Chapter Text
It has been four months, two weeks and five days since Sukuna was defeated. It has been four months, two weeks, and five days since Fushiguro Megumi is unresponsive. Satoru, all this time, had no time to mourn. No time to think of his fallen comrades, of his friends, of the boy he took under his wing for the past decade. It was easy for the higher ups to completely blame all the losses on him, as if he had not saved humanity as they knew it. As if he had not died once. He could not care less. Not after all that happened. All he saw was blurry faces and all he heard was white noise. Paperwork? Public apologies? Gojo Satoru, the phenomenon the mortal world did not recognize, who threw away his humanity for the ungratefulness of the hungry.
Satoru was never going to see Megumi grow into the powerful sorcerer he was becoming. Satoru was never going to meet an adult Megumi, with a full life ahead of himself, with so much more to explore than injuries and missions. He did not allow himself to dwell on inevitable deaths, deaths that he saw coming. Deaths that he knew would happen even with his intervention. But there was one single person that, regardless of the circumstances, he would never consider losing. He would never let that happen, how could he ever allow that?
He did. The strongest did.
Deep in fight, when he once thought foolishly he would find the way to liberate Megumi, felt an abyss form within him when he realized nothing could be done. He pushed anything that could hold him back, and fought. And kept fighting. He could no longer see that boy, he only saw what needed to be terminated. It was everything or nothing. When his own feelings tried to come out, when Sukuna would taunt and remind him it was Megumi’s soul instead of his, the entirety of his strength went to not stopping then and there. And so he numbed himself. Weeks passed after the battle came to an end, and he did not stop moving. If that meant to deal with the scum themselves, he would. He did. Traveling abroad, making amends, visiting the injured. All but dealing with his own grief. Satoru destroyed any single amount of time that would allow him to remember.
It wasn’t until he found himself all alone in his own house, with not a single task to do, that his facade shattered. He was making himself a meal, not even because of his appetite but the concern of Shoko when she found out he, the epitome of health, was losing weight. Am I not allowed to diet? Satoru joked around. She did not find it amusing. He was staring at the cutting board in front of him as he sliced some vegetables, when unmistakably, the faint sound of Megumi’s laugh was heard from his room.
Static.
He did not sense any cursed energy, his six eyes could not see anything. He knew he was all alone in the house. Before he could even think, he was already rushing to his bedroom. Empty. Of course it was. He had been there earlier in the day as well, he was not going to magically find the boy. Satoru knew that. It felt as if the world was heavier, the pressure on his chest debilitating as ever. It felt as if he was breathing fire, a wound that no amount of ability could cure. Regret was the one emotion he despised. And it was all he was feeling. He kept running away from it, from the pain that it would cause, from the memories that it would bring. And yet he found himself breaking apart the mere instant he was reminded of Megumi’s absence.
Feeling disoriented, he walked back to the kitchen. His gaze was lost at the distance, senses elevated to the maximum. Everything started to feel heavy around him, so he tried to regain his balance by resting on the counter. If only the green eyed boy could see him like this. His shaky breath only made his smile look even more crooked, only to grab his blindfold centimeters away and cover his eyes. Maybe Satoru was overdoing it. Maybe he was punishing himself. Consciously or not, he was feeling himself slip away from sanity. He could even taste the vibration of the light above him, it was not good.
A distant memory reappeared in his mind, just as if it was happening right in front of him.
The first day he entered his side-hustle home was not even close to the day he bought it. Megumi, who found out he had not put a foot in his new place, was livid. Sure way to waste your money. The boy was fed up once again by the antics of this man, but well, in his defense, it had been less than a month and he had seen it in person before. Once. With the salesperson.
He had ordered couches, mattresses, lamps, anything needed to make the house look as if it had people living in it. Satoru personally requested the deliverers to leave everything inside, in the vast living room. He still remembered the smell of new, the echo of their footsteps, and Megumi’s pursed lips as he explored the place. When the black haired boy came back from checking the bedrooms, his curious expression amused the older man.
“So you have your own room and a guest room?”
“My own room, yes” he grinned “the other one is yours”
“I will have my own dorm soon. I don’t need to-
“But what about our sleepovers?”
He put a chopped carrot inside his mouth, and tried focusing on his teeth cutting through the vegetable, millimeter by millimeter. The truth is that it was a guest room. The apartment would be used after a promising night at bars, after long missions, when he was trying to stay away from the school, and other times when Megumi himself did not want to be near his school area. After Tsumiki fell unconscious, the green eyed boy basically moved there. I cannot sleep at ours anymore. Satoru understood. And truth be told, even when he was using the house twice a month at most, then he started to come every day to check on Megumi. Every day he was asked about Tsumiki, and every day disappointment grew under his own skin.
But memories were not only bitter. He had not spent that much time with Megumi since he was in elementary school, and before his entrance to Jujutsu High, this was the last of them together so often. Gojo got the sleepovers he wanted, and he got to know more of what his protegee hid behind the problematic middle schooler persona he was attempting to pull.
His appetite did not resurface again that night.