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Shoko questions invincibility, when she looks at Satoru Gojo.
According to the higher ups, he’s untouchable. And he is – physically, at least. Gojo has fought special grade curses and won with a flick of his fingers, has stared death down on the line between heaven and hell and raised his middle finger with an obnoxious snort. The world has watched him overcome mountains – has seen him drunk off the magnitude of his own power, high with godly might.
But Shoko knows better than the world does. And she, unlike everyone else, doesn’t get to live in ignorant bliss.
Because she’s seen him at his lowest. She’s watched him fall to his knees in the privacy of his room in the wake of Geto’s departure, peaking through a door cracked just open enough for her to catch the glistening tears streaking down his face. She’s watched him bleed and break and heal, only to split himself open all over again in ways more painful than she could ever imagine, just to distract himself from the hollow feeling residing within. She’s had to sit him down on a paper-lined bed in the hospital wing of Jujutsu Tech just to tell him not to throw his life away so carelessly, all the while trying not to stare too intently at the dark circles underlining his eyes and the sudden prominence of his cheekbones.
She knows all too well how utterly human Gojo Satoru is. He’s the furthest thing from invincible she’s ever known, nothing like how the higher ups believe he is.
Which becomes apparent now as Shoko follows him into his apartment, trailing after his heavy footsteps. He’s mad – this is obvious. But he doesn’t often let his emotions get the better of him, opting to hide behind a wall of fake smiles and loud laughter. She’s admittedly unused to this: To unbridled, unrestricted fury emanating from the Gojo Satoru’s body like waves, threatening to drown out everything around them.
“You need to calm down,” she tries to say, watching as he drops heavily onto the sofa in the living room. One glance at the clock tells her it’s almost three in the morning. “You’re not thinking straight.”
This makes Gojo scoff. “I think straight all the time,” he hisses, pulling a dark cloth out of his pocket. He’s already wearing a blindfold, but he layers the cloth on top of it, grumbling as he struggles to tie it off behind his head. “It’s everyone else who doesn’t think enough.”
Shoko can’t argue with that. “I know,” she says softly. Placatingly. “But frustration will only cloud your judgment. I just worry that –”
“Would I not be justified in clouded judgement, though?”
Shoko freezes. Blinks. Sits herself down on the loveseat across the living room from the sofa, fiddling with the hem of her sweater. “Justified,” she repeats emptily.
Gojo doesn’t regard her. He tilts his head towards the ceiling, jaw tight. “Yeah.”
Shoko frowns. “No,” she says hesitantly, and squeezes both her hands into fists atop her lap until she feels her nails dig hard into her palms. “I don’t think clouded judgment from you can be justified.”
“And why not?” Gojo demands, the steel edge to his voice sharp enough for Shoko to feel it lacerate her skin. “Why wouldn’t it be justified? I fight morning, noon, and night, left and right, put my body on the line to save the skin of people who would never even think to care about what I do for them, and the higher ups still don’t think it’s enough. When is it enough, Shoko?” His voice breaks, just a little. “When is it enough?”
And honestly, Shoko doesn’t know. She hates that she can’t answer him positively. Hates that all she can really say is, “Never. It will never be enough. You can claw and connive and cut yourself a path to the top, do everything in your power to be the strongest, to protect innocent lives, and it will never, ever be enough.”
Not for the people. Not for the sorcerers. Not for the higher ups.
Instead, she simply says, “I don’t know.”
Gojo laughs. “Of course you don’t,” he says, sounding loose and tired and devoid of life. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”
Shoko would typically find this insulting. As of currently, she can’t find it in herself to care.
“You should rest a bit,” she tries, after a moment of tense silence. “Maybe that would help clear your mind.”
“I don’t need a clear mind, Shoko. I need results.” Gojo smacks his hands together, emphasizing every syllable of his words. “I need to know that when I do something, when I go out and kill curses and work myself to the bone, it will amount to a better future. For me, for you, for the sorcerers, for the people.” He trembles a little, then says, almost inaudibly, “For Megumi, and for Tsumiki, too.”
Ah, yes. For the children.
“I know,” Shoko says, and god, it hurts, the fact that she has to say this, “but you hold everybody and their lives in your hands. You have so much responsibility. You can’t afford to be reckless or make rash decisions, because a mistake from you could make thousands more die.”
“A rash decision like destroying the higher ups?” Gojo’s voice is full of fire – the nasty kind, the dangerous kind, the kind that sets entire forests ablaze and destroys ecosystems for generations. “The ones who care about nobody but themselves? The ones who keep getting innocent people tortured, and killed? At this point, would a rash decision not benefit society more in the long run?”
“What, like the ends justify the means?” Shoko scowls, frustrated. “Absolutely not. You want to protect the kids, right? What if your means, the rash ones, get them hurt? Or worse?”
“Don’t bring the kids into this. Don’t you dare.”
“But don’t you see?” Shoko is standing now, furious and desperate and upset, and she wants so badly for Gojo to understand, to get that he cannot, under any circumstance, go down the wrong path. “They are part of world you need to take care of, just like anybody else. Your choices will affect them, whether you want them to or not!”
“I wouldn’t let anybody hurt them!”
“You can’t always control that! Provoking the higher ups will only make it worse!”
“This is what I mean,” Gojo thunders, and Shoko doesn’t need to see his eyes to know they’re glowing. “You don’t get it. You just don’t get it! The way we’re living, the way the sorcerers are living and the way the people are living, it’s just not right! Somebody needs to do something about it!”
“You can do something about it, but you have to do it in the right frame of mind! If you kill the higher ups, who’s to say others can’t kill whoever disagrees with them? There will be anarchy, Gojo! We’ll fall apart!”
Gojo slams a hand on the sofa’s armrest. Shoko doesn’t even flinch. “Maybe anarchy is what we need,” he growls. “To rebuild. To reform. Maybe the ends do justify the means, and I’m thinking that this so-called clouded judgment of mine is probably the clearest I’ve thought in days.”
Shoko feels frissons go down her arms. She’s suddenly cold all over, the way freezing sensations brush over her body the instant she enters a morgue. “You sound just like Geto,” she murmurs.
Gojo explodes. “DON’T YOU DARE –”
“Gojo?”
They both turn.
In the doorway of the living room stands little Megumi, wrapped in a dark blue blanket and crushing a wolf plushie to his chest. He looks gaunt and pale, as though he’s been up all night. “What are you talking about?” He asks, and his voice is raspy, completely raw.
Shoko pauses. She doesn’t know how to proceed. “Um…” She begins, tightening her grip on the cushion beneath her, “just grown up business, kid.”
Gojo isn’t moving. He’s frozen to the spot, his jaw tight with residual anger, not even looking in Megumi’s direction.
“I don’t feel good,” the boy pushes, pulling the blanket more tightly around his shoulders. “I’m sick, I think.” He wobbles a bit, unsteady on his feet.
Again, Gojo says nothing.
“I can’t….I can’t go to sleep.” Megumi fidgets with his fingers, glancing from Shoko, to Gojo, to the floor, and then back again. “And Miki is asleep already. I don’t wanna wake her up.”
Gojo remains silent.
“…Should I –”
Gojo unfreezes, turns towards the kitchen, and leaves.
Shoko stares after him.
The emptiness he leaves in his wake is stifling. Shoko could choke on it, as though it were a physical, thick cloud of smoke. Thoughts fly a mile a minute through her head – why? How? What? What now? What then? What? What?
He left, he actually left, and Megumi is still trembling in the entrance to the living room, sick and shaky and weak. Shoko feels anger rise in her stomach – insatiable and beastly, hungry for a fight. Gojo, despite his goofy attitude and unserious mentality, has never pulled anything even akin to this. To leaving the kids behind, especially when they so clearly need him.
It’s frightening. More than anything, it’s truly frightening.
“Shoko?” Megumi pipes up, and Shoko turns towards him, alert. “Did I do something bad?”
“No sweetheart, oh my gosh.” Shoko shakes her head, and forces herself to her feet. Gojo or not, the child is sick, and Shoko is the only adult present. “You did absolutely nothing wrong. Here, I’ll go get you some medicine, and than we’ll –”
Megumi never gets to figure out what they would supposedly do next, because in that moment, Gojo strolls right back into the living room, smacking a thermometer gently against his thigh.
Shoko stares at him again.
He looks…better, almost. Pulled together in a way he most certainly hadn’t been seconds prior, his features once again soft, a smile once again teasing the edges of his mouth. His blindfolds are off now, peaking haphazardly out of his pocket, and his eyes are so soft, albeit tired and worn. Slowly, but surely, he sits back down on the couch, peering at the thermometer, tongue halfway out as he concentrates.
“Gojo…?” Shoko ventures.
Gojo looks up. Not at her – at Megumi. “C’mon, kid,” he says, an arm outstretched. “Come over here. I’m going to take your temperature, okay?”
Megumi shoots one quick glance at Shoko, as if to say holy crap, he’s back! Shoko can only widen her eyes slightly, and watches as the kid makes his way to where Gojo sits, and mounts himself clumsily onto the sofa by his side.
“Careful,” Gojo chides, pulling him into his side. Megumi, perhaps due to his sickly state, allows the proximity. “Now open your mouth, I’m going to put this thing under your tongue.”
“Why?”
Gojo chuckles. He laughs. Shoko cannot believe her eyes. “That’s how the thermometer reads your temperature, kid.”
“How?”
With a shrug, Gojo pops the thermometer into his mouth, patting the wayward spikes of his hair down. “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”
Megumi pouts.
Shoko doesn’t dare say a thing as Gojo finishes taking Megumi’s temperature, talking in soft tones even though he’d been yelling himself hoarse mere minutes ago. Megumi is blinking lethargically, like a frog – one eye at a time, clearly sleepy beyond human comprehension, slouched so that Gojo almost has to hold him up. He tsks when he reads the thermometer. “39 degrees, kid. You have a fever.”
Megumi barely even reacts. He sadly hangs his head as if he just got reprimanded for doing something bad, then stays there. It makes Shoko smile, despite the circumstances, and Gojo grins widely, rubbing a hand over his back reassuringly. “Go to bed, alright Megumi? I’ll make you some tea and come sit with you in a bit. Think you can do that?”
“Do I need to take medicine?”
“Oh, right.” Gojo scratches his head. “That, too.”
Megumi groans dramatically, as all children do, and pulls his blanket around himself even more tightly like he thinks that will protect him. “I don’t want to.”
“Too bad,” Gojo sings, and ushers Megumi up, gesturing him back towards his bedroom. “Sick kids need medicine in order to get better. That’s just life, kid.”
Megumi sticks his tongue out, and retreats down the hallway sulkily. Shoko hears the sound of his door opening followed by the quiet click of it shutting behind him, but her brain registers it as a gong, as something loud bursting her eardrums.
Gojo stands in the entrance, looking down the hallway, unmoving.
Shoko simply pats his shoulder – it’s all she can bring herself to do – and with nothing more than a soft breath and the wisp of her ever-present lab coat trailing behind her, she leaves.