Archive of Our Own

For a long time now, Satoru's believed in ghosts.

Six Eyes has a way of affecting time he’s never been able to explain (at least, he's never gotten around to explaining it). There isn't the linearity he's gleaned most others experience; instead, the world wraps both inward and outward; time grows around places, objects, people. Like the rings of a tree, the first instance he's seen will never be gone.

Ghosts are very real to him, in that sense. He strides around with corpses in his peripheral vision, the bodies of people who are no longer changing with time. Nothing can be taken from him, once he's witnessed it. Six Eyes hoards everything. Amanai, Haibara... even his younger self. (He's taken to teleporting past the school's main courtyard.)

As always, as with every god damn thing, Suguru is the exception.

Suguru — when he left, his ghost rose to take his place. The rest of Jujutsu society was content to treat Suguru like a taboo, forgetting he’d ever walked through their halls, eaten their meals. Satoru couldn’t. His ghost accompanied Satoru everywhere they used to go. He’d spend his rare leisure time shoulder-to-shoulder with it. He’d crawl back into his bed, after a week of surviving on RCT instead of sleep, and that ghost would hold him as he closed his eyes. It was the only person he confided in. He hated it as well. Hated how it followed him everywhere, nipping at his heels if he didn’t pay it enough attention. He hated Suguru, and in absentia, the ghost made from his memories gathered up all his rage until it was curdling.

He spends months thinking over what he could have done differently, the last time they spoke. What words he could have conjured to guide Suguru back to him. 

Then, Suguru dies. His ghost turns into a malaise. Every memory of Suguru threatens to pull him into that void of grief, amassing all the hate he fed it and turning it towards himself. There isn't a patch on the grounds they haven’t infected. It’s not like the other dead he keeps with him; Suguru isn’t content on staying static. There’s a shadow in the corner of his eyes he can never truly see, making sure Satoru never has a silent moment, foaming, boiling, reminding him of the selfish mistakes he’s made. The ones he will make. Suguru’s body hadn’t stilled, it had corroded. There’s no ghost for him to see, but something has to be gorging on Satoru's last happy memories, devouring any wishes for the future.

Maybe Satoru doesn't actually believe in ghosts. Maybe he believes in hauntings.

A drunk elation he hasn't felt in years, a pain in the stomach that moves up to his throat and into his eyes, grief lights up his bones and blackens his mind, stretching his body and brain miles apart from each other. He bites down to keep his expression blank (no matter the situation, Satoru's poker face holds), so hard his teeth cry out in protest.

He's never been a quitter, even if opening his mouth feels like he'll throw up his heart. He spits words at the body in front of him, hoping they're witty. He can't hear anything he's saying.

He manages to catch Suguru's eyes, and thinks, maybe that makes it all worth it. Fuck, how selfish can a guy get? People will die. People are dying around him. Suguru's body may be in front of him, but his ghost is still in Satoru's head, preening at the pain Satoru feels, telling him that he's finally getting his due.

Would the curse let Suguru go if Satoru promised his own body? Why would he? It already owns him, with how he and Suguru lock eyes. That the creature that's taken over Suguru must have taken his own brain as well, must be controlling both of their actions and thoughts, feels only fitting. They used to come as a pair, after all.

Six Eyes is still active. He traces the electricity from the neurons climbing up Suguru's spine, into the fake's brain. He can see every cell, each ion being pushed and pulled, bringing an electric pulse that turns into more pulses that turn into life. It still looks like Suguru, in a way. Satoru's hoarded every detail, since Suguru left him with his ghost. He remembers the way his brain had stopped, as well.

("Gate, Close.")

The last thing he sees are Suguru's eyes.

Time folds in on itself. Constricts, pulls. Satoru blinks, confused, as memories from his Six Eyes overlap with the present, save for the way he now lolls his head forward, the zippering motion of the two timelines squeezing his stomach into an abrupt, overwhelming nausea. Extrasensory vertigo, complementing the stabbing pain in his ribs.

The fake is talking.

In Satoru's memories (his present), he knows what he said at this moment. But he can't get his bearings enough to conjure words. Instead, he stares, dumbly. He's never been this out of tune with his own mind. Everything's... choppy. Metro's never have good reception, right? He laughs a bit at his own joke. Even though it's not his best. Whatever.

The fake is staring at him, he's just now noticed. A calm look on the face he's puppeting. The fake doesn't seem to have noticed the way time has stuttered and doubled back. 

Satoru’s not sure what's happening here. Is he in the prison realm, and it's replicating his last moments? Maybe it's his own overblown hubris, but Satoru feels like he'd be able to tell. So, why...

"Hm." A new voice rings out behind Satoru, startling the thing wearing Suguru’s face. "This looks like the right place."

Satoru's slow to act, turning his head a beat after Suguru's. It's some teen in an alien hoodie, making their way through the crowd. Six Eyes is weirdly blurry, from the way time is climbing over itself, but he can sense something odd with the way the teen walks. There’s a weight he's pulling with him, like the environment around him is shifting to match his movement.

He tries to force himself to focus. Green-tinted glasses. Pink hair — recently ruffled. Some hair clips his brain wants to slide over and ignore, for some reason. That and the pajama pants, they pull together with a pinched, annoyed face.

The environment's still trailing with him... it almost looks like the world is. The fabric of the universe. Satoru has a sudden fear that this could be Death entering the prison realm, coming to collect him.

"Not Death." The teen says. "Just someone who's had their movie night interrupted."

The teen finally zeroes in on the fake. Satoru watches as the two stare each other down.

"Wrong as well. Even more off."

The fake stares, taken aback. The teen tilts his head as the fake's eyes go wide. "Mm. Well, you've done a lot of long-term planning. Good grief. Wish you'd put that effort into anything else, but..."

The teen raises an arm up, and in a split second, shoots a beam of pure white energy towards Suguru. The fake is faster, dodging it as it pierces several walls behind him, and the teenager is swallowed up by a large, worm-like curse before he can even lower his arm.

(" — In the new world.")

The present grows out and then back inward, protruding into its stem. Satoru blinks. His ears ring. It tastes like being stuck in a Klein bottle, or maybe an ingrown hair.

He blinks up at the fake, and wonders what the hell is happening to them. To him, really.

"That was pretty stupid of me." The voice — it's the same teenager as before, walking towards them in the same manner. "I blame the premonition. It was vague. Also, only like 15 minutes ago. Like God did a rush job, but still expects me to pull through."

The fake clenches its jaw, the exact same way it did when the teen appeared the last time.

"Well. Second time's the charm." The teen doesn't move, but Suguru suddenly slams backward into the wall. Hard enough to do serious damage, if the fake hadn't cushioned itself with a curse. It growls as it sends that same worm curse up through the floor, and the teen disappears, swallowed up by the creature.

" — In the new world."

Satoru's head is slammed with memories, once again. His eyes feel like they should be coated in blood. That he should be — 

The teen walks forward, same as before. He doesn't say anything immediately, which seems to put the fake more on edge than the previous attempts.

"So, obviously, your reaction time is better than mine. I'll go back to basics." At the same time, he casually pulls the green glasses down his face. His eyes are a deep purple, and they feel a lot like how people describe Satoru's own. They make him tense, like that gaze is a weight to be thrown around.

When Satoru looks back to see how the fake will respond, he sees Suguru's body frozen in stone. He gapes. Was that... that was the teenager? He can't —

"Definitely feels like I'm missing something, actually." The teen says, as he stuffs his hands into his sweatpants' pockets. Does a loop to look at the crowd, and Satoru tries to catch another glimpse into his purple eyes, like it will reveal some sliver of an answer for the statue, less than a metre away.

The teen looks uncomfortable as he faces the crowd, taking in the dead on the ground, and all the living standing stock-still.

Within the crowd, Satoru sees Mahito finally twitch awake, then how his eyes widen as he takes in the stone body of Suguru. Mahito starts to pounce, and it takes Satoru a beat too long to realize the teen hasn’t noticed.

"Don't let him touch you!" He snaps at the teen, straining uselessly against the Prison Realm's binds.

The teen looks directly where Mahito is, but his eyes don't track the curse. Satoru is forced to watch the left side of his face start to bloat as Mahito laughs, a direct hit, smiling as the teen's remaining eye widens, still looking around to see —

The memories of the future cram into his brain. The fake in Suguru's body is still talking. Satoru has no idea who this teen is, but he's at the centre of the loops, isn't he? So why...

He's the first to speak this time. "...You can't see cursed spirits?" He can't keep the incredulity out of his tone.

The fake Suguru's expression pinches, confused, as the recipient of Satoru's question walks into view. 

"You're remembering the loops?" Now the teen also looks confused. "Weird. Do you know why?"

Answering a question with a question is unfair, in Satoru's mind. Especially because he now has to think of an answer, even though his brain feels like it's melting out of his ears, just a bit. Like when he bricks his phone, but his phone is his brain. His mind is adapted to taking in this sort of information, because of the Six Eyes, but he's never been subjected to divergent timelines... The kid called it a loop. A time loop? Was he causing them?

"Six Eyes? Hm, not the stupidest name." The teen sniffs, and Satoru gets more confused about the unprovoked response. Did he say anything out loud? "Also, I don't think it's the time loops affecting you — well, they're probably affecting you a bit, but to me, it mostly looks like shock."

Just in front of him, the fake Suguru is looking more and more disconcerted as he observes the two of them. The teen notices Satoru's gaze, and he tilts his glasses down again, so Satoru gets to see how Suguru is instantly petrified.

He stops breathing for a moment. There's no time delay for it, none that he can see, and really, there's nothing he can't. One frame after the next, living to dead. He can't — he can't breathe.

He has the thought that he should be used to this. Suguru dying in front of him. Shouldn't this one be better, even, since it's not his fault?

"...I'm making the shock worse." He hears the teen say. "Good grief, Teruhashi would be a lot better at this. Well, and she never has people try to kill her, either."

The teen walks closer. "You're trapped, in the... prison realm? Or, Kenjaku was really trying to, at least."

Satoru keeps staring at Suguru's body.

"...Let's focus on something else." The teen shuffles in front of the statue. "He's just paused, not dead — mmm, well, bad phrasing, good grief. Moving on to something else. You're... Gojo, right?"

"You said... Its name was Kenjaku." He's heard of the name before, in the Gojo clan archives, he thinks. The records were... vague, incomplete. It was a parasite. Hundreds of years old. It... it can transfer itself to...

The information doesn't make it from his subconscious, but a wave of grief comes over him so strong he needs to concentrate to not dry-heave. This was his fault. He knows, somehow, that this was his fault.

The teen titters, awkward. "...How about introductions. I'm Saiki. Very nice to meet you. What's your name?"

The teen, Saiki, is waiting patiently for an answer, but it takes a while for Satoru to register what he's said. "...Gojo Satoru. You said it's name is Kenjaku. You know Kenjaku?"

Saiki doesn't look impressed, but Satoru's brain only has one track. Even if it's not a very fast one. Only one bicycle lane, maybe. "No, I'm not a part of all... this. I'm just going to help out with the situation, and then you won’t see me again. Don't worry about me."

Satoru blinked, bringing the past minute of conversation back in his mind. "...But you knew my name? And, and my technique.” Something had been odd with the way the teen talked. How he kept responding to thin air. Kept tilting his head, grinning or frowning at things Satoru couldn’t see. There’s nothing Satoru can’t see, barring… something impossible.

“You can... You can hear my thoughts.” Satoru says, searching for any logic he could coax out of the situation. That pig had flown a bit ago, unfortunately. “Are, are you my subconscious? Or like, a post-death vision."

The teen looks away awkwardly. "No, it's, uh, just something I can do. Don't worry about it too much."

"Something you can do... But you can't see cursed spirits."

"I still don't understand this cursed spirits thing as much as I want. If you could fill me in, actually, that —"

Satoru hasn't been aware enough to keep track of Mahito, so just as the teen says it, he explodes into skin and fat, blood spilling into Satoru's eyes.

Another stack of memories falls into his brain, one more loop from the previous. He can still feel the teen's blood in his eyes. Kenjaku must have gathered his allies, must have been watching Satoru for a long time. Long enough to have the chance to take Suguru's body.

The body. He didn't burn the body.

Suguru could have been at peace, if not for Satoru. (You could argue this had been true since the day they met.)

"I'm doing this in a really stupid way." Satoru hears Saiki say, and Suguru turns to stone in front of him. "Doesn't really matter if it's just me, but if you're remembering them, I should hurry it up."

Satoru doesn't take his gaze off of Suguru's statue, so the teen stands in front of it again.

"Basically." The teen says. "Really basically, I'm always being strong-armed into — well, I'm here to fix whatever this situation is. So don't worry. Okay?"

Satoru's still staring.

"He'll only be stone for 24 hours, then he'll come back. Should have said that first. It's like a pause button. What are cursed spirits?"

Satoru thinks of the filler answer he gives to new students. Then he thinks of why the hell this teen doesn't know about cursed spirits. Because he's... an outsider of some sort. Some sort of extremely powerful sorcerer, but unheard of in Jujutsu Society.

"Not a sorcerer," Saiki says. "So, only people with a certain level of 'cursed energy' can see them? That makes it hard, actually. My Medusa vision is probably the best thing to use in this situation. I could maybe turn invisible...?" He scratches his nose. "No, that takes too long. And then what would I do after? Good grief. Well, I'm usually in a time loop because the situation can't be solved in one go, anyway. This is fine."

Satoru can slowly feel his brain coming back to him. Not by much; it was the equivalent of trying to defrost a meal after twenty seconds in a microwave. But he was starting to be able to respond to sentences on time.

"What... who are you?"

"Don't worry about it." Of course, the way the teen talked wasn't helping his microwave-brain situation.

"You can... read minds," Satoru says. He'll try to be helpful, even if the teen isn't going to. "I can see Mahito. You could… read my mind to see him. Then turn him to stone?"

Saiki hums. "...Maybe, but your mind's a bit... Well, I think if I try that, I might explode. On the other hand, this 'Mahito' is going to explode me, anyway." He casually turns towards the crowd. "We could —"

There's a pause. "Ugh. Oh no."

Satoru's heart drops in response, bracing for a threat. "No, don't worry." Saiki quickly says, glancing back at Satoru. "I can see Mahito now. We don't have to make this complicated." He tilts his glasses down, and with a crack, Mahito turns to stone.

Satoru feels like this entire situation has been a year's worth of information. And he should maybe go back to his theory that this was some insane, fucked-up vision courtesy of the Prison Realm.

"You can see him now? How, how did — "

"Ugh. Part of my powers, it's such a pain," Saiki says, a sentence that Gojo can't begin to parse.

"What."

"Don't worry about it. Next steps, I think —"

"You said you couldn't see them." Satoru needs the teen to stop giving him sentences that make his brain all wobbly. He needs two minutes, at least, to defrost. Preferably a long weekend, but he doesn’t think that’s realistic with the current situation.

Saiki frowns, probably reading Satoru's mind and realizing he wasn't going to let this go. "It's... look. Just imagine it’s magic. Things happen."

Satoru thinks aggressively about how much of a non-answer that was.

Saiki sighs. "You guys have... cursed techniques, right? Imagine powers, I mean, a cursed technique that adapts so you never have to do anything that hard. And you always win. Like, I used to draw when I was young, and then I developed thoughtography, so every time I use a pencil I can draw the exact image I saw. I want to play video games, but I can't use tech too much or else I'll become a technopath. Like I said, a pain."

Saiki must notice that his audience isn't following very well. "You've watched One Punch Man, right?"

Satoru nods dumbly.

"It's like that."

Satoru doesn't know how to respond to that, actually.

"So." Saiki says, apparently deciding that was sufficient. Or at least, that Satoru was sufficiently confused out of asking follow-up questions. He tightens the string on the pyjama pants he's wearing. He notices Satoru staring, so he says, "if I tied it before, I'd just have to keep doing it at the start of every loop. We have more time, now." He knots it into a droopy bow. Satoru decides he wants his long weekend.

"But we're still... in the loop?" Satoru asks. Both Mahito and the fake have been stopped, so he assumed that was it. Though he wasn't the expert on time loops, here.

Saiki nods his head, and does a slow glance around the room. "Yes, we're still in it. It's a certain feeling. I wasn't expecting that to be the end, anyway. From the premonition... "

Satoru waits expectantly. Saiki looks like he wants to leave the sentence there, but Satoru doesn't respond.

Saiki concedes after a long ten-second stretch, giving Satoru a withering look. Easily defeated by social expectation. "...Usually, the premonition is quite specific about the scenario that needs to be avoided. A giant volcano, for example. This one... was very wishy-washy, but I've gotten more context being here, I think. Someone, probably you, was stuck. But not physically," Saiki says, glancing at the box. "There were a lot of different factors connected together, forming a web, that started to fall apart because there was something trapping you — Not actually, ugh. Sorry, usually I don't need to explain these." He shrugs, not actually looking sorry.

Satoru thinks he sees the writing on the wall, however. Kenjaku has spent years planning this. Thinks that Satoru would be compromised if he had to kill him in this form. Ridiculous. He may have been caught by surprise, but Satoru didn't let things like sentimentality stop him from what needs to be done.

(And he'd done it before, so. He'd killed Suguru; he was an expert at this point. At failing Suguru, as well. It'd be a breeze. That's the type of monster he was.)

"You should probably kill S - Kenjaku, then," Satoru says, in the most nonchalant voice he can manage at the moment. Hopefully Saiki will confuse any wobbliness for shock. Wait. Shit, he hates mind-readers. "Sounds like the web is probably all of Kenjaku's plans, which then ends in some sort of apocalyptic, world-destroying situation. So, the solution seems to be killing him. It. At least, that’s my take on it." He thinks his voice sounds steadier at the end. He even phrases it in a way that lets Saiki make the ultimate decision, an important skill in teaching. Seems he's been teaching for so long it's what his brain defaults to when in shock. Wow, he must be pretty good at it.

Saiki tips his head. Stares at him, possibly his soul.

"...You think Suguru's still alive."

Satoru, turns out, fucking hates this kid. He opens his mouth, not knowing what he'll say before he says it, just knowing he can't pause without choking up. Giving in to the grief.

What Satoru doesn't say is: I believed Suguru was still alive months after I killed him. I would go back to my room and expect to see him there. I would turn my head to complain to him, without thinking. I see his ghost every day as I walk through the school. Of course I believe Suguru's still alive; I'm just a delusional, desperate guy who's only been known by one other person in his whole fucking life. One. I hate him for it. He left me, but he haunts me. I don’t know if I’ve ever loved anyone, but he got pretty damn close.

Maybe he saw Suguru's hand respond when he taunted the fake, but maybe it was the possession equivalent of a death rattle, the last embers of the soul burning out. It could be twitches from what's left of his reflexes, nothing more than how a spider's limbs curl upon its death. Who's to say? All he knows is that Suguru leaves him, time and time again.

Instead, he says: "You have telepathy. What do you think?" Which is another good technique to develop as a teacher. It almost makes him feel like he's still in the classroom, not trapped in what feels like a nightmare that crawled out of his skin.

Satoru tries to pretend he's not waiting by the gallows for the only person that ever mattered. Saiki, mercifully, pretends he doesn't notice.

"I can... rewind time, on people. I used to have pretty bad control, but I think I could rewind Suguru's body to a year ago, before..." He pauses for a breath, "It doesn't work on the dead. But Kenjaku's thoughts are weird. Really noisy, from several sources. ...We can try. I don't want to say it'll work, okay? But we can try."

Satoru nods. The words make him feel like he's rising to become God. He tries to clamp it down. He needs to treat Suguru as dead until he comes back. If. If this works. He's dead until then. He's like a rubber band reaching for the heavens, hooked to the earth. He's going to break himself, like this. (He can last until Suguru's back to him.)

"You're all still quicker than me," Saiki says. "So, you need to distract him. Do the same thing you did in the first loop. I'll do the rest."

Then, Saiki reaches to place one hand on the hairclips Satoru had (for some reason) forgotten the teen wore. It’s like a sudden release of invisible light, energy, spouting from Saiki in a force so powerful Satoru feels he should shield his eyes. It isn't cursed energy, he can't see it, but it washes over him, like falling through air. Who the hell was this teen?

Satoru blinks, stunned. He needs to ground himself; he forcibly shuts all thoughts out but the unreachable, dizzying goal of Suguru.

"I'll reset the loop, now. Taunt him, get him to come back out, fight Kenjaku for control." Saiki looks at him, eyes boring down. "Can you do that?"

Satoru nods, not trusting himself to speak. He can do that.

Another round of time loop-induced nausea. It's not as bad as the last few times, maybe because he knows to expect it. He's still in pain from various other sources. The burning in his heart, the tendrils of the Prison Realm through his ribs. All of it stems from Suguru, he realizes.

Why do they always end up this way? Hurting each other. Satoru hurt him first, before this. Refused to burn his body. But that was because of the grief Suguru left him with. It’s a cycle. A loop. How does he break it?

" — In the new world."

He hates the fake's voice. He hates how it contains Suguru's timbre and cadence but none of his life. The anger bundles in his throat and his eyes, and the hatred resonates with a warm day in spring, with watching Suguru’s back disappear into the crowd.

But he holds that anger. Hides it neatly behind his tongue, though he makes sure not to swallow it. And he lets himself speak.

Satoru tuts. "This shit really bores me, y'know that?"

He knows something Kenjaku doesn't. He wants the curse to see it in his expression. He wants to let it know that its master plan has already fallen apart, and it'll never know why. He wants it to feel the pain he feels, the anger he’s buried, towards Suguru, towards himself.

"All the talk about grand plans, altering the world. You've done it before, y'know."

Kenjaku narrows his eyes, but doesn't seem altogether surprised. "You don't —"

"I wasn't talking to you. Obviously."

Kenjaku tries to talk again, but Satoru interjects. "If you want to play it that way, I'll say what I should've said then."

"I wasn't going to talk you out of your warped perspective. You just wanted to piss me off, so I could be in as much pain as you were. Or maybe kill you. Shitty thing to do, by the way."

He tries to keep the tone light. Suguru’s plan had worked well, in the end. He’d hated his friend intensely, but it didn’t push down how much he still wanted to be beside him. It had almost clarified it, in a way.

"...But. Maybe. I'd been doing the same thing to you. I felt numb, detached, and I wanted you to feel the same way. I kept reading through all our text messages, after, and realized I'd stopped texting you like I used to. And then I stopped replying to you."

"A confessional. Very cute." The fake says, but Satoru sees him grit his teeth. He’s tense. Satoru continues.

"So. I'm not a teenager anymore, I can admit what parts were also my fault." He clears his throat. Drums up his nerves.

"I'm sorry." He stares into Suguru's eyes, and they’re holding that lost, desperate expression that always haunted him. "Wanna say it back?"

The fake bares its teeth, glaring, but looks worried. Satoru smiles, wide. He wants Kenjaku to know he’s going to die today. That he’ll never haunt Suguru again.

"You've never been this shy, y'know. What's got your tongue?"

The fake looks like it's lost its voice. Then the fake stutters, like he’s trying to speak. Kenjaku's eyes look to Suguru's mouth, it raises his hand to clasp over it, though his fingers twitch, like he's trying to shake its influence, and —

Saiki appears, one blink to the next, even for Satoru. He reaches up to a stuttering Kenjaku, a desperate Suguru, and places his palm gently on the stitching. He's focused. Satoru thinks this would be a good time to learn how to pray. A good time to believe in any higher power but himself. He hadn't been able to fix Suguru, no matter what he tried. No, he hadn’t been able to fix Suguru’s problems. Hadn’t been able to help. He prays — if praying is about screaming, alone in your head — that he’s finally brought something that can.

And then —

For one glorious moment, Suguru is whole, and then his brain is in bits across the subway. 

He must have blacked out for a bit, because he realizes that Saiki is standing in front of him again. Suguru is encased in stone before him. Like it never happened. Satoru might have been able to convince himself of that, if Six Eyes would stop showing him where Suguru's brain and body had laid on the tiles, how much of him had dripped onto the tracks.

"We're taking a breather." Saiki says, probably noticing how he's become more responsive. Slightly more responsive. "...My control isn't as good as I thought it was. We'll try again."

Ah, right. Time loops, where consequences don't matter. Where he sees this teen killed in front of him, Suguru and Mahito turned to stone, and then it all resets to the start. Everything put back exactly as the world left it. He wishes he had the ability, for a lot of select moments in his life. Or maybe even before. Maybe he could have erased himself, shove off all his burden to some other poor kid.

"You know what," Saiki says, "I'm going to play Candy Crush on my phone. You can watch."

Saiki plays Candy Crush for a while, and Satoru watches the screen with the same focus he’d give a lava lamp. A few minutes in, Jogo wakes up, sees both the fake and Mahito turned to stone, and (being smarter than Gojo would have ever given him credit for) turns tail and runs.

Then, mostly due to Satoru's insistence, they try again.

This time, Suguru just slumps forward to the ground. A dead body, exactly as Satoru remembers.

"I couldn't -- shit. I couldn't find... My fault. Bad focus."

Saiki is trying to sound casual. His voice is shaking slightly. Saiki can read his mind and see he's not fooling anyone, but they both play pretend.

The next four are the same. On the fifth, Suguru starts screaming, then Kenjaku starts laughing. Saiki quickly resets.

"So." Saiki says. They're back to their usual spot, Saiki in front of a stone Suguru, sitting cross-legged. "This is the issue I've run into. Suguru's alive, partly. I can hear his thoughts, he's dormant, but he comes out when you speak to him. I've tried to rewind just Suguru's brain, but I can't separate it from Kenjaku, and it doesn't... mesh well. I've tried to rewind Suguru's body, but ignoring Kenjaku's brain, he isn't alive. And rewinding both is..."

Satoru doesn't look Saiki in the eyes. Waits for him to say that they should have killed Suguru at the start. Waits for another solemn execution order to be drawn up. At least Saiki is sympathetic. At least this time, the burden isn’t on himself. Shouldn’t he be thankful? Last time Suguru died, he’d have been grateful if they let Satoru go with him.

"...But if I knew what parts were Suguru and what parts were Kenjaku, I could slowly separate the two as I rewind."

Saiki pauses again. Nothing is there to fill the silence, just a room full of the dead.

"Your memory's good, right? Six Eyes."

"I can't — don't forget things. I remember Suguru," Satoru stutters out. "His mind." He traces a memory. The second before he killed his friend, before his brain started to lose oxygen. He can count the receptors at each synaptic cleft, knows the path of each ion, each neurotransmitter.

Yeah, he knows Suguru. 

"If you held the memory in your mind." Saiki starts. "As I'm rewinding him. Then I can replace Kenjaku's brain with Suguru's one bit at a time, so he's always 'alive'. Can you?"

Satoru has held the unthinkable in his head for the better part of the year. He could tell Saiki what parts of Suguru shut down first, the droop of Suguru’s jaw as his muscles slackened, the skip of his heart when it beat for the final time. How his eyes rolled up. How his wet coughs got worse and worse, until it was a gurgle, and how after a while, even that ceased.

And how he smiled, at peace, until he took his last breath. And how Satoru sat next to him, and how he smiled as well. He held Suguru’s hand until his skin went cold.

Saiki looks grim. It’s not an answer, it’s not an image anyone but Satoru should see. But for Suguru? Anything.

Satoru's been speaking off the cuff for a few of these loops, now. He almost thinks it doesn’t matter what he taunts Kenjaku with, Suguru will try to come back to him, even if it means fighting in vain with the curse that turned him into a puppet. The warmth almost masks the pain in his stabbed-through ribs. He babbles, and Suguru will show up fighting Kenjaku for control, just from the sound of his voice. Almost makes it feel like old times. When Suguru wasn't dead, he means.

One more time. He promises himself. Just this once more.

So once again, he says something witty. (Something he and Suguru can roughly translate to 'I love you'.) Suguru, the real one, looks him in the eyes, bewildered but determined. Saiki arrives, and this time, he starts constructing the last image he'd seen of Suguru into thin cross-sections for Saiki to take and resurrect.

"I'm going slowly, now." Saiki says. His left hand lightly fits itself into the underside of Suguru's jaw. With his right, he reaches to the suture lines dividing his forehead. He strains the thread until the head cracks open, just like Satoru has seen, both a minute and a lifetime ago. "I'm removing Kenjaku's brain, and only rewinding Suguru's. Just keep your focus, and show me a few slices at a time."

Wisps of fluids start to pour out through the line Saiki's now opened. Satoru wants to retch. Suguru looks like a ghost escaping a body, as Kenjaku works the mouth up and down without making a sound, staring hollowly into Saiki's own eyes. Satoru keeps up the image in his mind.

"Done the first." Saiki says. Satoru dutifully moves on to his next memories. They aren’t simply slices, cutting thoughtlessly through Suguru’s brain. It’s like a mesh of connections, where he labels each cell at the hillock, and traces their axon. More neurons are found at the synapse from the first. Granular neurons are first, deep in the core of the brain, then the pyramidal cells come last, reaching to the surface, until he cradles a small part of Suguru in his memory.

"Go to the next few." And Satoru keeps going.

The process feels like an eternity. Satoru's been endlessly exposed to horrors of bodies, either dead or warped by cursed energy, until the most vividly disgusting curses don't cause him any reaction. But this... Suguru makes everything different. Even seeing Suguru wince in pain makes him want to dry heave. He bears witness to Suguru's limbs jerking about as the brain that connects to them changes. Suguru's eyes look crazed, then they roll up as Suguru lets out an animalistic sound of pain. Saiki stays determined the entire time, but Satoru notices his lip quiver as Suguru limbs start to shake uncontrollably. The brain squelches as Saiki regrows it. Satoru sees every detail, even small bits of Kenjaku fighting back; his neurons like tendrils, gripping to the new growth from Suguru. Saiki stamps it out, holding complete control of the cavity where Suguru comes back to. He sees exactly how the areas Saiki regrows make their effects known in the twitching of muscle, he traces a tangle of motor neurons as they’re replaced, and watches Suguru regain control of his own breath, hiccuping as his throat seizes.

Satoru keeps his focus throughout it all.

"Almost..." Saiki says. The liquid trickling through Suguru's forehead slows to the last few droplets. Saiki very carefully puts his limiter into place again, then lowers Suguru to the ground by his arms. There are tears streaming down Suguru's face, and he gulps air in, his breath stuttering and wheezing as he tries.

"Finished."

Satoru didn't know a memory could be such a heavy weight, but he feels woozy as he lets it dissipate from his mind. He’d held onto the memory for so long, he’d reached a state where time had slowed, and it had only been Suguru and him, once again.

He’s slowly blinking his way back to the present. He brought one of his ghosts back into reality, he thinks, as he catches Suguru’s eyes. Kenjaku is nowhere to be seen. Energy rushes through him, as coherent thought falls away, used up from being stuck in his memories for so long.

"Suguru." He says, almost instinctually. "Suguru!" The prison still restricts him, he can only watch as Suguru struggles to control his breathing, hyperventilating in front of him. His eyes are tied to the ground, not taking anything in.

"He's okay. His brain's been put back correctly, it's just shock. Motor control is all okay. ...He's still got some of Kenjaku's memories as well. Hm."

Saiki has gently let Suguru half-lay on the ground, one arm propping him up as he stares at the tiles of the metro. He's now dry-heaving, spit from his mouth falling from his lips. Satoru catches him glancing at Saiki, confusion taking up a small part of his pained expression.

"Don't worry about that for now. Just, keep breathing through it." Saiki says, awkwardly patting Suguru's hand. "The body's fine, it's because you're not used to controlling it anymore."

Suguru spits more liquid from his mouth, then turns his eyes up to face Satoru. "S— ngh, S'taru —"

"He's fine. Nothing's happened to him. You're the main worry, to be honest."

Suguru looks to Satoru in a very familiar, 'what the hell did you do' expression that hits Satoru with a wave of joy. He will always know Suguru, and Suguru him. He sends a smile to Suguru that says 'tell you later, promise.' Suguru nods slightly, and goes back to breathing, more deliberate than before, trying not to hyperventilate. His wheezing slows, until —

"Gate." Suguru manages. "Open."

The limbs of the realm peel away from him, and he catches himself before he falls to the floor. It's like he's broken the surface of the water, finally able to take a breath. He crawls over to Suguru, cups Suguru's face in his hands, and he almost giggles as he presses their foreheads together. He's crying, he realizes.

("I'm still here, by the way. Good grief.")

He can see Suguru smile, and he knows that it's Suguru's.

Satoru and Suguru hold each other for what feels like an eternity, but what Satoru knows (thanks to Six Eyes) is around ten minutes.

Saiki is kind enough to stay, though he acts like he's being forced the entire time. After a few minutes of waiting, he starts to rewind the surviving civilians by 'about a day', and then turns them to stone, like he did with Suguru.

("This will probably be easier for your weird secret society to handle," he says, "They'll turn back in 24 hours, like I said.")

Suguru eventually falls asleep — or at least, falls unconscious. Satoru can tell he's okay. He will be, Satoru will make sure of it. He watches Suguru breath slowly, at peace in his arms, and turns his thoughts to more long-term worries. Jujutsu society isn’t going to blindly accept him back. They were content ignoring him, and when they realize that isn’t an option any longer, their hate would take its place. But Satoru’s always been selfish, he knows that. Jujutsu Society may have already formed their opinions on Suguru, but he knows if he swings his weight enough, they’ll be forced to change. Nothing will get in his way. Their way. Tucking Suguru’s hair out of his face, he smiles. Everything will be okay.

Saiki loiters around for a while more. It takes Satoru an embarrassingly long couple of minutes to realize that the teen doesn’t know how to excuse himself from the situation. Satoru doesn’t either.

"Do you need help getting back to your school, or..." Saiki sounds almost pained as he says it.

"Don't worry, I can teleport the both of us. …See you around?" He says.

"Hm. I don't hope we meet again. If we do, it will be because I've been strong-armed by God to help out with another stupid crisis."

Satoru doesn't have much to argue against there, he supposes.

"If you ever —"

"Wait. Shut up." Saiki says, holding a finger up. "The volcano guy, Jogo, he's just finished... force feeding a pink-haired kid a lot of fingers? What the hell is wrong with you guys."

Sukuna. Satoru's mind flashes back to everything he's learnt about the thousand year old curse and Yuuji. Sukuna would be able to temporarily take control of Yuuji if there were too many, and knowing Jogo, he’d planned for it. This was a worst-case scenario.

"Okay. Fuck you, actually. Calm down, I'll sort it out."

"I can — "

"You're still in shock. You'd embarrass yourself and trip over your own feet or something stupid. Then it'd be even more inconvenient for me. Just stay here, you'd get in the way."

...Never in his entire life has Satoru had that said to him. Not since he learned how to speak. He’s appalled but similarly awestruck, and the emotion hits him so cleanly it doesn’t feel like it will ever leave, not for the next few years. You'd get in the way.

"Seriously, this is the last thing I'm doing. I need to head back to Kaidou's Halloween Movie Night. He'll pretend he's not sad I missed half the movie, but it's really obvious and uncomfortable. Be back in five minutes." He vanishes before Satoru's eyes, another casual display of raw power. Satoru can't believe this kid.

(Saiki's back with Yuuji in two.)