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Satoru would like to start off by stating for the record that this isn’t his fault.
Okay, yes, maybe he should’ve listened to Yaga-sensei and maybe it wasn’t a good idea to let himself be provoked by Suguru into picking up an incredibly powerful, incredibly cursed artifact, but in his defense, Yaga-sensei really should’ve known better than to leave the two of them alone in a room with something that was totally triple-dog-dare bait.
So. Who’s really in the wrong here, Satoru would like to know.
He knows who’s in deep shit here, and it’s not Yaga-sensei or Suguru- that smirking fuck, though he did look suitably horrified when the cursed artifact started doing it’s weird, creepy cursed artifact thing, so perhaps he can be forgiven. He’s on parole.
Anyway, cursed artifact, blah blah, don’t touch, blah blah, long story short, Satoru got sucked inside and chucked into a void that felt like he was being tumbled through a washing machine while simultaneously falling fifty thousand feet, so like, he’s definitely had more enjoyable experiences. Whatever.
The question now is where the hell is he and probably also how the hell is he, because his nose fucking hurts.
He squirms. Oh, so he can move. That’s good. Everything’s dark and his Six Eyes keep pinging him to tell him that he’s surrounded by cursed energy signatures, though, so maybe that’s not- wait. He opens his eyes, and immediately shuts them again because ow. His beautiful face.
A gurgling sound somewhere to his left makes him realize he said that out loud and that’s probably one of the many, many curses thinking he’d make a mighty fine snack right now, so he should really take care of that right now before he shish-kebabed and deep-throated. Hey, he is always down for a fun time (Shoko snorts in the back of his mind. “What does your virgin ass know about a fun time? If you get laid before that one,” she says, jutting her chin as a placidly smiling Suguru, “I’ll eat your glasses right off your pretty, empty little head. Dweeb.”) but like, maybe not with the monsters that are literally dumber than parrots. He’s not into beastiality.
Then, just as he’s tensing, muscles coiling, about to unleash the full brunt of his power on these peons who dared believe they could take down the Six Eyes, the bearer of Limitless, the Gojo Satoru, he hears a voice, piercing in the quiet, warble out, “Sensei?”
Gojo’s eyes fly open, and this time he keeps them open despite the influx of information-light-pain-too-bright-too-bright-too-bright. He drags himself upright, stumbling a bit as he takes a fighting stance.
What he sees is… not what he was expecting. The cursed energy signatures he was reading aren’t curses like he thought. They’re people.
He hesitates to call them familiar, but… he knows that hair, and those eyes. He knows them, even though they’re aged like he never imagined, weary stance and weary bones.
“...Shoko?” He asks, not sure he wants the answer.
Her face screws up before she hastily slaps a hand over it. “What the fuck,” he hears, smothered by her palm, eyes filling up with pain and- and tears, fuck, what the fuck, before they too disappear behind the veil of her fingers. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. That’s not fair. That’s not-,” a shudder runs through the whole of her body as her voice cracks, shoulders quaking. “That’s not fucking fair.”
Satoru stands, frozen. Shoko doesn’t cry. Shoko’s never cried. Satoru doesn’t know what to do with a Shoko that cries.
“I, uh-,” he swallows down the panic rising in his throat, grasping for his usual careless flippancy with both hands. “I don’t suppose this is a dream, is it?” Please let it be a dream, please let it be a dream. Or maybe a domain?
Satoru can deal with this being a domain; he’ll just blast his way out and everything will be peachy. He’ll trudge back to school, or maybe he’ll already be there, and he can tell Suguru and Shoko all about this, and they’ll laugh and rib Shoko for the embarrassment of her illusory self.
“Shoko-sensei… is this real?” A different voice asks, not the first one, and not Shoko’s, but some girl with a dye job and a sleek black eye-patch secured firmly over her left eye. She looks shaken, fists clenched at her sides and one visible brow deeply furrowed.
There’s a boy next to her, looking at him with wide emerald eyes. He’s scarred, too, and badly, discoloured, yawning gashes on either side of his face. Why are all these students so messed up? Who the hell is responsible for them?
As Satoru watches, the color drains so rapidly from Green-Eyes’ face that he sways, knees loosening before he locks them, forcing himself to remain upright. He blinks hard, squeezing his eyes shut for several long seconds before opening them again, as if hoping Satoru’s will be gone when he opens his eyes. Spoiler: he’s not.
Slowly, the disbelief fades, and Green-Eyes looks at Satoru like he’s seen a ghost, an emotional pendulum swinging between horror, hope, and nausea.
Satoru… does not like that look.
“Sho-?” He starts to ask again, weakly, but he’s cut off halfway through by a loud, desperate, “Sensei!” It’s an awful sound, wrenched out breathless and hurt, a thin thread of anguish, and Satoru catches a single, blurred glimpse of another boy running at him with a distraught expression on his face- pink hair, twin scars, two missing fingers, who the fuck-
But Satoru doesn’t have time to dwell on his own, absolute bewilderment, because the next second he’s being tackled with all the force of a battering ram and strangled in the tightest, most brutal hug he’s ever experienced in his life. And then Pinky bursts into tears on his shoulder.
What the fuck.
No, seriously, what the fuck? And is that Utahime? It’s gotta be, right, but where the fuck did the scar come from? Wait, she’s crying too? Fuck, what the fuck?
“What the fuck is-,” he stops to wheeze as the guy squeezing him squeezes harder , fucking ow, “-going on?”
“Sensei,” Pinky chokes out, the word muffled against Satoru’s slowly dampening shoulder. Holy. Fuck. Is this guy crying too? What the fuck?
Satoru is not okay with this. He would like to state- again, for the record- that he is not okay with everything that is happening right now!
“Shoko, what the fuck?” He asks as best he can while actively being suffocated. Normally, he wouldn’t tolerate this. He’d flex infinity or straight flip the guy onto his back and off of Satoru, but he- he’s crying. Pinky, whoever he is, sounds like his heart’s been chucked in a woodchipper, and to be honest, Satoru’s kind of freaking out about it. Nobody comes to him for- what, what is this, comfort? Nobody’s stupid enough to try. He’s not exactly the nurturing type.
Pinky, though, Satoru can feel the curl of his muscles for himself, the powerful squeeze of them around his back and abdomen; the strength in the half-hand curled around the back of his neck, though there’s only the barest pressure there, almost tentative, and… protective, maybe? It kinda… feels good, actually.
Not important!
Truth be told, Satoru’s not sure he’d be able to win against this guy if it came to an all out battle, not without knowing his technique, so he might as well give the illusion of staying where he is of his own free will until he can figure out what the hell is going on.
This is so fucking weird.
He glances over to see Shoko still covering her face. “That’s what I’d like to know,” she grits out.
“Shoko-,” his throat seizes up, because if he’s right about this… if he’s right, then he is in some seriously deep shit right now. “Shoko, why are you old?”
Shoko snorts, her hand finally falling from her face, uncovering a pair of red-rimmed eyes and a haggard mien, and yeah, Shoko’s always tired, but he’s never seen her like this.
“I’m not old. You’re just young. Satoru.” Her throat works, but in the end she doesn’t say anything else, just looks at him.
He doesn’t like it. Shoko should never look at him like that.
“So, uh,” he casts around wildly for something to say, because he is so not ready to deal with the implications of grief on his friend’s adult face.
Eyes darting here and there, taking in sorcerers his Six Eyes draws connections to and overlays people he knows on top of, similarities and differences so fitting yet vast it makes his head spin, and latches onto the first noticeable oddity- aside from the young, unfamiliar faces and the absences that are carving out his insides and filling him up with equal parts adrenaline and terror (Yaga-sensei, Haibara, Nanami, Suguru, where’s Suguru, where’s his best friend where is he where is he where is he) .
“So what’s everybody wearing black for, huh? You guys look like you belong at a funeral, seriously.” His brayish laughter trails off as Shoko flinches- actually flinches- and presses a hand to her forehead, lips quivering for a moment before she forces them into a stern, thin line. Pressed all along his front, Satoru feels it the moment Pinky stills, the snuffling sound of his sobs cutting off abruptly.
“That’s because it is, you idiot,” she says, every premature wrinkle in her face looking carved as if in stone. She looks tired. So tired. Shoko’s not supposed to be that tired. He and Suguru were supposed to protect her; keep her from overworking herself. So why aren’t they? Why isn’t Suguru? Where is Suguru?
“Whose?” He asks before he can think about it, tone demanding and belligerent, half a challenge. It makes him sound childish, but he doesn’t have time to think about that. Pull the bandaid off. Make it quick, quick enough not to hurt.
Shoko opens her mouth, then closes it. She closes her eyes, looking like she’s in pain.
“Shoko-,” he starts, but he’s stopped by a light pressure on the sensitive hollow of his neck. He shivers.
Pinky raises his head from Satoru’s shoulder. Ah. The whites of his eyes are a furious red that only highlights the molten gold of his eyes and the two thin, raised lines beneath them.
He’s almost boyishly handsome even with tear tracks drying on his cheeks, though the open set of his face is matured by the sharp cut of his jaw and the scars at his mouth and brow, the skin warped and discoloured. Oh, and his ear, too. With the cover, Satoru almost overlooked that nearly half of the cartilage is gone.
“Our teacher,” he says, voice quiet and hoarse. “It’s for our teacher. There wasn’t time when it happened, but things have calmed down enough that we can hold one now.”
Satoru frowns. “How’d he die?”
A pained look crosses Pinky’s face, but Satoru’s long used to ignoring the twist of guilt in his gut, so it almost doesn’t mean anything to him to be the cause of it.
“He did something stupid,” Shoko’s voice comes, and Satoru whips his head around, tracking every little tidbit of information despite the small, protesting noise Pinky lets out.
“Shoko-san-,” he tries, but Shoko talks over him like he isn’t even there.
“You wanna know who died?” She gives a gasping sort of laugh, though it sounds more like a sob. The twist in his stomach spirals tighter.
“Look around.” Shoko gestures behind him. “Who do you think?”
Satoru tries to turn, but Pinky’s arms hold him tighter, trap him against his chest, and Satoru growls, “Let me go,” but Pinky isn’t even looking at him. He’s looking at Shoko, pleading, “Shoko-san, do you think that’s a good idea, he doesn’t need to know-,”
“I need to know,” Satoru snaps. “Now let me go before I make you.”
Pinky’s eyes rest on him for a moment, expressive and glittering, and then, like a switch being flipped, they shutter. His face, so open a moment before, closes off, and he steps back, leaving Satoru free to turn and finally see.
There, carved into a stone obelisk, is a single name.
Gojo Satoru
Oh. Well, fuck.
“Indeed,” Shoko says dryly, and it’s only then that he realizes he said that aloud, too.
“I didn’t make it, then?” Satoru asks lightly, even though he feels like screaming, like crying, like standing still as a statue until an age passes away and he grows roots in this earth, the earth that holds his ashes; like running until the wind chaps his cheeks and his lips and nothing can catch him, not even death.
(Who else who else who else, his frantic heartbeat whispers. Who else didn’t make it? Quieter still, names, da capo in a reel: Suguru Nanami Haibara Yaga-sensei Suguru Nanami Haibara Yaga-sensei Suguru Nanami Haibara Yaga-sensei )
“No,” Shoko agrees quietly. “No, you didn’t. But you could have.”
His whole body jerks, and he whirls to look at her, half in panic, half in hope.
How, he wants to ask, to beg, how do I fix this?
It was never a cause for concern, before now. He always knew he would die one day; die young. He knew how it would go, too- curses, like every other Jujutsu sorcerer. Some epic battle or simply being overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Or boredom. On his more morbid days, he considered that maybe he’d kill himself once all the people worth living for were gone, another bloodstain on the underside of the jujutsu world’s shoe.
“Shoko-san,” Pinky protested, his voice small.
“No, Yuuji-kun, he could have. You know that. We all know that.” Shoko raised her gaze to pierce Satoru straight through, her face a hopeless, devastated rictus before it turns bitter, the set of her mouth closer to cruel than anything he’s ever seen from her. He almost takes a step back. This isn’t the Shoko he knows. “You could have. If you’d just let us help.”
Her gaze slips from him to the grave behind him. “Selfish bastard. You didn’t even care, did you? So eager to be done with it all, and go join your precious other half. You fucking bastard.”
Satoru makes a sound in his throat, surprised and alarmed. Other half? What other half? He doesn’t have an other half, he’s never wanted a so-called other half. He has his friends, what more could he possibly need? Nothing else would end up well for him or anyone else. His clan would spend every waking second bothering him about heirs and his quote-unquote other half would never escape their machinations. He decided a long time ago he was never going to let that happen.
“Let go, Utahime,” Shoko snaps at the woman tugging at her sleeve. “We all know it. The only reason Gojo Satoru died that day was because he wanted to. Fucking fool. He didn’t think about who he was leaving behind. He didn’t fucking think-,” and then her voice breaks, and Satoru watches in horror as she slumps against Utahime, covering her face once more as she dissolves into tears.
Satoru can’t do anything but stare. He should- he should probably- what should he do? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t like not knowing.
She’s wrong, right? There’s no way… he’s never wanted to die, and he doesn’t need help. He’s the Strongest. He’s always been the Strongest, always been the one who survived, who will survive, no matter what comes. He has infinity, has Limitless, he’s literally untouchable.
‘He didn’t think about who he was leaving behind.’
Satoru kind of wants to vomit. Shoko. Shoko’s here, crying, at his funeral, because he died before her. Did he- did he really leave her behind? Is he really dead? He… died? He died?
He’s not supposed to die. None of them are supposed to die. They’re just high schoolers. And yeah, they’ve gone on shitty missions before, and yeah, Satoru’s gotten injured before, but it’s nothing Shoko can’t fix with a flick to the forehead. It’s not- he can’t die.
But he did. He is. He’s dead. He’s dead, and… what about the rest of the world? Is it- obviously, it exists, it must, or this part of the world wouldn’t exist, either. Why is campus so weird, Six Eyes stretching as far as they can go, pinging him with different structures, different landscaping, different flows of cursed energy, and why is the barrier unfamiliar, where’s the eternally sentient mushroom; is Tengen slacking on the job? Or what- the thought hits Satoru like a brick to the face- is Tengen dead, too?
And then his mind is spinning, ideas spiralling out into space and back again. What the fuck happened to this place? He’s dead. He is dead. What the fuck would be powerful enough to kill the Gojo Satoru, strongest sorcerer of the modern age?
He opens his mouth to say something- he doesn’t know what, but it’s probably gonna be rude and stupid and maybe a little hysterical, too- but another unfamiliar voice- he’s getting kind of tired of those- stops him.
“What do we do with him?”
This voice is gravelly and low. It belongs to a female, no, a void, maybe a little older than him, with scars all over her arms and face. She has her arms folded tightly against her chest, lips pursed, and Satoru can see her, but he can’t at the same time. She’s right there, but he can’t sense her. She doesn’t have a drop of cursed energy, and it’s as fascinating as it is repulsive. Suddenly, he’s sure that he’s seen something just like her before, though he doesn’t know where.
One of the guys standing next to her, black bangs half-hiding a peculiar scar that stretches across the width of his forehead, seems to blink himself awake at the sound of her voice. “Do?”
She nods sharply, and it’s only thanks to his Six Eyes that he’s able to track the speed of the glance she shoots at Green-Eyes, Dye-Job, and Pinky, the momentary crease of worry. “We can’t just keep him. Gojo-sensei is gone. This twerp doesn’t belong here.”
“Sujiko,” comes a mumble from the pale-haired boy on her other side. “Shake, takana. Tsuna Mayo.”
…Eh?
Okay, Satoru doesn’t know what the hell that means, but apparently the girl does, because she nods and looks at him, pinning him with a deep and eerie gaze. Damn. He thinks he might get why people say it’s hard to meet his eyes, if it’s anything like this.
“Do you know how you got here?”
Satoru blinks. “Uh.” He glances away with a cough, and he is definitely not fidgeting.
Her eyes narrow. “What?”
“I mean, it could’ve been any number of reasons, really,” Satoru mumbles evasively.
“Satoru, for fuck’s sake.” Okay, that’s Shoko again, her voice thick with tears, and Satoru doesn’t want to turn to see her again. Not yet. Not until she’s not… like that.
“Artifact,” he blurts out. “There was a cursed artifact. I wasn’t supposed to touch it. But really-,” he protests, “-me and Suguru were left alone with the thing, without supervision. What did Yaga-sensei think was gonna happen?”
“Principal Yaga?” Pinky pipes up, eyes suspiciously shiny. He hasn’t moved away from Satoru this whole time, staying only a step or two away. Even when his eyes went flat and cold earlier, he stayed close. What’s his deal?
Satoru eyes him. “Yeah. Wait, he’s the principal here? Weird.”
Pinky hesitates, eyes darting to Shoko, then nods. “Sorta.”
Yaga-sensei was gonna get even more overworked in the future, then. A shudder runs down his spine at the first blatant acknowledgement of where he is.
The future, huh? Theories of timelines and multiverses racing through his mind, calculation after calculation bubbling away like overcooked rice.
Something nudges his hand. He looks down.
Pinky carefully links two fingers through his and says, “Don’t think about it too much, Sensei. We’ll send you home, and then none of this will matter, right? Like a bad dream.”
His smile is weak, but his hand is strong in Satoru’s when he gives it a squeeze.
“How did I die?” The question slips out before he can stop it, but it’s okay because he doesn’t want to stop it, though he does feel a little bad when it freezes the smile on Pinky’s face. Not that he cares, perse, it’s just… Pinky’s the only one that’s seemed actually glad to see him. Everyone else just looks like they’re on the verge of bursting into tears or constipated.
It gives Satoru the courage to ask the one thing he’s been desperate to know since he saw his name carved into that obelisk.
Pinky’s head drops, and he looks at their fingers instead- no. He looks at his own fingers. The missing ones. His lips press together and roll back out. Letting go of a breath, he smiles at Satoru, a small, bitter little thing, and says quietly, “It was my fault. I never introduced myself, did I?”
Taking a step back, he gives a short bow, and strangely, Satoru finds himself missing the secure curl of his fingers, the warm reassurance they brought.
“Itadoru Yuuji, second year, ex-vessel of Ryoumen Sukuna.”
What.
“What,” he says.
Pinky’s- Yuuji’s- smile is half a grimace this time.
“Ryoumen Sukuna. The King of Curses Ryoumen Sukuna? All the World’s Evil Ryoumen Sukuna? That Ryoumen Sukuna? And you’re his vessel?” Satoru is buzzing. He has so many questions.
Yuuji laughs softly. He seems far more accepting of his status as the vessel of the most violent and powerful curse to walk the earth in over a thousand years than Satoru would have thought anyone could be.
“How come you’re not dead?” Satoru demands. “There’s no way the higher-ups weren’t clamouring for your execution.”
That elicits a wince, and yeah, okay, maybe that wasn’t the best way to ask, but Satoru’s too busy trying not to think about his own apparent demise to give a shit about things like tact right now.
“Ah,” Yuuji says, then smiles at him. It’s knowing, and almost… indulgent? And maybe Satoru should be offended but mostly he’s just curious. Nobody but the most rebellious of his nannies and maybe Suguru has ever looked at him like that. “I had somebody looking out for me.”
“Huh.” Must’ve been someone powerful. A major player in jujutsu society, for sure, but Satoru wracks his brain and he can’t think of anyone that high up with the guts or the desire to keep Ryoumen Sukuna’s vessel alive.
“He actually incarnated?” Satoru asks. “In you?”
Yuuji nods. “It was okay, though, I mean, for a while. I could control him.” Emotions flicker behind his eyes as a strange look takes over his face, and he smiles again, though it’s not happy. It’s like he can’t help it. Well, everyone has their own way of coping. “Until I couldn’t. He escaped. We got him back in the end, but… he did a lot of damage.” For a moment, he too looks tired, the kind of bone-weary Satoru’s seen in veteran sorcerers who’ve managed to survive for decades. “Stuff got pretty messed up for a while.”
Yeah, Satoru can imagine. It must’ve been a fucking disaster.
“So is that what happened, then? We took each other out?” It’s still shitty, but if that’s how he died, Satoru doesn’t think he minds so much. Talk about epic. It must’ve been a battle for the ages. Satoru can feel his blood heating just thinking about it, heartbeat thrumming in his chest.
Yuuji’s smile fades. “Ah, no. Not really. That-,” he glances over his shoulder, but Shoko’s still trying to compose herself, Utahime hands on either of her cheeks as she talks to her in a low voice. He looks at Dye-Job next, but she’s too busy whispering ferociously to Green-Eyes and pinching him at random intervals to help.
He turns back to Satoru and shakes his head. “You lost.” He fiddles with the spaces where his fingers should be- gnarled stumps of flesh and wrinkled skin- as the bottom of Satoru’s stomach drops out, his ears filling with static. “It was okay- well, no, I mean, obviously it wasn’t, it wasn’t okay at all, not when you were, not when you-” he swallows hard, and Satoru blinks, trying to focus on him despite the spots dancing in his vision. Immediately, he wishes he hadn’t.
That much anguish couldn’t possibly be healthy.
“Not when we lost you,” Yuuji finishes, voice thick and strained. He reaches up to rub viciously at his eyes. “But, I mean, as far as Sukuna, we figured it out. It took a while, and we lost some people, but,” he shrugs. “We managed,” he says quietly.
Satoru swallows the bile in his throat. “Managed?”
Yuuji nods. “It ended up being enough. Though, we were kinda on our own even before-,” he stops and shoves his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunching. “Even before Gojo-sensei died.”
Six Eyes tracks the ball of his fists as they form.
“Uh, a word of advice?” Yuuji says tentatively, with a wobbly smile and short laugh, breathless with hurt. “You know the Prison Realm? About yea big, kinda a cube thing with creepy eyes all over it? Yeah, don't- don’t get near that thing. And if you ever see it, don’t think about anything else, okay? Don’t try to fight, or freak out, just run. Just run. Okay, sensei? We can take care of the rest, but just-,”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know if you’ll even remember all this once you go back. You never told us anything about this, if you do, but-,” he smiles, that same bitter smile. Satoru doesn’t like it. He thinks he likes it even less when it’s because of him. Well. Kind of him. Him-adjacent? What do you even call your future self who apparently made so many bad decisions even teenagers are calling you out on it? “It turns out there was a lot you never told us.”
Taking a deep breath, Yuuji lets it out, sharp and final. “So, cursed artifact? That’s probably not good. Don’t you know you shouldn’t be touching random stuff, Sensei, what if you get hurt one day? We should try and get you back sooner rather than later,” he says, a worried furrow creasing his brow. “Just in case. You shouldn’t get stuck here. That-,” he pauses, as if thinking about it, then shakes his head. “No, that would be bad. Besides, you deserve to go home.”
He glances at Shoko out of the corner of his eye. “You have people waiting for you.”
It hits him like a kick to the chest, and Satoru doesn’t want to think about it, he really doesn’t want to think about it, but he does. He has to. He’s dead here. He’s gone, and he’s not coming back.
He thinks, for the first time since coming here, that he really shouldn’t have touched that artifact. Shoko’s stooped back and Yuuji’s tear-streaked face should’ve clued him in, but no, he’s just realizing it now. Coming here was cruel. Stupid fucking artifact. Stupid fucking Satoru, he adds silently, in nowhere but his own head.
He doesn’t think a dare was worth this.
Not that it hasn’t been crazy, and horrifying, and kinda cool in its own incredibly morbid way, but… he wants to go home.
He does have people waiting for him, and they’re probably worried sick. And he wants to see his friends. Suguru’s still MIA, and so’s Nanami and Haibara, but Satoru doesn’t think he wants to know anymore. He’s curious, of course, but he thinks he might be better off not knowing. It doesn’t matter anyway. Wherever they are, he’s not going to let it happen. He’s not going to let any of this happen.
He’s decided.
“Okay,” he says, straightening up and setting his shoulders. “Got any ideas?”
Yuuji frowns in concentration, taking a step back and squinting at the air around him. “If I look at you like this, I can kinda see the cursed energy from the artifact. You can’t see it, Sensei?”
Surprised, Satoru shakes his head. He always sees cursed energy. That’s literally his thing.
“It might be because you’re the one cursed. There’s some curses that can do that. If it’s powerful enough, it might even be able to fool your Six Eyes for a while. It'll probably just take a while before it weakens enough for it to be visible to you, but there's some other stuff we can try first.” Shuffling closer, he asks, “Do you have any curse marks on you?”
Satoru checks over his hands and pulls up his pant legs to see his calves and ankles. Nothing. He shakes his head, looking back at Yuuji to see his gaze lingering on Satoru’s legs. He looks troubled.
“You’re really skinny as a teenager, Sensei. Are you eating enough?” He asks disapprovingly.
Satoru gapes. “Is this really the time?”
Yuuji gives him a confused look. “Why not? You like sweet things, too, right? If we can’t figure out how to send you back soon, I’ll make you something.” He brightens. “Sensei always liked breakfast desserts, and I make a mean waffle.”
Saliva floods Satoru’s mouth. Okay. That doesn’t sound so bad. If they can’t figure this out, then waffles it is. “I’ll hold you to that,” he threatens. Yuuji just laughs, a lighter and brighter sound than any before.
It’s strange. He’s strange, this Itadori Yuuji.
“I’ll join you,” someone says, and steps up to stand beside them. It’s that guy from earlier, the one with the scarred forehead. His eyes linger on Satoru, something very sad lurking in their depths before he turns to smile softly at Yuuji. “If you don’t mind the company, that is.”
Yuuji beams. “Of course, Yuuta-senpai. It’ll be nice, if we get the chance.” He says wistfully, his smile dimming. At the reminder, he asks Yuuta more seriously, “Can you see anything funny, senpai? I don’t really know where to start if he doesn’t have a cursed mark.”
Yuuta shakes his head. “He should be able to unravel it himself, I think. It shouldn’t take too much longer. Whatever artifact sent him here is definitely powerful, but Gojo-sen- uh, san, Gojo-san, has too much cursed energy for it to keep a hold on him for long. From what I can tell, this is more like a physical projection. Can you feel that, there?”
There’s an odd sensation, like the twang of a koto string, thrumming inside the whole of Satoru’s being, all at once. It’s not painful, but neither is it a particularly pleasant sensation, and he has to hold back a gag.
“Oh!” Yuuji exclaims. “It’s like a rubber band, almost.”
Yuuta nods in agreement. “He’s still tethered to his own time. Once the artifact’s influence wears off enough, he should be snapped back almost instantly. We can probably speed it up if we give him a shot of cursed energy ourselves.”
“Ah. Right.” Yuuji sounds much less enthusiastic now, his smile no longer joyful and easy, but hard-won and worn, like they were at the beginning. Satoru glares at Yuuta. Was that really necessary?
Yuuta notices his annoyance and offers an apologetic smile. Reaching out, he puts a hand on Yuuji’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze, and Satoru’s still trying to figure out why it’s making him bristle when Yuuta says, “It’s better this way. Maki’s right. We lost our Gojo-sensei a long time ago, and this…,” he shakes his head.
“I’m sorry,” he says softly to Satoru. “But you aren’t him. You’re not ours.” A muscle in Yuuta’s jaw clenches and he looks down, blinking harshly.
After a moment, he composes himself and he ruffles Yuuji’s hair. “Whenever you’re ready, Yuuji-kun.”
For a moment, something cracks across Yuuji’s face, a nearly bottomless well of grief, so full and heartfelt it takes Satoru’s breath away.
He’ll be the first to admit he’s the worst kind of asshole. How the hell does Yuuji survive as a jujutsu sorcerer if he gets this attached to everyone he sees? Or did Satoru just mean that much to him? His older self, he means. Not Satoru. Yuuji doesn’t care about Satoru. They don’t know each other.
It’s hard to believe that when Yuuji looks at him with a film of tears covering his eyes. “We should probably get on with it,” he says thickly, fighting to lift the corner of his lips. “You probably want to get home.”
Satoru nods, shockingly reluctant. He does want to go home. This is... it's a lot, even for him. He wants his own life back, familiar and safe, ripe for the changing. “I’ll take an IOU on those waffles,” he says, even though he knows once he leaves, Yuuji won’t ever be able to make him anything, ever again. He’s dead. Satoru still can’t quite wrap his head around it.
“Find me, okay?” Yuuji blurts, voice strained under the weight of all the tears he’s not shedding, the emotions that have nowhere to go, the grief Satoru’s stealing a little bit of for himself. He’s not sure if he’s made any of this better or worse. People mourn him. Him. Satoru. Not the Strongest. Just… the guy who likes waffles, apparently. What a mind-fuck.
“You know my name now,” Yuuji continues. “I’ll make waffles for you. Anytime.”
“Me too, Gojo-san,” Yuuta says, determined. “We’re your allies, okay? Always. No matter where or how or when. Come find us, it doesn’t matter where we are or how young. We’ll-,” he falters, gripping Yuuji’s shoulder tightly, and for the first time, Satoru realizes that maybe he’s trying to ground himself as much as offer comfort to Yuuji.
“We miss you, sensei,” Yuuta confesses, quiet. “Please come find us.”
His eyes are big and dark, a liquid brown, a little like Shoko’s, and Satoru thinks they could be friends. He wishes, in a moment of bizarre impulse, that they had more time to be.
He nods. Yuuta looks relieved, a smile curving his lips, small but real; a little giddy, like a child’s.
“Satoru,” a familiar voice calls out from behind him, and he turns, relieved, and Shoko’s there, and he’s being wrapped up in her arms. She’s still shorter than him. Some things, he thinks, almost dizzy with a surge of inexplicable comfort, never change. “Take care of yourself, you absolute idiot. Please.”
He can’t do anything but nod.
She nods, too, and after one more moment, steps back enough to take his face in her hands and tug him down to kiss both his cheeks. He blinks, startled. “Eh?”
A hoarse chuckle is his only answer, and a soft pat on the cheek. “Good luck, doofus. Say hi to the weirdo with the bangs for me, okay? And tell him to come to us first the next time he decides to throw a temper tantrum.”
“Yeah,” Satoru says, his throat a little tighter than he’ll ever admit to it being. “Whatever you say, short-stack.”
She snorts and swats at him, and it unravels something in his chest that he didn’t know was hurting.
Grinning, he steps back and cocks a brow at Yuuji and Yuuta. “Well?”
They share a look, then step forward as one to envelop him in an embrace, and normally, he’d shove them off or flip them over his shoulder or- or- he doesn’t know what. Just, something. Something besides giving himself over to their warmth, the strong arms winding around him and cradling him close, a hand at the back of his neck again, stroking softly, gently, like he’s something precious, something to be handled with care.
“Goodbye, sensei,” he hears, whispered into his ear, and then he’s falling, tumbling through matterless space, in and out and up again.
He trips into existence exactly where he left, landing on his hands and knees in a classroom with an artifact sitting innocently on the desk. The only difference is the number of people- Shoko and Yaga-sensei as well as Suguru, who’s given up his usual facade of carelessness to pace back and forth, worrying at the thumbnail in his mouth.
Grinning, he opens his arms wide. “I’m back,” he yells gleefully, and goes to hug his friends.