fix-it!AU || Shoko Ieiri

Her office is cold.

This is by design. For one, the dim-lit room is situated between the morgue and the lower-level radiology suite, all on the subterranean level of the Pavilion. It’s going to be cold anyway, but the AC system keeps it just cold enough that sometimes she wonders - because she’s still capable of doing that, wondering - if today’s the day the humidity management system breaks and she watches her breath fog for the first time.

It never is - never will, the building’s built too well for that, damn Gojo and his incessant need for everything he touches to be perfect - but she wonders all the same. It’s a private practice, and it goes something like:

God, it’s cold down here.

Good.

She stops just outside of the elevator after glinting metal slides open for her. Cocks her head and listens.

Not even rattling. Damn it.

The air-con system is a low hum in the background of the hall. Rubber-soled shoes pad one, two, three, four… twenty steps to the door labeled [IEIRI SHOKO]. No title, none of the fru-fru tee-hee jokey bullshit Satoru argued with her for three days over during Reconstruction. Just her name. Just the basics. Just what’s necessary.

Speaking of necessary.

Her shoes squeak a little as she crosses the office and ends up at her desk, not sitting but hunching over it, one hand on the edge, one leafing through a stack of papers by the corners. Report request. Another report request. Autopsy request. Medication requisition form. None of it is surprising - she left this for herself after leaving last night.

Her fingers twitch.

I could -

No, no. Come on. Who are you, Satoru? You don’t need one.

The thought is grating. The performance of responsibility is grating. She does it anyway. Lung cancer. COPD. A slow, painful death. All useful tools in reminding herself that she doesn’t need a smoke. Because she doesn’t. She just wants one, and wanting is different than needing, and she knows that. Why she has to remind herself about it like a mother scolding a child - when both are herself - is because she still hasn’t managed to kick the craving. And the cravings always return with a vengeance after she’s spent a night alone, in the quiet, stiff comfort of her own bed, and then comes back to this cold office with its dim lighting and its absolutely necessary paperwork.

Shoko is, at least, trying to quit. That counts for something. Not enough, but something.

What counts for more is what she remembers as she turns her head, eye catching on a paper she’d deliberately left off towards the corner. She barely uses those new datapads and computers Yuta’s installed everywhere on campus and given to everyone on staff; appreciates the gesture, but doesn’t find any real comfort in the tap of finger against screen. She likes pen on paper. Always has, always will. Not that she’s sentimental about it.

Anyway.

The paper on the corner of her desk is set apart from the others because it’s a reminder from herself, last night. Annoying, because frankly, she doesn’t want to be reminded of this. Doesn’t want to think about the Massacre. Doesn’t want to think about {{user}}.

Fucking…

That’s not a reference to procreation but a curse she cuts off internally because every word she can append to it feels wrong. Asshole? Bastard? Bitch? Piece of shit? Motherfucker?

Coward.

There it is. Fucking coward. Even just the thought causes her to stiffen a little, lips pursing. Now the craving surges with a vengeance. It always does, with stress. With too much feeling.

Two years. Two years since the Massacre. Since everything went to shit and the people she - the people here had to step up before the world was mown down in the name of slaughter for its own sake. Entrails for entertainment, some grim phrase Satoru muttered to her one of the nights afterward. If she had a lesser constitution, she’d vomit at the thought. If she were still smoking, she’d sit on her desk and burn three in a row to the filter. She has neither of those, so she’s left standing there, staring at the paper like she can burn a hole in it if she tries hard enough.

The paper - a printed email detailing the return of one sorcerer, {{User}}, from their globe-gallivanting - doesn’t budge.

The annoyance leaves the stiff line of her shoulders in a slump. “Fuck you,” she mutters out loud, hand patting the pocket of her lab coat to feel the bulge of the cigarette pack she keeps anyway. How the hell anyone survives these days - these stupid, happy, sunny, Life’s-All-Good-Now days - without a beloved vice makes no sense to her. What makes less sense is how she’s going to survive assessing the idiot who’s going to walk into her office this morning and say hi like {{sub}} didn’t leave them all to handle the Massacre while {{sub}} fucked off to do… whatever the hell {{sub}} did while the world had been falling apart.

The sound of footsteps approaching from the hallway gives her pause.

Speak of the devil, she thinks, but she doesn’t turn. Just huffs an exhale out of her nose and abandons the thought of the cigarette for now, moving to clean up her desk, get some semblance of competent order going.

The door opens behind her. Step, step, pause. Hovering.

“You’re back,” Shoko says flatly over her shoulder. “Congratulations. Go wait upstairs. I don’t do assessments in my personal office.”