Her Deal with Death

"How's she doing?" 

"Considering the circumstances, she could be better."

"It's not our fault, right? I mean I didn't want to leave her, but she still has Utahime." 

"It was never just about Utahime though, you know that, Satoru." 

"Yeah, I know, she needed her best friends. She needed all of us."

"But they need her."

"She won't see it like that. And, if she dies, the only people left will remember you when you were evil."

"Which I still don't regret."

"Yeah, you do. Cause it meant you had to leave me."

"You still had, Shoko."

"And now she has no one."

"...We're the worst." 

Shoko was alone. Her legs were crossed and resting on the gurney where Gojo's body lay. What was left of it, anyway. 

'Dear god, why haven't you killed me?' She prayed to no one because she knew that there was no God. Not one that answered prayers, at least. No god would let the sorcerers lose. If there is an all-knowing, all-powerful being, then he is evil. In the purest sense of the word. Not that she had ever been religious. She had thrown out the existence of a god when she was adopted into the jujutsu faction. 

'Maybe,' She thought, 'Maybe, Satoru is listening.' She breathed a disheartened laugh. He had come to the closest to godhood, but gods can't die. That was their defining difference. In fact, maybe death had punished him for his hubris. The divine retaliate in petty and unfair ways. An insult to a god is a death sentence to some. 

So why had she not been killed?

She knew the answer. She was being punished, tortutured in other ways. 

"I want to talk to her."

"That's not really how death works, Satoru."

"Well you sure would know, wouldn't you? You've got so much more experience than me after all."

"Need I remind you who killed me?" 

"Oh please, you deserved it."

"Shit," Utahime said. "I guess I forgot he could even die. He always acted like he couldn't, you know?" She stood beside Shoko, watching an imaginary rise and fall of his chest. She knew he couldn't, but it seemed so natural to see someone breath that when they didn't, it felt unnatural. 

But, curses didn't breathe, and Shoko was around bodies all of the time. Mauybe because it was Satoru that was on her table this time, and she knew his eyes would never open again. 

Nanami asked her once, long after Suguru's betrayal, if she ever loved them. 

"Of course I did." She had said, but she didn't mean it the way Nanami had implied. "How could I not?" 

Then she lost him too. She bagan to wonder if love was what was killing them. Death came with the territory as a sorcerer but she hadn't expected it to affect her so significantly, and she hadn't expected Gojo to be next on her list of victims by proxy. 

 "Shoko," Utahime put a hand on her shoulder. "It's not your fault." 

"Then why does everyone I love die?" Her voice was low but she didn't cry anymore. 

"Because, the world is cruel, and curses are even crueler. The moment we forget that, they win." She didn't need to be looking at Shoko for the words to sink in. They had never needed to see each other to hear each other. Shoko knew Iori's voice. Knew her inflections. Knew her subtleties, but she never let herself love her. 

Utahime had moral, she had power, influence, and heart. She was everything shoko was not, and Utahime loved. She loved everything. She even loved Gojo, though she would never admit it, and still somehow, after it all, she continued to love. Shoko wouldn't allow herself that pleasure. If someone had to be safe from her curse, it had to be Utahime, because if she died, then there really was no reason for Shoko to keep going, but if what it took to keep Utahime alive, was for Shoko to stay alive, then she would. 

But she would never love her. 

"I told you Utahime would be there for her."

"She's trying, at least. Shoko won't let her."

"Was she this resistant to help when we were with her?"

"No, because she had no reason to be. We broke her." 

"That's not true, Suguru." 

"..."

"It's not true."

"Okay." 

Her world had crumbled, but her life walked her out of the makeshift morgue with a hand on her back and a scar on her cheek. She had to live.