums softly as her hands move deftly. 

There is commotion outside your room.

  Your mother pauses. 

Voices approach the door. She freezes. Her fingers slip away from your hair as she cants her head to the side and listens. You have learned to follow your mother’s cues, like a fawn who goes wide eyed and unmoving beside the doe. 

When the door flies open, your mother is quick to stand. Your hair is half done, parts of it slipping and falling around your neck, your shoulders. You stand, too, scramble up and feel her push you behind her legs. 

But it’s just your aunt, out of breath, a little harried. 

Your mother lets out a sigh of relief, almost annoyance when she realizes who it is. She allows you to peer around her legs. 

“What is all the fuss abou–” 

“Did you hear?” Your aunt interrupts, crossing into the room in a flurry. “The Gojo’s finally have a Six Eyes user.” 

You see your mother’s hand, watch as it tenses in her skirts, before unfurling. 

“What? They haven’t had one of those in–” 

“Nearly one hundred years.” Your aunt finishes, as she tends to do. “Everyone’s astonished—they think the boy—Satoru, the young one—is going to restore the Gojo clan’s power.” 

Your mother hums, her hand falling back down to the top of your head. Her fingers are careful, gently petting. “He’s only six or so, isn’t he?” 

He’s two years older than you. 

“Yes, so young. But he’s inherited Limitless and Six Eyes. It’s certainly stirred up the other clans.” Your aunt finally begins to fix her appearance after rushing here, smoothing away ruffled lines in her clothes and flyaway hairs. She is usually a pristine woman, if not an uptight one. 

“Well, thankfully we’ve always been closer to the Gojo clan than others.” Your mother murmurs and something in her voice makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. You peer up at her curiously. 

But it’s your aunt’s eyes that finally land on you. 

“Yes,” she says slowly, “but we could always be closer.” 

You feel your mother tense, and you know that she is trying to keep a neutral face, “don’t start, please.” 

“If she inherits our family’s own technique—if she has Foresight, or Hindsight—both, perhaps—“ Your aunt steps towards you and your mother. You cling tighter to your mother’s leg, but she does not move. 

“Which we have not seen in nearly one hundred years ourselves—“ Your mother interrupts sharply. 

“She’s shown signs.” Your aunt presses, “she’s just about his age.” 

“She’s four.” Your mother bites out, reflexively ushering you back again. “I won’t entertain this.” 

“What?” You ask. 

Your voice, young and small, makes both of them pause. 

“Nothing, darling.” Your mother says, lowering to be at your level, “nothing for you to worry about. Why don’t you pick out clips for me to put into your hair? I’m going to speak with your aunt for just a moment.” 

Her hands are gentle, as they guide you back to the vanity. She opens a drawer for you, where countless gleaming clips and pins and hair sticks twinkle with soft noise as they’re jostled. You look up at her, knowing she is trying to distract you. 

“But—“ 

“I’ll be back in a moment.” She hushes and then she is grabbing your aunt, and leaving the room. 

The door shuts with a quiet click. You stare at it for a long time. 

You finally pick through the hair clips, gently, as if not to disturb them. They are all jeweled and beautiful, all different colors; rubies and peaches and opalescent pearls.

But it’s a sapphire clip you pluck out. 

And it’s infinitely blue, like an endless, summer sky. 

***

Your cursed technique bursts to life inside of you at the age of seven. First Hindsight; the vision of your left eye spirals and you clutch desperately at it as pressure bubbles behind the socket.

For a horrifying moment, you think your eye will burst clear from your head.

You scream out; piercing, terrified. A child’s scream. 

Pain surmounts inside of your eye swift and hot, a pulsing that arcs through you, that shudders through your skull. It radiates down to your jaw, your throat, zinging down the left side of your body. You push at your eye, like maybe you could keep it together, keep it in its place.

You barely hear the voices around you. 

“Don’t touch her!” 

“It’s her technique—“ 

Your screams taper into pained sobs, which rise in pitch when the darkness of your vision begins to twist and bend. 

Your mother is held back. They won’t let her touch you or hold you or comfort you, for fear of ruining your vision of the past. 

She screams with you, cries with you, clawing at her husband. At her sister. At everyone who tries to keep her from you.

Colors wash in and out, a heat burns at your eye, before a vision snaps into focus;

The tree you’d touched growing backwards, into a sapling, into a seed, into the ground that was once bare. A curse that roams the land. A bird that flies past, the seed returning to its mouth, to the sky. 

You scream so loudly, so terribly, that you shred through your vocal chords. 

You won’t be able to speak for a week after this.

And then, as if it’d never happened, your vision clears. The pressure recedes like the tide that finally pulls away from a battered shore. Your wailing tapers off to hoarse cries, fingers still clutching at your left eye.

And then arms are around you, cradling you, crying with you. 

You bury your face into your mother’s neck and sob, heavy and heaving, like you know what this means. You cry like you’re already mourning the life ahead of you, like you knew this was the point of no return. 

Maybe you did.

Your mother does. 

She cries for you, for the role you will play, for the girl you will become. For what Time will demand of you. 

She rocks you in her arms, cradling your aching head to her chest, your trembling body to her own. 

Your left eye bleeds in rivulets down your cheek, smearing into the crème robes of your mother. It burns and burns and burns. Red blossoms like rose petals on the fabric of her clothes. It stains deep. 

And when you lift your heavy head from her shoulder, your left eye is forever changed. Your clan gasps in soft awe. 

Striking silver cuts through the original color of your eye, like a bolt of lightning, like the flash of a knife. 

***

If receiving Hindsight was painful, then Foresight is agony. 

Not long after, your right eye feels as if it’s been slashed open, caught on the claws of Time. It hurts so badly that you can hardly make a noise, a mangled gasp, before you drop like a stone, before the vision of your right eye tunnels sharply. 

A stake has been driven through your eye, you are certain of it. It feels as if it’s gone clear through the right side of your skull. This time, your mother is the only one with you. You don’t know it, but she brings your head into her lap. It’s bleeding from where you fell. Her hand cups the wound, letting it spill slick over her palms and fingers. Your hair grows wet with it. 

You are the first sorcerer in one hundred years to receive both Foresight and Hindsight. Your visions will be unparalleled. A complete picture of the past, present, and future. 

Limitless in your knowledge.

A conduit of Fate, of Time. 

At once, you see the shimmery lines of cursed energy and you know it is your mother’s form. She manifests in your vision. 

You see it all. 

Her life, the mistakes, the hardships, the joy. You watch your form grow up with your mother’s. 

You see her death. The bloody tilt of her head. 

Anguish rips through you. 

You inhale like you’re resurfacing, only to let out a horrified scream. 

Your mother tries to cradle you, to hold you and soothe you. Your scream alerts your father. Your aunt. Your clan. 

The whole world, maybe. 

You tear at your right eye so harshly, so viciously, so desperately that you give yourself three scars ripping down the plain of your face. But when you are finally able to open it again, streaked with blood, gold has blossomed in the center of your iris. 

Your father falls to his knees in shock, in thanks. How lucky he is, to have such a blessed child, to have such a gift—

Your mother lurches you away from all of them, cradles you to her chest like you are an infant. 

And she apologizes to you, over and over and over again. 

***

Your mother fought hard for you. You know it. She cursed and spat and yelled at your father and her sister and brother and their father. Your house was not quiet for weeks on end. 

But in the end, your mother lost, as mother’s often do with daughters. 

As daughter’s often do. 

You are to meet with the Gojo clan, to meet the boy who you will eventually marry. There will be some sort of ceremony to seal the promise of your marriage, a binding vow carved between you and a boy you’ve never met, who apparently has shaken all the heavens and earth with his existence. 

You imagine someone imposing, the monster in your dreams with glowing eyes. 

You imagine someone cold and powerful and everlasting. 

You don’t imagine just a boy, a little older than you, with star blue eyes and a shock of white hair that is neatly combed down. His face is otherwise blank. He looks too perfect, standing beside his mother, who is tall and inhumanly beautiful. Her eyes are startling as well–a blue so fierce and deep that you don’t dare look long or hard into her face. She reminds you of the monster in your dreams, something sharp and so cold it burns. 

You cling harder to your mother’s hand, warm and soft and comforting in yours.

You are swathed in white, revealed to the Gojo’s like a little jewel to be unearthed. 

You are not wearing your long gloves today. Your father forbade it. 

You don’t yet have control of your technique so anything–anyone–you touch immediately sends you spiraling into the past, then sharply into the future. A whole picture. The history and the fate of anything you can touch. 

You have already seen your mother’s future. You mourn her in the moment, when you still have her, because to you, in ways, she is already dead. 

You cling desperately to her, your only landline. 

She never asked what you saw of her. You never told her. 

But until you gain control of your technique, you wear gloves, lest you touch your father, your aunt, all the people you love and see their life flash before your childish eyes. Your clan has agreed for now that this is acceptable; the weight of time will crush a child. It will drive you mad. And they need you to have your wits; for them, for their protection. 

However, today, your father pulled the gloves from your small hands carefully–made sure he hadn’t truly touched you– and then asked you to take Satoru Gojo’s hands and return to tell him everything you had seen in his future. 

Unknown to you, Satoru’s mother has instructed him to keep Limitless up at all times near you. 

His mother and your father would get along, you think, with all their demands of their children. Adults with agendas, using their children as tools, using their gifts as leverage, their existence as bargaining chips. 

Satoru’s mother looks at you like you’re a curse; a squirming, grotesque creature here to get your warped hands on her son. 

But your mother eyes Satoru carefully, too, the boy that will become the man that you will be forever tethered to. She had not wished for you to have the same life she did. She hopes Satoru will be a better man than your father. She hopes he will be good and kind, at least to you, at least to his wife. She prays silently, begs a higher power, begs the boy in front of her with her eyes for him to be good. 

You are hardly introduced to each other before his father says, “Satoru, why don’t you show her the gardens?” 

And in some part of your young mind, you know they want to talk as adults. Without you. About you. 

Unearthly blue eyes slash to you. You feel your little heart rabbit in your chest. You squeeze tighter to your mother’s hand. 

Satoru seems unsure for a moment, lifts his hand like he might extend it to you. The room holds their breath. But then he lets it fall limply to his side. 

His mother bends down beside him a moment, “remember what I told you.” 

Her voice is not kind. It is hushed, but not enough to keep it a secret from the whole room. Pointedly, she eyes you (they have the same eyes, they have the same mouth and the same starlight hair). You shrink away from her gaze. Your mother tenses. 

Satoru nods simply. 

And then he tells you, voice smaller than you had thought it would be, “the gardens are this way.” He turns on his heel, away from his mother, turning his back on the clans, on the whole group.

The image clings to you. A boy alone, with his back turned. 

You don’t know why, but you follow–without your mother’s prompting for once, without her encouragement or approval. You hurry a little, picking up your skirts to catch up to his side. 

So you can walk beside him, with your backs turned, with their eyes on you both. 

He is quiet while you walk through winding halls. You are quiet, too. What are you supposed to say to a boy who will be your husband? You want to yell maybe, or cry. You want to tell him no–you want to run away. 

The gardens yawn open before your eyes, greeting you with lush colors and gentle sound; water that runs, birds that chirp, the rustle of wind slipping through the leaves. Arching, bright colored trees and budding ruby flowers. Blue leaves and speckled butterflies that flit to and fro. 

He sits on a pair of stone steps, beneath the patterned shade of a tree. You sit beside him, careful, uncertain. 

Out of earshot, away from the world, in a garden that only you two belong to for a moment, he finally says, “my mother told me to not let you touch me.” 

Perhaps naively, you say, “my father told me to touch you.” 

“Why?” 

“It’s how my technique works. If I touch anything, I will see its past, present, and future.” You explain mechanically, the way adults have explained it to you, opening up your little palms to gaze at them. “I usually wear gloves, so I don’t touch anyone. I don’t want to see their future.” 

“Can’t you control it?” He asks, tilting his head. You can’t tell if he’s making fun of you. 

“No.” And then, because you feel self-conscious or a little insulted, you tack on, “not yet.” 

He turns his head towards you and if he is scrutinizing you, you can’t tell. His mouth twists a little, though, a flickering of a smile you think might light up the room if he lets it overtake his face. 

He’s not very imposing at all, you realize.

“You can’t touch anyone?” He asks. 

“Not without gloves–except for my mother.” 

He must understand the implication. He is quiet for a moment. A bird darts from a tree. A gust of  wind brushes past the two of you. 

And then he holds up his hand to you.

Instinctively, you wince away from him. “I won’t touch you. I don’t want to touch you.” 

“No, I–” he starts, and then, “you can try. My technique won’t let you touch me. Put your hand up to mine.” 

When you look at him in horror, he can’t help but laugh a little, the sound burrowing deep inside of you. It frees you both, maybe. “I promise,” he says softly, and all the world is in his voice, in that tiny, little promise, “you won’t touch me. You won’t see anything–not if you never want to.” 

Tentatively, terrified, you hold your hand up to his. 

You brace for pain. You squeeze your eyes shut in fear, like you might block out the past, the future. You will never be able to. 

But he says, “look,” and so you do. You crack a silver-laced eye open. And then gold blossomed. 

And your hands, despite seeming to nearly touch, never actually make contact. A barrier rests between you. You can feel it, the energy of it, pressed into your palm. So close and yet–

“There’s infinity between us.” He explains and his fingers fold carefully between yours. Still, no visions come. Still, you don’t touch him. It feels like you might be, though. 

“Can you touch anyone?” You ask in awe. 

He laughs again, more carefree. “Yes, I can, if I want to.” 

You flex your fingers, push against the barrier a little to test it. You never touch him. Will you ever touch him, you wonder? Will he remain untouchable forever to you? 

You let your hand slip away from his. 

Bluntly, a little surprisingly, he says, “it’s weird to think we’ll be married one day.” 

“Yeah,” you agree, feeling something tighten and then sharply unravel inside of your chest. A sucked in breath, held, and then let go. A heart’s nervous hope, maybe. “My mom is upset about it.” 

“So is mine, I think.” He responds, sighing lightly. And then, “are you?” 

You grow shy, even if you can’t see his eyes on you. You know it’s hurtful to say yes, you know it wouldn’t be polite. You would get scolded. 

But he says, “you don’t have to lie to me.” 

He must see it, sense it in you.

“Yes–I don’t know you. I don’t like boys. And it makes my mother cry. I hate, hate seeing her upset.” You look away from him sharply, feeling the heat in your face, the childish rush of frustration, of tears, bellow up from inside of you.

You cried the whole morning in your mother’s arms. You didn’t want to go. You didn’t want to meet him. You didn’t want to touch him. 

You can feel him peering at you and the tremble of your little heart is greater than you can name at this age, you feel greater than your age already. Forever old. Forever young. Somewhere caught in Time’s tricky fingers. 

“Are you?” You manage to get out, “upset?” 

He nods. “I think it’s dumb,” he says, “and such an old idea. My father says the clans have always been stuck in the past.” 

He sounds like he’s repeating the words of an adult. He sounds old, in a too-young body, too. 

“Maybe we can stop it, when we’re grown-up, too.” You offer. 

Satoru makes a face, nose wrinkling up, lips twisting downward. “A binding vow is going to be made between us today–it’s really bad to break those. Even when we’re grown-ups, it would be bad.” He looks out at the garden now, away from you, “my mother specifically didn’t want this, because once it’s made, we’ll always have it.” 

“Always?” 

Satoru nods, “until the vow is complete, at least.” 

“Until we’re married,” you say. And then, “we could get divorced, maybe.” 

Satoru’s face goes perfectly blank, the only indication of his distaste is a small, downward tilt of his lips. “Maybe.” 

Silence stretches itself between you two, long and slow, the garden filling it, bubbling and rustling with everything that could be said, that won’t be said. 

“We could make it our own,” Satoru says suddenly and his eyes brighten, flash in the sun like a bluejay’s wing. 

You look at him and you’re young, maybe too young to understand any of this at all, but you nod readily. 

“How do we make it our own?” You ask. 

Eagerly, he says, “Repeat after me.”

And childishly, you instantly respond with, “repeat after me.” 

A smile breaks out over his face, beautiful and raw, “hey!” he tries to admonish.

“Hey!” you say back.

And he laughs, full and bursting, so sweet that it tumbles uninhibited from his mouth. And just as he told you, you repeat the sound with your own bubble of giggles. 

(You look back at this memory and ache, a twist in your chest that might be your heart all knotted up. Or might just be the bitterness, after all.) 

He takes a deep breath to steady himself.

“I will always have you.” He decides to say and you’ll wonder about it forever. What possessed such a young boy to say such a thing? Was he already so lonely? So desperate? 

Is the start of your curse? Did he curse you? Or did you curse him? maybe it is your fault when you repeat slowly;

“I will always have you.”

“You will always have me.” He presses.

You inhale a little sharp and quick, but repeat it, as easy as breathing, as natural as the sun in the sky or the rocks on the ground;

(Later, when the binding vow is made between the two of you, Satoru derails from the clan’s perfectly laid script to form his own.

And he says it again. 

And you repeat it again.

And his mother hisses at him and your mother gasps, your father curses colorfully.

But you finish the vow and it’s just the pair of you, you think, in a new world. It’s just the pair of you, you think, who could ever understand this. 

It’s just your small voice, repeating his, sinking a vow into the ocean between you to never be found again by anyone else’s hands or eyes or thoughts. 

It’s just your small voice and his and the creation of a new religion,)

“You will always have me.” 

***

As children, you and Satoru are allowed to see each other every few weeks, which dwindles to every few days, before suddenly you see him nearly all the time. 

At first, things were rocky. Despite the initial vow, Satoru is strange and tormenting. He pulls at your clothes and you scream at him. He takes your toys and you want to bite him. He makes you cry and cry and cry. 

He keeps up his infinity for you, so that you can get close but never touching. 

And he’s yours. All yours. And no matter how angry you get or how upset he gets, you always end up back together. You always know, you will always come back together. 

Your mother looks after him. Your father despises him, each day presses and asks you to look into his future, each day your mother begs him to stop. 

Satoru’s mother despises you, but she still looks after you, like a hawk, a little too closely when you’re around her son. You think you hardly see his father. 

But you grow up running through gardens and past curses, following after Satoru, coming up against his side. Being chased by him, too, until you're laughing and out of breath. All yours. All his. 

Godlings, you run together, and the world grows, and so do you. 

***

By twelve, you have mastered your technique enough to lose your gloves. To touch and not be ripped into the past, into the future. You control when you want to peer into both, and learn that you don’t have to be sucked into the riptide of time, but rather wade into it as an observer. 

Your training is specific to your clan, woven in its own history. 

There is an amulet passed down in your family, one that has gone unworn for nearly one hundred years before you. 

But now it dangles in front of you, shimmering silver, cut through with arcs of gold. The sun and the moon. Past and present. Your eyes reflected back to you in a stone. 

“This,” your father begins, “holds all you need to know. No one else can peer into it, except those with Hindsight. With it, the previous users will teach about time. They will teach you what it means to be a keeper of time, how to use it to benefit you, to not let it drive you mad. Once you touch the amulet, it will show you its memories, the memories of previous users’ who always wore it.” 

You eye the amulet. You have a question on the tip of your tongue but you know instantly your father won’t understand. He won’t be able to answer it. 

Regardless, your father says, sharper, to make sure you’re listening, “and now you’ll always wear it. Do you understand? Everything you learn about time, about these techniques, will be passed on to the next, too.” 

You nod, even if you don’t want to agree. 

Your father smiles proudly, “good. Turn around.” 

You turn around. He wraps the necklace around you, allowing the amulet to lay flat against the hollow of your throat, feeling it hum along your skin. 

“Peer into its past.” He instructs. 

You lift your hand up to grasp hold of it. The past is just a blink away but the future…

It sings to you. 

You glance at your father, just a flick of your eyes that he regards with impatience. “Do I need to tell you again?”

“No, father.” You reply, but you’ve made up your mind. 

Your vision spins sharply, pressure mounting in the corner of your eyes. Nausea rolls in a sickly circle inside of you. Time takes hold of your throat, wrestles you still, steals the noise of pain you were about to let out so it comes out as a mangled squawk. 

Someone appears before you; before the amulet. They hold it up to them. It’s as if they’re holding you up, like your eyes are in the amulet. 

“Finally,” they say, “I’ve found you.” 

You are peering into the future at someone who is peering into the past at you. You feel their eyes. They must feel yours. 

A shudder runs through you. 

“Who are you?” 

A ghost of a smile from a foggy face. It’s disorientating, trying to sharpen your vision. Dream-like, when you can’t quite grasp what you’re seeing, when you can’t run or speak or scream properly. 

“You don’t recognize me?” 

Their voice echoes in all the distant parts of your mind, buzzes strangely, what you think divinity might sound like if it had a voice. 

“I can’t–I can’t see you clearly yet.” You respond slowly, pushing the words out like molasses to drip down your jaw, sticky in your mouth. 

“Hm,” they hum, “still learning, I suppose. I remember.” 

“T-teach me,” you get out. “You’re supposed to teach me.” 

Another smile, you can feel it, this one wider, fuller. Teeth flash. Eyes spark like lightning. A shiver rips through you. 

“I will teach you,” they say slowly, “I will certainly teach you. Not what you’re expecting to learn, not what you will ever be prepared to have, but I will do so anyways.”

You begin to tremble. “Why? W-what will you teach me?” 

I don’t want to learn, you think suddenly and so unbridled it terrifies you, I don’t want to know, you feel it deep in your bones. You’re certain your life would be simpler if you never know. You feel an axis shift in this conversation, you can feel time changing, you can feel your whole world transforming before your very eyes. 

The change of your heart is as great as the change of seasons. 

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.” 

***

Masterlist | Chapter One: Swallow ->