Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

By midday, you and Choso had cleared the abandoned buildings listed in your little notebook. Three to be exact, hidden down back alleys and side streets with lower foot traffic.

“What about this place?” You asked, nodding your head in the direction of a darkened alley, practically abandoned. “It’s not on the list, I don’t think I’ve seen this part of town before… huh, I thought I’d combed every corner of this district, maybe it’s part of the next ward?”

You watched the practically black blip on the map, untouched by neon and market smells, scraps of discarded newspapers and lost change fallen from people’s pockets. It was barely built, forgotten like an old relic.

“Huh…” Choso rubbed his chin, studying the building's tall side with the high smashed-in window. “I can’t say I’ve seen this either, like it was ripped up out of nowhere and placed here.”

“Well, let’s take a peek, it’s probably where the homeless are staying if it’s this closed off. Let’s check it out. We might be able to get some answers.”

You marched off down the thin alley, side stepping past some old, rusted trash cans, avoiding the weeks old garbage that harboured the smell of sweet rotting food. 

If the ominous appearance didn’t keep people away, the smell definitely did.

“Jesus-“ the police issue face guard did nothing. “Does this place never get cleaned?”

Choso followed close. “I’ll put in an enquiry with the local authority to see why their sanitation is lacking here.”

“Maybe it’s just difficult to get down here, but it doesn’t negate the fact that we’ve never seen this place.” 

The entire building was wrong, broken. Each window had been blown out with fire damage, and eerie shapes cast over the poorly laid concrete bricks from old, peeling posters and expired stickers of parades that had passed three years prior. It was more than just wrong, it was rampantly present like a rash, an oozing sore in Kabukicho’s ward, poorly covered in tape.

It was festering, the woodwork broken and rotting away at the doorframe, practically coming apart in your hand in large shreds and sections.

“I’ll go first.” 

Choso adjusted his mask and pulled out his flashlight and gun, moving past you for the first step directly down into the cellar.

“Pretty macho of you today.” You said, following close behind and checking your six.

He scoffed and turned down the narrow staircase. “Maybe I’m just up for dick measuring today.”

“Sounds about right. That new kid really has you riled up, huh?”

What was his name again?

“That Gojo kid has nothing I’m interested in. I just didn’t like the way he looked at you, that’s all.”

How sentimental.

“N’arww, you really do have a soft spot for me, don’t you? I knew it-“

“Don’t flatter yourself, boss. I just know how guys think. It pisses me off when they look at you like a piece of meat.”

Well, that much was true. Ever since you joined, your colleagues tried it, any detective with balls bigger than yours tried it with you and any other female member of staff to see just how far they could go. Tiresome really, proving yourself to the point that diminished the return even now when men liked to try their luck.

Your skin was much thicker now than it was.

“Because you know the real me?”

Choso nodded, pointing his gun down the stairs with each careful step. “And you’re insufferable.”

He had you there. “I am, aren’t I?”

“God, you are. I can’t believe you put up with Sukuna’s back and forth shit you two go through. I would have kicked his ass by now.”

There were the usual men who most people encountered, egotistical, arrogant or cocky. Sukuna was all three but entirely different, downright disgraceful and pretty sure he was crooked to some degree. Yet he always followed through on what he set out to do and delivered.

How could you not respect that?

“He’s a great detective. That’s about as far as my respect for him goes. He is personality isn’t even my type so he’s boring to look at in my opinion. Shame. Could do with a bit of eye candy around here without all those old men leering all the time.”

Choso reached the bottom step and ducked under a low bearing beam. “Don’t think you can crawl to me when you get bored.”

That was laughable in itself. 

You ducked too, barely, stepping off to the right whilst he went left around the perimeter of the basement. The thick air stifled your face shield, making the fibres stick to your lips and grow damp with your breath. 

“C’mon, Choso, you know you’re beautiful. I don’t need to tell you that. And whoever you end up with will be very lucky…” 

That earned a laugh from him across the room for some reason. “I could say the same about you, but then you’d hit me.”

You totally would.

“That’s right.” Tiptoeing over more rotted wood brought you along the wall facing back in Choso’s direction. “No trying to inflate your boss’s ego or tell her that she’s pretty and we get along just fine. Worked out so far with us, right?”

“I remember your first day on the job. You were a mess-“

“Okay! It was a mistake-“

“And that’s why Sukuna doesn’t respect you.”

“Hey! I could kick his ass any day of the week and you know it!”

Maybe. No, who were you kidding? Your sheer will alone would kick his ass.

Your tone amused him enough. “Sure-“ A clunk in the wall made you both pause. “What was that?”

A rat perhaps? You hopped over a scattered chair and table cloth, edging around a large sunken part of the floor with collected, polluted water. A red marker on the wall, no… it was darker than pen ink. 

“Looks like blood…” You fiddled with your radio and backed away so Choso could take point. “Requesting a forensics back up with the nearest available unit.” You effortlessly reeled off the general location.

“Boss, it’s fresh.” He shined his light on it, you saw the reflection from across the room. 

There came the clunk again, as though by instinct, your flashlight levelled with Choso’s to the right to a large padlock dangling on the wall, linked with two metal rings.

“On it- hello? Tokyo police! Is anyone in there?!”

You froze, holding your breaths to listen for a sound, something that wasn’t a squeak of a rat or trill of a pigeon this low under ground.

Yeah right. 

A grunt, a groan, a noise completely and utterly human. 

“Shoot it off.”

Covering your ears, Choso shot it off and pulled part of the wall away, letting your flashlight fall on what was underneath.

“Holy shit.” You pulled your face shield off, letting it drop in the puddle with a soft splash. “Hello?”

A man. Barely clothed. Barely living.

“Help… p-please…”

Choso assisted him, checking him over and asking him a series of questions. You fumbled for your radio, starting to pace at the first possible live evidence of the Hollow Purple Killer’s trail.

The man shivered, shaking like a leaf by Choso’s gloves hands, tugging on the space blanket over his shoulders. He mumbled something, random words and nodded every so often to what Choso asked him.

“Request for an ambulance, we have a man, mid thirties, possibly fitting the H.P.K characteristics. Requesting immediate support from the nearest unit.”

Again, you reeled off the closest address.

“Yeah, message received. We’re five minutes away.”

Of course it was Sukuna that answered.

“What is this?” Choso asked, taking what looked like a token from the man, an acrylic square. 

“H-he said to give it to the police… t-to the woman.”

The woman? 

“What is it?” 

You took it, studying it under the flashlight beam tearing through the musty air. You set in the corner for more light while Choso’s flashlight flickered over the man's face and bloodied arms. Just an average clear acrylic square with a load of scribbled lines on it.

“Well… if he said to give it to a woman, I’m assuming it’s me?”

“Yeah, there’s no one else on the task force it could be, unless it’s for someone at the precinct, but I doubt it.”

“Then it’s evidence.” It went straight into the clear baggie from your belt, labelled ‘number one’.

“Can you move? Where did this blood come from?” Choso called you over. “His wounds, they’re already healing, do you have your first aid kit with you?”

“No, we came here to check out buildings, not find evidence. I have the bare essentials you have, I’m not prepared at all.” 

You aided him, helping the man to walk with a quick glance at the open wall. A thin break between two walls, just wide enough to stand until the man’s legs gave out. His fingernails scratched the sleeve of your jacket, bloody, uneven.

“He scratched at the wall… look.” Three red lines messily scribbled in the dark. “What… three days?”

“Can you tell us about this man? Did he put you there, or were there other people who did?”

You were overwhelmed with questions, tasting a brief glance into the step closer to the Hollow Purple killer. Evidence, potential evidence he was actually here, that he’d stepped foot right where you did that wasn’t a crime scene resulting in a dead body.

Someone was alive and he was in reach.

“I don’t… ugh- I can’t. I don’t know why- I just…” He rocked with his head in his hands, too disoriented for questions. Shit. You were getting ahead of yourself.

“It’s alright, sir. We’ll get you taken care of and we’ll talk later. We need to get your wounds seen too, alright?”

“Jesus. One hell of a party down here.”

“Detective Sukuna.” And the wonder boy. “Where’s the ambulance?”

“On its way, three minutes out.” He trotted down the stairs with his own flashlight. “He kept him in there, did he? Place looks like a DNA farm. This should be fun- new kid, get your ass down here and tell me something I already know.”

“Now isn’t the time to train the newbie, Sukuna. Set a perimeter so forensics can get in here.”

Sukuna leant his arms against the lintel of the doorway, tilting his head with his usual condescension. “Any time is teaching time, that’s what our boss taught us, right, Boss?”

“Yeah, I did.” You smiled as sweetly as you could in the darkness. “So take this guy with you and do a triage on him while you wait for the ambulance. You’ll see to it personally that he’s taken to the hospital and sit with him until he’s cleared for questioning. I’ll take…” 

Shit, what’s his name again?

“Gojo. It’s, Gojo.” He said, waving a few fingers to you.

“That’s right, I’ll keep Gojo for the rest of the day and arrange someone to come with you.” 

Choso stifled his laughter and walked with you to Sukuna who remained silent, hopefully stewing in his own stupid brain that you were in charge and not to be fucked with.

He murmured something under his breath, probably calling you a bitch blah blah blah, and helped the man up the stairs.

“That’ll teach him to piss me off.”

“Nicely handled.”

Whether it was a compliment or general praise, it didn’t matter. 

“So, Gojo. Tell me what you see.”

“I’ll... liaise with forensics.” Choso cleared off up the stairs, peeling his gloves off and the sounds of his boots soon disappearing amongst disembodied voices and foot traffic.

“Well,” Gojo waited for silence. “There’s blood on the inside of the wall- that guy was in here? Three lines, three hours, three days? But it’s pitch black in here. His sleep cycle wouldn’t line up unless he counted every second.”

A basic deduction. “He was babbling, he didn’t count each second. His legs gave out, he’s sleep deprived.”

“Hm…”

You knew all this, his body language suggested he had something on his mind that he wasn’t letting on. “Okay, NPA wonder boy. Give me something worthy that your title suggests.”

He grinned, staring into the wall space, picking up the padlock in his gloved hand, flashlight temporarily in his mouth to bag it up.

“When our circadian rhythm is dipped into prolonged darkness, we can think we’ve spent less time than we actually have. Twenty-four hour day sleep cycles can often double. That means if those lines in the wall was his attempt to try and keep track, it could easily be a week he actually spent here.” 

Sleeping every two days instead of one. Standing initially until it got too much. At least the poor guy had an idea to try and keep track.

“Then there’s this lock too.” Gojo shined the beam over the evidence bag. “The padlock is pretty fresh, no signs of dirt or scratches. Whoever put that guy in there probably left him. He’s probably malnourished, it can affect memory.”

Potential memory loss due to trauma and cognitive function, a fact you’d considered and dreaded.

So he might actually be worth his salt. Better than I expected. It’s worth asking I suppose.

“There’s this too. What do you think of this?”

“Oh… you found a music marker.”

“A what?”

“Uh, well it’s better if I just show you, do you mind?” He yanked off his glove and pulled up his phone's camera.

“Go on.”

“So… you take a picture- you can get these things at any convenient store and they print them for you, if in this case, it looks hand written.” The room flooded with the flash. “Click the link. And… there, it brings the music app up and plays the song. It’s this song.”

It played through the speaker, a familiar tune though in its original form in English. 

“I know this song. Why would he want me to have this?”

“For you?” He asked.

You took the evidence bag from Goo and hummed to yourself. “That’s what the guy said… 'for the woman'. I can say I’ve been called worse.”

“Hey Boss, forensics are here!”

“I guess that’s all we can do for now until we can talk to that guy… er, thanks for showing me that music thing. It really helped.”

You weren’t strict on giving praise where it was due, but seeing how his eyes seemingly lit up in such drab conditions forced you to be cautious.

Not another one.