Chapter Text
Gojo has business to take care of, which he thinks of as an errand. He’s already halfway through his front door before he hears Geto’s voice--surprising, considering Geto hadn’t looked like he was in a walking state. When Gojo turns, he sees Geto is not really in a walking state at all.
“Heading out? What for?” Geto asks, leaning most of his weight onto a particularly ugly but also particularly sturdy looking cursed spirit.
Revenge, on whoever did that to you, he doesn’t say. Besides, since when have he and Geto told each other everything? He’d thought they had, once.
“Tea,” Gojo answers easily, naturally. He crosses the room back to Geto’s side. Gently, he walks him to the unbloodied sofa. “Hojicha from the mountains, like before. From the shop that’s too close to the school for you to visit anymore.”
Geto’s favorite kind, he certainly remembers, out of reach for all these years. Geto doesn’t mention it. Instead, he says, “You’ve got a lot of killing energy for a tea shop run.”
Gojo's getting a little tired of being read like a book. “I’ve got some curse users to clean up,” he admits. He normally wouldn’t, but there’s only so much time before the trail of residuals fades entirely. “C’mon, sit down. You’re worrying me.”
Geto sits down, but his grip on Gojo tightens with startling strength. “Don’t kill them,” he says--almost asks, but not quite. He’s not in a position to ask for any more favors, though he’s apparently always in a position to make demands. “We don’t have enough competent sorcerers left in Japan for you to pick them off for revenge.”
"We've got plenty," Gojo says all too cheerfully, "as long as we've got me."
Geto closes his eyes. He's in pain, but not from his wounds. (What are friends for, right? What are enemies for, even.)
Gojo could just warp out. He doesn’t owe Geto anything, much less an explanation. But he tries, he explains, "They're curse users--my enemies, in case you forgot. And they were only about an inch away from killing you. I don’t appreciate that very much."
"They are sorcerers, Satoru," Geto repeats, as if that means anything, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t change the value of their lives, not to Gojo. "If I wanted them dead, I would have killed them myself."
"Well, I want them dead," Gojo says, with more bite than intended. "So I think I’ll take care of that clean up, while you rest."
Geto laughs at that, though not like laughing at a joke or just at Gojo. He laughs at something else, in exhaustion. Gojo wonders if they’ve had this exact conversation before. They might have. It feels like they have.
Geto hasn’t let go, so Gojo sits down next to him on the sofa. He stares at the TV through his sunglasses. The TV isn’t even on.
“They stabbed you,” Gojo explains--for no reason besides that he feels obligated to. He doesn’t think about why that must be; it just is. “Murder is traditionally what I do whenever someone stabs you and gets away with it. It’s not the first time.”
“We were partners then.” Then, back in those before days. “You shouldn't kill people just to satisfy your hair-trigger temper. Not on my behalf, not anymore."
“I don’t have a--” He doesn’t have a temper problem anymore. (He didn't back then either, it was mostly just Geto that found the right buttons to press every time--) That was ten years ago. Yet that’s also today. "...You don't bring out the rational side of me, Suguru."
“Your rational side has always been rather impoverished.” Geto’s candor is infuriating--and comfortable, familiar in the way no one else has ever been. It feels human; it allows Gojo to feel human. "I just thought you'd be a little more adverse to playing executioner."
"...Why?" Gojo asks because even when they were students--together, during better days--that was all their missions were. They were never training for anything else.
Geto's never thought about it, clearly. He falls into that loud silence that he always does when he's thinking. He answers at last, "...I thought you were better than that."
"I'm pretty sure you were always my better half." Gojo's tone is light and airy, but hollow. "Not sure what you expected after you walked off."
"I expected you to be fine, with or without me."
"I am fine. I'm still the strongest sorcerer. Just not the strongest duo--” At that, Geto’s face turns into an expressionless mask, and Gojo talks a little faster, “That doesn't matter. You need to rest. You don’t have to worry about anything else for now.”
Geto smiles, so Gojo braces himself for the worst. "I expected to turn my back on you, and that would be my loss. And you, I expected you to continue to be unbearably brilliant, a blinding light. As you always were."
"...I guess I'm not anyone's light these days," he responds. He almost smiles back, but it's not quite there. It's too worn down.
He looks to Geto, who watches him in return. Perhaps Geto’s waiting for him to say something more or something else, but that's all there is. He wonders if Geto always has been waiting for him.
"Mine," Geto says, too honestly. Gojo doesn’t need that sort of honesty in his life.
What could he say to that? What could anyone possibly say to that?
“Sorry,” Gojo says finally, like pulling teeth. He’s never been good at apologies. Also, it occurs to him that he didn’t specify, “Not for being about to play executioner, whether you like it or not. For--the other stuff.”
"For ‘the other stuff,’” Geto repeats, somewhat in awe. “But not for the one thing I’m upset about.”
“...There’s only one thing?”
Geto sighs. It’s the sound he makes when he has to choose between the satisfaction of winning an argument, or being happy. He sounds only disappointed with himself when he says, “I have terrible taste in men."
"That's just karmic balance, Suguru. You can't have it all."
"No," Geto says tiredly. "I suppose not."
"I wish you’d talked to me though," Gojo says, just as softly, and it sounds like an apology.
There shouldn’t be any way for Geto to know what Gojo means, but he does. He always does. “I'm not sure there was anything to talk about."
"I feel like there might have been a few things actually." Gojo remembers the very moment he found out what Geto had done. He doesn't remember every detail, but the feeling of betrayal had carved itself in his bones. He wakes up to it in the dead of night sometimes. “If you’d trusted me--”
"I do trust you,” Geto says, with a distant warmth, a certain nostalgia. “That's why I asked you to help. You could purge--" a beat, as he chooses the right word, "humans from existence, rid us all of cursed spirits once and for all."
"And then what? What am I supposed to do after?"
"Whatever you want? I don't know. Live. Be happy. You wouldn't have to be at the elders beck and call anyway."
Gojo gives it some thought, but he quickly concludes, "I'd probably die."
"You? From what?" Geto sighs. "You can trust me to watch your back for as long as I live."
Gojo laughs, because something is funny, but he doesn't know what. Everything is funny, maybe, the way it all ended up.
"Suguru," he reminds very kindly, "you can't protect me from myself."
Gojo pulls his arm free from Geto. It comes easily, Geto’s not trying to stop him anymore.
“I won’t be long. Be back soon, with the tea.”
-
As soon as he closes his front door behind him, Gojo takes off his sunglasses. Any sorcerer could see the cursed energy residuals leading a trail straight east. Gojo sees the trail lead straight toward a set of beating hearts, pulsing with energy still--but not for long.
He doesn’t say anything to the coterie of curse users when he warps before them. He doesn’t talk to dead men.
When Gojo’s done, he puts the blindfold back on, and he calls Yaga. "Ran into a group of curse users. There isn't a group of curse users anymore."
A pause as he listens to Yaga.
"Yeah, yeah, I know we have rules on how to handle that but it's easier to take out a band of first grades when they're all together."
A longer pause. Yaga lectures like a professor that knows his whole class is at best uninterested and at worst asleep.
"Won't happen again," Gojo promises, not for the first time about things that have happened again and again.