Chapter Text
────────────────────────────────
25 May 2006
Second-year students Satoru Gojo (Grade 1 sorcerer) and Suguru Geto (Grade 1 sorcerer) are dispatched to retrieve the body of the Star Plasma Vessel post-mortem from the Star Religious Group.
────────────────────────────────
"You're late, Suguru."
Blindingly white lights surrounded him. In the illuminated room, reflections bounced off the squeaky clean floors, the white garb of the cultists. His hair was no exception — though in normal situations its shiny blandness would stand out, in a room surrounded by a distinct lack of color, he could almost be mistaken for blending in.
Disgusting.
Uproarious applause. A sea of faces, all placidly smiling.
A face held in his arms, covered by a thin white sheet. A sheet that was the only barrier obscuring the serene expression of Amanai. He imagined that she looked peaceful. Expressionless.
Dead.
"No," Satoru intoned, talking more as a reflex than to communicate. "I guess you got here fast. There are several Star Religious Group facilities in the city, after all."
He stepped towards Suguru, each step reminding him of the weight held in his arms. His hair, matted and crusted with blood, hid his face from his fellow sorcerer. He stopped in front of Suguru. The sudden change in motion jostled Amanai's arm, causing it to tumble out of her thin, fabric tomb.
Satoru stared at it. He saw Suguru stare at it.
He should be feeling something. Grief, maybe. Anger, definitely. Even sickening euphoria that had enveloped him during his clash with Toji had all but dissipated. Satoru felt simultaneously like a monolith of stoicism and porcelain one tap from shattering completely. The emotions swirled in his chest, ultimately canceling out, leaving Satoru with a feeling of dull emptiness.
He mechanically looked up at Suguru, his eyes flashing with the Infinity that he hadn't let down and never would again. He watched as his classmate, his partner, recoiled at the sight of him. Shock and horror emerged on Suguru Geto's face at the sight of the mangled features of the Strongest, still laden with scars that Reverse Cursed Technique hadn't finished healing. The blood that had streaked down his face was now drying, clotting in shit-brown flecks on his face. Distantly, he noted that they felt itchy. He wished that he could scrub at his pale skin until it tore away — even if it did, Reverse Cursed Technique could heal it in a heartbeat.
"Satoru?" Suguru finally stammered out. "What happened?"
"I see you already saw Shoko," Satoru said lightly, in lieu of an answer.
He saw Suguru's expression of horrified shock shift into slight confusion at the change in topic, before it settled into something more apprehensive than scared.
"Yeah, she healed me. I'm fine now," Suguru assured him, before his face darkened at the sight of Amanai's limp arm hanging out of Satoru's grip. "No, me being safe doesn't help anything here."
You being safe is the only thing that made this worth it, Satoru thought.
"I screwed up," is what Satoru said. "You're not at fault."
I screwed up, I screwed up, I screwed up.
Allowing Amanai to go to school for what would be her last couple days alive.
Staying an extra day in Okinawa.
Letting down Limitless.
Losing the fight.
Getting stabbed — killed — by a—
"Let's head back," He heard Suguru say softly.
By a--
His head snapped up to observe the crowd. All of them, standing there, still trapped in a trance of applause. The sound of dry skin slapping against itself repeatedly grated on Satoru's ears. Thin lips stretched over airheaded smiles made him squirm in disgust.
What had Fushiguro called himself?
A monkey.
He was surrounded by monkeys.
The weak. For all his merits as a jujutsu sorcerer, he honestly couldn’t care less about the weak.
They were fodder. A distraction. Always somehow caught in the crossfire, something they needed to conceal themselves from.
And yet that fodder had stabbed him straight through the jugular.
It was as if a dampener had been removed from his senses. Satoru wanted to gag as he suddenly started perceiving, tasting, smelling the pervasive stench of cursed energy leaking from the crowd around him. It was different than his and Suguru's cursed energy, where they kept their stench contained, locked away in a flow that cycled within their body. The cultists surrounding them had none of that self control — how could they? They would never be able to. Six Eyes could perceive the invading tendrils of leaking cursed energy escaping the crowd, creeping up around Satoru's legs, accumulating in corners of the building where it would turn to filth and rot.
"Suguru," Satoru called, turning back to his classmate.
Suguru no doubt had noticed Satoru's uncharacteristic dullness. Satoru saw Suguru's body tense slightly at his strange tone.
Satoru cast a lazy eye towards the crowd, prompting his fellow sorcerer to follow his gaze. He regarded the crowd of still-applauding cultists that encircled him and Suguru with a dim sense of annoyance. Like a group of gnats. Squishable under the power that Satoru knew he had. Lives and deaths that would ultimately be inconsequential. It would be so easy.
"Should we kill these guys?"
Suguru said nothing.
"The way I feel right now, I doubt I'd feel anything about it," Satoru continued. His words didn't serve as rationalization, but rather just an observation. A simple flick of his wrist, and the entire venue would be carved out, in the same shape of the gaping wound he left on Fushiguro. Maybe he could even increase the size — or have the violet ball of energy split in multiple directions, for maximum efficiency? His arms twitched in anticipation, morbid curiosity being the only sensation dancing around in Satoru's recently regenerated mind.
He glanced back at Suguru, awaiting the input of his designated moral compass.
He saw Suguru's eyes flick back to Amanai's limp arm, lingering for a bit.
"No, there's no point," he finally said. Satoru watched as Suguru looked around at the applauding cultists.
"It looks like there are only common believers here. The masterminds who know about our world have probably fled already. And unlike with the bounty, they won't be able to talk their way out of this," Suguru reasoned, his voice shifting to the same impartial tone that Satoru had been using for the length of their conversation. "The organization had problems to begin with. It'll be dissolved soon enough."
While Suguru was talking, Satoru had shouldered past him, pushing through the large, reflective doors and into the hallway.
"No point, huh?" Satoru mused. "Does there really need to be any point to it?"
Did Amanai's death have a point? Satoru thought back to their short-lived trip in Okinawa. How Amanai adored whale sharks and manta rays. How she had hated the rough-skinned sea cucumber Satoru had chased her around with. How her and Satoru had eaten enough ice cream where they were clutching their stomachs. Were the desserts they snacked on still sitting in the stomach of the limp body he was holding now? His eyes stayed on Amanai's body as he turned around to face Suguru's back.
"It's very important that there is," Suguru said. His classmate turned around to meet his gaze, violet eyes meeting iridescent blue.
"Especially for a jujutsu sorcerer."
────────────────────────────────
"...-s time, I can't absolve all responsibility from the two of you."
Satoru zoned back in to the lecture that he was facing. He was on his knees, hands splayed over his legs as his fingers tapped out an impatient pattern. Lying off to his side was a bloodied rag, which he had used to wipe off the barely-dried blood from his face.
After they had gotten back from the mission, he and Suguru barely had enough time to dump Amanai's body in the Jujutsu Tech morgue before Shoko started hounding them.
Suguru and Shoko had formed a temporary alliance and all but dragged Satoru to the infirmary, despite his insistence that he was fine. Shoko conducted a hurried once-over with Reverse Cursed Technique to heal up some minor wounds, but, to her surprise, discovered that Satoru's miraculous deciphering of Reverse Cursed Technique had done most of the heavy lifting.
Satoru had seen how Shoko and Suguru both looked immensely relieved, before Shoko reached down into a drawer and threw a change of clothes at Satoru's face — he had still been wearing the ripped ones from his fight.
"I guess I won't have to bother you as much then, yeah?" Satoru remarked, emerging from the other room where he had changed into his new uniform.
Shoko regarded him with a tight smile. "Good, you'll be out of my hair," she joked back.
He caught her eye, and was surprised to see typically nonchalant eyes swirling with an emotion that he couldn't quite make out. But the moment passed, and Shoko flicked him on the forehead as she turned to leave the infirmary.
"Oh, by the way," she called over her shoulder at the door. "Yaga's having a fit. So you guys should probably play nice, unless Satoru wants to get killed a second time."
He felt Suguru's hand tighten where it was on his shoulder. "That's not funny," his classmate said, low and disapproving.
Satoru shot him a look. "Asshole," he huffed at Shoko, trying to appear put-off but inwardly relieved at the normalcy of the joking. "Like I'd ever let old man Yaga get me."
Shoko rolled her eyes good-naturedly as she exited the infirmary, leaving the two boys to start their death march to face a pissed-off teacher.
His head tilted slightly to the side as he blatantly ignored Yaga's reprimands in favor of counting the droplets of rain on the school window. The pitter-patter of water on glass made for nice ambience. He completely missed the long-suffering, tired glance cast his way by Yaga as his teacher continued admonishing them over the details of the Star Plasma Vessel mission.
To his right, Suguru was also sitting on his knees, but his posture was noticeably straighter and more proper than Satoru's default slumped-over position. His hands were neatly folded atop one another on his lap. Suguru's eyes were trained on the ground, his face pinched as listened intently to what Yaga was saying, giving an occasional sharp nod to indicate that he was paying attention.
Between the two of them, Suguru had always been the polite one.
Satoru's gaze drifted from the window, where he had just lost track of a droplet he was tracking, to the open door of the classroom. The hallway beyond it was completely dark — no one would be awake at the witching hour, save for maybe Shoko in the morgue.
Satoru was always one to prefer a bright, sunny day to the eerie calm of night. But right now, in the dim lighting of moonlight, warm colors faintly reflecting off the wooden walls, he felt tension release from his body for the first time in days. Anything was better than the blinding white lights of the Star Religious Group’s headquarters.
He barely suppressed a shiver as his mind strayed back to that place. Something about those people…they didn’t seem real. Their placid, vacant expressions in the face of a dead Amanai. Even if he were to take one of them by the neck and rip out their jugular, he could imagine their expression wouldn’t change at all.
Those cultists didn’t seem human. Those things lacked empathy, they were vile—
"Satoru!" Yaga barked, startling him out of his thoughts. He lazily turned his head to come face-to-face with his teacher.
”Were you even listening to what I was saying?” the bearded man wearily sighed, running a hand down his face. Upon closer inspection, Satoru could see that Yaga had deep shadows painting his under-eyes. He almost felt bad.
“Definitely not, sensei,” Satoru joked dryly. His voice sounded flat. He didn’t know why.
He looked back at Suguru, expecting his friend to chastise him, per the usual routine.
Instead, he saw his friend giving him a look of concern, eyebrows furrowed as he analyzed him through a mess of black bangs.
Yaga continued on, "You two have been summoned by the Higher-Ups. They're not...happy...with how the mission went."
He walked over to a nearby desk and picked up a stack of paper. "I was able to draft up a barebones mission report. It's missing key details, but you can expand on exact events during the meeting."
His teacher held out the mission report towards Suguru. "They don't like to be kept waiting."
"What, we need to see them now?" Suguru asked, sharply. "Yaga-sensei, can't this wait until the morning? We just got back. And Satoru hasn't gotten a chance to rest yet."
Yaga shook his head. "They said it's urgent."
Suguru looked affronted. "But—"
"Suguru," Satoru interjected, anticipating a back-and-forth. "It's...fine."
He felt his friend's scrutinizing stare on him, even as he avoided meeting his gaze. He was tired. It was a bone-deep exhaustion, born of a combination of the events of the past few days, the weird ache in his chest as he grappled with images of Amanai, Fushiguro, and the cultists. Satoru was running on fumes. When was the last time he had slept? Non-death related—it had to have been more than 72 hours ago.
Regardless, he would rather get the meeting out of the way now, then retreat to his dorm and sleep for the next week, at the least.
"It'll be quick. In and out. Not a huge deal," Satoru said dismissively, unfolding his legs and pushing himself into a standing position.
The sudden change in altitude made black spots dance in his vision, and Satoru had to blink, hard, to keep himself from blacking out completely. Huh. Was it the blood loss?
Outwardly, he was able to avoid indication that anything was amiss, and started his march towards the Higher-Ups with single-minded determination: meeting, then bed. He bid his teacher goodbye through a flippant wave of his hand as he slinked out into the hallway, rolling the shoji doors of the classroom shut behind him.
Slightly muffled by the door, he heard Suguru let out a frustrated sigh before he got up as well. On the way out, Satoru could hear a sharp rustling of paper as Suguru snatched the mission report from Yaga's hands. Knowing Suguru would soon catch up to him, he kept walking, taking a left at the end of the hall leading to the school's front doors.
Pushing a door open, he felt a cool breeze flutter into the building. Though it was mid-May, in the early hours of the night (or should he say morning?) the chill and slight dewiness of the air could be mistaken for the beginnings of autumn.
Satoru exhaled a punched-out breath as he sat down heavily on the front porch steps, bringing a hand up to remove his blackout glasses and rub at his face. He clamped his hand over his eyes, putting pressure on his temples to stave off a mounting headache. Six-Eyes was going insane. Had been going insane since his...since he had woken up. Normally, his blackout glasses were enough to filter out the massive amount of information Satoru was being subjected to at all times. Now? It was like someone had taken the 'Exposure' dial in his eyes and turned it all the way up. It was harder to notice while preoccupied with Yaga's lecture, but he really could see everything now. His Six-Eyes before had been akin to a LIDAR scanner, with Satoru able to detect the location of cursed energy, but not quite able to pin it down or examine it with much accuracy. Cursed energy looked like points on a map.
Right now, even with his palm completely blocking light from reaching his eyes, he was being blasted with images of cursed energy as if he had suddenly gained x-ray vision. With his head tilted back, he could see the detailed shape of a lamp, imbued with cursed energy as a ward, that was hanging on the frame of the porch awning. Its cursed energy licked around the lamp like a flame, holding its shape the best it could as a nonsolid object. He could see fine details, details he hadn't been able to perceive before — and he sat there, looking up at the lamp, hand clamped over his eyes. He definitely looked weird, but he could care less about weird after the past 24 hours he experienced.
He felt a distant ping of familiar cursed energy behind him, and he twisted to look over his shoulder at the school's front door opening as Suguru stepped out into the chilly night.
With his eyes still covered, Satoru could see the shape of Suguru's cursed energy. It felt purple, and tendrils of it licked at Suguru's shoulders and heels like an octopus made entirely of flames. It spread out slightly where his feet met the ground, but overall seemed contained to curling around Suguru's body in shimmery vines.
Suguru sat down next to him, and Satoru took his hand off his face — an action he immediately regretted, as his Eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness again. He groaned a soft ugh before shoving his blackout glasses back over his eyes. They didn't help much, his headache immediately returning despite his best efforts.
"They're bothering you?" Suguru asked, more of a rhetorical question than actual inquiry. With his eyes open, Satoru could see that his friend had brought with him the mission report (slightly crumpled), the rag Satoru had been using earlier, and a half-filled bowl of water.
"Duh," Satoru responded, fingers coming up to massage his temples. "Super sensitive for some reason. This sucks," he bemoaned, a bit childishly.
Suguru studied him, a scrutinizing pinch of his eyebrows that Satoru often found himself the subject of. Satoru saw his eyes drag across his face, particularly at his forehead.
"Close your eyes for a moment," Suguru said after a beat had passed.
"Sure," Satoru obliged. He let his eyes fall shut, and subtly sighed at the relief of blocking out most of his surrounding stimuli. He could still see cursed energies floating around, but now there wasn't all the extra input that came from his normal eyes on top of Six Eyes. He should really find a way to never have to open his normal eyes again.
He heard a slight rustle of fabric — probably Suguru picking up the rag he brought with him — before his blackout glasses were carefully removed from his face.
"Hey!" Satoru squawked, playfully. "Those are mine, Su-gu-ru."
He heard Suguru laugh. "Well, Sa-to-ru, you need to get your face clean somehow. You're filthy."
"I already tried getting the blood off, it didn't work," Satoru complained petulantly.
"That's because you just used a dry rag on already dry blood," Suguru deadpanned. "Basic cleaning, but you wouldn't know."
Satoru flipped him off and Suguru let out another laugh in response. Then he grabbed the hand Satoru was flipping the bird with and started scrubbing with the damp washcloth at the dried flecks of blood, getting in-between his fingers, underneath his fingernails, and at the creases in his palm. Their banter felt nice, familiar, like they had just returned from their usual pair-up missions and were cleaning up to prepare for bed. Satoru could pretend the blood being washed off by Suguru was the gross, sticky residue of a curse after its exorcism, rather than his own. That he didn't just...
Suguru finished cleaning one of his hands and moved on to the next one. Methodically working until Satoru's skin felt shiny and new. After both of his hands were free of any blood, and felt a bit damp from the use of the wet rag, he felt Suguru unbutton his uniform's jacket and he shrugged it off, leaving his only protection from the chilly air as the white dress shirt he wore underneath.
"Roll up your sleeves," Suguru said, and Satoru obliged.
Satoru shivered at the drag of wet fabric on his forearms, the chill in the air becoming even more prominent now that his jacket was off. He would feel exposed if the person sitting next to him hadn't been Suguru. Right now, he felt content. Like the two of them existed in their own little vacuum.
The small, loopy tufts of Suguru's cursed energy started to ghost along his wrist where Suguru's hand held it steady. Its lavender tendrils came in contact with Satoru's own cursed energy, which manifested as a light, sky-blue glow thrumming under his skin, carefully contained by his expert control on his energy flow aided by Six Eyes. Even with this control, however, wisps of Satoru's cursed energy inevitably leaked out, drifting into the sky like the smoke coming off an incense.
Suguru finished wiping off the blood on Satoru's arms. Satoru felt him pull away, heard the dip of the towel back into the bowl of water. He heard shifting as Suguru turned back to him, rag ready to continue cleaning.
With his eyes still closed, Satoru didn't realize where Suguru was going to clean until he felt something brushing his neck.
His neck, where a jagged and barely-healed scar started and ran down the length of his torso.
His neck, where Toji Fushiguro had brutally stabbed him. Where he had ripped him open surgically, indiscriminately, and had strewn his guts across cold stone.
Where his Infinity hadn't mattered, because the Inverted Spear of Heaven could penetrate right through it.
With a choked-off gasp he slammed Infinity into place. Eyes flying open, his hands scrambled to remove the spear he knew was lodged in his throat.
He couldn’t find it. He gagged, coughing and trying to expel his stomach while simultaneously trying to draw oxygen into his lungs. His eyes were open, but he couldn’t see anything, with rapid flashes of cursed energy and black spots dancing across his vision.
Distantly, he heard a crash and a grunt as someone hit the railing of the porch.
He pushed Infinity out farther, and couldn’t hear anything over the hum of his exploding cursed energy and his wheezing as he desperately tried to keep his airways working, when they had stopped after Fushiguro sliced the blade clean through his trachea, and he had been left to drown as his own blood invaded his lungs.
“—atoru!” he heard the stranger call.
“Stop,” he gasped. At some point, he had squeezed his eyes shut again. “Don’t…”
He scrambled back, scooting along the floor as he felt the signature of cursed energy draw nearer to him. He threw an arm over his face, trying to shield himself from what he knew was already inevitable.
He waited for the blade to pierce through his veil of Infinity. Waited for it to lodge itself into his neck, slice clean through his collarbone and rip open his side. For another blade to be plunged through his forehead and into his brain.
But…
Fushiguro hadn’t had cursed energy.
“Satoru!” he heard Fushigu—no, Suguru— call out to him.
Satoru opened his eyes to find Suguru pressed up against his bubble of Infinity, pushing against it and trying to get through. Behind his friend, the porch railing had a broken segment, as if someone had flown into it.
He looked up to Suguru’s forehead, saw the trickle of blood cascading down the side of his face, and knew that he had messed up.
“Oh,” he breathed. Immediately he retracted Infinity, forcing his cursed energy back under his skin. But he didn’t turn his Infinity completely off. He let it sit like a thin, protective veil over his body.
He jolted a bit as Suguru drew closer to him.
Satoru started stammering out, “I—”
“You okay?” Suguru asked, crouching down as if he were talking to a wild animal.
“Yes—I’m good. Fine,” he got out, but his eyes were focusing on the blood staining Suguru’s face. “But Suguru…”
Suguru’s eyes followed his, and a look of realization crossed his features. His friend brought a hand up to touch at his own temple. Satoru saw him draw his hand back to look at the blood coating his fingers. Then his friend simply wiped his hand on his pants and gave him a soft smile.
“I’m fine. See?” Suguru smiled, reaching up to move his bangs out of the way, revealing a relatively small cut compared to the blood gushing out of it. “Head wounds just bleed a ton, you know that.”
Satoru stared. “Mhm,” he hummed, unsure if his voice could take anything else. He pressed his palms against his eyes, trying to wipe away the tears that had accumulated in the midst of his unnecessary panic. They were safe, they were in Tengen’s barrier. But then again, Fushiguro had been able to get through the barrier — if he could break in, then what else—?
Satoru drew in a sharp breath, the chill of the night air filling his lungs, and attempted to use the cold air to slow his heartbeat. Using the unbroken railing as a crutch, he hauled himself onto his feet, ignoring Suguru’s rushed wait— as Satoru forced himself into standing. He straightened out his sleeves, shrugged on his discarded jacket, and carefully buttoned it, trying to use the monotonous action to quell the shaking in his hands.
He breathed. He breathed in tandem with the paper-thin winds flowing through the forested landscape surrounding the school. He breathed with the ever-present hum of Tengen’s barrier, strong, but not perfect. Not perfect enough. He breathed in, savoring the earthen tones of cedar and maple, because there was a time when the only taste he had known was iron. He inhaled and exhaled, letting the crisp, forest air circle through him.
His hands were still shaking. After all that, he thought with a twinge of annoyance.
He shoved them in his pockets to preserve what little dignity he had left, heaving one last breath before turning back to face his friend. His friend who he just knocked on his ass with his technique. The same technique that had failed to protect him before, when it had mattered most, had failed to save Kuroi, to save Riko, to save Suguru.
In the end — even as his birth had altered the balance of Jujutsu society, his death hadn’t been of much consequence at all.
It could be a terrifying revelation. It could be a freeing one.
“Well. Let’s get this over with,” he said, trying for a smile. “I’ve got a bed with my name on it waiting after we deal with these old geezers.”
But revelations could wait.
Suguru stared at him. He stared back. He stared back in all his glory, with his barely-dried eyes, his still-trembling hands that he knew Suguru hadn’t missed. Among the heavens and the earth, Geto Suguru alone could see Gojo Satoru.
It was terrifying, at first. To be perceived by someone other than his own multitude of eyes. In his fiery, initial bout of independence, drunk off of the freedom from his clan, Satoru hadn’t spared a second thought for friendships and forging bonds with his classmates. He’d met Shoko’s wry apathy with flippant passivity of his own, had brushed off Suguru’s attempts at fitting into the Jujutsu world with a laugh and a point.
At some point — Satoru couldn’t pinpoint when — harsh edges had melted into a more easygoing camaraderie. Nights spent in shows of strength and contests of ego had turned into quiet conversations and cups of tea. One cup brimming with pure, herbal scent. One cup tooth-rottingly sweet. One cup filled with coffee, instead, before it was whisked away into a study room and left only two in the kitchen.
Maybe Satoru could pinpoint when it happened. Because from that night onward, even with his terrifyingly average, human eyes — Geto Suguru could see Gojo Satoru.
And it was with this sight that Satoru had known Suguru would reach out for him as he turned away, stumbling away from the school to Jujutsu Headquarters. Suguru would reach him after Satoru’s clumsy gait had been replaced with something more stable, more sure of himself.
Satoru would feel the presence of cursed energy approaching him, not hostile, but potent enough.
Suguru’s hand would glance off Satoru’s shoulder, pinpricks of lavender meeting an impossibly wide chasm of sky blue.
Satoru’s eyes would meet Suguru’s, the glow of otherworldly azure casting soft lights onto the harsh, betrayed lines of a face framed in black. Two forces of insurmountable power, clashing not for the first time, but under the wishful impression that there had been a last.
Blue and violet would walk side-by-side, in tandem, out of sync, together, yet separate. For years, there had been a bridge between the two strongest sorcerers of the modern era. A bond crafted of indestructible steel, forged in the heat of hot-headed rivalry, bitter conflict, shared hardships, and — eventually — friendship. A diamond-tough shell that excluded the outside world while drawing the two ever closer.
The Six-Eyes and the Cursed Spirit Manipulator.
They were untouchable.
Crack.