#ieri shoko gives me Much Emotion Many Feels

[mossterunderthebed]

Ever since I saw this comic I always somehow manage to write Yuuji and Ieri as friends.

Not necessarily super close or anything but like... sit in silence together, reminisce about the good times, swallow your sorrow and choke on silence buddies. Unwilling, tortured survivors.

They were there for each other when nobody else was. Because everyone was gone.

I don't know why but their relationship is Very Important to me.

"Please drink some water, Ieri-san," Ijichi says, offering a bottle of water with a deep crease between his brows. Always awkward, that one. Shoko doesn't know why he even tries. She should probably be grateful that someone in this hellscape does.

Utahime crouches beside her, reaching out to warm a patch of her arm. Good old Utahime. Soft hands, soft heart, soft voice. "Shoko, we need to move somewhere safe. Can you walk?"

She stays still long enough that they leave her alone, hunched on the floor. Alone alone alone. Hollow puppets, walking along; march in time. One by one, two by two. Cut strings left and right.

Who's gonna cut her strings? She's ready. Why's it just her? Picking up messes and dealing with the fallout, it's been this way since high school. She should've known. Bastards. Bastard.

She can't even cry.

Bastard.

"We're leaving now, Ieri-san," a voice says, youthful and bright-edged. Hoarse. She'd recognize those dulcet tones anywhere, even colored with so much grief. Itadori. "I'll carry you. Please tell me if you're uncomfortable."

She's lifted by strong arms, stronger than a teenager has any right to be. The day he ended up in her morgue, Satoru grinning with glass teeth as he contemplated mass murder, she'd thought he was another kid gone too soon. Haibara two point oh. Now she realizes she was wrong.

Try Satoru the second. She should have known.

What a legacy. What a damn- ahh, fuck. She doesn't have the energy to philosophize. Doesn't have the energy for anything, so she doesn't bother to fight as he carries her away, moving yet again, trying to find some safe haven that no longer exists, some hopeful ending that'll never come, no matter how many curses go down.

Heal, succeed; heal, fail; heal, sleep; heal, smoke; again again again. Never-ending. She can't figure out the point anymore.

Her best friends are dead.

She turns her head, tucking her face into Itadori's shoulder as he carries her, silent and solemn, like a wake. A witness to her own funeral, how perfect. The reverse curse user; she was always going to be the last to go. Maybe it was her destiny to witness the falling of a dynasty. Which god does she curse for this?

"We're all alone, huh, Itadori-kun?" She murmurs into the worn flesh of his uniform.

He doesn't reply.

It's not like she blames him. What the hell is there to say? But after a moment, his hands shift to grip her a little tighter, a little more secure, and by some miracle, when she drops off to sleep, she doesn't dream.