For You, My Life.

Together Alone

"I didn't realize you still felt any connection with me."

"You're an idiot, Gojo. A kind one."

"Good job on the braid. Real cute."

"At the risk of sounding redundant, I want to be completely clear when I say that Suguru Geto is not one of us."

"Monkey just has such a distinct odor that I'd almost forgotten it."

"When do you ever do something that's not just for your benefit, Satoru?"

"It's not like I knew you were hiding a wanted special grade sorcerer, Gojo."

"I never should've left you. I'm sorry."

"It's over, Gojo"

"Not yet," Satoru rubs his palms over heavy porcelain lids only to reveal enraged, bloodshot blue eyes staring back at him from his harrowing reflection in the bathroom mirror.

It took him a while to figure it out. That the Prison Realm could duplicate most things from his reality, but they weren't real. They weren't his.

It's why he finds himself in a house much like his Tokyo home.

Even if his toothbrush sat on the same sink before him and that same carton of eggs he bought remained in the refrigerator, they didn't belong to Satoru.

They belong to this world. His prison.

Life here is nearly identical, too. Well, despite the fact that none of its features are worn with love or comfort the way he's become so accustomed. After all, the pillows on the bed are without long black strands of fallen hair. As well, the bathroom beholds a perfectly attached towel rack, unlike the one that Satoru had broken on the day Megumi came over. The kitchen is without spices and rice, a living room devoid of bunched-up blankets. Even the curtains to the patio were overlapped perfectly rather than left wide open to allow the glory of daylight inside.

There hung a television he'd never fallen asleep watching. A dining table he'd never been fucked on.

He recognized it all. But it wasn't his. Each item colder- more foreign than the last.

Satoru stared at the mirror he remained unflinchingly in front of. The objects of his focus turned through his mind as if they were a display sitting on an old Lazy Susan. Each rotation produces a screech from rusted metal rubbing against the rust-ridden trays. A constant turn of the tables in his brain to pacify his wrath.

To placate this world in the Prison Realm.

Without Suguru Geto.

The blackness of Satoru's pupils blew wide before his hands lunged forward to grip the edges of the bathroom mirror, tearing it from off the wall. With fury in his shaky fingers, he heaved it to the side and let it crash to the ground, refusing to watch as it shattered into an ocean of tiny mirrored shards on his bathroom floor.

He'd caught a reflection. One that conjured when he thought of Suguru. A private memory. A view of the one-armed sorcerer from long ago now. How could the Prison Realm have known? Or was it his mind betraying him? Guilting him. The squishy brain tissue behind Satoru's porcelain forehead ever-fraying at the ends and sparking danger like an electrical fire. And of course, it would because the reflection he'd been tortured by was that of a time when Suguru couldn't walk without help.