@sigilsmut - Tumblr Blog

Jun 27

THE BEAT OF YOUR HEART — S. GOJO

pairing — frankenstein!gojo x scientist!reader

summary — when the world's most brilliant researcher dies in a freak accident, you refuse to accept it as the end. using the resurrection technology you developed together, you set out to finish his life's work, and accomplish the impossible: bringing Gojo Satoru back from the dead. but love and science make dangerous companions, and some boundaries exist for a reason.

word count — 9.9k

content warning + tags — MDNI 18+ ONLY, fem reader, modern sci-fi au, heavy angst, plot with smut, obsession, death, grief, resurrection, pseudo science, some crazy technology, satoru being innapropriate at the worst times

a/n — for @sweethearticism's brutal bakery event ♥︎ ♥︎ ♥︎ halloween's over, and as always, my tardy ass is late to the party TᴗT but here it is, my version of frankenjo that wouldn't leave me alone. this is a modern interpretation and very loosely inspired by the actual frankenstein. i hope you enjoy it ♡ 〢 art: @ _3aem (x), divider: @ saradika-graphics

A storm engulfed the world outside, but inside the research centre, the silence was louder. As loud as the stillness of Satoru’s body, cold and stiff, lying on a metal slab.

You’d lost count of the hours, the days, the weeks. All you knew was that when the alarm rang, you had to return him to the cryochamber, because keeping him out for too long would trigger the decomposition.

But today—today you were going to change that.

Today, he would no longer be dead.

Even now, your life still revolved around him. You would have it no other way. Even now, when he had no air in his lungs, no rise and fall of the once warm chest you used to lay your head on every night, listening to the familiar rhythm of his heartbeat as you listened to his voice prattle on and on about his latest discoveries like a bedtime story… you still heard him in your head.

“Can you imagine it, baby? The shock of the entire medical industry—no, life itself—when we finally crack the code?” You’d hear his excitement in the darkness of your bedroom. His endless blue eyes steeped with unquenchable passion. “Those narrow-minded dimwits on the board might call us crazy now, but we’ll show them, won’t we? Soon, they’ll be singing a different tune.”

“We?”

“Of course, baby.” The glow of the bedside lamp would catch in his eyes. A glint that never failed to mesmerise you. “We. Us. Me and you. It won’t feel as good sticking it to them without you by my side.”

“But this is your life’s work, Toru. I’m just your assistant. I can’t possibly take the same amount of credit.”

“It’s ours,” he’d said firmly, kissing your head as if he was sealing his words in stone. “Everything of mine is yours, if not officially now, then it will be soon. Why do you think I’m marrying you?”

“Because you always forget to eat unless I remind you.”

“That’s because I can’t live without you. I thought we’d established that fact.”

You’d smiled and snuggled into him. “Well, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good,” he’d said, wrapping you closer in his arms, his scent. “Because neither am I.”

But he did. He’d gone and died.

And now you would fix him.

This was not ‘The End’.

Gently, you smoothed back the wisps of snowy white hair from his face. Your fingers traced his brows, his temple, along his jaw, brushing the pale, grey lips that used to press against yours not so long ago. Your gaze moved first before your hand, to the fine stitches down his chest, circling his right arm, raised slightly against the skin across the width of his stomach—a perfect split, and a reminder of the state he’d been in before you’d patched him up—

In pieces.

You smacked the image away. There was nothing left in you to hurl out, but you refused to remember him that way. Your Satoru was too brilliant, too full of light, too alive. He was too beautiful to be fleeting. Too precious to be taken away so brutally.

And he was yours. He still was.

You heard the staccato beep of an access card tapping in, the door sliding swiftly open. A pair of shoes clacked against the tiles. You didn’t turn around.

“It’s time, doc.” The voice belonged to Shoko, your former colleague before you inherited the research centre Satoru left you in his will. “They’re waiting for you to do the final checks.”

You nodded once, your gaze still fixed on Satoru. You should be excited. This was it. You were going to revive him. You should move. Get him to the Infinity Chamber immediately.

But your feet stayed rooted to the floor.

You felt Shoko come up beside you. The room was soundless for a few seconds.

“He looks good, doc. Your suturing is impeccable. It’s lucky his brain wasn’t damaged and all the injuries are neck-down. Cell and nerve therapy was a bitch, but I don’t think we’ll stand a chance if we have to replace brain matter.”

“It has to be his brain,” you said. “He wouldn’t be him if it wasn’t. And I would’ve found a way.”

“Mmm,” was all Shoko replied. You knew what she was thinking. You knew what they all thought but didn’t have the heart to say aloud in front of you.

That you were delusional. That despite shutting down every research arm except those that benefited your cause, despite stripping the centre down of non-essential staff and resources, and pouring the entire budget into speed funding Satoru’s wildly controversial Theory of Resurrection—his life’s work—the chances of success was next to none.

And if it didn’t work, then that was it. You would have destroyed the Gojo family’s legacy. The board would kick you out and sell the centre. It was a miracle they had agreed to this in the first place. You supposed you had Sukuna to thank for that extra vote, though the man was a cunning bastard, so you were sure his motives were not completely altruistic.

You’d calculated the odds. There was a six percent chance this would work. Only six. All for today. All for him.

Eh, better than five, Satoru’s voice spoke in your head. You clutched onto the sound, but it was like chasing a ghost. A blink, and it was gone.

A water bottle appeared in your vision.

“Drink,” said Shoko.

“I’m fine.”

“Of course you are. You’re also living in hell, and I guarantee you won’t find him there.” She pressed the bottle into your hands. “So you’re going to drink this, and you’re going to wheel him out of this room. You’re going to put him into that chamber, and you’re going to face the fact that it might not work. But I’ll tell you something—staring at his corpse for five more minutes isn’t going to bring him back.”

Your lips pressed into a tight line. “How many?”

“All of them,” confirmed Shoko. “Every board member, not just Sukuna. Arrived some time ago. And ah… Fushiguro Megumi is here too.”

Fuck.

“I see,” you said, keeping your tone steady. “I—give me a moment. I won’t be long.”

A beat, and then Shoko was retreating. You waited for the sliding doors to seal shut before reaching into the pocket of your lab coat. Your gaze hadn’t wavered from Satoru this whole time, and it still didn’t as you let the water bottle fall on the floor with a loud thud.

“Hey baby,” you whispered, taking his hand in yours. Like reflex, you waited for his fingers to curl around yours. For his thumb to brush lightly along your knuckles. And when nothing happened, you stroked his instead. “So, here we are. You could’ve made it easier if you’d sorted out all your files like I told you to. And didn’t I say making my birthday your password was too obvious? Anyone would’ve guessed that and you know it.”

A distant chuckle echoed somewhere in your head.

“I wish you could see it,” you continued. Paused. “I mean, you will. When you wake up, you’ll see I did everything according to your specifications. No deviations. No variables. It’s all your design, down to the last decimal. It’s all you, Toru. It will be all of you… you’ll be you again.”

You lifted his hand, your other holding the ring you’d been carrying around in your coat pocket for what felt like an eternity, and slipped it onto his fourth finger. A simple platinum band, matching with the one you wore. You’d picked it out together during an extended lunch break a month before the wedding.

You squeezed his hand, and bent down to press your lips against his.

“I’ll see you soon.”

Thirty three weeks ago…

“Death is a process, not a moment. But you already know that.”

You groaned. “Satoru, it’s two in the morning. The wedding is in fifteen hours. We should get some sleep before checking into the hotel.”

“Just humour me for a bit, baby. I think I’m onto something.” Satoru was already hopping out of bed. He flicked on the lights without warning, temporarily blinding you, and was rolling the whiteboard to the foot of the bed by the time your vision recovered.

You stared at him, shirtless and in a pair of checkered pyjama pants, as he uncapped the marker pen, his blue eyes wide awake and bright with that unrivalled ambition you envied and loved.

You sighed and shifted to sit up against the pillows. “Alright, make it quick. I don’t want to walk down the aisle with bags under my eyes.”

“I’ll still think you’re the most beautiful person in the world.”

You couldn’t help the skipped beat in your chest, or the smile that appeared on your lips. “You want to keep the compliments coming, or tell me your theory?”

“Baby, you underestimate me. I can do both at the same time, and then some more.” Satoru winked, and began sketching.

You watched as Satoru filled the whiteboard with diagrams, his hand moving like an artist with a brush. Sometimes, you swore you saw equations flying out his head, faster than the average human could comprehend. His mind was a marvel, his face was a dream. He was your dream.

The dream you couldn’t wait to spend the rest of your days with.

"The key isn't preventing death,” Satoru was saying. “It's reversing it. Death is a cascade—cellular processes shutting down in sequence. If we can interrupt that cascade, reset the cells' programmed death response, we can bring them back online."

“Yes, it’s the basis of your entire research,” you said. “Interrupt cell degradation. Reverse. Reconstruct. Rehabilitate. Regenerate. The Four R’s, as you like to remind everyone. It’s why we’re building that machine in the first place—“

“Chamber, darling. Not machine. Sounds better.”

“But why are you repeating this?”

“Because, my gorgeous soon-to-be wife, I just realised we’re missing an important ingredient.” Satoru proceeded to draw a big question mark and circled it. “We can revive a body, but what of the soul?”

You lifted a brow. Since when was he suddenly concerned with the spiritual side of things? “You’re going to have to elaborate, Toru.”

“Think about it, baby. Why am I so madly in love with you?” Satoru grinned. “Why do I look at you now and think I want nothing better than to take your clothes off? Why do I want to fuck no one else but you?”

Heat prickled up your neck. But you said, “It’s the logic your brain comprehends, as unromantic as it sounds.”

“Exactly. It’s brain chemistry.” Satoru flung the marker pen aside and in the next moment, he was climbing on the bed, and on top of you. “The soul is tied to the brain.”

His head lowered, lips brushing against yours.

“Feel that?” he murmured. “Do you like that?”

You melted under his gaze.

“Yes,” you breathed.

Then he was ripping the blanket away. His hands slid underneath the oversized shirt you wore, up and up and peeling it off you, leaving you in nothing but your panties.

“What about this?” His fingers dragged up the middle of your torso, tracing the underside of your breasts. He began drawing slow circles around your nipple.

You arched into his touch. “Yes…”

His mouth caught a nipple, and he began sucking. Flicking. His tongue and teeth playing with you until little moans escaped you. “And what about now, baby?”

“Ngh—get to your point…”

A chuckle. “Consciousness,” Satoru said, as his hand travelled down your stomach, down between your thighs, and with two fingers, began stroking you over your already soaked panties. “Our brains are what shapes our souls. What allows us memory and complex emotions. We can revive a body, but without a soul, without consciousness, the body would be human in appearance but not in essence.”

Your moans grew louder when his fingers slipped underneath your panties, sliding right up the middle of all your aching wetness. Your legs parted wide to give him more access.

“Pleasure…” Satoru murmured, his mouth and tongue working up the curve of your neck as his fingers caught your clit, and pinched it.

“Ahn! Toru—take it off…”

His tongue had reached its way along the shell of your ear, but his fingers remained, holding your clit hostage.

“Patience, baby. I’m not yet done with my demonstration,” he teased, then did the most wicked thing, and began rolling your tight little nub between his fingers. Slowly. So, so slowly.

“Oh my…” Your head tipped back against the pillows. You tried to grab hold of Satoru, but he only pinned down your wrists above your head with his free hand.

“God,” he finished what you couldn’t, “why do I always go crazy for you like this? Why are you enjoying what I’m doing as much as you do now? Tell me, baby.”

“Because—nghh! Because it’s you… because I only want you, Toru…”

“And I, you, my love,” he said against your lips, in a tone so tender and reassuring there was no room for doubt, before finally plunging two fingers inside you, pumping deep. “Which brings me back to my point. You love it when I fuck you like this because it’s me. Because of all the memories you have of me. Because of what you feel for me. This is what your brain has decided, and because the brain is connected to the soul, one cannot be brought back without the other.”

Somewhere in between, he’d added another finger, making it nearly impossible for you to concentrate on what he was saying. In this moment, with him rocking inside you, hitting you over and over again in that terribly sensitive spot, driving you insane, Satoru could’ve been reciting the ABCs and you still wouldn’t have understood much.

“T-toru…please—“

“Almost, baby. Did you forget about my cock?” His fingers ceased its sweet torture, slipping out. The sudden lack of him jarred you, but you could only whimper out a plea.

In one easy motion, Satoru flipped you around and was yanking off your panties. Warm, solid hands palmed your ass, lifted your hips high, exposing all the slick evidence dripping down your inner thighs.

Satoru swore under his breath. “Fuck, look at you. If this is the last thing I see before I die, then I’ll die happy.”

Your thoughts shattered as you felt the warm press of his tongue. Satoru licked you clean. Licked up all that wetness leaking down your thighs. Then he licked you there—a single stroke, deep and slow, up your melting core, before narrowing on your dangerously sensitive clit, flicking and sucking and making you lose your mind.

Satoru let you come like this first—on his tongue. With your face buried in the pillows and his buried in your pussy. Your legs were still trembling when you felt his impressive length, rock hard, rubbing against your folds, making you go wet all over again.

“Yes or no, baby?” he asked, though it was pointless. He already knew what your answer would be.

You mumbled something unintelligent, but wiggled your hips for emphasis. Then felt his tip nudge at your entrance.

“Which brings us back to the missing ingredient,” Satoru said, and a loud moan escaped you as he sheathed the full length of him inside you. He was so impossibly hard and thick, you were struggling to even clench around him. “We’ve only taken four R’s into consideration, when there’s actually a fifth… Resurrection.”

He pulled out, almost to the tip, and slammed back into you. Hard. Fast. Then he did it again, and again, and again. And each time he did it, you felt like you’d died and came back to life.

“Because a soul can’t be regenerated,” Satoru continued as his pace increased rapidly, ruining your mind and your insides at the same time. “So, in essence, our theory is not about reversing death. It’s about resurrecting the whole self. All the intangibles that make us—fuck, baby, you’re so tight. You’re choking my cock.”

“S-Satoru…”

“Mm?”

“More… Harder…”

“God, I can’t believe I get to have you like this forever.” Satoru did as you asked, fucking you until your cries drowned out the erratic thumping of the bedhead against the wall. Until you could no longer close your mouth. Until nothing existed save the feel of him pumping deep inside you…

The way he filled you so completely, so perfectly… it was everything.

He was everything.

Stars exploded in your vision. Your climax came in swift, escalating waves, overwhelming you.

You cried out his name, and it was only then that Satoru finally gave in, driving right over the edge along with you. You felt him—all of him—spilling into you. Heard his deep, unrestrained groan as he spent himself inside you before falling on the bed, half his body still draped on top of you.

Satoru’s mouth found yours, his tongue sweeping in and pampering you with gentle strokes while his fingers danced slow, playful circles down your spine. He grinned against your lips. “How was that, baby?”

You were still out of breath. “I think you know the answer.”

“But I want to hear you say it.”

You peered up at your fiancé. At the man who was to become your husband in less than a day. A part of you still couldn’t believe it—that someone as brilliant as him wanted you as much as you did him. That you, who had dedicated your life to science and medicine, to logic and reasoning, still couldn’t explain why you found yourself speechless whenever his gaze was fixed on you.

So you told him the truth. “You’re incredible, Satoru.”

The smile he gave you then… you could look at that smile a billion times and still melt from it. “I hope you mean both the sex and my theory.”

You sighed, knowing exactly where he was going with this. “Alright, five minutes. Then I’m really going to sleep, promise?”

He laughed and kissed your forehead. “As you wish, my love.”

“Well, for starters, you’re talking about preserving brain activity—core consciousness—after death, not only on a cellular level. That’s notoriously tricky. Impossible, some might say, but I know you hate that word—“

“Most things are not impossible, merely improbable.”

“But brain function is quickest to deteriorate, so you’ll have to find a way to—“

“We, darling,” Satoru corrected.

You couldn’t help your smile. “Right, so we will have to find a way to prevent core consciousness from ceasing to exist the moment the heart stops beating… save the soul, as you say, from extinction.” You tapped your chin, your mind whirring as his fingers continued their light tracing along the contours of your body. You didn’t doubt Satoru had already found the answer, but you loved him all the more for letting you figure it out on your own, even if he wasn’t letting you sleep. “The difficult part is the time constraint, unless we freeze the brain. We already have the cryogenic technology for that…”

“But?” Satoru looked at you with hopeful eyes.

“But the soul isn’t cellular. It’s immaterial.”

His answering grin told you that you were close.

“Even if we do bring back consciousness, we don’t want it to be a blank slate,” you continued. “We want it the way it was before death. We want to retain memory…” It hit you then. Your eyes widened at Satoru. “So we back it up. We copy neural activity in the brain before it dies and upload it back in later.”

Satoru leaned in, and pecked your lips as reward. “By the way, have I told you I’m crazy for you?”

You laughed. “Everyday. Don’t stop.”

“Oh, as if I will,” he said, pulling you in for yet another kiss. “You’re stuck with me for the indefinite future, baby. You’ll soon get sick of hearing it, but I’ll continue saying it anyway.”

You reached for his beautiful face.

“Never,” you said.

Satoru’s smile was tender. “I’ll hold you to that.” He kissed your palm, your lips again, and then he was pulling away to slip out of bed.

Your brows furrowed. “I thought you promised we were going to sleep?”

“Huh? I thought you were going to sleep.” He was already pulling open the dresser drawer. “I’m going to the lab. Don’t wait up for me, okay baby?”

“What? Are you serious?” You sat up straight now, back stiff. “Satoru, you have a wedding to attend. Our wedding. Can’t whatever it is you want to do wait for just one day?”

“I’ll meet you at the hotel. I need to make some new adjustments to the chamber. I’m thinking of calling it the Infinity Chamber. Has a nice ring to it, no? Infinite life. Infinite time. Very mythical—”

“Satoru, don’t,” you warned. “Just forget about work for twenty four hours. That’s all I’m asking for. Please.”

“Baby, you know it’s not just work to me.”

“Then what am I? Just some girl you’re marrying?”

His hand paused midway to his backpack on the armchair. Satoru’s gaze found yours across the room.

“Is that what you think?” he said, his tone gentle but serious. “Because to me, you’re my equal. In every measure.”

“Satoru, don’t you dare walk out that door. I’ll kill you.”

“Baby, we both know you won’t.”

“Wanna bet?”

“Then I’ll win,” he said.

“Don’t be so sure.”

“Well, I am. I’ll win because you’ll let me. Because you love me.”

He winked, and blew you a final kiss.

And then he was gone.

Satoru never turned up at the hotel. You’d waited at the lobby for an hour, and when he hadn’t answered your call for the sixteenth time, you went to check in to the suite you thought you’d be stepping in together with him.

As the hours until the wedding drew closer and closer, you’d finally hit the last straw of your patience and sent Suguru to the research centre to drag Satoru over. It didn’t matter if you had to marry him in his lab coat. It was better than marrying his ghost.

The call came thirty minutes before it was time for you to walk down the aisle. The guests had arrived. White roses covered every surface of the ceremony hall. You were in your gown, veil draped over your head, chewing on your lip when Suguru’s name flashed on your phone.

You’d laughed first. You’d thought it was a joke. A bad one. Suguru had to repeat it three times before you were running to your car.

But still, you didn’t believe him. Not until you reached the lab. Not until you saw Satoru.

They’d categorised it as an accident. The security cameras confirmed Satoru had been alone. You’d seen the time stamp. It happened while you were sleeping. He’d forgotten to turn off the main power, and was ripping out some components from the cryochamber, presumably to move to his new Infinity Chamber, when the door malfunctioned, and sealed him inside.

Hours. Satoru had been stuck in there for hours. In a temperature of minus two hundred degrees celsius, slowly freezing. His blood solidifying…

And like brittle ice, he simply broke apart.

As with every task that involved touching Satoru, you were the one who performed it. The human mind was fallible, so it was natural for them to make mistakes, but you less than others. Satoru was unmatched, of course, but since he was out of commission for the time being, the next best person you trusted was yourself.

You were not unaware that Shoko and the team, as well as every board member, had their eyes on you the moment you wheeled Satoru into the Infinity Chamber—more a tall, circular room that resembled the inside of a silo, with large lamps fixed onto the generous, three-storey high ceiling, clinical light glaring down as rigid and impersonal as the spectators watching you from above, shielded behind a circumference of glass.

Well, you supposed ‘impersonal’ was being unkind to your team. Suguru was Satoru’s best friend, after all. Correction—he is. Perhaps unforgiving was a better word. They’d understood why you’d put all of their jobs and livelihoods on the line for this, but it didn’t mean they would forgive you for it.

And then there was the boy. Megumi. You could practically feel his gaze burning into your back as you hooked up the last of the dozens of tubes connecting Satoru to the walls of the Infinity Chamber itself, because that was what this room was—one giant machine built to execute the last of Satoru’s ‘Five R’ Principle:

Resurrect.

You checked the tubes again, checked the wires, checked the position of the helmet fastened over Satoru’s head, then checked everything again before finally forcing yourself not to prolong this any further. You hated leaving Satoru alone, but you needed to be in the control room, and no one could be in the chamber while the procedure was taking place unless they enjoyed being electrocuted.

You went through a steel inforced door that took you up a set of winding stairs straight to the control room, where the chatter immediately died a quick death the moment you stepped in.

No doubt they had been discussing you. Not like you gave a shit. You were used to it by now—the whispers behind your back, the glances shot your way when they thought you weren’t looking. The furrowed brows and downturned lips, and perhaps worst of all, the knowledge that none of it was out of hate but pity.

“Doc,” Shoko nodded in greeting, the others mimicking her gesture, albeit in silence. “All screens are live. Perfusion system is loading, should be ready to go in three minutes.”

You turned to Suguru, who was positioned in front of a wide monitor, the screen filled with lines and lines of ever-shifting numbers. You asked him the same question you did everyday.

“How’s it reading?”

And Suguru answered you as how he always did. Calmly. A little bleak. “We’re still at a 0.0000033 percent loss. Nothing’s changed since the soul mapping. The system shows his neural patterns are still processing information at an unnaturally high efficiency. His consciousness is more than active, doc. It’s fully functioning, fully realised—it’s like Satoru can’t shut up in there. Typical of him, I guess.”

“We should have just made him a new body,” Nanami remarked from where he stood monitoring the blood tanks. “By my calculations, it would have lowered the risks by precisely sixteen more percent.”

“Yeah, but then we’re wasting the original body,” Haibara pointed out. “We can’t just throw him out—“

“We’re already copying his brain. I don’t see what’s the—“ Nanami cut himself off, glancing for half a second in your direction. He cleared his throat. “It’s done anyway. The best course now is to proceed as is.”

It’s all noise, baby. Block it out. Satoru spoke in your head. You have me.

Without thinking, you walked over to the wall of thick glass. Below, Satoru lay unmoving, in the exact same position as when you’d left him. You couldn’t explain it, but even now, a tiny, microscopic part of you still thought he might just wake up on his own. As if he’d merely decided to take a very, very long nap. It was ludicrous since you were the one who had put his body back together. But when it came to Satoru, your own brain tended to override most rhyme and reason.

“Everything’s good to go,” said Shoko, pulling you from your thoughts. “Want to do the honours, doc?”

Your gaze narrowed on the small green button raised against the main control panel. You approached it, reaching out a hand, fingers hovering.

You think I can’t do it, baby?

I think you can do anything, Toru.

Do you doubt me?

Never

“Never,” you whispered, and pushed the button.

It was as if the chamber itself had come to life. The great whir of a beastly machine waking up from an eternal slumber. Invisible currents coursed through the air inside the cylindrical shaft where Satoru lay alone, hooked up to the tubes that were now pumping synthetic blood into his body. You thought you saw him twitch. You blinked. It was just electricity. But then—

“Doc—“ It was Shoko, her tone uncharacteristically shaken. “Peripheral nerve activity detected. We're seeing reflex responses. His motor neurons are firing."

“Perfusion efficiency at ninety-two percent…ninety-three…ninety-eight...” Nanami added, similarly unable to hide his surprise. “Capillary beds are accepting the new blood flow. Oxygen saturation levels are rising steadily. No adverse reactions detected. This is… unprecedented.”

“Ah, guys…” Haibara announced. “The ECG just detected a heartbeat.”

Your breaths stilled.

“Fuck me.” Suguru jolted from his seat. “Doc, you should come see this—all of you should see this. The upload… it's working. His consciousness is downloading into the biological brain. Neural pattern fidelity is nearly perfect. I'm seeing unified brain activity. He's not just alive. He's conscious. He’s… he’s coming back—“

But while everyone rushed to Suguru’s monitor, your feet were moving in a different direction. In the next moment, you were flying back down the stairs and slamming through the door into the Infinity Chamber.

And just as your gaze snapped to his body on the metal slab—

Satoru bolted upright.

Blue eyes, wide awake, found yours.

Your mouth fell open.

His lips, no longer leeched of colour, parted.

Satoru blinked. Once. Twice.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Your lungs hollowed out. Disintegrated.

But then he was laughing.

“I’m joking, baby. It’s a joke. Hey, don’t pass out, okay?”

You stared at him.

At the same time, a voice came through the chamber’s speakers.

“Oh my fucking god, Satoru. Are you serious? Of all the times, now’s not it.”

“Suguru? That you? Tch—some friend you are.” Thirty three weeks of stillness, but now Satoru was tipping his head up at the control room. “If you’d just answered when I called you, then I wouldn’t have turned into a block of ice, would I? Because I would’ve forced you to come to the lab.”

“So you do remember dying?” It was Shoko this time.

“I remember freezing my ass off with no way out of that bloody cryochamber. Doesn’t take a genius to know what came next.”

“That’s a ninety nine percent memory retainment.” Shoko gave a low whistle. “Impressive work, doc. You did it.”

“Of course she did. She’s my—“ Satoru paused, his gaze finding yours again. “Fuuuuck… baby, I’m sorry. I missed the wedding, didn’t I?”

You didn’t answer him. It was as if your mind had glitched while trying to process if this was real, or if you were actually hallucinating. If somehow, somewhere in the process of trying to bring him back to life, you’d lost your mind and ended up in the loony bin, and that all of this was happening in your head.

“Baby, you’re shaking.” Satoru made to stand but was jerked back by the tubes connected to his body. “Ow, damn it—fuck.” He gripped a tube, about to yank it off, but then had the common sense to drop it when he saw blood still pumping into him. His arms reached out towards you. “Come here, baby. It’s me… I promise.”

But before your feet could decide to function, the door to the chamber opened. Two figures strode in. Both, you recognised. Both, you could do without seeing.

“Huh, so you’re actually alive.” Sukuna picked off some imaginary dust from his creaseless suit, his tone managing to sound both amused and scathing all at once. “I was expecting some sort of trickery. A hologram, maybe. At most, a robot. Who knows what they’ll come up with to prevent the board from selling this place off.”

Satoru snorted. “You’re lucky there were cameras, or I would’ve found a way to frame you for my murder. And a robot? How insulting. No one can be me but me.”

“Evidently. A robot would know when to stop talking.”

A step behind Sukuna, Fushiguro Megumi stood glaring. Not at Satoru, but at you.

He looked more dishevelled than last you’d seen him during the reading of Satoru’s will, in which a mini skirmish had broken out among Satoru’s relatives—who hadn’t bothered showing their faces until that day—when the Gojo family’s lawyer had announced that the entirety of Satoru’s assets were to be split equally between you and Megumi. An adopted son and a not-yet-wife.

And like you, Megumi hadn’t given a flying fuck about the inheritance. What he did care about was the one clause Satoru had somehow had the foresight to include in his will. That the decision on what to do with his body would be solely up to you. Satoru’s own messed up way of showing you he meant it when he’d once told you, “I belong to you.”

Megumi had wanted a funeral. You didn’t. Megumi had wanted to say his goodbyes. You didn’t. Megumi didn’t want Satoru to be tampered with, to be experimented with. You didn’t see it that way. And that was how your relationship with the boy had soured to this point.

“I hope you’re happy,” he said to you. He might as well have spat in your face.

Satoru must have sensed the tension, because he immediately dropped his verbal sparring with Sukuna. “Oh? What seems to be the problem, Megumi-chan? I thought you’d be glad to see me.”

But Megumi wouldn’t even look at him. His eyes stayed on you like daggers slicing into your skin. “The Gojo Satoru I know is dead. This…thing you created—with fake blood and a fake brain—“ he laughed, bitterly. “And now you’re pretending he’s real? What a load of bullshit.”

He didn’t wait for a reply and stormed out of the chamber.

“He’ll come around,” Satoru said, but still, he’d winced. “Alright, welcome party’s over, everyone. As nice as I am to look at, I don’t really want to sit here naked with my dick hanging out for much longer. So if all of you could kindly piss off, that would be amazing. I’d like a moment with my wife, please.”

Sukuna scoffed. “Well, if you’re in good condition to yap incessantly, then I expect you’ll be in good condition for a board meeting tomorrow. Ten o’clock. Don’t die and be late again.” And with that, he was out the door.

Shoko’s voice spoke through the speakers. “We’re going to stop the perfusion, Satoru. It should be safe to remove the tubes. But me and the team will need to stick around in case of anything… unforeseen. Just pretend we’re not here.”

The whirring of machines faded, steeping the chamber in a new silence. Once again, you were alone with Satoru. But this time, you’d finally accepted he was truly breathing.

“Baby? Talk to me.” Satoru flashed you a nervous smile. “You haven’t said a word.”

You moved.

And the moment you did, you couldn’t stop.

You reached for him. Your hands were on his face, moving down his neck, his chest. Over the very real beat of his heart. And when you felt his hand on yours, the pressure of his very real touch, your voice broke.

“I—we should try taking the tubes out.”

It was lame. You should have told him you missed him. You should have told him all the things you wanted to tell him in the months he lay lifeless while you pieced him back together. How you refused to let a single drop of tear roll down your cheek, because it would mean that you had something to cry about. How the entire research centre thought grief had turned you into some mad scientist who was obsessed with creating your very own Frankenstein, and that you almost believed them… almost.

But you didn’t tell him those things. Because those things no longer mattered.

Slowly, you removed the tubes from him one by one. Satoru just sat there, watching you work, his fingers playing with your hair, grazing down the back of your neck, applying gentle caresses here and there until the last of the tubes were gone.

“Try standing up,” you said, your voice too thick to hide the emotions threatening to burst out from within you. “I need to check your sense of balance.”

Satoru nodded and wasted no time hopping off the table onto his feet. He grinned, and did a little spin. Like he was modelling for you. “Nice stitching, baby. I think I prefer myself like this—adds a lot of character, you know?”

“I’ll get you some clothes.”

But he caught your wrist then, pulling you tight against him. His arms enveloped you, fingers lifting your chin to meet his gaze.

“I’ve missed you too,” he said, stroking your cheek.

The way he spoke, softly, his cadence perfect and familiar and exactly as you remembered—it really was him.

Your lips trembled, betraying you as you peered up at him.

“Never again, Satoru,” you said. “Okay?”

He leaned in. “I promise, baby.”

And when his mouth brushed against yours… when you parted your lips, feeling his tongue sweep inside you, meeting his every stroke and caress with your own… it was like everything that had been blocking up your insides for so long—the sand in your lungs, the pain in your chest, the hollow pit in your stomach—all of it became but a distant memory.

Your kisses grew hungry. You couldn’t stop touching him. You needed to bottle up all of his warmth and preserve every ounce of this moment because you couldn’t bear to lose another second with him.

“Hey,” Satoru murmured against your lips. “Easy, baby. I’m right here.”

A smile cracked through some forgotten place in you. “Well, deal with it. All my kisses have been one-sided for months.”

“I bet I still taste good dead.”

“That’s not funny, Satoru.”

He laughed. “We’ll see if it is sixty years from now.”

“Why sixty?”

He grinned, and then he was pulling you in for another kiss. “That’s what husbands and wives do, don’t they? Grow old together.”

Like wildfire, news of the scientist who died and came back to life spread across the globe, saturating every media outlet, baffling entire religions, upending the medical world and whatever long held beliefs they had been preaching on the subject of mortality.

The headlines were calling it a miracle. Churches called it blasphemy. The medical journals were split between praise and skepticism. The National Registration Department had never had to rescind a death certificate eight months after registering it. Gojo Satoru, billionaire scientist, child prodigy, TIME 100 most influential individual, the world’s sexiest man alive for six years running, and former corpse, had become a global sensation as the man who had defied death.

And you were right there in the spotlight alongside him. Satoru had made sure of it, insisting that your name was listed first in the accreditation for his now infamous Theory of Resurrection. Whenever he was asked, Satoru always drove in the fact that though he was the mastermind behind it, you were the one who saw it to the finish line.

“Execution is worth infinitely more than mere ideas,” he’d point out in all the interviews while refusing to let go of your hand.

Naturally, with any bizarre phenomenon came the conspiracies. There were those who accused Satoru of not being human, instead believing he was some kind of top secret, hi-tech artificial intelligence the government was testing out as a weapon for modern warfare. The ufologists’ deductions were much simpler—that extraterrestrial beings had abducted Satoru, conducted experiments, and placed him back on earth as one of them.

In answer to these wild accusations, Satoru had only one reply. “Whether I’m an alien or the Terminator, at least I’m a damn good looking one.”

Well, if there was a truth you could confirm, it was that he still fucked you like a feral beast.

After three weeks of monitoring at the research centre, Shoko and the team had determined Satoru’s condition as stable, and the board finally allowed him to return home with you. The moment the both of you stepped through the front door, it was like Satoru was a man on a mission.

“To make up for lost time,” he said as he tore off your clothes, and took you against the wall. “It’s lucky you didn’t have to sew my cock back on as well.”

“If you’d lost it, I wouldn’t have brought you back—ahn!”

He laughed as he thrusted deep into you, filling you up so completely, making you take in every inch of him until there was no doubt that he was here to stay. Inside you. With you. “And here I am thinking you fell for my incredible mind.”

“It’s—nghh—Toru, you’re…”

“What is it, baby?” Another thrust. Your moans filled the foyer. “Tell me, what am I?”

“Everything,” you breathed. “You’re everything, Satoru…”

His gaze softened, and when his lips found yours, his kiss was tender. Warm.

Alive.

You let him pick you up, clinging onto him as he carried you to the bedroom and gently laid you on the sheets. You didn’t let go. Not when he sheathed himself in you again. Not as his mouth claimed every part of you as if he never wanted to forget the very shape of you. Not while your bodies moved in sync together, while you cried out his name over and over again as he brought you to the edge, and went right over it together with you.

You still didn’t let go as your head rested in the crook of his arm, your palm on his chest, over his beating heart. Your fingers traced the thick gash spanning across his stomach. It was still too early to remove the stitches, but he was healing up nicely. You wanted to believe scars could be beautiful, too.

“You can close your eyes, baby. It’s alright.”

You peered up at Satoru, not understanding at first.

“You’re exhausted,” he said. “I bet you haven’t properly slept since—“

“Don’t, Toru. I’ve heard that word enough. I don’t need you saying it too.”

“Then what do you me want to call it?”

“You didn’t—you were just absent. That’s all.”

“Well, I’m here now.” Satoru trailed his fingers down the curve of your back. “And I’m going to marry you. We’ll have that wedding I stupidly ruined. We’ll take that trip to Paris and never see the sights, because I’ll be fucking you so well you won’t want to leave the hotel.”

A soft laugh escaped you. “What about all the improvements you want to make to the Infinity Chamber? It’s going to be a tight schedule. All the major hospitals have already placed their orders, and Sukuna wants to release the first commercial model by early next year—“

“Baby, if there’s one thing I learnt from dy—my absence, it’s my priorities. Work can wait. Never you. Never again.”

You hugged him tighter. “Is that a promise I’m hearing, Gojo Satoru?”

He beamed. “I don’t have to promise anything, baby. I’ll show you. Just sit back and see for yourself, I’ll—“

Satoru paused. His brows furrowed.

“Toru?” Your smile vanished as he suddenly jerked upright, and stumbled out of bed.

Satoru was coughing. The coughing turned into heaving. He was doubled over, clutching his stomach.

Red spilled out his mouth. Globs of it, fresh and dark, splattering across the white carpet.

Someone was screaming.

It was you.

Of all the fucking things that had to go wrong, why did it have to be his immune system?

Your jaw was tight as you read the report, your eyes burning holes into the file as if you could force the words to magically reshuffle and change the diagnosis.

But nothing changed. Satoru was dying. Again.

“We’ll rush a stem cell transplantation,” you said. “We’ll develop new immunosuppressants. We’ll—“

“Those treatments take time, doc,” replied Shoko. You hated the tone she was using. It was too gentle. Too final. The kind of tone doctors used when they were required to deliver bad news to patients. “If it were a normal autoimmune disease, we’d probably have a chance. But Satoru isn’t normal. At the rate his immune system is attacking… it’s like a war inside him. His body is shutting down too rapidly—“

“How long?” you asked, already knowing the answer. But your brain refused to accept it, instead seeking out someone, anyone, who might tell you otherwise.

The team fell silent.

“He won’t last the hour,” Suguru finally said. “I’m sorry, doc.”

You pitched the file across the Infinity Chamber. The papers came loose, flapping about midair before scattering soundlessly onto the floor. On the operating table where Satoru lay motionless, those blue eyes lost under closed lids. Unseeing.

He’d fallen into a coma before the ambulance arrived. Simply keeled over, face down in a pool of his own regurgitated blood. No hospital would be able to treat him, so you’d screamed at the paramedics to take him straight to the research centre. Everyone had seen his face on the news, and it didn’t take much convincing for them to oblige your demand.

His skin was greying again. The pink in his cheeks, his lips, had faded to an ashen pallor. His breaths were waning. Those fucking tubes were stuck in him once more.

“Brain activity is flatlining,” Nanami reported, his expression grave. He added, quietly, “You might want a moment alone with him, doc. He can’t respond, but he can still hear you.”

Your fists were balled, nails puncturing through the skin of your palms.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

This wasn’t happening. You weren’t going to let it happen.

You weren’t going to fucking say goodbye.

“Activate the resurrection procedure,” you said. “Now.”

Someone touched your shoulder. You flinched back.

Shoko’s hand retreated. “Doc,” she said, carefully. “We never calculated for a second time. It’s too much. The process will fry his organs. The synthetic blood might destroy his natural cells.”

You spared her a single glance. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

No one moved at first. Then, Haibara spoke.

“She wants to try, guys.” He wouldn’t meet your eyes as he said it. “We should let her try.”

A sigh. You didn’t know from who. You didn’t care.

“Everyone to the control room,” said Shoko. “Nanami, reduce perfusion speed by half. Suguru, watch the reading—the moment his consciousness hits zero, we’re uploading immediately. Haibara, see if you can block some of the electro current. Satoru’s still alive. We want to jolt his system, not subject him to an electric chair. Doc—“

“I’m staying in the chamber,” you said.

“It’s not safe—“

“It will be if you block a portion of the electro current, which you are. Either way, I’m not leaving him.”

“If we’re going to do this, we should get moving,” said Suguru. “We have less than an hour now, and I’ll have to recalibrate the neural mapping.”

There was nothing to recalibrate and you knew it. Shoko might not have given up on you, but Suguru had accepted the fact that convincing you to do anything else was a lost cause. You suspected he’d understood this a long time ago. He was the one who had found Satoru in the cryochamber, after all. The one who had to call you while you waited in your wedding dress.

But you didn’t need him to understand. You didn’t need a friend. You didn’t need compassion.

You needed Satoru back.

The team left you alone and hurried to the control room upstairs. You positioned yourself beside the operating table, and waited your second eternity. But you were used to waiting by now. You’d waited for him to offer you a spot on his research team, waited for him to notice you as more than an assistant, waited for him to ask you out for a quick lunch at that dingy sandwich joint staff liked to go to when they were sick of cafeteria food…

You waited for him to love you. So death could go fuck itself if it thought it could rip Satoru away from you after you’d spent all this time waiting.

You counted each shallow rise and fall of his chest. Saw the moment it stopped moving before the machines around you started buzzing. You stood, numb, as the chamber you’d finished building—not for humanity’s advancement but for one person—came alive around you in a flurry of mechanical droning.

All the while, you watched him. Until you chewed the inside of your cheeks raw and your vision blurred from refusing to blink. Until you spotted the twitch of his finger. A fluttering of long, white lashes.

Satoru groaned. His eyes flew open, then he was fumbling upright.

A small cry escaped you, and then you were holding him.

“It’s alright,” you said when he looked at you, dazed and confused. “You’re alright now.”

“I…” Satoru hesitated. “Where am I?”

“At the research centre. You had an accident, but everything’s okay now. You’re okay.”

“I see. I think I remember. Just… give me a moment. My head feels like someone cracked it open with a hammer.”

You helped him to unstrap the helmet, and draped your lab coat over him. Continued to hold him steady as he studied the tubes running out his body.

“So I died,” he said.

“For a short while, yes.”

“And you brought me back.”

“I always will, Satoru.”

Those blue eyes searched yours.

“You’re very beautiful,” he said. “But I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“Satoru, I told you it’s not funny.”

He blinked. “Right, ah… so I do know you. I mean, it feels like I do. It feels like I’ve known you my whole life.”

You stared at him.

Satoru stared back. “Shit. I’ve said something wrong, haven’t I?”

The speaker crackled. A grim voice cut through the chamber.

“Doc. Satoru…” Suguru sounded too calm. “So this is what’s going to happen—I’m going to read you the diagnosis, and then me and the team… we’ll wait for your decision. But, doc, I think this time you should let Satoru decide.”

Suguru didn’t wait for an answer and continued. “You died twice, Satoru. We brought you back using your Theory of Resurrection. Do you remember your theory?”

For a long moment, Satoru didn’t speak. His eyes darted from you up to the control room above, and then around the chamber, assessing. Processing. As if a flurry of information was running through his head at lighting speed to reach a conclusion.

“I think I understand now,” he said, slowly. “And I can guess where this is going. Whoever you are, give it to me straight—and don’t bother explaining my theory. I know what I created.”

Silence.

“We couldn’t recover a portion of your memory, Satoru. Your body is rejecting the neural upload… among other things.”

“Please, I forgot some things. I’m not an idiot.” Satoru’s gaze settled back on you, on the matching rings on both your fourth fingers. He mustered a grin. “Well, at least I was lucky enough to find someone like you, even if I can’t remember how.”

You didn’t know when you’d started shaking.

Suguru spoke. “Satoru… your body is shutting down. The synthetic blood we’re pumping in is keeping you functioning for now, but the moment we shut off the tubes, you’ll—“

“I’ll die,” Satoru finished. “Took you long enough to say it. Kind of figured that out since I woke up feeling like shit.”

“Your consciousness is currently at thirty three percent retainment. We can try to bring you back again, but from the reading, retainment percentage will only go down. You’ll probably lose another fifteen percent if we go through with a third procedure.” Suguru’s voice hitched. “I—listen Satoru… even if we succeed, you won’t be yourself.”

“Again, Mr. Obvious, I’m not an idiot. And I can hear you sniffling, by the way. What’s your name?”

“Suguru. We’re friends.”

“Well, Suguru, if we’re really friends, then I think you know what to do.”

“No,” you whispered. Then louder. “No. That’s not what we’re doing. We’re not going to—“

“Hey, come here.” You froze as Satoru took your hands in his, gently pulling you closer. He shifted, wincing as he stood, and wrapped you in his arms.

The world slipped away from under your feet. There was only him. Soft, white hair falling over deep blue eyes. His pale, tired face, still perfect. The pressure of his hands around your waist, lifting to cup your cheek. The stroke of his fingers against your skin. The way he was looking at you, like he…

“I’m sorry, baby.” His lips were on yours as he spoke. “Do you hate me?”

At last, you broke. Your face crumpled. Your composure went. You stopped caring if he could feel your body shudder.

“Never,” you said.

“Do you love me?”

Your laugh was bitter. “I can’t believe you’re even asking that.”

You felt his fingers tighten a fraction around your waist. “Then, do you know that I love you?”

“I—“you could barely choke the word out. Because the truth of it was more than you could handle. It was easier to beg. So you did. “Please don’t leave me.”

Satoru’s smile was oddly relaxed. Almost relieved. As if he’d lost something important and had found it. “I’ll still be around, if you want me to. Right here,” he said, and gently tapped the side of your head. “As long as you live, so do I.”

“It’s not the same.” Your vision blurred. “It’s not—it’s not everything. It’s not you...”

“My love, you know as well as I do that I won’t be me even if I stay.” He kissed you. Kissed away the damp streaks flowing down your cheeks. Gently. Slowly.

“I’ll find a way,” you tried again. “There’s always a way. Nothing’s impossible, only improbable. That’s what you told me. There has to be another—“

“You’re right, there always is. Doesn’t mean you should go searching for it.”

“No. I refuse.” You were shaking your head violently. “Don’t do this to me. If you don’t want to try, I will. I’ll fix it. All you have to do is wait. I won’t stop—“

He hugged you tighter. You felt his lips on your hair.

“Look at me, baby.”

You screwed your eyes shut. If you couldn’t see what was written so clearly on his face, then it wasn’t true.

“Please, baby,” Satoru said, lifting your chin. “I want to get a good look at what my soul cannot deny.”

You wanted to scream. You wanted to hit him. You wanted to burn down this whole fucking place, with you and him in it, so you wouldn’t have to live through what was coming next. So you wouldn’t have to feel yourself tearing apart inside.

Not yet. It wasn’t enough. The time you were given with him was simply too short. It should be more. It should be sixty more years like he promised.

You weren’t ready to let him go.

But you knew you had to. Because it was what he wanted. Because he didn’t want you to lose him slowly. Because he was losing himself. Because he couldn’t be brilliant without his memory. Because he would no longer be Gojo Satoru, and he didn’t want you seeing it.

Because he loved you.

You looked into his eyes… the eyes you once thought you’d be looking at forever.

“There’s my girl.” Satoru’s smile destroyed you. “Better holes in my brain than yours, because I don’t want you forgetting I’m yours. In every lifetime. Can you do that? Can you remember that for me?“

It was the same before, and it was the same now. You would do anything for him. So you nodded, and told him what he wanted to hear. “You’re too much for me to forget so easily, Satoru.”

He laughed and kissed you again, long and slow, and for a moment, nothing existed but the warmth of him that filled you.

“Come here, baby,” he said. “Let me hold you.”

You let him pick you up and place you on the metal slab. You laid down with him, your head on his chest like how you always fell asleep, curled up against him. Your legs tangled with his, his arm under and around you. Your hand in his, where it belonged.

You couldn’t say how long you stayed like that. Talking. You told him about the day you met, how he’d asked you to marry him one random morning to make you feel better about the coffee machine breaking down. He laughed and told you that he must be quite a catch for you to say yes to such a lame proposal. Then he told you his vows—the vows for a wedding you would never have.

Somewhere in between, Satoru must have signalled for Suguru to stop the perfusion because the whirring in the chamber faded. You ignored the silence. There was only him. His voice. The press of his body against yours. His fingers wrapped in yours as you moved yourself up, placing your face so close to his that his features became indistinct, and you began to lose yourself in them.

You held him as he slipped away. As his chest slowed and his skin turned cold. You told him it was okay for him to close his eyes, and right before he did, you told him you loved him.

You held him long after his heart stopped beating. Long after the team had left and your muscles had gone stiff from lack of movement. Long after his soul had departed to a place you couldn’t reach. And when you finally let go of him, it was to pick up the metal helmet from the floor.

You placed it over your head, and sat back down beside him.

“System override,” you said, your voice calm. Flat. “Password: Replacement.”

Satoru was wrong. He’d theorised Five R’s, ending with resurrection. He never considered a sixth. But you did. You’d figured out the final ‘R’ to the equation.

A computerised voice droned through the speaker. “System override. Affirmative. Existing consciousness detected. Permission to erase for remapping.”

“Permission granted.”

“Affirmative. Accessing stored neural data for replacement. Confirm subject.”

“Gojo Satoru.”

“Affirmative. Neural data for subject, Gojo Satoru, confirmed for replacement with existing consciousness. Requesting password for final permission.”

Your gaze fell on Satoru. You took his hands in yours, and brought them to your lips.

“Never,” you said.

“Password confirmed. Neural replacement loading. Erasing existing consciousness in ten… nine… eight…”

You loosened a great breath.

You’d proven his theory. You’d succeeded. If you could not give him everything, then you would give him you.

His soul would live.

Even if yours couldn’t.