The Strongest | ɢᴏᴊᴏ ꜱᴀᴛᴏʀᴜ

Chapter 45

He's okay. Of course, he's okay. He's Gojo Satoru. He'll always be okay. Once we're all back, Shoko fixed my hand, and Yamazaki and Aikawa are being treated by her, Gojo doesn't even wait for us to get to Yaga to debrief him. He gets one look at me in the light and strides toward me, forgetting everyone else with us in the hallway. Gojo cups my face with his hands and wipes the blood off my cheek with his thumb.

"Are you okay?" he asks. Why does everyone keep asking me that?

I chuckle and take his hands off my face, holding them in my own. "I'm fine." My grin widens. "You owe me some money."

Gojo laughs heartily and heads down the hallway. I follow him, grinning, ignoring the looks of the sorcerers around us. It's about time we show ourselves outside of our rooms. My chest is swollen with pride as I head back to the teacher's room with Gojo. I did pretty good earlier. It's crazy to look at the clock and see that it's almost two in the morning. I'm not even tired, I'm so pumped up with energy. I want to do the leg-over-shoulders-thing with Gojo once we're done here.

Takeru has just finished talking to Yaga when we enter the room, and the principal sets his eyes on us. He comes over, making me frown. "She did good," he says to Gojo. What? I can feel Gojo stiffening next to me. "You really shouldn't worry."

My eyebrows rise all on their own, and when Yaga walks away, I turn around to glare up at Gojo. He's standing still as if I might not see him if he doesn't move. But I do see him. And it hurts me. Because he doesn't seem to see me. Six Eyes, yet not one of them really see me.

"You sent me a babysitter?" As soon as I speak the last word, I can feel my blood beginning to boil. "I can't believe you sometimes!"

Gojo reaches out for my elbow and wants to pull me out of the room, away from our colleagues, but I pull my arm away from him. "Don't touch me," I snap and walk outside on my own because, believe it or not, I'm a grown woman who can do things on her own.

"I'm just worried about you," he pleads, desperate for me to understand.

And I do. I do get it, but. "No, it feels like you don't believe in me, Satoru."

He lets out a breath as if I've just robbed him of the words he was about to say. But I don't know what to say either. Shoko does this to me all the time. She tells me after every mission to take it slower and easier, that I'm putting too much pressure on myself. And Gojo used to say that, too, before all of this, when we still hated each other. He told me that we shouldn't split up because something could happen to me, not to him. But then he said I did good, that at our first mission, he hadn't stepped in because I hadn't needed his help and that he wasn't underestimating me. Yet here he is, contradicting himself again, and I don't know what to think.

"We've been over this," I whine, and I can feel tears welling up in my eyes. Why are they doing that? Why is it so hard to speak all of a sudden? "Again and again, we've been over this."

"I know," he replies, and it's barely more than a whisper. "But try to see it from my side."

A punch in the gut would have hurt less than this. I can see it from his side, and I understand where he's coming from, and I know that Geto Suguru must have fucked him up. But that doesn't change the fact that this fucking hurts. It hurts to even just consider the fact that he thinks I'll never be as good as him. That I'll never be as strong.

Tears are streaming down my face. "I know, Satoru," I say, pushing the words through the knot in my throat. I know. "But that doesn't make it okay." I don't know why I'm saying this. Why am I saying these hurtful things when I don't mean them? What I really want to do is wrap my arms around him and hold him and for him to tell me he's sorry.

"I don't want to argue about this anymore," Gojo says, and his voice is suddenly hard and cold like I haven't heard it in a while.

"Then tell me you're sorry!" I shout at him, and the second the words are spoken, I want to take them back. I'm falling apart here, and it seems like he doesn't even notice. I want to fold myself as small as possible and cry my eyes out. Instead, I wrap my arms around my middle and try to hold myself together.

Gojo raises his posture. "I'm not," he replies. He's too damn proud. "I did what I thought was right. You are the most important thing in my life, and I will do whatever I can to keep you safe!" And he's almost shouting, too.

"What if I want to keep you safe, too?" I ask back loudly.

"I don't need to be kept safe!" Okay, now he's shouting.

And now I'm bawling my eyes out, tears dripping down my chin as I take a step backward. "Because you're better than me?"

"Because I don't care about myself!"

"But I do!"

What are we even fighting about? Who likes whom more? Who's more important to whom? I can't even tell, but all I know is that this is wrong. This is so, so wrong, and I want it to stop, but it doesn't. It just keeps going; words just keep spilling out of our mouths like waterfalls. I'm begging him to understand me, but he doesn't want to set his pride aside to see that he was wrong to do what he did without telling me. It's not even so much the part about him sending someone to look after me. It's the part where he didn't tell me and wasn't going to if Yaga hadn't messed up.

"I- I need a moment to think about this," I say, and I don't know why. Don't say this. You don't need a moment, you know you don't! You know that all you want is him. But can I ever really have him if he won't fully have me? "Please."

Before I know what's going on, Gojo lifts his two hands to his face and rips the blindfold off. His eyes are red and puffy, and it makes me feel awful. He's just as hurt as I am, so what are we doing? Why won't we stop arguing?

"Are you going to walk away from me now?" Gojo's voice is trembling. "Like he did?"

I look at him to see those lips that I love to kiss curled into a painful scowl. Then I walk over to him and cup his face with my hands, standing on tiptoes. "No," I state with absolute certainty. "I won't ever walk away from you like he did. Like my sister did."

Gojo closes his eyes for a moment, and two tears roll down his face. When he opens his eyes again, they're on me, and they're bluer than ever before, the tears sparkling in the hallway light.

"I need an hour," I tell him and let go. "Just one hour, and then I'll come back."

And he lets me walk out the door.