Chapter Text
There he is. The one you once knew; once loved like a brother; once killed with your own, two—too—bloody hands. There he is, standing before you and grinning like his living, breathing, six-feet-higher-than-you-left-him presence is a joke and the pathetic look on your face is the punchline.
Reality warps. It twists at the seams, encapsulating you in a myriad of bloody reds and browns until all that is left is a chasm of understanding that sinks heavy in your rioting gut like tar and feathers.
It makes sense, all at once, that the Getou before him is not the one he buried all those months ago. Gojo realizes this. Yet, his foolish mind will not allow his helpless will to make him move. He is but a hapless heap of heavy regrets in a hollow darkness more similar to a grave than a box like it must appear on the outside.
Gojo knows, instinctually, that he must do something. That there must be something he can do to bring Getou to his senses or kill the monster wearing his skin, or… oh, that’s it. Without access to his best friend’s corpse, the best he can do is halt the plans of his parasitic host.
Gravity tears his cell from the imposter’s overconfident grip, spiderwebbing cracks across the concrete and making a mockery of the grand evil’s schemes and dreams in one fell swoop.
He swears he can hear that entity cursing his name from the inside of the Prison Realm as though it were whispered in his ear. Gojo lays his feet against the cool stone of the floor and shimmies the rest of himself into a nest of skulls and bones until he is comfortable enough to lie himself into admitting he feels at ease.
Gojo lets out a heavy sigh and removes the blindfold from his eyes.
“Man, it is dark in here.”
There is no way of telling time from within the blackness of the Prison Realm, for there are no clocks inserted in an ancient relic created to divide and to conquer the most powerful of sorcerers. What need is there to inform a prisoner on death row how long they have left to live when the sun will hit their face just before the sword cuts it loose? Some warning must be just enough.
To Gojo’s surprise, not much of his lifespan is spent sleeping among bones. At least, that is what it feels like. As mentioned previously, there really is no way for one to tell the time spanned past from the inside of a spaceless box.
There is no need for eating from within the confines of Schrödinger’s Box; the whole purpose would be for naught were that the case. Half-dead cats will survive on their own half of the time, or so it’s been said.
There’s the sun. Or, at least, a visage of it. It beams and beams and blinds him like a lightning strike in a Summer storm. Gojo yanks down the blindfold he forgot to replace countless increments of time ago and raises a hand to block the light from penetrating even the cloth. After so much time in darkness, it is the only thing he is used to. Back in his student days, he didn’t need to worry about such things as much as he does now.
It isn’t something he should dwell on and he knows it. Seeing the light–stepping out of the box–can only mean a few things for him now: he will be killed, he will be forced to kill someone else, he will be forced to watch someone kill somebody else, he will be brought back to his students and his comrades to fight for his life until the end like he always knew he would, or he will open his eyes to the sight of his bedroom ceiling–the one he is less accustomed to seeing than the underside of his blindfold or the backsides of his eyelids–and wake up from this horrible nightmare.
Imagine his surprise when, upon opening his eyes, Gojo is met with the sight of his bedroom ceiling light.
“Well,” he mutters to himself, “this is unexpected.”
He shifts to sit on the edge of his bed, moving slowly like a hospital patient or a retirement home resident. His bones ache and itch as though he has been stuck in one place for far too long, but surely that is simply the remnants of his dreams calling him back to sleep. What use is there in worrying over useless things like the meanings of dreams anyway? He can deal with future consequences when they become current ones.
Besides, dreams are simply dreams. Nothing will ever be able to change that fact, no matter how hard one may try.
He knows this from experience.
Gojo reaches his arms towards the ceiling, twisting his limbs and pulling at his muscles until they are satiated and no longer ache like he imagines the final stages of rabies or rigor mortis might. He stands to his feet and finds himself dropping towards the floor before he can so much as take a breath.
The harsh whoomph of his knees crashing on the rickety wooden boards the dorm rooms have always had pulls a gasp from his lungs without his consent. Rough coughing follows, from the tickle of dust in the back of his throat to a dying curl of smoke and rubble forcing its way out past the high chambers of his lungs and his trachea.
The sensation of choking on everything and nothing at all causes Gojo to wonder if this is what really dying feels like; if this is how Getou felt that fateful day. He hopes however Getou’s organs ceased their functioning didn’t burn and chase after his breath like this.
It takes a while–far too long–for him to regain control over his lungs and himself in general. Gojo stands to his full height the exact moment he is just able to and breathes in deeply, slowly, in an attempt to compose himself and in a true effort to teach himself how to breathe like a normal human being once again.
He hasn’t felt this helpless since he was a child. Ending the life of his best friend follows as a close second, but the threat of death holds tight to his mind like a spear to the chest. Even the Reversed Curse Technique could falter should he forget himself.
And he cannot afford to forget himself. He is one of the only things he has left, after all.
Gojo stands once again, retaining his balance the whole way up. A silent cheer is all the consolation he rewards himself. There are things he has to do before checking in on his students, after all, and there is no telling just how early Megumi and Yuuji will be up for morning training. It’s best to get the more tedious things done away from prying eyes and helping hands.
The communal bathroom is where it always has been, just down the hall from his room in the dorms. With a whole estate to choose from, enough money to buy a whole apartment complex ten times over, and the emotional turmoil of an adult man, one may think living away from the Tokyo campus to be a more optimal decision. Gojo would have to disagree for a few reasons of note: for one, it’s much more convenient to live so close to where one teaches; and for two, the more lively one’s living situation, the less time there is to… never mind.
Gojo scrubs his teeth with minty, sudsy bristles until his gums bleed before spitting and rinsing out his mouth for extra measure. He finger-brushes his hair and straightens his blindfold in the mirror, the outline provided by his Six Eyes warbled and scattered, but just helpful enough.
He exits the bathroom with no consequence. It’s just business as usual, following his regular morning routine. The drawls of his dreams hardly tether him to sadness at all, because he knows what has occurred can never be undone. He knows that his one and only is a distant oyster at the bottom of the ocean, his memory a pearl which rolls about unbothered in the back of Gojo’s mind.
It is shiny and round and unblemished despite its giver’s crimes and inner turmoil. Nobody is perfect, nor should they claim to be. God knows that oyster would never have even attempted to.
Gojo turns a corner in the dormitory, nearly having made it to the kitchen, and pauses in his step. Out of the corner of his eye, he could have sworn… But, no, that just can’t be right. …Right?
“What are you staring at? Don’t think I can’t feel your eyes on me, Satoru.”
No, he decides, this just is not right at all.
On the couch in the common room, just to his right, sits a face he hasn’t seen unobscured from memories of surgical precision and cascading dirt and rubble atop fine-grain pine for quite some time. He rotates his body to face the man from the hallway, furrowed eyebrows portraying true confusion and clasped hands betraying the heavy set of his shoulders.
“Satoru, what’s wrong?”
“I think I’m dead, Suguru.”
Black hair cascades over a corpse’s shoulder like a breathtaking waterfall ought to, breaking a dualtone of white fabric and creme upholstery in a silly expression of jail cell bars or a gap between a baby’s first milk-white teeth.
“What?” asks Getou, with no stitches in sight–no visible wounds at all–and in clothing far too casual for the preference of a body-snatcher or a mass murderer playing priest. “Satoru, maybe you should sit down. You’re looking much paler than normal.”
Normal. Normal, he says. What is the purpose of calling something “normal” when what has always been normal becomes abnormal in an instant?
Gojo opens his mouth as his mind spins in a fruitless attempt to regain his understanding of anything at all, and sputters when not even one useless word spills from his tongue. He runs a hand through his hair, laughing despite the sincerely confusing moment he has somehow found himself in.
“What?” asks Getou again, like a broken record would do.
“This is just too absurd.”
Gojo drags his hand down his face and then places both of them on his eyes and cheeks. He groans, shoulders slumping and knees shaking where he stands.
“Satoru, sit down.”
Being commanded to do things is something Gojo is used to… ignoring: Yaga’s demands to show up on time; the Elders’ demands to do as they say; and Megumi’s demands to act his own age to name a few.
But this… well, this is just too much.
Gojo slumps down onto the couch, as far as he can be from his best friend’s corpse as humanly possible, of his own accord and not because Getou told him to.
“What’s going on with you?”
Neither of them say anything for a while.
“I just had the worst dream I’ve ever had in my entire life,” Gojo says finally, his voice drawn out and his words exasperated. “I dreamt that we got the Star Plasma Vessel killed, you committed genocide and defected, I became a teacher, I raised two long-lost Zen’in kids, saved another vessel from being killed, killed you, and got sealed in that ancient artifact, the Prison Realm.” He takes a deep, shaky breath. “Not all specifically in that order.”
“Woah,” Getou breathes out. “You became a teacher?”
A sudden surge of anger swells up inside the Six Eyes holder. “I tell you I dreamt that I had to kill you and you’re more focused on the fact that I became a teacher? Are you kidding me?”
Getou shrugs from across the couch, his feet together with one knee against a back cushion and the other hanging off the edge of the couch, and tosses Gojo a pillow to hold onto. “I mean, most of the rest of that sounds like something that could happen in our line of work. But you? Becoming a teacher?” He snorts. “Now that’s funny.”
“It”–Gojo stutters–“It’s not funny, Suguru. I killed you!” He catches the pillow and holds it close to his chest.
Getou raises his eyebrows. “Satoru, it was just a dream. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“But what if it wasn’t?” Gojo spits out, eyebrows scrunching closer with every racing thought that passes through his head.
“What if it wasn’t what?”
“What if it wasn’t a dream? What if all of that really did happen, and I got sent back in time–or to another dimension–or something? What am I supposed to do, just stay here? They–they need me back home. Sukuna’s…”
“Hold on a second,” Getou says, “Now that you mention it, you did mention something pretty strange.”
“What?” Gojo asks flatly.
“You said that you dreamt about getting the Star Plasma Vessel killed, but that’s not true.”
Gojo takes a moment of silence to let Getou’s words sink in.
“Don’t mess with me, man,” Gojo says, glaring at Getou through his blindfold. “It’s not funny.”
Getou scrunches his eyebrows together. “What? I’m…not. Messing with you, I mean.” He reaches into the pocket of his off-duty sweats and pulls out his phone. “Do you want me to call Riko or something?”
Gojo stands from the couch abruptly and Suguru stares at him with wide eyes.
If Amanai is still alive, he thinks, then maybe…
He knows he has to take the opportunity that has been provided to him. He strides across the common room and grabs Getou by his arm. The pillow he’d been holding falls to the carpet like a squat bar. “Let’s go,” he says. “I need to get you far, far away from here.”
“Woah, woah,” Getou protests. “Hold on, Satoru. You’re talking crazy. What are you doing?”
“Saving you, plain and simple.” Gojo pulls on his arm and his sleeve, attempting to leverage Getou off of the couch and onto his feet.
Getou shoves Gojo’s hands off of him before falling back down into his seat on the couch. “Saving me–? Satoru, are you feeling alright? What happened?”
“I…” Gojo feels the moment his words evade his tongue involuntarily, leaving him breathless. “You…”
“Gojo, what’s going on?”
“I just,” Gojo starts, “it was so realistic. That dream. I guess I just can’t… shake it.”
Getou sighs and pulls on Gojo’s sleeve until his friend falls into the couch beside him. “Oh, is that all?” he asks. He pushes Gojo’s head against the top of a back cushion and puts his hand over his blindfold. “You must just still be tired. Sleep a little while longer and then I’ll make us some coffee. You’ll feel better by then, yeah?”
Gojo sighs. It’s been forever since anyone did this for me. “Yeah. Loathe as I am to admit it, you’re probably right.” he agrees, his voice drawing out with a yawn he doesn’t bother to cover. “I hope I will.”
He hears Getou’s upturned lips in the tune of his contented hum. “I hope so too,” he says.
Sleep finds him like a paralyzed goat on a rocky cliff, pulling him into the deepest, darkest depths until no light is left to search for and the cold air chills him right to the bone. Gojo shivers in his sleep, a sigh escaping him as he fades into a state of full unconsciousness.
The Prison Realm is colder than Gojo remembers it being and he feels frantic–light-headed and woozy–for a moment in the absence of Suguru. But, even mere moments later, that hardly feels like a problem at all. His frantic memories become harder and harder to remember until all thoughts of Suguru and migraines and promises of coffee fade to black like a worn-out photograph.
There are no clocks to see or speak of in the darkness of the Prison Realm or behind the veil of a Gojo’s heirloom blindfold. What use is there in telling a dead man the time, anyway?