Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

In the second year of the turbulent reign of the emperor Go-Sanjo, the omyoji to the Kyoraku family disappears. This is not remarked upon by those outside the family, nor those outside the shoen, and if the onmyoji had given a reason, it has been kept a secret, even from the younger son of the family who had considered them friends.

All agree that it is not like him. None agree on if he left alone, if he was summoned to Heian-kyo, for the Onmyoryo might need his services, for all that the tyrant Ryomen Sukuna had been vanquished not a month hence. The very foundations of the earth shook with the fall of the Daten, dragged down from deification, tarnished forever by his disgrace. Every sorcerer had felt it. Every sorcerer had breathed out a sigh of relief; some had wept.

The younger son of the Kyoraku family had noted that their onmyoji flinched at the sudden pressure and release of cursed energy, and that his face had gone distant and cold afterwards. He had not gotten an answer to his questions and had in fact been summarily brushed off for his trouble at concern.

The younger son had also noted a single anomaly – a fluctuation of cursed energy, again, like lightning crackling over ice, distracting him briefly from his poetry. But that too had faded, and he turned back to his tanka. 

By the time the sun rose two days later, Nanami Kento had vanished, his home left neat and only slightly emptier than how he had kept it. 

***

“Nanami.” A pause. “Nanami. Nanamiii, Nanami, Nanamin.”

“Don’t call me that,” Nanami snaps, temper already short from their weeks on the road and the steady drizzle that has been gently soaking him – and him alone – to the bone for the past hour. Gojo is remote, untouchable, and in far too good a mood for a man who has nineteen of the twenty most powerful cursed objects in the world in his possession, tied up in a scrap of bloodied cloth that hangs from his waist.

“Why not? That boy at the shoen did,” Gojo no Satoru says easily. “Itadori, was it? He seemed nice. I think.”

Nanami snorts despite himself, inelegant but already falling back into old habits. “You were half-dead. I’m sure that a tree would have seemed nice, so long as it didn’t fall on you.”

“Not even that could sweeten your bedside manner, Nanamin! I didn’t take you for the type to end up with such a cute name.”

“Itadori is incorrigible, but it does no harm to indulge him now and then,” Nanami answers grudgingly. And he had, despite himself, not tried particularly hard to dissuade him. Itadori had few people in this world, with his grandfather ailing and his parents dead, and the nickname had not caught on with others. Until Gojo, that is. “You, on the other hand, are an entirely different case.”

Nanami need not look over at Gojo to know that the man is smiling, his eyes sparking with mischief. Much the same now as it had been in the years that Nanami had known him, when they were both younger. 

“Different, hm? Maybe! But I’ve known you much longer than that child, so I think I should be able to call you Nanamin, and Kento-kun, and any sweet name I’d like. It’s what childhood friends do, after all.” Gojo says this so obliquely, so casually, that Nanami nearly shrugs it off. Perhaps he would have, when he’d first known Gojo.

But Nanami’s dealt with plenty flippant nobility since then, some of whom do the exact same thing when they want to mask which is the most important point to them. A negotiation tactic, he’d gathered, and sometimes, a defense.

“Are we childhood friends?” Nanami asks, equally casual in his doubt. This time he looks at Gojo, catches the way his shoulders stiffen. “I only met you at fourteen. My childhood was long past.”

Gojo relaxes subtly.

“So pedantic. Fine, then, we’re just old friends, and I happened to be there for your most embarrassing youthful moments,” he sighs, mouth curling with fond memory. Nanami grimaces.

“If I remember right, you were the cause of half of them.”

“Now, now, I never forced you into anything! But you sure let your temper get the better of you sometimes.” Gojo is outright grinning now. “Once I figured out the best way to provoke you, anyway. You shouldn’t worry, Nanamin. You’re different now, but I’ll figure it out now, too.”

“Yes, because that’s exactly what I want,” Nanami mutters. “Have you considered that I’ve grown up and won’t be dragged into your childish arguments?”

Gojo pretends to think about it, at least. “No.”

“Funny. But you aren’t wrong that I’ve changed. If you want to annoy me, you’ll need to work for it.”

“It’s worth the effort,” Gojo replies confidently.

“I’m sure you think that now. But we’ll see how long it takes for you to change your mind.” Nanami smiles, a little mean. Gojo, gifted beyond measure, has had half the world at his fingertips from birth, and as he grew older and his reach expanded, had only ever needed to reach out to take what he wanted.

Work had been out of the question, when Nanami’d known him.

“Are you suggesting that I’m spoiled?” Gojo raises an eyebrow. “Or that I give up easily? Because we both know that’s not true.”

No, not even Nanami could accuse Gojo of giving up easily. Not after what he’s done. 

“Spoiled rotten to the core, in fact,” Nanami answers, arch. “An affliction common to many nobles, but yours is the worst case I’ve seen yet.”

“I take offense.” Gojo, naturally, remains dry; the rain hits an invisible barrier but a finger’s breadth from his body, droplets sliding off and down nothing. Nanami wants to tell him to drop it, to conserve his cursed energy, but Gojo would likely not even understand the concept. “Spoilt, Nanami, implies that everything has been given to me. All I need to do is ask, or throw a tantrum or two.”

“Is that supposed to prove me wrong?”

Gojo’s smile is razor-sharp. “Well, I won’t deny that I was born with plenty. My clan wasn’t nothing before me, after all, though now they’re much, much more. But I’m the strongest. If I want something, it’s not hard for me to get it – though I have to get it.”

“You’re still saying that you get everything you want.” The wind picks up, tilts the rain sideways so it’s misting directly into Nanami’s eyes. Between two remote villages, it’s less a road and more a meandering path, on its way to being bogged down by mud. “The end result is the same.”

“I can’t believe I forgot how impossible you are to argue with, Nanami. So stubborn! So ridiculous!” Gojo exclaims, sounding far too pleased by this for it to truly be a complaint. Nanami’s cheeks warm despite himself. 

“Be careful, Gojo. Else I might think you’re complimenting me.”

“Am I not allowed to?” Gojo’s voice is airy here. “Your bedside manner might be lacking, Nanami, but you were always things like reliable, and serious, and strong.”

Nanami cannot help but scoff at that. The absurdity of Gojo, of all people, calling him strong isn’t lost on him; in terms of sheer power, the only one who could have rivaled Gojo is now gone, twenty fingers the only thing that remains of him. 

“What, you don’t believe me? That’s bad form, Nanami. You should just thank me and move on, that’s how it’s done,” Gojo admonishes him, wagging a finger for good measure.

“You’re the last person I expected an etiquette lesson from,” Nanami returns. 

“How you kept your position working for any noble is beyond me, with a mouth like that,” Gojo mutters. “At least you pretended to be respectful when you were younger.”

“I don’t remember pretending very long in your case.” Nanami had given up on that after their second or third meeting, when Gojo had somehow spilled an entire plate’s worth of sweets over the both of them. A decadence that Nanami’d never been allowed before, covering his clothes and falling useless and ruined to the floor. The wastefulness was astounding. The stickiness was worse; Gojo’d been having something utterly covered in some kind of syrup, and it had soaked through two layers of Nanami’s summer robes, some even getting in his hair. He grimaces at the memory.

Gojo had apologized, but through tears of hilarity. This hadn’t exactly endeared him to Nanami.

That, in turn, had not endeared Nanami much to Gojo. He’d been closer to Geto and Ieiri, though the latter was rarely with them unchaperoned.

Nanami wants to ask what she is doing now, if she remains in Heian-kyo, sequestered away but for when she’s needed, or if she too has managed to leave.

He bites his tongue instead, and when Gojo says, wistful, “No, you didn’t. But I still knew that you would be the best person to go to, so that counts for something.”

It counts for more than Nanami can understand. He’s done nothing to deserve this kind of trust – Gojo showing up, more than half-dead, his reverse cursed technique knitting him back together slower than Nanami has ever seen it work, barely keeping him conscious. Blood, everywhere. And in his clenched fist, a scrap of fabric from which cursed energy pulsed like a siren song, each wave of it sharp as a blade.

It’s muted now. Nanami is grateful for it as much as he can be grateful, given the cost.

“You never explained how you found me,” Nanami says instead.

“Hm?” Gojo’s head tips up to examine the sky, through the bandages over his eyes. “Oh, that. You’re not as hard to find as you think, Nanamin.”

“Don’t.”

“I mean, the Onmyoryo keeps good records. And you aren’t the type to wander off without telling anyone.”

“It would have been a bigger problem if I suddenly disappeared,” Nanami counters, face a little hot. Gojo had not wanted him to tell anyone he was leaving at all, but Nanami couldn’t simply disappear. Even when he left Heian-kyo, he had said his goodbyes. 

“I know, I know,” Gojo waves this off easily. “Anyway, that’s not how I found you. I mean, I had an idea of where you were, but I wasn’t keeping track. We weren’t in contact.”

No, Nanami supposes, they weren’t. He braces himself, but no reproach follows. Gojo sounds unbothered if nothing else.

“But did you think that I couldn’t see you, if I wanted to?” he asks, his voice nearly soft.

There’s no threat to it, like there may have been years and years ago, with Gojo at the height of his arrogance but not his skill, and Nanami pushing away as fast as he could, heedless of what was left behind. No, that wasn’t quite right. Nanami had known what he was leaving, but staying was impossible. 

And Nanami had thought that.

“I thought I was the closest person you knew who wasn’t affiliated with any of the main clans,” Nanami tells him. 

“You were,” Gojo admits easily. “Do you know, your cursed energy feels the same after all these years?”

Nanami frowns. “That can’t be right. I don’t regularly exorcise anything.”

“But you practice.”

“I can’t afford not to,” Nanami answers, reluctant. “Ryomen Sukuna was content to purge curses from within his borders, for his own pleasure. But they still flocked to him, and we were close enough that it would have been foolish to let myself lapse completely. Still, Gojo. It’s not like before. I’ve fought curses, yes. Not curse users.”

He pauses.

“You could tell, couldn’t you?”

“You’ll probably have more practice than you’d like with that!” Gojo’s too cheerful about that. “Of course I can tell, Nanamin. These Six Eyes aren’t just for show, you know. Just like you’re better with your ratio now, I can see anything. Everything, if I want to. Down to things so small you wouldn’t believe they were what makes trees, rocks, even you and I. There. Now it’s not so hard to believe that your cursed energy was the brightest thing around, is it.”

“Once Sukuna was dead,” Nanami murmurs.

Gojo inclines his head. “Obviously. I felt that you were around when I was on my way there, you know, thought about dropping by and surprising you.”

This is news to Nanami. “I hadn’t heard you were going at all. Not that I was in the best position to receive news, that is, but the Gojo clan head, descendent of Sugawara no Michizane himself, journeying to kill the Daten? Even that would have made its way to me.”

“Maybe I should have let news spread, then,” Gojo muses. “You could have been cheering me on! I might have done better if you were somewhere around saying tearfully how much you believed in me and that I would win.”

“That belongs in stories,” Nanami says, amused despite himself.

“So? I beat Sukuna. I’ve just cemented myself into legend.” A grin now, but strained around the edges.

Gojo had not at any point said how the fight went, nor what it was like, nor what happened, exactly, that ended up with him in such a bad state, appearing directly in front of Nanami. 

The first few days, he hadn’t been in good enough shape to answer. And Nanami had not asked afterwards.

“You were infamous before,” Nanami tells him. “Or do you forget the war?”

“Different, Nanami, that’s different. Sukuna was on our side there too, remember?”

Nanami does remember. Gojo’s voice darkens as he says, “I earned my name there, but I wasn’t the only one. Now, I am. Who else even came close to what I’ve done, now?”

No one.

That’s the truth of it.

Gojo no Satoru stands, now, alone at the top.

And Nanami’s trailing after him like a lost pup.

“Your ego’s gotten worse,” is all he has to say, and just like that, the tension breaks. “You’ll suffocate me with it before we even rid ourselves of five of these fingers, let alone twenty.”

“Good thing I never said patience was on your list of attributes, eh, Nanamin?” Gojo laughs heartily, amused as he ever is by himself. “It’s alright. Your looks more than make up for it.”

“We can go further today,” Nanami snaps, and begins to walk faster. “We won’t make the next village by nightfall, even if you want to risk it, but we can at least go further on the road before we stop.”

Gojo’s laughter dances among the raindrops, distinctly mocking now.

They have only hidden two of the fingers so far. Twenty is a large number, and they have a long way to go yet.

–

Night, now, the darkness comforting. Exhaustion pulling at Nanami’s eyes. 

Even with his skin a strange, sallow gold from their fire, Gojo is beautiful. Nanami does not look away from his bareness, though he wants to; instead, he gestures for Gojo to turn. Easier to face his back, the curve of his spine and delicate bumps of his vertebrae, rather than reminisce on how Nanami’s never seen him like this. In his sokutai, yes, resplendent in silks embellished with the newly founded Gojo clan’s crest, the last thing Nanami had seen before leaving Heian-kyo for a simpler life. In the light armor some shamans favored, too, worn more for form and style, to mark him as being on their side, spattered with blood that was not his own. In clothes tattered into shreds as he appeared in the midst of Nanami’s home, a wildly triumphant grin on his face and a prize in hand, too; and after that, clad in the hitatare they donned in an attempt at disguise.

Futile, Nanami suspects. Secrecy is their only friend. Gojo is known, and Nanami’s looks are unusual enough to garner comment, to linger in memories to be easily coaxed out. 

“You’re healing well,” he says instead, electing to focus on the pink scars crossing Gojo’s body. The newly-healed skin is still fragile; Gojo had been only mostly knitted together by the time they left, and the walking cannot have been easy on him. But they had both agreed they couldn’t afford to stay longer. Sooner or later, someone would have come – for Gojo, for the fingers, even for Nanami, asking him to do his duty. 

Itadori knowing was bad enough.

“Of course I am. The reverse cursed technique is powerful,” Gojo answers, equally simple. A statement, a fact. He had not yet mastered it when Nanami left, but word had filtered in nearly ten years ago in pieces: A Zen’in with a Heavenly Restriction, Tengen’s newest plan, a sacrifice. The Gojo clan forming, their head cemented as one of the most powerful shamans of his generation.

And, of course. Geto Suguru’s defection, which Nanami suspects is still an all-too sore wound, just as Haibara’s death in the war is for him.

What happened between them then is not for Nanami to know; he hadn’t been there. He has never regretted it, not until now, with Gojo before him and nearly inscrutable in his strangeness. 

“Powerful, yes. But slower than it ought to be,” Nanami reminds him. “We’re making good time – if you need to rest –,”

“Nanami,” Gojo cuts him off, voice saccharine. He is not entirely a stranger, in the end. “If you insist on coddling me, I really will turn into the brat you like to complain I am.”

“You already act like one,” Nanami replies automatically, but the threat is noted for what lay beneath it. “I’m not coddling you.”

“No? Fussing, then? Succumbing to some long-lost maternal instinct? I hadn’t taken you for the type, but you did seem fond of that village boy,” Gojo muses. “Or do you like me, Nanami?”

The last question is nearly a leer. 

Nanami remembers this type of misdirection and how much Gojo had enjoyed it – but he’s no longer a boy, green and unused to love, or desire. He merely raises an eyebrow and weathers it.

“I tolerate you perfectly well,” he corrects Gojo. “Whether I like you or not is up to you, don’t you think? And besides, this is a matter of practicality.”

Gojo’s face does something interesting then, freezing and then flattening out, and his ears look nearly red, but that may be the warm light from the fire bouncing off his skin.

“Practicality,” Gojo repeats. His voice is laden with nothing but doubt. Whatever his reaction, it has passed.

“When Sukuna’s followers come – and they will, we both know it – and when secrecy fails us, I would much rather you regained your strength,” Nanami says plainly. 

There is silence as Gojo digests this. He leans forward, the motion slow and a little strained; the wound on his abdomen is by far the worst, though he never complains while they walk.

“You doubt your own strength, Nanami?” he asks quietly.

“Doubt is a strong word. I am…realistic about the current state of my abilities, let’s say,” Nanami offers. He means it. “I’m out of practice, we both know that. What minor curses we might run into, I can handle. That much I am sure of. But anything that wants those fingers – anyone, for that matter – would be a different story.”

“Sukuna’s followers are scattered to the wind,” Gojo says easily, with the arrogance that comes so naturally to him. “Nanami, please. They fled before me like ants before a giant. He was alone, abandoned, before I struck the finishing blow.”

“All of them?” Nanami asks, pointed. There is at least one even he remembers, that would never have left Sukuna.

Nanami had not known Uraume well, only seen the newly-orphaned child clinging to the hem of Sukuna’s robes, or grasping at his armor with one hand, heedless of the blood that spattered the shaman then. But the devotion in their eyes – that is not something so easily erased. 

Gojo’s mouth thins.

So he is correct.

“All that matter,” he answers, sour. “Uraume was not there.”

“Not there then does not mean they won’t come,” Nanami murmurs. It’s meant as a gentle warning, nothing more, but Gojo bristles for a moment, his eyes flashing like lightning. Nanami finds himself holding his breath before he can stop it, his body reacting to the danger that Gojo promises.

He forces himself to relax. 

“But,” he continues. “It may be a long way off. If I were Uraume, or indeed anyone else, I would either go to Heian-kyo or wait there, and then try your estates.”

“Estates, hm?” An eyebrow raises, teasing. “Have you been keeping up with my many honors, Nanami? I’m flattered.”

“I might have overheard the occasional bit of gossip, or official announcement,” Nanami says smoothly. “I did not think much of it. Though your ego doesn’t need the compliment, it is a good thing, I think. Especially now where there are many places you might be.”

“And that’s leaving out the old man’s temple,” Gojo agrees.

It’s Nanami’s turn to startle. 

He had not forgotten about the temple to Sugawara no Michizane, now in the zenith of its splendor, but it hadn’t occurred to him that Gojo could have taken the fingers there. That he might have. 

“Why are we leaving the temple out?”

“Oh, you know. Can’t trust anyone,” Gojo answers, airy. “Especially not priests.”

There’s more to that than meets the eye, Nanami can tell, but he doesn’t press.

“Not even one? It could be secure there,” Nanami tells him. 

“Could it? You’re the one who marked out the array. None of our points are in the capital, or even close to it. The temple, of course, consecrated to Tenjin, wouldn’t be ideal even if it did make your list.” Gojo scratches at his neck, absent. 

“Wouldn’t it?”

Gojo laughs at this, but the sound is hollow, a little contemptuous. It reminds Nanami of being in class with him, of asking a question to do with curses or cursed energy, as an outsider to this world, and being met with the condescension of one born at its pinnacle. 

“If it were anyone else, perhaps. But Ryomen Sukuna gathered plenty of worship even while still alive; were he dead, he would have been canonized already, and now that he is dead, I don’t see the need to risk it by putting any of his remnants in a temple. It might be more difficult for anyone else to find there, of course, but that’s outweighed by the fact that it is one of the most obvious places to look.”  Gojo’s face twists slightly, the contempt more visible now, though it is directed elsewhere. 

“You have other reasons, though,” Nanami says. It’s a statement rather than a question; if he were to ask outright, Gojo might not answer. It would be understandable if he didn’t; Nanami is an onmyoji, barely higher than a hijutsushi in the eyes of most shamans – or perhaps lower, for his choice to turn away, to join the hordes of those with only an inkling of cursed energy at most and a love of ceremony and a smooth tongue at best. 

But Gojo regards him, leaning to prop his chin up on one hand, careless in the way that always comes before he says something cutting. “You left for a reason.”

Nanami, despite bracing himself, flinches. 

Haibara’s ghost lurks between them, the cold fingers of death reaching in.

Nanami swallows. Makes himself answer, as evenly as he can: “I did.”

“Not that you ever told me,” Gojo remarks, casually cruel. This, Nanami does not flinch from; he hadn’t explained it to anyone – had told Yaga merely that he was going, had simply needed to look at Ieiri and Geto and they had understood it perfectly. Gojo had found out before Nanami had the opportunity to break it to him, had seemingly taken it in stride, not asking for a reason, not caring for one. 

And those were the sum total of the people which Nanami felt the need to inform.

He does not know what lies were spun in his absence, nor does he care; it didn’t matter then if they thought him soft, unfit for battle and sick of war, and it does not matter now – in fact, he thinks it may even be a benefit; very few know who he was, during the war, and clanless as he had been, there are no familial ties linking him to any of the clans. The Fujiwara, with their star falling slowly; the Gojo, newly emerged and rising; the Zen’in or the Kamo, well-established and ancient even now: Nanami had never belonged to any of them, and had only ever been a useful tool, a knife for the butchery. 

“You didn’t ask,” Nanami counters. And, because they are both older now and because he thinks Gojo might finally understand, he adds, “And I would not have been able to explain it, I think. It’s – it was mostly about Haibara, then. I won’t deny that. But it was also that his death felt meaningless, as if it didn’t matter to anyone but me.”

A muscle works in Gojo’s jaw.

“You know that’s not true.”

“I know now,” Nanami corrects him with a rueful smile. It aches to speak of this, like prodding at a wound that hasn’t quite healed over. “And then – there were other things to worry about. I couldn’t begrudge a lack of grief, not in the middle of all that.”

“But you could, afterwards,” Gojo says softly.

Nanami inclines his head. “More than. Then, it was loss, and I was tired of fighting. I had done my duty, we all had, and I knew then that if I stayed, it would kill me just as it would Haibara. I didn’t leave to save my own life, but I didn’t think of it then as a problem with jujutsu, merely something I refused to participate in.”

Gojo’s brow furrows; he’s displeased with something Nanami has said, though he doesn’t elaborate on what. 

So Nanami continues, “I couldn’t have explained that to you, of course. You were then – and still are – the strongest of us all. What was it that you said? That the balance of the world shifted when you were born? There was no Gojo clan when you were born, that much is true, but you were born to jujutsu. I wouldn’t have known how to make you see what was wrong with the world you were so ready to shape in your image.”

It is, perhaps, a cruel thing to say. But Nanami had said nothing all those years ago, and if nothing else, Gojo deserves to know now what he hadn’t known then. 

If nothing else, Nanami wants him to understand.

“It is not just deification that I worry about,” Gojo says, a non-sequitur. “Both temples to Tenjin – my ancestor was deified out of fear. The Fujiwara who exiled him died, one by one, until those temples were built and his worship was made official, his exile rescinded after death. It’s a poor offering, but I’d expect no less from them.”

Nanami’s mouth twitches in faint amusement; the old grudges still simmer close to the surface, though there are new ones now, between the Gojo and the Zen’in.

Of course, the Zen’in heir is a very, very easy person to hold a grudge against, as far as Nanami remembers. He practically invites it. 

“You worry that a place where such worship was born would instead be perfect for Sukuna,” Nanami summarizes. “Even though he’s been reduced to nothing but fingers – and I still don’t understand how that happened. Nothing in his technique suggested it; nothing in any of his followers’ techniques should be able to do that. Unless I’m mistaken? I’m hardly the most informed on the topic.”

“No, you’re right here. For someone uninformed, Nanami, you know plenty. There’s no one associated with him who should be able to do that, and I’ve never seen anything like it.” Gojo grimaces, shaking his head. “Rare enough for me to say! But not even the Six Eyes could trace back what happened. I’m sure if I hadn’t been focusing on not bleeding out, I would be able to piece it together, but then the world would be robbed of my presence, and who knows what would happen to our precious cargo.”

“Precious cargo is an interesting way to put it,” Nanami says, deadpan. “There’s no need to be defensive. Anyone else would have died. And you won, did you not?”

Gojo is quiet.

“I did.”

“You don’t sound happy about it.”

“Do I have to sound happy about everything, Nanami? I won, but his fingers are nearly the most powerful cursed objects I’ve ever seen, is that what you’d like to hear?” Gojo snaps before he can catch himself. That is not all that is bothering him, Nanami’s sure, but he decides to let that lie. Gojo is in no mood to talk about it, and Nanami is unwilling to divulge more secrets in exchange. If this continues, he won’t have any left. “Sorry. That – it doesn’t feel like much of a victory, does it, only I’m alive, and he isn’t, and so it is. That’s what it comes down to, in a fight between jutsushi.”

“There’s a difference between the fight being over, and the job being done,” Nanami offers after a moment. An attempt at peace, dressed in practicality. “But you’ve never been the most industrious. A long task after the fight is precisely the kind of thing you would normally run away from.”

Gojo’s lips part – in shock, or affront, Nanami isn’t sure –, and then he bursts out laughing. The sound rings out, startlingly merry, little of the bitterness that had seeped into his voice just moments ago remaining. Nanami had forgotten how volatile he could be, how easily he would seize on any conversational out given, misdirection with a wink and smile.

“I see you’ve only gotten meaner in your time away,” Gojo finally says, amused. “What am I doing now, if not working hard for the betterment of society? I should be on my back being fed plums by hand and composing poetry, you’re right.”

Nanami just sighs.

For all that carrying the fingers costs Gojo, a burden that Nanami himself cannot help with, disposing of them is easier than it should be. The actual process requires them both for now, but Nanami knows that in the span of a moon’s cycle, Gojo will no longer need his assistance for anything more than locating the best place to secret away the rest. His cursed energy is rising by the day, his strides easier, his sleep deeper and unpained at night. 

It helps in this case that they are in the middle of a forest clearing, little to no mountains in sight, though those shall come soon. The moon hangs in a sickle’s curve above them, more light than they had sealing away the first two, for they had started during a new moon when the night was dark and secret. 

It had been important, to Nanami’s mind. The omen of a new beginning, if nothing else, though he will admit that it was more a coincidence than anything else that Gojo had been well enough to travel in time for the nearest new moon. They could have improvised, Nanami thinks, but it would not have been as secure.

Ten until a full moon, for half the cycle; ten more until a new moon, to close it. The waxing and waning of Ryomen Sukuna.

Nanami takes a breath and resumes digging.

Gojo is taking care of the seals – ink and blood on a roll of yellowed paper he has drawn from his sleeve, layers of which must be cut and pasted onto each finger to seal them. Nanami had drawn a curtain around the area before they started, small enough to only surround them both, and the cursed energy within is an oppressive mix of his own, Gojo’s, and Sukuna’s.

Even just having one of these fingers outside of the pouch Gojo has been using to carry them is nauseating.

It is no wonder Gojo’s healing is so slowed, with half his cursed energy going towards fuelling the concealment. 

The cursed tool itself is a mystery to Nanami – and, he suspects, a mystery to Gojo, whose curiosity about them had only ever extended as far as how he might use them, rather than how they were made, once he realized he had no real aptitude or interest in the arduous task. Nanami knows only slightly more, by dint of having used a weapon for long enough that his cursed energy had been imbued into it, but it isn’t the same. His nata is a cursed tool, but one that only he might use; an extension of himself, rather than an item crafted to be wielded by others. Even now, he cannot bear to think of someone else touching it, holding it.

All things told, he had been fortunate that Yaga had never asked him to leave it behind.

His newfound callouses sting with the bite of the shovel; much of the work he has done before now has involved no weaponry, no hard manual labor like this. His hands had softened, worn to the shape of a pen more than anything else. But he has been practicing with his nata again, and the digging, of course, has been inevitable.

The hole needs to be deeper than this, though not much wider, and Nanami is grateful for the recent rain that has softened the ground somewhat, though he was far less pleased after an entire day being drenched by it while Gojo’s Limitless warded it off, for the most part.

“How much longer until you’re ready, Nanami?” Gojo asks. There is a new note to his voice, one that Nanami can now register as strain, despite having never heard it when they were younger. 

“A few minutes,” he answers. “Do you need me for the seals?”

A kind question, or at least he wants to make it so – the seals themselves are horrendously complicated, not of Nanami’s design, but instead passed down through a handful of generations, strengthening all the while. Gojo had explained while they practiced, still in Nanami’s home, his hand shaking with the effort of transcribing the characters of the array for Nanami.

He had needed to do both tasks, for the first fingers, with Gojo supplying a steady stream of cursed energy to supplement his own, and Nanami carefully tracing out seal after seal to be pasted on, still sweaty and exhausted from digging. The third had been easier, simply binding weight and an adapted curtain onto a sealed box, dropping it into a lake, but his arms had still ached from rowing afterwards. 

“When you’re done grave-digging is fine,” Gojo says. Nanami grimaces and pushes down on the shovel, dislodging another clod of dirt with a satisfying sound. If Gojo weren’t surrounded by ink and paper and a great deal of hard work that Nanami didn’t want to ruin, he would be severely tempted to throw said dirt at him. Instead, he restrains himself to adding it to the growing pile.

“It isn’t grave-digging.” Down, shift, toss. Repeat. “For one, this is hardly a grave, and there’s no body.”

“The fingers count,” Gojo protests. “They’re the closest thing to a body that Sukuna left behind, we’re currently working to bury it. Are you annoyed because I’m right? I thought you grew out of that a long time ago, Nanami.”

“I’m annoyed because this isn’t a grave. He wouldn’t have fit in it, anyway,” Nanami mutters. 

It’s true enough; though Nanami himself had not yet grown into his current stature, there was no denying the sheer physical strength Sukuna had possessed, towering even above Gojo, who was outrageously tall as is, with broad shoulders and arms thickly covered in muscle to match. Nanami could not have called him handsome, not in the lean, delicate way that is favored – there was too much strength and solidity to him. 

“He could have shrunk since then, for all you know,” Gojo says cheerfully. Trying too hard to keep levity, though Nanami notes that he does not sound out of breath. A good thing, but he will still check Gojo’s wounds when they’re done.

They are camped too close to this place for his liking, but any further would mean he had to carry Gojo back.

“Well, did he?” Nanami asks to keep Gojo talking, and to distract himself. He is, he thinks, nearly done. Just a little deeper, a handspan or two.

“No,” Gojo says after a beat, reluctant. “I got taller, he looked much the same. Which I found strange at the time, but not enough to be a concern. Now I wonder if it has something to do with this.”

“It isn’t impossible,” Nanami says slowly, pausing for a breath. “Though somewhat unheard of. Did his cursed energy seem different?”

“It was as unpleasant as ever,” Gojo replies. Nanami does not need to see him to know the precise curl of his mouth, the angle of the sneer on it. 

They had not gotten along, the young rising star of jutsushi, cultivated by the clans, and the older warrior who had simply appeared one day, boasting a talent that bordered on offensive and a power that made offense a near impossibility, if you wanted to survive.

Nanami had been only on the periphery of that, and he does not regret it.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” he points out fairly. He has to lean over considerably to excavate the next few shovelfuls; it feels as if he is on precarious footing. His shoulders scream in protest, and he ignores them; he ought to be more used to this by now. 

“What did your Six Eyes see?”

“He was more powerful,” Gojo admits, careful. His face is likely creased with concentration. “You know that’s not how I fight, but – it felt different. Heavier, more akin to a cursed spirit.”

Nanami understands a little better, now, Gojo’s reluctance to use any of his clan resources, to store the fingers at the Tenjin temples. 

“As I said. Strange but not enough to bother me,” Gojo continues. “Even ignoring that he’d grown stronger, he also had more to resent. Had cultivated more resentment and fear and hatred towards himself. And that place, too –, ah, Nanami, you would have had to be there.”

The silence is only punctuated by the bite of the shovel, the harsh rasp of Nanami’s breath.

Only when the hole is done, does Nanami speak, “I think we both know how poorly it would have gone for me, if I were there. But I am not unaware of the reputation of his abode. He exterminated the entirety of the group the Fujiwara sent after him. Shaman after shaman died there, and countless hijutsushi, though that was more incidental. If you told me the entire place felt cursed, or was steeped in resentment, I would believe it. Even your Six Eyes might have had trouble discerning what was him, and what was his shrine.”

“Shrine is a funny word for it,” is all Gojo has to say. “Done now?”

“I am.” With a grunt, Nanami straightens up, clambers out of the hole. There is dirt in his hair, he is sure, and caked under his fingernails. “The seals?”

As Nanami dusts his hands off, Gojo gestures widely, clearly pleased with himself. “Nearly done. I need you to finish the last one so I can stick it on.”

Gojo has ground enough ink, but it has taken long enough that it’s tacky, half-dry, and so Nanami provides the blood needed to re-wet it with but a wince. Gojo adds a few more drops of water and sets to mixing while Nanami binds the cut – it is a small thing, one that he has reopened before for this and will again, but he would rather not bleed all over the paper. They only have so much, taken as it was from the stores of the Sugawara clan and allegedly blessed by Tenjin himself. Nanami knows little of all that, but it is powerful, and he does not doubt that a Vengeful Spirit has touched it.

Careful, he dips the brush into the ink, and bends over to the close work of finishing Gojo’s lines seamlessly. He has done a creditable job though Nanami remembers him never paying much attention to calligraphy beyond the bare minimum required for this purpose, but there are slight wavers to his lines that Nanami knows will not be present in the earlier seals he’d drawn, exhaustion peeking through.

“Eh? Holding your breath, Nanami?” Gojo asks as he leans in, his own breath stirring the fine hairs at the back of Nanami’s neck. He nearly startles, though of course that is Gojo’s aim even now – to tease, to provoke a reaction and to delight in it.

“It is difficult work,” Nanami murmurs. “On uneven ground, with the night wind. I’ve no intention of smudging a line and ruining the seal.”

“You’d never,” Gojo tells him. But he moves away, the distance between them widening into the cool air. 

“You are remarkably confident about that.” Nanami drags the brush down, ink gleaming wetly in the dark. He uses only the very tip for the small characters ringing the outside, the ones that Gojo could not have managed. 

“Of course I am! This, at least, you would have kept practicing. And you were good at it before,” Gojo says. “It’s a wonder you didn’t leave us to become a court painter.”

Nanami allows himself a quiet laugh as he wets the brush once more. 

“Hardly. I can copy accurately, charms are easy, as are maps. I would have been either exiled or executed for failing to portray any number of nobles in a flattering light. Or indeed an accurate one,” Nanami says. 

“I’d rather sit for you than any of them,” Gojo offers after a moment, with no discernible meaning behind it, no shift in his voice.

All the same, Nanami is taken aback.

“What, for a portrait?”

“I sat for one, when I became clan head,” Gojo explains. “They made me far too stern.”

This, Nanami cannot picture. Gojo’s face would suit any medium, Nanami is sure, with the delicate sweep of his lashes, the set of his cheeks and jaw, the sharp angle to his nose. But he does not envy any painter the difficulty of capturing his eyes, his smile – or indeed even getting him to sit still for long enough to get a likeness.

“Ah, so your painter was a worker of miracles,” Nanami says, and Gojo laughs despite the situation, doing nothing but proving him right. 

“Perhaps you should sit for one, then. He might paint you smiling – that would be a true miracle, wouldn’t it, Nanami?” Gojo sounds terribly pleased with himself, even above the gentle rustling of paper as he begins to assemble the seals.

“Quiet, I need to concentrate,” is what Nanami tells him in response. Obligingly, he listens; not even Gojo would risk Nanami making a mistake at this part, as he paints the last line to complete the array on the paper, funneling in a flicker of his cursed energy to bring it to life. It doesn’t feel like his own, not with Gojo having drawn half of the seal himself, but that’s for the better. Nanami’s hand is in the design, at least in part, in the neat ratio of lines and the placement of characters. Gojo’s is in the execution.

“There,” he says, inspecting it and then blowing gently to dry it. The paper hums a little beneath his fingers, sparking as he passes it over to Gojo, who simply plasters it atop the rest. 

There is, as always, a moment of tension while they wait to see if it works. But the cursed energy emanating from the finger cuts off, stifled by their work. Gojo’s shoulders unknot slightly. Nanami lets out a breath.

Gojo promptly throws it into the hole as one would a piece of garbage. Nanami supposes that, to him, it may as well be just that. 

“Right,” Gojo announces, clapping his hands together with less forceful enthusiasm than usual. “Make yourself useful, Nanami, and get back to it with the shovel. I didn’t ask you to come along for your looks, after all. Maybe this will be in the illustration of our epic journey. You, shirtless and glistening, as you dig.”

“I see you aim to provide a very different account. In a different genre, even,” Nanami says dryly. He does not mind playing along, if it continues to lighten Gojo’s mood, but neither of them will relax fully until the finger is entirely buried and they are safely away. 

So under Gojo’s watchful eye, Nanami begins the arduous process of filling the hole back up.

It is brutally slow going.

“So, onmyoji?” Gojo prompts another night, apropos of nothing. The relative ease of their journey so far does not seem to be grating on him; Nanami himself is torn between suspicion and a desire to make use of this peace before it runs out, but he is certainly not as at ease as Gojo.

It could be argued that he has never been as at ease as Gojo, though, in any given situation. 

“Hm?” Nanami is poring over their map by the scant light of the fire and the crescent moon above them – the sharp curve of a sickle, a good omen for the harvest, his mind provides, before he shuts that thought down. 

“Onmyoji,” Gojo repeats. “Rather than jutsushi. Diviner, rather than shaman. Why?”

“Still an exorcist,” Nanami offers, but this isn’t enough, coincidental more than anything else. He should have known; it takes more than a non-answer to appease Gojo.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Curious,” Gojo admits. “I remember you did well at these lessons – all the omens, the dates, the calculations for what was auspicious and what wasn’t. Even the cartography, which is pretty useful right now, I won’t lie. But I didn’t think you liked them. Your technique isn’t suited to this.”

“It isn’t,” Nanami agrees. “But I’ve found ways to apply it all the same. It’s more like redirecting, or preventing curses and resentment from lingering, rather than exorcising them after the fact. I think it does some good.”

“Ha. Now you sound like Tsukumo,” Gojo says, humorless. Nanami doesn’t know who that is, and Gojo offers no elaboration. “So, you decided you were done fighting.”

Nanami considers this for a moment.

“I decided I was done watching people die,” he corrects. There is a difference, though a subtle one. Onmyoji are called upon for prayer, for ceremony, for organizing and arranging and ensuring things go smoothly. They are not called upon to fight, to kill, to hold half a friend’s body in their arms and wonder why they got so light. 

They may occupy a place between the bureaucratic and politically minded – for those with ambition, or at the very least those who remain at the capital – and spiritualism, but never one in the sphere of war.

When Nanami had been considering his options of where to go, what he might do, that had meant a lot. 

“So you ran away.”

Nanami flinches a little. Maybe from his own cowardice, maybe from the lack of judgement in Gojo’s voice.

“I did.” He can admit that much. “After Haibara – I couldn’t, not anymore. Neither of us were clan children, Gojo. His life bought a small pouch of coin for his family, nothing more. They did not care to know him, so they didn’t know his worth. Neither of us were like you, or Geto, or even Ieiri. No real clan connections to speak of, no genius to make up for it.”

“We both know Haibara’s technique wasn’t suited to combat. But don’t undersell yourself, Nanami,” Gojo disagrees. 

“Please. If you wanted someone to cut something, Ryomen Sukuna was right there, was he not? Not with precision, but he hardly needed to create a weak spot, with strength like that,” Nanami scoffs. He knows well where he stood, what he would have been giving his life up for then. What Haibara’s life had indeed been wasted for.

Gojo is quiet for only a second as he digests this. “I’d take precision.”

Nanami raises an eyebrow at him, amused. “You? Well, I suppose you bring enough strength on your own. No one needs to supply it.”

“That too,” Gojo is happy enough to agree. “But just as no one should compare themselves to me, you shouldn’t compare your technique to his.”

“Why not?” Nanami asks. “They’re similar enough, and I am not the one who found similarities between them at first.”

“I didn’t know you two spoke.” Gojo’s tone changes, gains gravity. 

“There were many of us, but not so many to afford anonymity,” Nanami explains. “We only had a single conversation. It was nothing remarkable, I don’t think I impressed him very much.”

Gojo’s eyes narrow.

“So he was interested in you.”

“That is not what I said.”

“Nanami, your standards for a remarkable conversation are high enough that even the emperor would struggle to meet them.”

“Careful, Gojo. I am sure the emperor is an intelligent, reasonable man, with far better things to do than converse with this lowly onmyoji,” Nanami murmurs, deliberate in his genuflection. It is not the type of politeness Nanami affords Gojo, though he ought to; and predictably, it makes the other man scowl briefly.

“The Daten was merely curious about my technique. Once he determined the superiority of his own, he left, as might be expected. He was not a man interested in those weaker than him.” Nanami relents, offers an explanation. 

“And that’s it?”

“Gojo, if you think that I was ever tempted to follow him –”

“No. No, never. I would not have come to you if that were the case,” Gojo cuts him off immediately, a note of apology in his voice. Nanami would not have found that there, when last they knew each other, and he marvels in it now. “I’m not doubting you. I only want to know. Leaving, after all, is not something I would ever do.”

This is said in earnest, without a trace of insult or arrogance. Nanami knows it to be true; Gojo, his place as the strongest shaman in this golden age of sorcery long-rumored but now cemented, would not ever leave this life behind. He is the bearer of the Six Eyes and the Limitless, only a handful of generations shy of Sugawara no Michizane himself, and while he could doubtless make a life for himself outside everything he has known – Gojo excels at everything he puts his mind to, of course he could – he would not thrive. There would be no promise of a challenge, no next battle, none of the flattery that Nanami knows he still enjoys. 

Still, Nanami finds that he wants Gojo to understand, nearly as much as Gojo seems to want to. 

“Hm. Well, as I said. After Haibara’s death, after the war ended, it would have been difficult for me to truly leave. I will admit I had grown used to a certain amount of luxury, but there is little for a shaman to do in peacetime but play at politics and wait for the next war. And I did not want to do either of those things. The Onmyoryo provided an alternative path.”

“They are insistent in their recruiting, but they still only gather those with the barest gleanings of cursed energy. Or the very best of liars,” Gojo adds, tongue-in-cheek. Nanami does not contradict either of these statements. “You must have been quite the prize.”

“It was well enough that I did not need much tutelage – we learned the very basics, after all, before developing our cursed techniques. Or, Haibara and I did, as we hadn’t manifested techniques yet. I assume you, Ieiri, and Geto already knew yours.”

“From the day of my birth,” Gojo says, smug. “And from childhood, for the other two.”

“Yes, yes. The balance of the world shifted when you were born.” And, Nanami cannot resist teasing him, so he tacks on, “And it shifted once more when Ryomen Sukuna awakened.”

“Ah, but I am the honored one, and his remains are in a bag and half-scattered around the country. Consider the balance righted,” Gojo corrects him. They both know this cannot be true, not with the sheer power present in those fingers; the balance will not shift again until they are cleansed and dealt with, until his spirit is gone for good. But there will be peace for a time, hopefully lifetime after lifetime, and so Nanami cannot complain about it.

“It sounds as if you don’t want to hear my reasoning after all, Gojo, if you keep interrupting.”

“What! You’re the one teasing me, Nanami! And still doing it, too, maybe I shouldn’t have doubted you. Are there cursed techniques which can replace a person with an identical copy that only acts strange?” Gojo leans in, jabbing at Nanami’s cheek for good measure.

“No, and stop that,” Nanami snaps, swatting his hand away.

Gojo settles back and looks pleased with himself. “Ah. There’s my Nanami. I can now rest in peace.”

My Nanami. It would be laughable if Gojo were even the slightest bit serious, but he is of course teasing, and so Nanami merely smiles and shakes his head.

“Hardly. I did not know you had such a burning curiosity about the matter, though.”

“What, you don’t want to know what I’ve been doing?” Gojo asks.

Truthfully, Nanami had not wanted to. He’d wanted to forget it all.

“I don’t need to. Word of your exploits got around, though I assume some of it was exaggerated,” Nanami admits. “News often is, by the time it reaches me, if it is not important.”

“My exploits are of the utmost importance, Nanami, so I’m sure you heard it all right.”

“Oh? So you nearly collapsed a temple on top of yourself after a small cup of alcohol?”

To his astonishment, Gojo colors, his cheeks going a deep red. “It was an accident. Did you really hear about that? It was a long time ago.”

“I always knew you weren’t able to hold your liquor,” is all Nanami says in response. 

More soberly, he continues, “There was, of course, also your instatement as clan head.”

“Turning an offshoot of the Michizane family tree into its own clan, you mean?” Gojo prompts. “You were there for some of it.”

“Not all,” Nanami gently reminds him. “But yes, I was present when you truly began to make a name for yourself. The incident with Tengen is what cemented it, was it not?”

Gojo goes very still.

It takes him a long moment to answer: “Yes. And what did you hear about that, Nanami?”

“The truth.” Of this, he is sure. After all, he had heard it from the other person present. “That a vessel was secured.”

“That’s it?” Gojo speaks softly, not entirely to Nanami. He is treading dangerous ground now, Nanami knows, and perhaps this is a cowardly thing too, how he backs away from the conversation.

“That’s what they considered the formalization of the Gojo clan a fair reward for,” Nanami answers. “Even when accurate, I do not hear many details.”

“Hm. Well, maybe if you ask very nicely, I’ll tell you about it someday, Nanami,” Gojo says after a moment. 

Surprisingly, he even sounds sincere in his offer.

“It’d depend on how many irritating questions you ask me in the meantime,” Nanami counters, and just as he had hoped, Gojo smiles.

When Nanami realizes that the transcribed path to the next point of burial will take them near the temple which Geto Suguru now heads, he thinks nothing of telling Gojo – it will afford them a roof over their heads that they need not pay for, with monks who are unlikely to gossip, and a hot meal perhaps. A safe place, for Nanami has begun to feel distinctly hunted, though they have yet to encounter any curses worse than usual, nor any curse users or Sukuna’s followers. But they have been lucky, passing through as few villages as possible, with Nanami always being the one to go and purchase supplies: He may be memorable, but they can trust that no one will be thinking to look for him.

What he does not expect is for this of all things to begin an argument, not his first with Gojo over how they should approach this, or what next, or even things as petty as his solo trips into villages. But Nanami is right and they both know it, his case persuasively argued – Gojo would benefit from a night of true rest, perhaps even two or three, if they can spare it, as they have made good time, and he is one used to creature comforts, more so than even Nanami, who had indulged himself in small luxuries while acting as the Kyoraku family’s onmyoji – and so it fizzles out to Gojo sulking himself to sleep, with Nanami leaving him to it.

All the same, he is displeased about the decision and refuses to say why, only loudly complaining on the road to it, not even silencing himself after receiving dirty looks from the few devotees or initiates that pass them. He eventually falls silent, his sour mood fitting the grey cast to the day. And as it comes into view, Gojo tenses further, though Nanami cannot understand why. 

It reaches a head when the head monk comes to meet them, resplendent in his kyutai, that illustrate just how well the temple is doing. Geto Suguru has indeed risen high in the world, perhaps higher than he envisioned after leaving Heian-kyo.

“Geto-san,” Nanami bows at the waist. “It’s good to see you.”

“Nanami,” Geto greets him warmly, inclining his head, no less formal. “You as well. It’s been a while; we haven’t met since I last passed near your home some years ago – but I’m in charge of the temple now, and so my traveling days are behind me.”

“Seven years now, I think,” Nanami murmurs. He straightens up, looking at the temple complex: The shrine, looming behind Geto, the immaculate cleanliness to the laid paths. “And two, I think, since your letter telling me you were head monk here.”

“And I have missed your letter telling me you have taken yet another path in life,” Geto replies. All the same, he steps forward to draw Nanami into his arms, affection which startles him but a gesture he returns easily. 

It is good to see him, after all. 

Nanami relaxes into the embrace, embarrassed to realize precisely how much he had needed it.

Geto’s face freezes, and Nanami knows that he’s seen Gojo.

“I didn’t know you two were together,” Geto says, but his voice is no longer warm, and he looks as if he’s seen a ghost. Perhaps he has, with the faint scars that mar Gojo’s perfect skin.

Nanami opens his mouth to answer, but Gojo cuts in with, “Coincidence, really. It is a funny story. I was passing this shoen on my travels and who did I have to rescue from five hundred curses but our dear Nanami? I could hardly leave him there to die horribly, of course, and he joined me out of undying gratitude!”

“That is not what happened,” Nanami says, strangled. “Five hundred – what? I would be dead.”

“Fine, it was only fifty,” Gojo corrects himself, still shameless. “But he was in terrible shape, I of course had to swoop in and save the day, and the part about undying gratitude is true. You know how loyal our Nanami is.”

“That I do,” Geto agrees, an undercurrent to his voice that makes Nanami uneasy. But this entire interaction is making him uneasy; he had not thought Gojo and Geto to be on poor terms, though he’d known of course that Geto was no longer in Heian-kyo, was no longer a shaman, technically speaking. He had understood better than most – perhaps better than any other – why Geto might wish to leave that life behind, and choose that of a monk. He had not been overly interested in religion when Nanami had known him, no more than Nanami himself, but men worse off have found solace in a shrine, in meditation and peace and an ordered, calm lifestyle.

“In any event. Might we trouble you for a place to sleep tonight, and a hot meal, if you can spare it?” Nanami interrupts. 

Geto blinks at him, and then smiles once more, the expression sitting artificial on his face. But he is in the guise of a magnanimous host, and so Nanami does not fault him for this either.

“Of course. The quarters will be shared, I am afraid, but they are not so full that you will resent it. Go, rest, make use of the spring, if you like.” Geto's smile widens, sly as a cat’s. “It has some small healing properties, and so was the seed from which our humble temple has flowered.”

“It would be our pleasure,” Nanami answers before Gojo can, or perhaps so Gojo does not have to, bowing once more. 

“Of course,” Geto agrees. With a near-imperious wave of his hand, two novices scurry in to escort them away. “I shall see you after the evening meal and prayers.”

Gojo’s uncharacteristic silence continues as they are escorted out, enough to even make Nanami uneasy. Geto is somewhat changed, he cannot deny it, but Nanami is unable to find the peace he had hoped for here. It is not entirely Gojo’s fault, he realizes as they both sink into the hot spring with varying levels of relief; there is something in this place that inspires doubt. The springs are lovely, the disciples and monks all seem entirely normal, albeit busy, and yet Nanami cannot make himself relax even as the hot water loosens travel-tight knots in his muscles.

“Gojo,” he begins.

“No,” Gojo answers immediately. His eyes are closed, the wound in his side still dressed, though Nanami will help him change it when they leave; he had not wanted to bleed in the spring, and Nnanami would have insisted he avoid the spring entirely, if it would not help him. 

“You do not even know what I was going to say,” Nanami replies, irritated.

“I do not need to. Just – not here.”

Strange. Paranoid, Nanami would call it, from anyone else. But Gojo has never had cause to be paranoid, despite the enemies he has made and doubtless will continue to make – there is little to stand in the way of such overwhelming strength.

Little, but not nothing.

Nanami wishes they had their own private rooms, if only for security. 

“Very well,” he agrees reluctantly instead. “But you shouldn’t spend too long here.”

“No? I thought we came here for the benefit of such luxuries.” Gojo’s finger trails across the surface of the water, disrupting the gentle curls of steam. “Or was there an ulterior motive, hm, Nanami?”

“There was not. I made my motives clear,” Nanami says. “I thought you knew that Geto was here. That’s all.”

“I didn’t.” Gojo is quiet for a moment, and the only sound is that of water moving, slow and gentle, as he shifts. It’s with forced cheer that he continues, “I don’t suppose there will be anything good for dinner?”

Nanami only grimaces. Perhaps for guests, but he doubts it.

He is proven half-correct when they eventually drag themselves to the meal, guided there by the same pair of novices as before – slight-framed, eyes cold, distant and almost suspicious. They are girls, Nanami thinks, though he says nothing of it. Certainly it is not traditional; if they were miko, they would not be in amongst the monks, they would be cloistered elsewhere. 

They also have cursed energy, well-controlled for those so young. 

But it is not Nanami’s business who Geto teaches, and he cannot ask Gojo and hope to obtain an answer. Not over the evening meal, where Gojo eats with more enthusiasm than Nanami has seen from him yet, despite the simple fare, and not when they are once more taken away from it.

They are being watched, that much is clear, though Nanami cannot tell why either.

They meet Geto in a small room, set aside from the temple at the heart of the complex. His own receiving room, Nanami gathers, though to have one is more ostentatious than he might imagine a monk to be.

It is still the largest temple in the region, though, and that must count for something. 

He is sitting, clad still in all his layers, and the light robes of acolytes that Nanami and Gojo wear seem all the more plain in comparison. Nanami does not mind it; Gojo is more vain. 

“Mochi?” Geto offers, gesturing at the laden plate.

Nanami, perhaps too used to this to consider it blasphemy, abstains politely with a shake of his head. He’s surprised to see that Gojo does too, his mouth set in a thin, unhappy line.

“I forget that you don’t like sweets,” Geto says. He does not offer Gojo any, and Gojo does not ask. The tension is strange between them; Geto had made no mention of a falling out in his letters, and Gojo has not spoken of one in the time they’ve traveled together. And Nanami cannot remember leaving them in such a poor shape as this. 

“I never developed the taste for them,” Nanami apologizes. He sits across from Geto, and though uncomfortable, Gojo does the same, their knees brushing. 

“This is nice,” Geto muses. “The three of us together again. We only need Ieiri.”

And Haibara, Nanami does not say, and Geto does not say. But they feel his absence all the same.

“Ieiri and war,” Gojo remarks, caustic. “The last time we were all together was not a happy one.”

“I’d not risk a war simply to see you both again,” Nanami adds in an attempt to defuse this. It falls flat. 

“Are you saying we are not worth it, Nanami?” Geto asks, his teasing as barbed as ever. Nanami offers him a guarded smile, allows himself to relax slightly despite himself. The temple is strange, and Geto and whatever changes he may have made stand at the heart of it, but Nanami does not think that Geto means them harm.

He would have had plenty opportunity by now.

Or, Nanami corrects himself, Geto does not mean him harm. What lies between Geto and Gojo is something else entirely. 

“You forget how cruel my Nanami can be,” Gojo answers. The possessive is striking, even so casually said; Nanami knows his own reaction will go unnoticed with how focused Gojo is on Geto, on the way Geto’s spine stiffens.

“Not as cruel as you, Gojo,” Nanami defends himself. “Far from it. I never glued a paper hat to my junior’s head in a mockery of a welcome celebration. Nor did I terrorize any onmyoji just because I had the ability to.”

“Ijichi may yet recover, with your absence from the capital,” Geto puts in then. “It has been some time since you were last in the capital, Satoru?”

The question is innocently asked, but feels like the thrust of a sword.

“Some time,” Gojo agrees easily. “You know how easily I lose track. I have not had as much chance to travel as you, and I thought it would be nice to, without a war or battle awaiting me on the other end. Well, a fight every now and then would be fine, it turns out that this involves a lot of boring walking. Even with Nanami as company. It’s as if I have a wall next to me at times.”

“Some of us prefer to enjoy the peace and quiet that nature might bring, Gojo,” Nanami retorts before he can think better of it. He should not respond to Gojo’s petty jabs – they are not meant in bad faith, and not directed to him here, anyway. 

A response is what Gojo wants. And it is too often that Nanami now finds himself in the pattern of giving Gojo whatever he asks for.

Spoiling him has proved a startlingly easy thing to do, entirely accidental.

“I fear you picked the wrong companion if peace and quiet were what you wanted,” Geto says, amused. “Though I recall on the few journeys we undertook together, you were not talkative either.”

“You were less verbose than I remembered,” Nanami admits. “Still, nothing can compare to how much Gojo talks.”

“Why, thank you. At the very least I might be a more entertaining companion than a monk,” Gojo says, all false cheer. Nanami knows already that he will be hearing about this later – petulance, he expects, but there is an edge to Gojo’s every word since they have been here, and this makes him more unpredictable than usual.

Gojo leans closer, deliberately resting some of his weight on Nanami in the way that has become all too familiar over their journey – and even before that, from when they were youths together.

It does not occur to him that this is unusual until he sees Geto’s reaction, and then something like shame, like dread, coalesces into a pit in the bottom of his stomach. Gojo’s touch is still steadying, the warmth of him tangible without the boundary of the Limitless between them.

“Entertaining is a very strong word for it,” Nanami manages to say, offering a paltry answer at the altar of conversation. “But thankfully the fights you might be seeking for personal enjoyment have yet to materialize since we started traveling together.”

“True, it has only been the odd curse here and there,” Gojo admits. “I had expected worse – you know what they say in the capital, about these backwater towns.”

“It is what they say about anywhere that is not Heian-kyo itself,” Nanami counters. “I’ve had very little trouble around the shoen where I resided, though the roads can be dangerous at times. They are less so now than they were before. I take it you do not have trouble?”

“No, not at all, but the temple is a holy place and one of peace. I would not expect them to; the very nature of it repels curses,” Geto answers with a careless shrug. He tosses another mochi into his mouth. Nanami does not know that he believes this – there is still something strange about this place, but it is indeed true that there are no curses lingering. They must do a good job purifying the shrines when needed, as people pour their miseries, their hopes and dreams and anger, forward. 

“I am pleased that you two have encountered little trouble, though,” Geto continues. “These are dangerous times, after all. I would not be nearly so comfortable in such a small party.”

This strikes Nanami as false; Geto had always enjoyed his wanderings, and had often traveled alone – by choice, he had said with a smile, as any other monks would simply slow him down. Nanami remains quiet, adds that to the tally of strange things about this place.

“We do not often use the roads,” Nanami admits. “And this part of the realm is quiet. I expect that if we were to venture further to the east or south, it would be different.”

“Do you?” Geto asks, oddly intent.

“Oh, eventually,” Gojo puts in airily. “I will have to return after all, and there’s time yet to convince Nanami to come along, if only for a visit. Ieiri would like to see him.”

This is the first that Nanami has heard of it, but he refuses to let his surprise show. He’d not considered what he would do after – but it might be presumptuous to think that his old job would be waiting for him. It would be difficult for a family to go without an onmyoji for so long, in both standing and function, and Nanami had of course served the nearby villages as well when called upon. Itadori knew some things, and would serve as a stopgap, but there is little doubt they would have summoned someone as soon as possible.

“I have not yet decided,” Nanami answers, diplomatic. “I cannot say I ever cared for the capital, and it will be a difficult journey. Dangerous, as you both say.”

“Less dangerous than before, surely,” Geto offers. A sly glint enters his eye. “Given recent changes. But I can see why you might wish to avoid it.”

“Oh?” Nanami’s heart quickens, but it is Gojo who prompts this, casual. 

“The Daten is gone, and the vacuum in power he left demands to be filled,” Geto answers. Nanami wonders if he has any stake in this game, if news has truly traveled so fast. He does not want to believe it, and yet worse men and weaker jutsushi than Geto Suguru have flourished, would seize this chance with their teeth.

“You think curse users are fighting amongst themselves,” Nanami supplies. It is an interesting thought, and a heartening one.

“In part. Apparently, Sukuna left behind some rather powerful cursed objects he had in his possession. I never would have taken him for a hoarder, he did not seem to care for that sort of thing, but,” here, Geto trails off with a delicate shrug of his shoulders. “I would not blame anyone for looking.”

“Rumors,” Gojo echoes, deliberate. “I did not think gossip reached your ears in a place like this. Isn’t there a rule against that? Something about it being earthly, impure?”

A cat’s smile. “It serves its purpose. And I like to hear the stories of the outside world. Would you not, in my position?”

“Only if it is scandalous, and that is no scandal. All powerful shamans hoard things. Worse yet if they’re clan members. The things the Fujiwara have in their vaults would turn anyone’s stomach, I’m sure,” Gojo scoffs. 

Nanami has never cared for gossip himself, only at times the ritual of sharing it – with Ieiri or Geto, over sake, or letting Itadori’s chatter wash over him as he went about his day. The words themselves matter not.

“What else do the rumors say?” Nanami asks. He does not feign casualness; he wouldn’t be successful. He tries for curiosity instead. “If they are looking for these items, it might be worse should they find them.”

“Hm. Well, there is only one tidbit that might interest you: They say that a jutushi from the newly raised Gojo clan defeated Ryomen Sukuna in battle,” Geto remarks.The room goes utterly still, Geto’s gaze locked on Gojo, Gojo’s eyes unearthly, challenging, as they stare back. “One might wonder what it cost.”

“One might be a fool to,” Gojo replies, his grin wolfish. “No victor speaks of cost like that, Suguru. You should know better. It cost nothing, except maybe the loss of the only shaman who could put up a fight against me. Unfortunately, he was the worst person in existence, and so I cannot mourn overmuch.”

“How tragic for you.” Geto’s smile in return sends a shudder through Nanami; the mood has shifted, soured, and he does not understand it at all.

“I will live, which is more than Sukuna can say.”

“Hm.” Geto glances between him and Nanami, who has yet to interject in this exchange, wrong-footed with the history that he was not there to see. “I don’t suppose you know what happened to any of those items. Surely not making their way to form the core of the to-be-infamous Gojo clan collection. You never cared for that kind of thing either.”

“I never needed it,” Gojo answers. “I was there to kill the man, Suguru, not rob him. And it would have been a pain to take anything to Heian-kyo.”

“A shame,” is all Geto has to say to that. “It will be interesting to see if that particular rumor was true after all, and what might come of it.”

What might come of it is nothing but trouble – Geto drawing the logical conclusion that these items must be in Gojo’s possession only means that others will have done the same. And not merely Sukuna’s followers, though they are the most likely to know precisely what to look for.

It’s concerning.

“Nothing, I’m sure,” Gojo tells him, flat and near-angry. “Only half of what you hear is remotely accurate, the rest is nonsense. You could do better than spend your days with an ear to the ground, Suguru, a cart might run over your head and then where would we be?”

Nanami cannot possibly smooth that over. He closes his eyes and sighs, though Geto’s laughter in response does nothing to put him at ease. Gojo is in a mood – worse than Nanami has seen him yet – and it bubbles close to the surface, threatening to boil over disastrously.

“You’ll forgive us if we retire,” Nanami says swiftly before either of them can make things worse, one hand on Gojo’s shoulder, now barred from his skin by Limitless. “It has been a long journey, we both need to rest.”

“Of course,” Geto says, gracious and ingratiating. “And do stop by some time, Nanami. It has been good to see you.”

Gojo’s back is stiff with tension even after they leave, his eyes alight with anger.

Somehow, Nanami does not feel the need to apologize, only attempts to temper the edge of this by remaining close.

He cannot say whether it helps. 

They do not stay a second night, though the first and the hot spring indeed appear to improve Gojo’s constitution. It is a decision made without discussion; he wakes to find their bags packed firmly, and the look on Gojo’s face tells him little, his silence over breakfast even less.

And so Nanami waits to broach the topic, even though his own reluctance to leave is less than he expected.

“You did not want to leave a finger with him,” Nanami says on their second day away from the temple. “Why not.”

“Did you think I would? Is that why you wished to take this detour?”

“Not permanently,” Nanami tells him. “But the thought crossed my mind; we will come this way again later, it might have done you good to carry fewer of them. You might heal faster.”

“I am Gojo no Satoru, and I do not need to relinquish my war prizes to a temple because I am not strong enough to bear them,” Gojo says, with the haughtiness and arrogance of the one called the strongest, his eyes cold.

“And you do not need to speak to me like that either,” Nanami retorts sharply. “Beyond the fingers, I thought you might have liked to see Geto-san again.”

“You have not seen him in seven years, Nanami, but it has been longer for me.” Gojo’s mouth sits unhappily on his face. “He is as a stranger to me. And I would not trust a stranger with these, for the temptation or for the risk it would bring upon them. You heard what he said. He covets them.”

Nanami cannot argue with that, though he senses this is not the whole of it. A stranger, when they used to be so close? And Gojo had said nothing of it before.

“I would not have insisted, if I had known you did not want to see him.” It is nothing, a half-apology. “Nor if I thought others knew that Sukuna left anything behind. They will come looking for you, soon.”

“Let them. And you made a good point,” Gojo says grudgingly. “The rest, the opportunity to bathe, it was welcome. We might not have that chance for a long time yet.”

He does not even comment on seeing Nanami near-nude in the springs, a clear indicator that something is wrong.

It is not the suggestion of danger worse than they had initially imagined, sooner than they anticipated – Gojo is not one to worry about those things. He is too used to invulnerability, all-encompassing power, and so concern about this falls under Nanami’s purview.

No, it is Geto. It can be nothing else. 

“Why did you not want to see him?” Nanami presses. “Did you not keep in touch? He has sent me letters, over the years, though they were sparse. I thought he must have corresponded with you.”

This, it seems, is a step too far for now. Gojo doesn’t answer, only walks a little faster, as if he might avoid the conversation by doing so.

Nanami speeds up to match. If Gojo were truly unwilling, he would move faster, or push Nanami away; instead, he allows this, even if his shoulders are tense and the line of his mouth strange and unsmiling.

“Gojo,” Nanami prompts, gentling his voice. “I only ask because I remember –,”

“Remember what?” Gojo bites out. “That he and I were close?”

That, Nanami thinks, is an understatement.

But they had never named what passed between them, and Nanami had not much cared beyond knowing that Geto usually tempered the worst of Gojo’s impulses, channeling them into more bearable annoyances if nothing else.

“Yes,” Nanami answers. The understatement is fine. 

“Yes, well. Things were different after Haibara died and you left,” Gojo mutters, bitter rather than the distant sadness that had stolen across Geto’s face on the rare occasion that he and Nanami discussed their past.

“So I gather. But you trusted him more than anyone else,” Nanami pushes.

“Trusted,” Gojo agrees. “He left too, but apparently you already knew that. Tell me, Nanami, how much have you two kept in touch? Letters, you said, but maybe not as few and far between as you would have me think.”

Nanami hesitates to answer, thinking; this is his undoing.

“Exactly. And I am sure you may be the greatest of friends, but that does not change the fact that Geto Suguru is no longer a shaman, and is, in fact, meant to be as affiliated with jujutsu as you are. Less, even, if we’re being honest about it.” Gojo’s mouth twists now. “It was a condition of his release.”

“Release.” Nanami’s eyebrows raise, and then he understands. “Ah. Of course. After the war, and then with Sukuna’s ascendancy. They could have afforded to spare someone such as myself, of course, especially if I simply switched to the Onmyoryo. But Geto was nearly as powerful as you.”

Something in that statement upsets Gojo, Nanami can tell, but this whole conversation has been upsetting him. It’s difficult to discern which part, exactly. 

“And they feared us,” Gojo says then, so quiet as to be almost inaudible. “They wouldn’t let him go without a Binding Vow. I’m surprised they didn’t make you take one, but you’re right – you would be easy enough to find, to drag back, if they wanted to. And they won’t risk it unless things are truly desperate.”

With Sukuna gone, Nanami knows it won’t come to that. But he’s here anyway; he says nothing.

“A Binding Vow – to what end? Loyalty?” 

Silence from Gojo.

“Worse, then. To stop using cursed energy entirely?” But – no, that cannot be right. Not unless Geto had lied, of course; the temple was suffused with his power. Suffocatingly so, but Nanami had thought that was his own impression; he's been away from any truly powerful shaman for a long time, and Gojo's semi-weakened state excludes him from the tally.

Still. Nanami has seen him swallow curses, personally, has poured him strong tea to wash the taste from his lips, but he has never seen Geto exorcise one since he left.

“Not for anything that wouldn’t aid the clans and the Emperor.” Cruel, Nanami thinks, angry on Geto’s behalf though he's still unsettled. If they had forced him to do the same, he would be furious. He would do anything to circumvent it. “In exchange, they wouldn’t call him back into service.”  

“And now he can no longer leave the grounds of his temple,” Gojo says. “That’s a Vow on its own. I’m sure he told you that much at least. They must have had him take it recently, when he rose in status.”

“That he had to stay? Yes. That it was a Binding Vow? No,” Nanami answers, slightly shaken. In an attempt at levity, he adds: “I suppose I got away easily, in comparison.”

Gojo’s head tips up to look at the sky. His expression is inscrutable.

“It’s going to rain again,” is all he says. “I hate spring.”

Nanami is tempted to lean in, let their shoulders brush, their hands touch, anything to offer Gojo comfort.

It is not a strange urge, but a newer one, around Gojo.

He doesn’t give in to it. There’s no point, when Infinity will just push him back away. 

“We’d better hurry, then,” Nanami says back. “And avoid the next village on.”

Gojo thinks that it is Geto’s fault when they begin to see curse users. Not merely curses, but shamans turned away from the path of order and to their own purposes. Nanami is less certain – there’d been no proof, after all, that Geto was in contact with any of them, that he’d go so far to take the fingers when it would’ve been easier while they stayed with him. This sits as a point of contention between them, a pebble in a shoe.

Nanami cannot put his finger on the exact issue – Gojo is by turns derisive and avoidant when he tries to ask, cutting him off with mockery or some inane observation, or more often, loud complaints about how his side hurts that he knows Nanami will take seriously. 

The first, Gojo senses coming, and they’re easily avoided. The second attempts to ambush Gojo while Nanami is elsewhere, and he returns to a campsite smeared in bloody slaughter and an insouciant shrug from Gojo. The third, Nanami almost mistakes for a bandit, until they lash out with their cursed technique, but it turns out Nanami remembers more than he likes of how to fight another human being. He doesn’t kill that one, and Gojo doesn’t question it, doesn’t call him soft as he has the right to. The man flees, bleeding from a wound that will at the very least incapacitate him until he finds someone who can use the reverse cursed technique – and for months afterwards.

None of them have names that Nanami knows, none of them are as powerful as Geto once was, nor Gojo – and certainly, as far as Gojo can tell him, none of them were followers of Sukuna. 

The fourth, though.

They are together when they feel someone powerful approaching, a few days past the last village they stopped at – and so enough time, perhaps, for word to have gotten out from there of two strangers, pale-haired and tall, one beautiful, both poorly disguised. If Gojo had sensed them first, he’d said nothing; by the time Nanami feels it, he already knows that running will do no good.

He cuts Gojo a glance. 

“I could hold them off, if you went ahead,” he says carefully. They have not discussed this. Nanami regrets that; seconds are precious in situations like this, and the curse user is moving fast. 

“No.” Gojo’s answer is swift and brooks no argument. It rubs at Nanami’s pride, the thought that Gojo must risk it all to defend him, but he knows it’s no use protesting.

“It would buy time,” Nanami tells him, due to obligation than any real hope of changing Gojo’s mind. 

“I said no, Nanamin, so why don’t we simply find a better place than this to meet them.” It is not a question, but an order, snapped off. Nanami tenses, but obeys – it is not an unfamiliar thing to follow orders, even Gojo’s, and he has not forgotten the habit of it. 

“A clearing, do you think?” he asks instead, more conciliatory to compensate for Gojo’s irritation. One of them must keep an even head, and Nanami refuses to let his nerves get the better of him. “We will see them coming. Better, if it is a hill.”

“A hill is unlikely. But we passed a clearing not too long ago,” Gojo says after a beat. His tone is not quite apologetic, but it’s less aggressive; Nanami takes the shift in good faith. “It ought to work.”

“And we’ll get there before them?”

“Nanami, if I see fit, I can be there before anyone,” Gojo points out, not unfairly. But it is a useless brag, when they both know that warping and fighting in short order is beyond him for now. 

“I would prefer you save your energy for something useful. I’d have to walk there myself anyway,” Nanami answers, dry. He turns around and begins walking briskly. “Which direction are they approaching from?”

“North,” is the prompt answer, Gojo’s long legs propelling him to fall in step with Nanami. He does this easily enough these days, can even run for as long as Nanami can, his stamina recovering. Nanami does not know if this translates to the speed Gojo normally possesses in a fight, the devastating power he would wield were it not being directed to healing him, and to sealing the fingers. 

“We have ten, perhaps fifteen minutes,” Gojo continues. “As I said: We’ll get there first.”

“Is it someone you recognize?” Is it Uraume, is what Nanami means to ask. 

“No. But I did not pay attention to all the mosquitoes buzzing around my prize, either,” Gojo admits carelessly. “Neither did he, actually, so it’s difficult to feel bad about that.”

So Gojo suspects it to be a curse user, rather than anyone from Heian-kyo. Nanami is relieved, albeit only marginally, that he will not yet have to deal with a clan sorcerer that isn’t Gojo. The Fujiwara are not yet so toothless, despite Sukuna having obliterated their most talented jutsushi, but the Kamo, the Zen’in, even the Sugawara to which Gojo traces his blood – they would all prove to be a problem.

By the time they reach the clearing, the curse user is close enough for Nanami to feel them too, their energy crackling in the air. Other than Gojo – and in some ways, Geto –, Nanami has not been around someone so powerful in a long time. He grits his teeth against it, takes the precious few moments they will have before the fight starts to compose himself.

“Are you worried, Nanamin?” Gojo asks abruptly. “Because there is no reason for you to be. I’m here, after all.”

“You are,” Nanami agrees. “I am not sure that it’s the wise thing to do.”

Gojo does not bother gracing him with an answer, only scoffs. Nanami takes his point: Wisdom or not, they are in this together. It’s more comforting than it ought to be. 

The curse user finds them there, standing side by side, Nanami’s nata in his hand and Gojo’s own hands empty. He is quiet as he steels his strength, and Nanami does not attempt to distract him.

She comes through the trees, clad only in a hitoe, barely tied at the front. Her kasa has attached to it a thin veil of opaque white, and slim hands pull it aside, pinning it away so her dark eyes might see them clearly. 

“I did not think to meet anyone on this path,” Nanami says to begin, because the silence is unbearable. Gojo snorts beside him, but makes no comment on what Nanami knows he considers to be ridiculous politeness.

“No? Well, I suppose I must introduce myself, though I certainly hoped to meet the both of you. Or one of you, in any event. I am Yorozu,” she says. She does not bow, though there’s little of elegance in her manner. She is beautiful, Nanami notes, not unusual for curse users, precisely, but unusual for him to notice at all. “A pleasure to meet at least one of you, I think –,” and here, she turns a smile on Nanami that is nearly devastating, if not for the coldness to her eyes. “I don’t know you. But I’m afraid we have to be enemies, given the company you keep. What a shame.”

“A familiar complaint when it comes to him, I hear,” Nanami says dryly. Gojo is tense as a carved board beside him, and that is more concerning than the cursed energy this woman is shrouded in – different than any Nanami has felt before, more used to it being sharp-edged, or blunt, or as jagged as the rasp of stone against skin. But hers draws in rather than pushes out, invites the eye, invites attention.

Nanami has seen men and women both with this kind of charisma – Gojo himself is as bright as a bonfire to moths that surround him, and the few courtesans Nanami had glimpsed during his time in Heian-kyo had much the same mysterious allure that this Yorozu cultivates for herself – but not like this. It has never been this pointed a weapon before.

“Oh? Have the others found you, then?” she asks, her head tilting, full lips pulling into a frown. “Then the Gojo jutushi is not as weakened as I thought.”

Nanami says nothing, but Gojo sneers at her, answering, “Would you not like to find out, then?”

“I would,” Yorozu tells him, intent, her voice husky. “Believe that. But there are things I must know, first. The fingers of Lord Sukuna, for example. You have them, you must, but do you have them all?”

“Lord Sukuna,” Nanami cuts in lest Gojo actually tell her the truth. “You are one of his, then.”

Her eyes take on a distinctly dreamy glaze, one that Nanami takes a long moment to parse as almost lovesick.

“Yes. It was my honor, and my pleasure.” Her tongue runs across her white teeth at this, adding something lascivious to the statement. “And even in death, I serve him. As do we all.”

“And yet you are here alone,” Gojo points out, casually cutting. “I do not see the rest of his followers. Nor do I sense them.”

Yorozu laughs. “They are all fools, with the exception of Uraume, and I can barely stand them on a good day. To work with them would have been boring.”

“You wish to resurrect him on your own, and to keep any gratitude he might show to yourself,” Nanami surmises easily. Next to him, Gojol scoffs.

“Please. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word. You give your life up for something that does not exist.” This strikes Nanami as cruel, though he cannot place why. The bitterness in Gojo’s voice, perhaps.

“I give my life for my Lord,” she corrects him easily. Yorozu will not be dissuaded from this path, Nanami can tell, but all the same he had not expected the first curse user to find them, to do so for a selfless reason. He had prepared himself instead for those who wanted the fingers to resurrect Sukuna for what he could do for them, or to take one or two to aid their own abilities, or even to tie the Daten to themselves, bend him to their will. Nanami does not think that would go well, of course, but he would not put it past the Fujiwara, nor the Zen’in. 

Nanami steels himself for the fight that is sure to come, but Gojo continues talking, not making a single move next to him. 

“You give your life for nothing, and no one. A sacrifice, to someone undeserving,” Gojo tells her. “You know it as well as I do. Even if he was alive, he wouldn’t care if you died at either of our hands. There would be no vengeance to follow. All that loyalty, and for no reward?”

“Gojo,” Nanami says quietly. “Stop this. You won’t convince her to leave.”

Gojo says nothing. It might be a tactic to disarm her instead, distract her, but Gojo has rarely used those. 

Of course, he has rarely needed to say a word to catch an opponent off-balance – any mockery was by choice rather than necessity, and his overwhelming power would take care of the rest. 

“You can’t understand this kind of love. I would kill for him, I would have killed him, to show him precisely its strength. I will kill you to make you understand too, though you don’t deserve it,” she answers Gojo, flat out, her face twisting into something ugly for the first time. “Do you think you will find someone as devoted to you as I am to Lord Sukuna? Do you think that I come here not knowing what it might cost? Know this, Gojo: I do. I did not get the chance to die for him, but I will lay my life down here and now if it means bringing him back. The wheel turns, and so in my next life I might be at his side.”

“Sorry to destroy your fantasy,” Gojo drawls, “but I’ll ensure you don’t make it to that next life. Ryomen Sukuna is dead, and I’ll do everything in my power to make sure he stays that way. And given that my power was enough to best him? I like our odds much better than yours.”

“You bested him then,” she allows. “But look at you now.”

That is all the warning they get before she strikes, her form a blur of dark hair and her dark kimono, striking out at Gojo. Her speed is startling, her feet barely touching the ground, and Nanami realizes belatedly that it is because there are a pair of dragonfly wings sprouting from her back, spurring her on. 

Nanami steps between them to catch the blow on the flat of his nata, feels the force of it echo along his arm. Gojo had seen it, of course, but his body was too slow to react properly. A new strategy, then: Nanami will have to keep her away from him, give Gojo an opportunity to attack and weaken her enough for Nanami to strike a finishing blow, if he does not do it himself. 

Yorozu’s eyes widen in surprise, and Nanami gives her a wry smile, one he does not feel beneath the pounding of his heart. 

“So you would die for him,” she breathes, and darts away to regard them both with a new gleam to her eyes. “I see. But you wouldn’t kill him, would you.”

Nanami’s heart, already pounding, cannot beat faster with fear or confusion.

“I am doing what is right,” he says, flat. “There’s no need to read further into it.”

He goes on the offensive then – because he must, because given half the chance, she will kill them both, and Nanami does not intend to give her that. She is fast, dodging blows of his cleaver by a hair’s breadth as if to taunt him; moving even as he blinks ratio lines in and out of existence, the habit engrained but disused when it comes to a moving target, a person. 

Her form bulges, mass accumulating on her arms, her back, until she is cloaked in armor akin to an enormous insect. It makes her faster, stronger; Nanami catches her hits and they leave him reeling, and flinging himself back into the fray every time she takes a step towards Gojo. He keeps her at bay. 

Great gouges in the earth appear; trees fall. She does not get close, but Nanami is tiring.

Yorozu lands one blow to his arm, and it rattles to the very bone. 

Impossibly, she gets faster, flashing in to land another that he struggles to deflect. 

Keep her occupied, is his only thought. Keep her away from Gojo. It is easier said than done, with how slippery she is, nearly weaving around him twice before he shoves her back with a shout and a swipe of his nata, a tear opening in the ground between them. 

“Interesting technique,” she tells him, her breathing only the slightest bit heavier in comparison to Nanami’s panting.

“I divide things into seven parts, and three again. Between them, a weak spot,” he explains, the words rusty on his tongue. But the Vow locks into place, a bargain common enough: Reveal your ability, gain power for it. 

“Nanami. Seven, three. Cute,” she answers, with a coy smile. “Shall I tell you mine, then? I can make anything, Nanami. Anything at all. But this is my favorite.”

The armor ripples as if to agree with her. 

This time, Nanami is the one to strike first.

He feels it, a rush he thought he had forgotten, the simple pleasure of a clean hit and a surge of cursed energy to batter at the weak spot he’s created. Again, and again, still too slow to press her, but fast enough to block or dodge the majority of her blows. It is a good thing Yorozu does not rely on ranged weapons, preferring her fists; Nanami can respect that, can understand it, though he alternates between that and his nata. 

More, he finds himself thinking, pain sharp in his shoulder as he fails to dodge in time. More. He’d not forgotten how to push himself, surely. He isn’t done – this fight is not done, he has more to give. Nanami moves forward, eyes intent on her: There, the build up to a kick, and he sways to the side, follows it with a blow to her side that sends her flying into a tree. 

Yorozu is hardy. She gets to her feet, bares her teeth at him, but there is new wariness in her eyes, something of respect. She approaches nonetheless; the distance is to his benefit, and she knows it.

But it’s too late. Nanami sees it then, finally: The battlefield laid out in his mind, the distance between her and Gojo too great for her to overcome, Nanami with a clear line of sight to whichever avenue she might approach him by. Nanami, cutting off her escape; she knows now that if she shows him her back, it will be over. 

Left, then, Nanami decides, and hefts his nata for another blow. He forces his body to do it, his arms unused to this sustained surge of cursed energy. It catches Yorozu just at the forearm, sprays her blood against the ground, and she snarls at him. 

And lunges to the right, focus on Nanami as he’d planned. She has finally forgotten about Gojo. This is her undoing.

“Domain –” she begins. Nanami does not give her the chance to finish. 

“Gojo, now!” he shouts, and can only pray that the other is ready, is strong enough.

His prayers are answered. They always are, when it comes to Gojo.

An unearthly purple light illuminates the hill, the night sky, a beam that narrowly misses Nanami and barrels straight into Yorozu before she can dodge. Nanami sees her expression shift from triumph to horror as she realizes she cannot outlast it, that it is not the weak blow that she expected.

So Gojo mastered it in the end, Nanami thinks numbly, his ears ringing in the aftermath. The air smells of lightning, of thunderstorms. It is not the most powerful application of cursed energy Nanami has seen from Gojo – his Red, his Blue, both have been more devastating than this, leaving nothing but ash in their wake. But Yorozu is alive still, her energy more than a residual, pulsing now with fear and anger

She will not be alive for much longer. 

She is done for, with that blast. Nanami knows it. He has nothing to do but approach to witness it; Gojo does not want him seeing his weakness instead, but Nanami can still hear him gasping for breath, see him in his mind, bent over and clutching at his injury. No new blood will run, but the seal on the fingers will weaken while Gojo’s cursed energy redirects itself to healing him. 

He still holds his nata, though. Nanami’s forgotten many a battlefield lesson – he’d received a sore reminder of that today, in the wounds he’s taken – but not this one: A wounded enemy is no less dangerous. 

Yorozu pulls him close, her nails digging like claws into his shoulders.

“Nanami,” she rasps out. “I’ll give you but one warning, for your pretty face: You love him, or you will soon if you don’t yet know it, but you should leave now. Run. Save yourself, he will never be able to give himself to another. You won’t hurt him to do what you must, fine. But there’s no lesson in love that you can teach him, that he wants to learn.”

You do not know that, is the first thought that springs to Nanami’s head, absurdly. Defending Gojo, defending a relationship that does not exist – that he well knows can’t exist, for this reason. Even without Geto and whatever has passed between them, there are expectations of Gojo, there are things he must do that not even he would shirk. 

Yorozu gives him a smile, knowing. “It’s a terrible thing to love someone like that.”

Sukuna is who she must be referring to. Nanami dislikes the comparison instantly; it quenches some flame in him, leaves him cold and numb.

“I am sorry,” is all Nanami can think to say, kneeling there with her.

“Ah. Don’t be. In another life, did I not say? He will see me. I know that much.” Her voice weakens there, though her conviction does not; by the last word, Nanami is straining to hear her at all.

The light goes out of her eyes.

Nanami buries her in the end, though Gojo is buzzing with impatience to be going – they won’t get very far, but they do need to get away, and to him, this is nothing but a waste of time. So Nanami is not careful; he gouges the earth in sevens and threes and sevens and threes until there is a hole big enough that he can lower her corpse into. The ground is soft and wet, and they can’t afford the kind of fire it would take to do this properly. It’ll be enough.

“I might come back,” Nanami tells Gojo later that night, when they’re both half-asleep at their camp. “And give her a proper funeral. It isn’t right to leave it like that.”

“I could have vaporized her,” Gojo says, razor-edged. “Then you would have ashes to bury.”

“No, you couldn’t have,” Nanami corrects him. Not with the majority of his cursed energy still being funneled into sealing and concealing the fingers. It would be impractical, a waste – and even Gojo is not so childish as to insist on it in his condition. “And I don’t want you to, besides.”

“Wow. What did she say to you?” he asks, deliberately casual. “Don’t tell me she seduced you away, Nanami, I know you’re too cold for that! Not to mention that it’s a wasted effort, for her.”

It’s safer not to answer this, merely to raise an eyebrow.

“Oh?”

To Nanami’s surprise, Gojo backpedals, palms raising defensively. “I only mean that – well, when’s the last time you were interested in someone? You never had so much as a crush back then, and if you wanted to get married and settle down, I’d probably have had to pay a fortune to your wife and ten children just for the right to borrow you for a little.”

“Or for traumatizing them all by showing up at our home in the state you did,” Nanami says, amused despite himself. “Are you saying that your solution would have been to buy me? And leave my ten children – which is far too many, for the record – fatherless for however long this took? I’d never agree.”

“I have a lot of money, and your wife would tell you to do it. You’d never marry someone impractical enough to refuse such an offer, nor indifferent enough to let the whole world go to shit just because she wants you to stay at home and tend to the garden,” Gojo answers with somewhat startling confidence. Entirely unfounded, though Nanami is left somewhat shaken to know that Gojo is right about this.

It is alarming how transparent he is to Gojo, at times. But then again Nanami had wanted something similar when he and Gojo knew one another – a good person, had been his answer, when asked. Nothing less would suffice; anything more would be a bonus. 

“Anyway. She didn’t seduce you,” Gojo continues, blithe. He is, of course, correct about this too, though that’s no feat of reasoning. 

“She wasn’t hideous,” is all Nanami offers. It isn’t why he wants to return, to give Yorozu a grave as she deserves, perhaps the slightest chance of passing on. It may be an entirely futile desire, but Nanami thinks he would want someone to do the same for him. It is as simple as that.

He badly wants to look at Gojo, gauge his reaction to this teasing, but he can feel Gojo’s attention on him like a weight, a curse sitting heavy on his chest.

“I thought you liked them less evil,” Gojo counters. 

Nanami cannot actually refute this.

“She loved him very much,” he says instead, a peace offering. 

“You don’t wonder why?” A note of something genuine in Gojo’s voice. “I do. He was awful, he would have treated her badly. He didn’t have it in him to care about someone else.”

“I think you were being harsh,” Nanami murmurs, though he’s not convinced of it. “Does it matter? This was no case of blind love. She knew what he was like; she simply loved him anyway.”

“And he didn’t deserve it.”

“He was a monster, there is no denying that,” Nanami agrees. He doesn’t quite know how to put it into words, the knowledge that someone could look at Ryomen Sukuna and find something worth that level of devotion. He only has the proof that it happened, again and again, people compelled by more than mere awe and strength and fear. Or perhaps all those things combining, transcending, until it turned to something very like love.

“Did you pity her?” Gojo’s question is a surprise.

“Not more than I would anyone else in that position. Maybe even less,” he admits. “She did in fact try to kill us, and she would have brought him back as a curse. Neither of those are outcomes I would like very much.”

“Why do I feel like you’re going to say ‘but’?”

“Because I am. So here it is: But, I don’t think anything about him matters. If she knew what he was and didn’t turn away, that’s her decision. It’s foolish, but admirable,” Nanami says, picking his words carefully. “Not the kind of love story that I would aspire to, personally speaking. But she loved him. I’d rather it be about her, than him.”

“Nanami, has anyone ever told you that you’re a terrible idealist? Or a secret romantic? I can’t tell if that’s romantic or just sad,” Gojo exclaims, laughter brittle over his voice. “You say all that like it was a good thing. She died for him, do you really think that he would have cared?”

“Do you really think she didn’t know?” Nanami counters. But they’re talking in circles; Gojo is looking for an answer that Nanami can’t even find the question to. “If it didn’t matter to her, I won’t let it matter to me. But to answer your question: No, Gojo, obviously she didn’t seduce me. She wasn’t remotely interested in me.”

“She seemed plenty interested,” Gojo mutters, mutinous. Nanami can’t quite understand this either.

“Well, you killed her beloved. It may be a novelty to have someone lack attraction to you, Gojo, but she has a very good reason,” Nanami answers. That is not the whole of it, he’s sure, and so this is but a guess, neither confirmed nor denied by Gojo’s reaction. 

“She clearly has poor taste then! If she had no interest in me and apparently wasn’t trying to seduce you! Then again, to be so desperately in love with Sukuna of all people is rather telling, don’t you think, Nanami?” 

Nanami considers this for a moment, and then says, “I would not disagree, Gojo. But she went about it in the way best for her, I think.”

“What? What does that mean?” Gojo frowns now, arms crossing over his chest. “Nanami, I thought you were secretly a romantic, not a fiend for riddles.”

“Only that in some cases, it is better to love from afar.”

This seems to strike Gojo; he pales slightly, does not quite flinch, but Nanami catches the aborted motion regardless.

“Don’t dwell on it. You need to rest, and so do I,” he says to save Gojo from answering, and to gently change the topic. “I can take the first watch.”

“No,” Gojo tells him. “I will. You sleep first, Nanami. She said she was alone, did she not? And I sense no one nearby.”

Nanami wants to protest, to wonder at Gojo’s bout of kindness and his change in mood, but his eyelids are heavy and he aches.

He slides into a dreamless sleep shortly after, Gojo’s gaze as heavy as the thin blanket over his shoulders and twice as warming.