Archive of Our Own

“I have taken in Toji’s kid,” Satoru says. He’s lying on Suguru’s bed, staring up at the ceiling, but he turns towards the other, who’s curled up on the chair at his desk, to gauge his reaction.

“Mmh-mh,” is all Suguru says, not looking up from the book he’s reading.

Satoru almost scoffs, his breath catching in his throat unpleasantly. “Really? That’s all you have to say?” 

“What do you want me to say, Satoru?” Suguru says, throwing him a sideways glance before looking back at his book.

“I dunno,” Satoru mumbles, pulling himself up on the bed. “I kinda thought you’d be mad at me?” He is not even sure that that is actually what he expected. He can’t really tell what Suguru is thinking anymore - he used to, all the time spent together, working and breathing and living alongside each other had made Suguru’s heart easier to read than his own. But they’ve been apart for too long, pulled in different directions from the weight of the world they carry, and now when he looks at Suguru all he can see is that he is breaking. And with that always comes the other realisation: that Suguru is breaking, and that he doesn’t have the time and the knowledge and the freedom to save him.

This time, Suguru actually turns to look at him, cocking his head to the side. “He’s just a kid, Satoru,” he says, tiredly, like he’s repeating it for the hundredth time even thought they have never talked about this before. “He’s not responsible for what his father did.” 

At that, tension that Satoru didn’t even know was there releases from his shoulders.

“There are two of them, you know?” He says, louder now that he feels more confident. 

“Toji’s kids?”

“I mean, the girl isn’t Toji’s, she’s his wife’s or something, but Megumi wouldn’t go anywhere without her, so I guess I’m her dad too, now. Time to start living my DILF -” 

Suguru hides his face in his hands. “Ugh, don’t call yourself that,” he says. “Those poor children.”

“What?” Satoru laughs, “You don’t think I’m a DILF?”

“You are barely even a dad, Satoru,” Suguru says, emerging from behind his hands. He’s trying to keep a straight face, but there’s the smallest smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. It makes Satoru feel like there are sparkling bubbles inside his chest.

“Mmh,” he concedes, “and what about the other part?” 

“I swear I’m going to throw this book at you,” Suguru says, but his cheeks are tinged pink and he can’t quite look Satoru in the eye. Satoru’s breath catches, and he has to look away, clearing his throat. 

“Honestly,” Suguru says after a moment. “How are you qualified to raise children?” 

He’s not wrong, and Satoru knows that. Since accepting to take them, to stand between Megumi and the Zen’in clan, the question has been nagging him incessantly: how am I even going to do this? 

“Shut up,” is what he says instead of voicing those doubts, knowing full well that Suguru will see right through him. “I’m a great role model.”

“You can’t even cook.” 

“I’ll learn,” Satoru waves him off. “I’m a genius, it can’t be that hard.” 

“Understanding quantum physics isn’t the same as knowing how to fry an egg.” He is referencing the Great Egg Frying incident, a moment that probably still instils fear in the heart of Principal Yaga. 

Satoru shrugs. “It’s not like I ever had to learn.”

“Oh, I forgot you are used to being pampered by servants, oh great lord Gojo,” Suguru says. It stings a little.

“No, I more meant that you usually cook for us,” Satoru says, looking down at his hands. It was something close to a tradition. Suguru liked to cook to relax and Satoru didn’t know how to, so about halfway into their first year they had settled into a routine in which Satoru bought the ingredients, and Suguru cooked. Usually, Satoru would hang around the kitchen and chatter away and sometimes chop vegetables, the only task Suguru trusted him with, and only because Infinity was there to stop him from accidentally cutting any of his fingers off.

“But I won’t be here.” Suguru looks at him straight in the eyes. That one stings a lot.

“I know, I know,” Satoru says, waving his hands in the air like they will push the concept away. “You don’t need to tell me that.” He doesn’t like to be reminded, especially not when they are here, like this. He crosses his arms, putting on a pout.

Suguru gives him a small smile, and finally stands up. “Don’t sulk now,” he says, coming to sit in front of him on the bed.

“’M not sulking,” Satoru says, even though they both know that’s a lie.

Suguru leans forward - close to Satoru’s face, closer than they have been in a while. “Sure you aren’t,” he says, and the expression on his face is so full of tenderness that Satoru thinks for a second that he might cry.

“I miss you,” he exhales. A confession, almost whispered. 

Suguru looks down, pursing his lips. “I know,” he says. “I miss you too.” 

“You could come back,” Satoru says, and he knows it sounds like a plea, and can’t bring himself to care.

“No, I can’t.” Suguru’s tone is final. It’s the answer he expected, and Satoru thinks he might actually cry for real, this time. It would be the perfect time to do it - here, where no one can see him. And yet.

He decides to go for more whining instead. “Why not?” 

“You know why,” Suguru leans even closer to him, so much so that Satoru can see nothing but his eyes, feel Suguru’s breath on his own skin. Before leaning in to kiss him, Suguru says, “You are just not enough.”

He presses his lips to Satoru’s, and then Satoru jerks awake, alone in the darkness of his own room, covered in cold sweat, his heart beating like a hornet’s nest.

***

Satoru makes it back in time for dinner with the kids the following evening. Granted, he has to rush through the mission he’s assigned, which does result in him blowing up the side of a building, but the building was empty and belonged to a big bank, so he figures they can deal with it. He jumps into a cab almost immediately after having exorcised the curse, leaving a stressed out Ijichi to deal with the fallout. Oh well, he can handle it. Satoru has children to cook dinner for.

Speaking of which, here is the deal: what Suguru said in his dream, that he doesn’t even know how to fry an egg, is technically true. And it’s also true that before going to high school, pretty much all of his meals were prepared by servants, so, yeah, he’s never really had to cook before. But how hard can it be, right? It can’t be more complicated than teleporting, and he’s been getting the hang of that recently. Filled with confidence, he doesn’t let the fact that the first egg he tries to crack is full of shell fragments get to him.

“I’m sure it’s edible like that, right?” He asks the kids, who are sitting at the table behind him. “Adds some crunch.”

“Oh my god,” is all Megumi says, hiding his head in his hands.

Even Tsumiki, who, god bless her, has the kindest soul to ever grace this planet, tilts her head sideways in confusion. “Satoru, are you sure you have done this before?” She asks.

“What? Of course I have,” Satoru lies.

“We’re going to starve,” Megumi groans, “We’re going to starve, or you are going to poison us.” 

“Hey!” Satoru protests, and then reminds himself that if these children have been living alone for months, they do probably know more about this than he does. Which is not embarrassing, by the way, he’s had other stuff going on, okay? “Fine, I’ll try it again. I am sure this one was just a fluke.” He gingerly scrapes the questionable egg out of the frying and picks up a second one, ready to try again. Should he crack it against the counter, instead of straight onto the frying pan? He knows he’s seen Suguru do it hundreds of times, but he doesn’t want to search too far into his memories for it, because that’s a recipe for thinking too much about Suguru, and he can’t be doing with that. 

“Crack it against the counter,” Tsumiki suggest, and because she’s an angel, she manages not to sound condescending while she says it, “you’re less likely to get eggshells into the pan that way.” 

“Yes, I knew that,” Satoru lies again. He does so, and then opens the egg onto the frying pan. It’s a bit wobbly, but at least there are no eggshells in it, so he decides to call it a win. “See?” He says excitedly, turning back towards the kids. 

Megumi looks unimpressed. Tsumiki is still doing that concerned head tilt.

After a second, she asks, “Satoru, are you sure you don’t want me to do the cooking?” 

Satoru feels an unpleasant pang in his stomach at that. “Nah,” he waves her off, “you are seven. You shouldn’t have to cook for yourself.”

Tsumiki opens her mouth to reply, and then shuts it. For a moment, he thinks Megumi might look genuinely impressed. Right, he has to figure this out.

“Vegetables next,” he mutters to himself. He can definitely do the chopping up fine, he’s had practice, and then cooking them… can’t be much more complicated than throwing them into a pan, right? He picks up some carrots, actually puts them on a chopping board without being told to, which is very smart of him, thank you very much, and gets to work on that. This part he knows he’s good at, the knife moving fast in his hands.

“Try not to cut off any of your fingers,” Megumi warns him, sounding like he is the concerned adult in this situation.

Because Satoru is an ass, he pretends to slip, the knife stopping millimetres before his fingers thanks to Infinity.

“Careful!” Megumi shouts before he realises what’s happening. When he does, his expression goes from concerned to sour, like someone put salt in his coffee. “I see. Very funny.”
“Yes, I am!” Satoru grins. “Don’t worry, chopping vegetables is actually my vocation. Maybe I should quit being a sorcerer, become a chef.” 

“Yes, I am sure restaurants are dying to hire someone who can barely fry an egg.”

“Honestly,” Satoru whines, “why are you all on my ass about frying eggs today?” 

“Who else…” Megumi starts, and Satoru cuts him off. 

“Nevermind! The point is, I am sure I could become a great chef if I tried.” 

Megumi raises a skeptical eyebrow, but doesn’t argue. 

Satoru is done with his carrots, which is a bit of an issue, because he’s not sure what to do after this. This is the part where he usually hands them to Suguru, so he should…

For a moment, he’s not in the kitchen with Megumi and Tsumiki anymore. He is somewhere at Jujutsu High, a couple of years earlier - hard to tell exactly when, it’s a night like any other. 

He hands Suguru the board with the chopped vegetables, and Suguru smiles while taking it.

“Thanks,” he says, softly, not looking up at him.

“I know,” Satoru says, “I’m so nice.” 

Suguru elbows him, and Satoru doesn’t even try to turn on his Infinity to stop him. “Don’t get too full of yourself,” Suguru laughs, “I’m still the one cooking for you.” 

He throws the vegetables into a pot. Satoru is no expert, but he thinks he’s making soup. 

It’s not long until it’s done - Satoru, under Suguru’s instructions, has laid the table for both of them.

The soup is… nice. Different from what Satoru is used to, less high cuisine from his family’s professional cook. It feels more real, somehow. That’s how things tend to feel with Suguru: real. Like Satoru is a person, not a combination of Six Eyes and Infinity that just so happens to be stuck in the body of a human.

Suguru narrows his eyes at him. “Is cooking for you really the way to get you to shut up?” He asks. “Maybe I should’ve tried it earlier.” 

“Shut up,” Satoru says, waving him away. “I am delightful and you love listening to what I have to say.” 

“You are way too full of yourself and you never shut up,” Suguru says, but he’s sort of smiling and it’s not technically a denial. Satoru takes the notion and wraps it up carefully, stores it in his heart for future reference.

They do end up eating in silence, for once. Satoru savours his soup, and he throws hopefully sneaky glances at Suguru. 

It’s calm, it’s quiet, and it somehow makes Satoru want to scream with joy. He thinks, nonsensically, that this is where he wants to be, forever.

“Satoru?” Megumi’s voice snaps him back to reality. “The egg is burning.” 

Satoru blinks a few times. His egg has, indeed, turned to charred remains. “Shit,” he exhales.

Tsumiki leans forward on her seat. “Satoru, are you alright?” 

“Yeah,” Megumi adds, and in any other moment Satoru would treasure the look of concern he gets on his face. “You zoned out for a second.” 

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Satoru waves them off. He looks at his charred egg remains, and at his chopped vegetables he is not sure how to cook, and decides to let go. “Screw this,” he mutters. “Who fancies takeout?” 

Less than an hour later they are sitting with their takeout boxes which, Satoru has to admit, is probably much nicer than anything he could ever have cooked, so maybe burning that egg was a genius move after all. Still, he can’t help but think about how much Suguru would have made fun of him for this. He can see it, the little smile he would have given, the I told you so face. 

Apparently, Suguru isn’t content haunting his dreams, he also has to interrupt his waking moments. Asshole.

This has been happening more and more - he dreams about Suguru, and then he can’t stop himself from thinking about him, and then his Six Eyes flood him with memories at the worst possible time. The truth is simply that he misses Suguru like a lung, and the more he tries not to think about him the worst it gets. The dreams, the kind memories of a past they can never go back to, those are almost better than picturing what Suguru must have looked like as he slaughtered that village, covered in blood and probably heartbroken, and it’s still better than remembering his face the last time Satoru saw him, when he realised that there was no bringing him back. 

Yeah, Satoru is doing fine after the - well, he’s not sure he can call it a breakup, because they were technically never dating. A break seems more accurate, or maybe a fracture, because the carefully constructed thing they had built like each other hasn’t broken cleanly, and has left sharp pieces that Satoru keeps cutting himself on. He keeps getting lost in possibilities - would it have hurt more or less if they had actually been together, if Satoru had actually worked up the fucking courage to ask him out properly instead of just shamelessly flirting with him until Suguru finally decided to make a move? He thinks, even if he had, even if Suguru had said yes, even if they had been a real couple who went on dates and held hands in public and called each other pet names, Suguru would have left anyway. Suguru had been splintering for too long, and Satoru had seen it happen before his eyes, and he hadn’t been enough to stop him, so he had no reason to think things would have been in any way different if they had actually been dating, but there must have been something. Something he could have said or done, something to catch Suguru’s freefall before he went and slaughtered a whole village. Goddamnit, even after - he knows Suguru well enough to know there must have been a moment of doubt after, before he went and decided to commit and killed his own fucking parents, and if only Satoru could have gotten to him then - then what? Satoru has never been the best listener, nor the best shoulder to cry on. Actually, Suguru has given him shit before for what he called his ‘complete and utter lack of tact’. So, yeah. Maybe there was never a time, or a place, or a way, for Satoru to stop this from happening. Maybe, power of a god and all that, he simply wasn’t enough.

Aw, shit. He’s zoning out again.

“So, how’s school going?” He blurts out, realising a second too late that he’s interrupting Megumi, which means that he’s probably exposing himself for zoning out.

Megumi narrows his eyes at him. Oh, yeah, he is definitely reading through Satoru’s bullshit. He purses his lips. “You were not paying attention again, weren’t you,” he says flatly.

“Megumi!” Satoru presses a hand to his chest as dramatically as he can. “How could you accuse me of such a thing! I have never zoned out of anything, not once in my life!”

Tsumiki giggles, but Megumi simply raises an eyebrow at him. “Yeah? Then what was I saying?” 

Satoru opens his mouth to reply, then snaps it shut. “Fine, fine,” he says instead. “I was actually thinking about how we should do something together soon. You know, take a day off, do something fun.” He definitely needs the time off, and he’s pretty sure that these kids haven’t done anything fun , that kids are supposed to do, in probably years. He is pretty sure he will take them to Disney if they ask.

“Can we go to the zoo?” Tsumiki says, sheepish, like she’s embarrassed by the request. Satoru’s stomach twists unpleasantly. “I want to see the otters.”

Aw, man, he went to the zoo with Suguru, once in first year. They were supposed to be looking for a curse, but instead they took advantage of the completely empty zoo to wander around the enclosures, looking at the animals. It had been the first time he’d seen Suguru laugh properly - a real laugh, his cheeks going red and tears in his eyes. It was the time they still argued more often than not, the fact that a stupid pun he’d made about bears had broken through Suguru’s walls like that had made Satoru feel incredibly pleased with himself. And, well. He’d found out he liked the sound of Suguru’s laugh.

He shakes himself back to reality. “Megumi, what do you think? Does the zoo sound good?”

Megumi shrugs. “Yeah, ‘s fine.” He says it nonchalantly, but he’s still just a kid, and his eyes are filled with excitement. 

Oh, well. He can endure some depressing memories of Suguru for the sake of these kids. 

“Zoo it is, then!” Satoru says with a clap. “I’m gonna take a day off work, and we’ll go there instead of school. And also eat tons of ice cream.” 

Tsumiki giggles again. She does this thing - this little laugh, almost stifled, like she worries a full laugh will bother someone, and it always makes Satoru want to punch whoever ever made her feel like that. The kids don’t talk much about their parents - well, Megumi doesn’t talk about Toji at all, which is probably for the best - but it also doesn’t seem like they were especially awful. That said, it’s still clear in the way they are surprised whenever Satoru brings them sweets, or sits down to watch a movie with them, that they didn’t let them live the most fantastic childhood, either, and Satoru knows quite a lot about what that’s like, so he’s determined to change that. 

As part of his brilliant ‘let Tsumiki and Megumi experience fun childhood things’ plan, and also because Satoru wants to, they end up watching a movie after dinner, so they all snuggle up on the couch, passing around a bag of chocolates. Tsumiki and Megumi barely last half of the movie before falling asleep, and Satoru has to remind himself that they are just children after all, they don’t have the same propensity for all-nighters that he does. But Tsumiki is drooling on his leg, which shouldn’t be as adorable as it is, and even Megumi, on his other side, has fallen asleep leaning against his shoulder, so Satoru decides to leave them for now, letting the movie continue to play and his thoughts wander.

God, he’s had them for less than a year and Satoru is already pretty sure that he would burn down the world to keep them safe. He tries not to think too deeply into the implications of the fact that he adopted two children after a bad - well, okay, maybe it is a break-up after all. So what if him and Suguru never went on an official date, never called each other boyfriends ? They spent as much time as possible together (though, admittedly, there was very little of it by the end), and Satoru is pretty sure that at least some of their outings could be considered dates - that time they went to the aquarium, for example, when they sat for what felt like hours in front of the big shark tank and held hands and Suguru laid his head on Satoru’s shoulder, and all the times Satoru dragged Suguru to some new bakery and they always paid for each other’s cakes, and that time at the Autumn festival when they kissed under the fireworks. And they have kissed, multiple times in fact, always in quiet corners where the rest of the world disappeared and all that remained was them, and their lips against each other’s and their hands in each other’s hair. They rarely talked about it after, nothing more than a check-in with each other that it was fine, that it had been nice, and Satoru always worried that that time would be the last time until it happened again. He can’t help but wonder if this is another scenario in which he should have said something, told Suguru what it all meant to him, something he chickened out of one too many times. Suguru must have known, though, because Satoru knows that he’s never learned subtlety, and that Suguru could always read him too well not to know, and he still didn’t say anything back, and Satoru has spent one too many nights thinking himself to exhaustion about what it all meant. 

So, yeah, maybe Satoru is going through a bad breakup! He has seen enough movies to know that it is fairly standard for 18 year olds to get their heart broken, and that it is also relatively normal for newly heartbroken people to adopt a new pet, but he’s pretty sure most people didn’t get their heart broken because their ex had decided to go and be a genocidal maniac, and also most people didn’t cope with it by adopting children, one of whom he is directly responsible for orphaning. To be fair, he has never been like most people.

Lost in thought, Satoru hadn’t even realised that their movie is over, and that Tsumiki and Megumi are both snoring now, lightly - another thing that doesn’t have any right being as adorable as it is. He should probably put them to bed, but he’s not that confident in his ability to move them without waking up either of them, and he’s trapped under them, so he can’t move either. Oh, well. Guess he’s stuck like this for the night. As gently as he can, Satoru reaches for the remote and turns off the TV, then settles back against the couch. 

For the first time in what must be months, Satoru falls into a dreamless sleep. 

***

Time passes. Slowly, frustratingly so, but it does. Almost two years since the last time he’s seen him, Satoru stops dreaming of Suguru every night, but he’s still ever present in his mind. It doesn’t help that they receive news, sometimes: he’s gaining followers, he’s exorcising curses (though Satoru guesses he’s just acquiring them through his technique), he’s - well, no point dancing around it. He is killing civilians. He does it rarely, and it seems to Satoru, just by reading the reports, that so far he’s only done it if they get in his way in some way or another, but even that will not last for long. The higher-ups haven’t outright asked him to kill him, yet, but that time will come too, and when it does, well. Satoru is just going to have to refuse, isn’t he? Because as much as he knows he has the ability to kill Suguru, it doesn’t mean that he actually can. Sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly self-indulgent, he actually lets himself imagine what it would be like if Suguru came back - if somehow, miraculously, he realised that he’s destroying himself for a dream that will bring nothing but ruin, and showed up at Satoru’s door. He likes to pretend that he’d play hard to get, but really, he’d probably just let him in and pick up from where they left off. The higher-ups would object, of course, call for Suguru’s execution, but Satoru would stand in their way - what are they going to do, fight him about it? It’s nothing more than a dream, but it’s a nice dream. 

He’s been training Megumi. He offered to Tsumiki, too, but she was not keen on fighting, so it’s been just the two of them. For now, Satoru still refuses to let them set foot at Jujutsu High unless strictly necessary, they are too young and they deserve a few more years of being carefree before they get involved with that world, so there is a dance studio that they rent out once a week. They haven’t destroyed any of the mirrors so far, but Satoru thinks it’s only a matter of time, especially since Megumi’s Divine Dogs (well, they’re more like puppies just now) manifested. 

“The problem with using shikigami,” Satoru explains after he’s kicked Megumi’s ass for the third time today, “is that it is too easy to expect them to do the work for you, and your opponents will take advantage of that. Hence…” he gestures to Megumi on the floor.

Megumi huffs. “Again,” he says, standing up and adopting a fighting stance. Satoru smiles, because Megumi might be eight and not even half as tall as Satoru is, but he is still ready to throw hands with him at any moment, which Satoru appreciates.

“Alright, slow down, you menace,” he tells him, flopping down on the floor instead. Megumi doesn’t sit back next to him, and instead takes the opportunity to stare him down from his 130cm pedestal. “Let’s talk this through a moment. Why have you lost all of our spars so far?” 

He can tell that Megumi is about to crack some sort of joke at Satoru’s expense, but he holds back at the last moment, pursing his lips. Despite Satoru’s best attempts not to put too much pressure on him for now, Megumi takes his training very seriously. “I pay too much attention to Divine Dogs,” he says after a moment of consideration. As if to prove his point, the two puppies run up to him, and Megumi actually kneels down to pet them. Satoru knows that he should do his best to be a responsible adult in this situation, but the sight of Megumi playing around with the puppies is so cute that he has to physically restrain himself from cooing.

Instead, he asks, “And?”

“And I get distracted from my own fight because I end up worrying about how they are doing.” 

“Bingo!” Satoru claps. Truth be told, he doesn’t envy Megumi. He knows all too well how much easier it is to fight when he’s on his own, without needing to worry about people getting in the way. His technique is kind of destructive, he knows that, it’s part of what makes it so powerful, which automatically makes fighting along someone else difficult. But he also knows he’s done some of his best fighting when he had Suguru by his side, when he had someone to protect who could still match him beat by beat. Yeah, unlearning those patterns since Suguru left has been a fun time. “Most shikigami users just assume that the shikigami will do their fighting for them, so you’re already doing better than them. But,” he raises a finger, certain that he will make him look very cool and serious, “you keep diverting your attention to them, instead of taking advantage of the fact that they are distracting your opponent.”

Megumi mumbles something, looking down. He’s holding the black puppy in his arms, while the white one is licking his feet. Satoru desperately wishes he could take a picture. 

“What was that?” He asks, his grin wider than probably warranted.

Megumi frowns, like he doesn’t want Satoru to pry. After a moment, he says, “I just don’t want them to get hurt.”

Oh.

The thing about Megumi is that, being an absolute menace pretending to be an accountant trapped into the body of an eight year old who’s already going through an edgy phase, it’s almost easy to forget how kind he is. Satoru can tell he’s not like Tsumiki, who doesn’t have a single mean bone in her body, but he’s fiercely protective and committed to those he cares about. God, sometimes Satoru wonders what it would be like, if the jujutsu world was made out of people like Megumi and Tsumiki, people who are kind and people who care and people who actually want to protect, instead of stupid old farts who only care about keeping their own power and upholding a tradition that’s failed them countless times before. It would be a better world, maybe, a world where they are not constantly losing people and are expected to just move on and do it again. Maybe, it would be a world where Suguru could come back home.

He has no idea how he could ever make that world a reality, but it’s a nice dream. 

“Right, listen up,” he tells Megumi, knowing that he’s been quiet for too long. “You are thinking of yourself and the puppies as separate entities, and you are, but in a good fight, you and your allies want to be working as one. You trust them to watch your back, they trust you to watch theirs, and then you kick your opponent’s ass.” Megumi raises his eyebrows at him, unimpressed, so Satoru continues. “You want your relationship to be symbiotic, alright? You are not responsible for them, and they are not responsible for you, you are just helping each other out. Which means that you have to let them do their own thing, or you are going to get in their way, and also your own.”

“And how do I learn to do that?” Megumi asks, running his hands up and down the fur of the white puppy.

Satoru thinks about it for a second. “Well, you practice over and over until it’s second nature, I guess.”

“Alright,” Megumi nods. “I think I get it. Let’s go again.” 

***

It’s a calm, sunny afternoon, and they are sitting in an isolated corner of Jujutsu High. Satoru’s back is leaning against Suguru’s side, his head on his shoulder, as he looks up at the canopy of trees above their heads. It’s an almost perfect moment, so of course Satoru has to go and ruin it. 

“I’m thinking of becoming a teacher,” he says slowly. 

Suguru jerks away, and Satoru falls to the floor. “You?” Suguru asks. “A teacher?” 

“Ouch!” He complains. “Was that necessary?” 

“Oh, don’t give me that,” Suguru waves him away, “You could have turned on your Infinity, you drama queen.” 

“I can’t believe you would do that to me!” Satoru says, getting himself back up. 

“Well, we are in your head,” Suguru says, unimpressed, “So technically you did that to yourself.”

“Oh, shut up,” Satoru waves him away. “I hate it when you get meta.”

It’s been four years since Suguru left, and the dreams still haven’t stopped. Satoru is starting to doubt that they ever will.

“Other than inflicting bodily harm upon me,” Satoru says, and Suguru huffs out a laugh, “what’s your take on what I just said? Come on, hit me.” 

Suguru levels him with a look. “You do know that nothing’s gonna change.” 

“I don’t know that,” Satoru says, putting on a pout. “And you don’t either.” 

Suguru sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You are not going to change this fucked up world with - what, slightly questionable teaching skills?” 

“Fuck off, I’d make a great teacher,” Satoru snaps. Okay, that’s… well, he would be lying if he said that he hasn’t worried himself sick over it, that there is no point at all to this plan of his because he’s just going to fail miserably at teaching, but - well, Megumi’s been doing pretty well. He has another shikigami now, a bunch of frogs which Satoru is kind of obsessed with, and his hand to hand combat has been improving… leaps and bounds.

“Oh, even for you, that’s terrible,” Suguru says, but he’s laughing, loud and careless like he used to years ago. Something like this, Satoru only gets in these dreams of his. Time with Suguru, time where they can be silly again, pretend they’re still kids. And so what if this isn’t the real Suguru, what if he’s just a combination of wishful thinking and memories provided by his Six Eyes? It’s better than never seeing him again.

“I’m hilarious,” Satoru says, “and my students would love me.” 

“Sure, keep telling yourself that,” Suguru says, bumping Satoru’s shoulder with his hand. Before he can withdraw his hand, Satoru catches it mid-air and kisses it, because he’s learned that these are his dreams and he can be as self-indulgent as he wants in them. And, because there are his self-indulgent dreams, Suguru smiles, the tip of his ears going red. 

“You know,” Satoru says after a moment of silence. “I do know that things are not going to change if I just put together some platitudes about the power of friendship to a group of teenagers.” He looks down at his hands, fidgets nervously with his thumbs. “But if I could… If I could educate them, make them realise that things can be changed, if I could have people stand at my side and help me rebuild it after tearing it all down…” 

“What’s that gonna fix?” Suguru says, his expression going dark. “Say that you rebuild jujutsu society from the ground up, it doesn’t change what we do . Hell, how many of your students will die before you even get to making a real change?” 

“Hopefully as little as possible, if I am looking after them.”

“Oh, you couldn’t even save me,” Suguru says, sharply, and Satoru’s breath catches in his throat. “What makes you think that this would be any different?” 

Satoru keeps looking at his hands, and talks himself out of bursting into tears. 

“At least my plan doesn’t require genocide,” he mutters. It’s a pretty low blow, even in his own head, but Suguru started it.

“It’s not genocide, it’s evolution.”

“Oh, boo-hoo, forgive me then!” Satoru says, too heated. “If your evolution involves massacring millions it’s still fucking genocide. And,” he says when Suguru goes to open his mouth to argue, “if you say that you are not planning to kill people but monkeys, I swear I am going to punch you, and I don’t even care that you’re not real.”

Suguru’s mouth snaps shut, and it takes him a moment to open it again. “Why didn’t you tell me this last time, Satoru?” He says instead, and now they’re both shouting. “It’s not a bad argument, you know. You should have told the real me.” 

Because Satoru was seventeen, and tired, and heartbroken, and had been in too much pain to think coherently. He doesn’t say that, and instead sighs, sitting back. 

“Sometimes I think about finding you again,” he says slowly, quiet now. “Maybe I’ll run into you when I’m on a mission, maybe you are trying to take a curse that I was sent to exorcise, and I will finally see you again, and talk some sense into you.” 

Suguru huffs. He leans forward, takes one of Satoru’s hands in his. “You could probably find me, if you went looking,” he says. It’s more of a suggestion than a statement.

“Yeah, I could.”

“Then why don’t you?” 

Satoru squeezes his hand. “Because it’s just a fantasy,” he says. “Because even if I did find you, I don’t know what I would say.” 

He knows it in the same way that he knows fundamental truths, that the earth revolves around the sun and the sea shifts with the moon and that he’s the strongest, he knows that Suguru needs meaning to live, and that he’s kind and that he cares. And because of that, he knows that making him realise that all the death, all the pain that he caused is meaningless after all might just kill him, and Satoru doesn’t know that he’d be able to hold him back. He didn’t manage it before, after all.

“You know you are going to have to kill me eventually,” Suguru says, their hands still linked.

And yes, Satoru knows that too - he’s been asked before, and he’s always slithered out of it, but if Suguru continues down this path, the time will come when he does something that Satoru truly can’t forgive, and when that happens, he’s going to have to end it. Because he’s the only one who can, and because he refuses to let anyone else do it. Because he loves Suguru, with all his heart, and he knows it has to be him who puts an end to their story. Anyone else simply wouldn’t feel right. 

“Don’t remind me,” Satoru moans. “Honestly, do you want me to kill you?” 

Suguru shrugs. “I can think of worse ways to go.” Before Satoru can even think of what to say to that, he adds, “About the teaching thing.”

“Mh?”

“It’s not going to work,” without letting go of Satoru’s hand, Suguru changes position, then lays his head on Satoru’s shoulder. “But you should do it anyway. You’re just going to continue feeling sorry for yourself, otherwise.”

Satoru finally huffs out a laugh. “That’s not very reassuring,” he says, but he doesn’t really mind. He cuddles up to Suguru - if this were real, it would truly be a perfect moment - Satoru can almost see the cherry blossoms in the air. “Can we stay like this?” He asks, even though he already knows the answer.

Suguru sighs. “I am sorry, no,” he says, giving Satoru’s hand one last squeeze. “You need to wake up.”

And Satoru does.

***

He doesn’t spend as much time with Shoko as he used to when things and were simple and they were just happy, but he still crashes the infirmary every once in a while, raiding the bowl full of candy she has on her desk (she always gives him a half-hearted ‘it’s for patients!’ when he does, but doesn’t really try to stop him).

“Say, Shoko,” he says one evening, when he’s sitting cross-legged on her desk and she is, quite literally, elbow deep in a dead body, “do you think I would make a good teacher?” 

For a moment, she stops digging into the body’s chest cavity to level him with a look. “What’s this about?”

“Ah, you know,” Satoru waves his hands in the air, “just thinkin’ about it. Inspiring the youths and all that.” 

Shoko hums, going back to her dissecting. Satoru picks up another sweet and unwraps it, throwing it in his mouth and letting the sweetness soothe his nerves. He’s not nervous, not really, that would be ridiculous, but the thing with Shoko is, she saw it all. It used to be her, Suguru and Satoru, staying up late at night in their first year to get up to stupid shenanigans, and she had been there to see the aftermath of the Star Plasma mission, and she had seen Suguru slowly break and Satoru get further away, and when Suguru had left she’d been the only one not to offer him some empty platitudes, she had just sat next to him and offered him a cigarette. Satoru doesn’t even smoke, but he’d made an exception for that one time. She knew about Satoru’s feelings for Suguru long before Satoru knew, which means that whatever bullshit Satoru can pull off to pretend he’s holding it together way more than he actually is, she can definitely see through it. 

“Are you having a midlife crisis?” She asks eventually. 

“What?” Satoru brings a hand to his chest. “ Absolutely not, how could you possibly think that?” 

“You know, when Suguru left, I thought you were going to do something really stupid,” she says, still not looking up from the mass of organs she’s examining, “like dye your hair pink, or get a piercing, or hell, maybe even follow him. Frankly, this is less bad than I thought it would be.” 

“I wasn’t going to follow him,” Satoru says, half-heartedly, almost a whisper. “It wouldn’t have made it better.” 

“Yeah, well, you were always stupid when it came to each other. Remember that time when Suguru slipped in the snow and fell into the river in the middle of winter and you dived in right after him without taking your clothes off?” 

Satoru does remember that. They had both caught horrible colds after, and had ended up bunking down in the same room in the hope they would keep each other entertained while they isolated from everyone else. Unsurprisingly, they spent a good three days driving each other up the wall. It had been wonderful.

“Yeah, point taken,” Satoru shrugs. “But look, this is me stepping up and taking responsibility!” 

“You’ve never once in your life been responsible, and you know that,” Shoko says, unimpressed. “What brought this on?” 

The truth is, Satoru is not really sure. Some of it is seeing Megumi and Tsumiki, watching Megumi training, realising that he will be so much better than the stuck up bastards they call leaders. And, well. There’s the fact that…

“Suguru’s not wrong, you know.”

Shoko actually looks up at that, her gaze narrowed. “Are you also about to go on a genocidal killing spree?” 

Satoru waves her away. “No, I mean, he’s wrong about that, obviously,” he says, “but the jujutsu world does need change. Things will never get better, otherwise. You know that, too.”

Shoko shrugs, turning back to her work. There’s a crease between her eyebrows now. “You could just kill them all,” she says casually. “The higher ups, I mean. You have the power.”

Satoru laughs. The less time they spend together, the more he tends to forget that Shoko is a master at rolling with the punches. “Hey!” He says. “I thought you were trying to discourage me from going on a killing spree!”

“I am discouraging you from going on a genocidal killing spree,” she says flatly. “Didn’t say anything about killing sprees in general.” 

That’s a bit of a surprise, he hadn’t realised she was as angry as he was.  “I’ve thought about it,” he says, “but I doubt it would actually do anything. They will just put someone else back in charge unless I kill everyone, which is honestly a bit much.” 

“God, I forget you can actually be smart, when you use that super-brain of yours,” Shoko sighs.

“Excuse you, I am brilliant!” Satoru says.

“I watched you almost set the communal kitchen on fire because you thought that your cake would bake faster if you put the heat on to the maximum.” 

Okay, that one’s fair. It was close to Tsumiki’s birthday and he’d been kind of at his wits’ end with her birthday cake plans. In the end, he’d gone to the store and purchased a cake and decorations, then brought everything home so that they could decorate together, which had inevitably resulted in a cake fight. He raises his hands at Shoko in surrender, smiling fondly at the memory.

“So, why teaching?” She asks after a moment.

Satoru shrugs. “I think that that’s what I need,” he says slowly. “To make a change, I need strong allies who understand how fucked up this world is. And what better ways to ensure both of those things than to train them myself?”

She has a small smile on her face, and she leans forward on the body, like she’s trying to hide it.  

 “Good plan and all,” she says, “but what makes you think you’ll be in any way good with children?” 

“Hey, I have two kids! And they’re doing great!”

“Their father was the sorcerer killer,” she says with a shrug. “Their standards are low.” 

“Oh, come on! How hard can it be?” 

Shoko shakes her head. “I am giving you a hard time,” she says. “You’ll probably do okay.”

It’s not the most encouraging endorsement, but coming from Shoko, he’s pretty sure it’s equal to a blessing. 

“So you support me?” He asks, finding himself almost surprised.

“God help me, I do,” she says, taking off her gloves. “Satoru?” She throws the bloodied gloves in the bin. “When the time comes, make sure you give them hell.” 

***

While Satoru isn’t quite as ever-present in Megumi and Tsumiki’s life now that they are older, he still tries to spend time with them whenever he has the free time, which includes embarrassing them by going to pick them up at school. He has the free time today after clearing out a particularly nasty curse faster than had been expected, so he waits outside for them, taking in the sunshine and watching the droves of students run out of the school. He sees a group of little girls walk out huddled together, whispering rather loudly. They are laughing, and then one of them points at a boy walking with two others a little further away until her friend swats her hand down and they all dissolve into giggles. For just a moment, Satoru frowns. He was home-schooled before going to Jujutsu High, so he hasn’t really had the “middle school experience” that Suguru would sometimes refer to with a sour expression on his face. He’s never really regretted it, it’s not like he didn’t have plenty to do at home, and he’s sure that the kind of education he got there is way more applicable to his life than a normal, non-sorcerer school would have been - but sometimes he wonders. He sees Megumi and Tsumiki’s classmates carefree lives and wonders what it would have been like to have a normal life, even just for a few years, far away from the heavy expectations and regulations of the Gojo clan. He wouldn’t change who (or, to be honest, what) he is, he’s pretty sure, but. Things would have been a lot easier had he turned out different. It’s a fruitless thought exercise, anyway - he is the strongest, and he likes a good portion of what that entails, the thrill of the fights, the split second of satisfaction when he realises exactly how he’s going to win. He’s working on deciding if all of that is worth being so goddamn lonely, but, well. This is who he is. 

He shakes himself out of his reverie when he sees Megumi and Tsumiki walking out of the school next to each other.

“Hey, kids!” He shouts, definitely louder than warranted. “Your favourite mentor figure is here!” 

Tsumiki’s face opens into a smile when she spots him, and she raises a hand to wave at him. Megumi simply glares at him, and Satoru finds himself smiling.

“Hi, Satoru!” Tsumiki says when they’ve walked up to him. 

Megumi scowls. “What are you doing here?” 

Satoru shrugs. “Had the free time, I thought I’d come and hang out!” He goes to ruffle Megumi’s hair, and Megumi goes to punch him in response. Because they are surrounded by tweens and because it would be funny, Satoru drops his Infinity, so that Megumi’s fist actually connects with his chin. Turns out he hadn’t really packed any real power behind the punch, but Satoru still yelps dramatically, cradling his face.

“Ouch! Is that any way to treat your elders?”

Megumi shrugs. “You’re like, twenty.” 

“I am twenty-two!” Satoru whines. “I pay taxes!” 

Sure, he lets Ijichi file them for him, and actually go to the bank and pay them, but like, he does technically pay taxes like a grown adult! That’s what matters, right?

“Whatever,” Megumi says, unimpressed with how cool and adult Satoru is. 

Satoru doesn’t really have a retort to that, so he wraps an arm around Tsumiki’s shoulders as they start walking away, because he can always count on her. “So, how was school?” 

Tsumiki doesn’t reply, she just hums questioningly. 

“It was fine,” Megumi shrugs before she can decide on what to say.

“Tsumiki?” Satoru asks, squeezing her shoulder as gently as he can. “Anything on your mind?” 

“Megumi got into another fight!” She says then, the words spilling out of her mouth quickly.

“Tsumiki!” Megumi complains. 

“I am sorry, I just…” she trails off. The thing is, Satoru has known her for long enough to know that she didn’t tell him because she was trying to be a snitch, but simply because she worries about Megumi. That said, he isn’t sure her concern is fully warranted.

“Right, what was that about, kid?” He asks throwing a look at Megumi.

“Some older kids were giving a first year a hard time ‘cause they wanted his lunch,” Megumi says, pointedly not looking up at Satoru, hands in his pocket. “So I beat them up.”

Well. Satoru can’t argue with that one.

“Did you win?” He asks instead.

Megumi looks up now, giving Satoru his best attempt at an intimidating glare, which Satoru is sure works on middle school bullies, but not so much on Satoru, who has the power of a god and is also about twice as tall as Megumi. “’Course I did,” he says evenly.

Satoru grins. “Nice!” He catches the smallest smile on Megumi’s face, and lets go of Tsumiki’s shoulders to clap his hands together. “How are you two feeling about getting ice cream?” 

He takes them to an ice cream parlour nearby, and grabs them both the biggest cones they have. They eat in silence, but the sun is out and both of the kids are smiling, so for once Satoru doesn’t feel the need to chatter away as he goes to town on his own ice cream. Realistically, he’s going to get a call from Megumi’s teachers soon, saying some nonsense about how Megumi got into another fight and Satoru needs to discipline him better, and Satoru is going to chirp that, of course, he’s already taking action to make Megumi understand the consequences of his actions. Ice cream counts as consequences, right? He’s doing great at this single parenting thing, despite the complaints from the kids’ teachers, who keep being way too whiny about Megumi supposedly “being a hothead” and “not respecting authorities”. The way Satoru sees it, if the school kept a tighter leash on bullies and didn’t let them go around terrorising people then Megumi wouldn’t need to beat them up, so his behaviour can only be blamed on the school. Actually, they should count him beating up bullies as community service activities.

Despite his musings from earlier, sometimes Satoru can’t help but think that Jujutsu High is, deep down, pretty similar to a normal high school, right down to the old farts in charge who really have no idea how to take care of their students. Ah, fuck, he’s going down this rabbit hole again. 

“Hey,” he asks in a spur of the moment decision, “do you think I would make a good teacher?” 

Tsumiki and Megumi look up at him, Megumi with his brow furrowed. 

“I think you would make a great teacher, Satoru,” Tsumiki says, but very slowly, the way she does when she is preparing to say something she worries will be unpleasant. “But maybe you should, you know, learn to be a little more organised first?” 

Satoru laughs. “Hey, I’m plenty organised!” He says. “I have a diary and everything!”

Okay, just because he has one it doesn’t mean he ever writes in it. But, come on, it’s not like he needs to keep the tightest grip on his schedule, he already has Ijichi for that.

“Well, I don’t know what you are like as a teacher,” Tsumiki says, giving him a small smile. “Megumi, what do you think?” 

Megumi looks down at his ice cream, then back at Satoru. “I think you’re irresponsible and also completely lacking in tact,” he says flatly.

“Megumi, you wound me!” Satoru brings a hand to his chest in a tragic gesture. How could he possibly be hurt like this? And by his own kid, no less?

“But,” Megumi continues, undeterred. “I still think you’d be better than the idiots I am stuck with right now.”

Satoru grins. 

***

The funny thing was, Satoru wasn’t even supposed to be on the mission. It was a low grade, probably fourth or third at best, and his students should have been able to handle it completely fine on their own - and also, Satoru had been shipped to the other side of the country to exorcise a special grade. But he’d finished up early, because he often did, and he wasn’t really feeling reporting back to the school just yet, so he figured he’d warp to the location his students had been sent to, just in the unlikely case of them needing a hand. What he hadn’t been expecting was to find his students on a fight to death with curse that was definitely not a third grade. 

It’s his first year as a full-on teacher at Jujutsu High, after an awkward part-time stilt last year, and there only two first years this time around, both girls, and Satoru is pretty certain they are dating. He’s not the best person at reading into this sort of thing, but when he went to assign them their mission a few days before leaving he’d found them making out on a couch, so he thinks he can make an educated guess. Hard to be sure, though, him and Suguru made out a fair amount of times without ever officially dating. Regardless, the girls work well together, which Satoru is fairly certain is the only reason why this curse hasn’t managed to kill them yet. They are still both exhausted by the time he shows up, and Ai, the taller and more muscular of the two, is bleeding profusely from the forehead in a way that cannot be good. 

“Right, kids, stand down,” Satoru says, floating down to them. 

“Gojo-sensei!” Keiko, the other girl, turns to him in surprise, and the creature, which looks like a massive bat with six wings, takes advantage of the split moment of hesitation to lunge at her. Satoru warps right next to her and picks her up by the back of her shirt like a kitten before floating away, getting her out of the way. The curse screeches in displeasure, beating its wings faster, generating some kind of - is it shards, coming towards them? No matter, Satoru lands next to Ai and extends his Infinity to the two girls. The shards stop inches away from them, then drop to the floor as they lose momentum. 

“Stay back,” he tells the girls, taking a step further towards the curse. It is powerful, he can tell, probably somewhere between a first and a special grade, but he’s pretty sure he can take it down with a single good application of his Red technique. In a different scenario he’d quite like to show off and take his time with it, but the students are injured, and he’d rather get them out of here and back to Shoko as soon as possible.

“Sensei, we can still -” Ai says, because she’s a hothead who doesn’t know when to step down from a fight, which Satoru can understand, but he can’t let it happen under his supervision, so he cuts her off. 

“I said no.” He spares a look at the two of them, figuring he doesn’t have much time before the creature overcomes the confusion of its technique being stopped by Infinity. Ai - tall, pink hair and undercut, muscular body covered in tattoos - is definitely doing the worst out of the two of them, with the gash on her forehead and also what looks like a chemical burn on her arm that he hadn’t noticed before. Keiko, blonde and delicate looking (Satoru knows from training her that she can pack a punch as well as someone twice her size), is doing better, but she keeps stealing nervous glances at Keiko. She won’t be able to fight well if she is worrying about Ai, and it’s only a matter of time before a distraction like the one before costs her some serious damage. Well, time to finish this quickly. “You two stay back,” he orders, “Keiko, look after Ai.” 

“But-” Ai tries to argue again, but Keiko leans towards her and grabs her elbow, shaking her head at her. Ai looks at her for a second, opens her mouth to argue, and then closes it and nods. Satoru’s stomach contracts unpleasantly. They are so young.

He stops his train of thought from getting away from him, and gives them a smile that’s definitely not faked. “Watch and learn, now.” 

When he flies upwards again the curse aims straight for him. Turns out  it can fold its wings on itself and fly faster by rotating on itself, which first of all is kind of funny looking, and second of all it works to Satoru’s advantage, since he wants to get it as far away from the girls as he can before blowing it up. The curse dives after him, trying to bite him, but Satoru propels himself higher, and the curse bites into thin air. They’ve gotten high enough, and a real smile makes its way onto Satoru’s face.

“Got you,” he says, flicking his fingers and activating Red. Before it even realises what’s going on, the curse explodes into nothing.

Still smiling, Satoru looks down to where his students are. Surely they are gazing up at him, mouths wide open in awe at how cool he is.

And then, the smile vanishes from his face like he’s been punched, because there is a man speaking to the girls now, and while the shilhouette isn’t exactly familiar, Satoru would recognise the flavour of that cursed energy anywhere. 

For a moment, memories come flooding in. It’s overwhelming, and he hasn’t really felt something like this since he learned to use his Reverse Cursed Technique to deal with the sensory overload from Six Eyes. For a moment, he’s seventeen years old again, standing in front of Suguru in goddamn Memory Lane of all places, desperately asking for an explanation, everything in him screaming in pain. 

But he’s older now, and slightly more put together, so he swallows and takes a deep breath and flies down, because right now his priority should be his students. 

“Are you trying to fill their heads with nonsense?” Satoru asks, descending just behind Suguru.

He sees it, the moment when Suguru registers his presence, and Satoru feels some sort of perverse pleasure at seeing the way he stiffens, one of his hands closing into a fist.

“Satoru,” Suguru says, turning around, what’s clearly a fake smile plastered on his face. “Well, that explains why the curse I came here for is already gone.” 

Satoru shouldn’t be surprised that he looks different, they haven’t seen each other in years, but the cognitive dissonance between the Suguru he remembers and the Suguru in front of him right now still gives him a moment to pause. He’s gotten a little taller, Satoru thinks, but he’s also definitely lost weight, the flowing monk robes doing nothing to conceal the weight loss from Satoru. His hair is mostly down, flowing in ink black waves over his shoulders, which makes Satoru’s throat burn. He used to love seeing Suguru with his hair down, the version of him that only existed when they were in his room late at night, drunk on laughter and each other, but now it sets him on edge in a way he doesn’t like.

“Not here for me, then?” Satoru says, pushing past the knot in his throat.

Suguru huffs. His smile is different now, too - wider, but with nothing behind the eyes. It makes Satoru want to punch something.

“Are you going to kill me?” Suguru says. “It would be about time.” 

Yeah, it would be. Suguru is a pressure pot right now, and one day the time will come when whatever plan he’s been working on for years actually starts, and then things are going to truly and certainly go to shit. Like the higher-ups keep reminding him, eliminating him before that can come to fruition would be the wisest course of action. Of course, Satoru’s never given a shit about what the higher-ups tell him. 

“Depends,” he says. “You are not my priority right now.” 

He can tell that that catches Suguru off guard for a moment, but then his gaze shifts to the students behind him, a new understanding dawning in his eyes. The girls don’t seem to be doing too badly right now, even though he definitely needs to take them to Shoko sooner rather than later. They seem tense, and while he has no way to tell if they recognise Suguru, or even know who he is, they are clearly distrustful of him, both ready to shift into an attack position. 

For a moment, Satoru considers his options. He should leave and take the girls straight to Shoko, but he’s fairly certain neither of them are going to die on him just yet, and he’s also fairly certain that Suguru isn’t going to kill them. And, for the first time, Suguru is here in flesh and blood, not just a construct made out of memories and wishes in his dreams, and despite knowing that he really should go, everything in him is shouting for him to stay. 

“Girls,” he says, because it honestly isn’t a difficult decision at all, “will you give us a minute? Suguru and I need to do some catching up.” 

The girls give him a questioning glance, then look at each other and seem to reach a conclusion. Keiko gives him the smallest nod, then they start walking away.

“Don’t stray too far,” Satoru calls after them, “we are leaving soon.” They disappear behind a building, not giving any sign of having heard him.  “So,” Satoru says, looking back at Suguru. 

Suguru stares him down, and Satoru feels an ounce of satisfaction at the fact that Suguru is clearly as unsure of what to say as he is. 

“So,” Suguru says eventually, voice carefully even, “I am not sure I like the new look.” He gestures vaguely in the direction of Satoru’s eyes, so he must be talking about the bandages he’s been using as a blindfold. He moved on from the sunglasses shortly after Suguru left, because Suguru had been the one to give him his first pair and he was doing the equivalent of a post-breakup cleanse, hiding everything of Suguru’s that he had in his room in a shoe-box and shoving it to the back of his closet. He has another pair of sunglasses now, that he wears when things are quiet, but the bandages are his go to. They work better for him anyway, the sunglasses were not enough of a barrier. Of course, he doesn’t say any of that to Suguru.

“Well, your clothes look stupid,” is his intelligent retort. Despite himself, he raises his hands to his hair and starts undoing the bandages. If they are going to do this, he wants to see Suguru properly. 

Suguru huffs out a laugh, a single, fake syllable. “Got to look the part,” he says, raising his arms slightly as if to show off his stupid robes. “Honestly, these are pretty comfortable to move in.” 

Shoving the bandages into his pockets, Satoru restrains himself from groaning. What are they talking about? What are they even doing here, what did he think would happen if he stayed? It’s alright, he tells himself, he knows how to push Suguru’s buttons better than anybody else.

“Yes, gotta stay comfortable while going on about your mass murder plans, huh?” 

Suguru rubs his eyes, tiredly, like he’s explaining the same thing to a child over and over. “It’s not mass murder,” he exhales, “it’s evolution.”

“Holy shit, you actually say that.” Well, good to know that the Suguru in his dreams is accurate to real life. 

“What?” Suguru furrows his brow.

“Never mind,” Satoru says, waving him away. “Look, are we going to stand here and argue about ideologies again? Can I even convince you to change your mind?”

“No, you can’t,” Suguru says, quickly, like he’s asked himself the same question before. “I’m not forcing you to stay, Satoru. Why are you here?” 

Because I missed you . Because I don’t want to give you up. 

“Needless violence aside, your plan is stupid,” Satoru says instead, “you should know that, you used to be smart.” 

Suguru shakes his head. “It’s not stupid, it’s just ambitious,” he says, his voice low. “I told you before, didn’t I? If I was you, even my crazy plan would be achievable.” 

That stings, he doesn’t need Suguru of all people to remind him of how powerful he is. You used to understand, Satoru wants to shout. You used to know that I couldn’t do it all on my own, you used to understand that I needed you. It was us, we were The Strongest together. Imagine what we could be now if you hadn’t left. 

“Fuck you,” he spits out, angrier than he thought he would be, “you could have stayed, we could have found a way together, and instead you just…” 

“Oh, don’t,” Suguru says, poisonous. “We couldn’t have done it together, because this is what needs to be done. And you could never accept it, because despite what you tell yourself, you are good, Satoru.” He exhales tiredly, and for a moment he looks just like he did years ago, when they would lose hours talking in circles about duty and life and purpose. “You are not nice, and a lot of the time you’re not even kind, but you are good.” 

Well, goddamnit, what is he supposed to say to that? Differently from Suguru, Satoru has never spent much time tying himself in knots over whether or not he’s a good person. But Suguru was - is - that best person he’s ever met, and Satoru realises, now more than ever, how much he’s convinced himself that he’s on some sort of righteous path.

“Then why can’t you trust me?” He asks, tired. “Why can’t you come back with me?” 

Suguru sighs. “I am doing this for you, Satoru,” he says, small and frail. “I am doing this because jujutsu sorcerers need to be saved from themselves, and so do you.” 

How dare he. How dare he walk onto the pyre and set himself on fire leaving Satoru behind, and now saying that he’s doing it for him, when all Satoru wants is to have him back at his side.

“I never asked you for this,” he says. “Neither did anyone else, for what it’s worth.” 

“It’s for their own good,” Suguru shrugs, the fight having completely left both of them. “It’s for your own good, too. One day you’ll understand.” 

The way he says it, it’s resigned. He doesn’t actually think that anyone will understand in time, he’s just decided that this is the hill he wants to literally die on. Because Suguru needs meaning in life, and this is what he’s settled on. Satoru is very, very tired.

“If you cared so much about what’s good for me, you wouldn’t have left me.” It’s a low blow, he knows. He’s also angry and exhausted.

This time, Suguru recoils like he’s been struck, but Satoru feels no satisfaction at his pained expression. It’s not going to change his mind. Nothing is, at this point, and all they are left with are the remnants of what they mean to each other, and Satoru can’t help but ask himself, helplessly, when even that will stop being enough. 

“I’m going,” he says before Suguru can reply. “I need to take my students home.” 

Suguru doesn’t say anything, just looks at him, brow furrowed. He is in pain, that much is clear, but so is Satoru.

The girls disappeared behind Suguru, so Satoru has to walk past him to go find them, doing his very best not to look him in the eyes as he goes. Just when he thinks he’s going to make it past, Suguru’s arm shoots out, grabbing his elbow. Satoru’s breath catches in his throat at Suguru’s touch, and he turns to face him, his heart doing all sort of funny things in his chest. He sees Suguru’s mouth fall open the moment he realises what just happened, his chest visibly rising and falling.

“Why didn’t you…” Suguru starts, then trails off, looking at Satoru like he’s a puzzle he’s desperate to solve, and this is - it’s too much, it’s all too much. Satoru shuts his eyes, desperately trying to tell himself to walk away. 

“I don’t know,” Satoru says, almost a whisper. “I didn’t do it on purpose.” The truth is that unless  he’s extending it to other people or he’s showing off, his use of Infinity is almost completely automatic, it stops anything Satoru’s subconscious categorises as a threat and lets the rest through. As frustrating as it is, Satoru is not that surprised that it didn’t qualify Suguru as a threat and let him through. In spite of himself, Satoru opens his eyes again, only to find that Suguru is looking at him still, and he looks so similar and simultaneously so different to what he looked like years ago that Satoru thinks he might cry. 

“I was going to tell you to take care,” Suguru exhales. Their faces are very close. 

Satoru laughs, bitterly, and it’s almost a sob. “You know, if you keep on this path,” he says, shards of glass in his throat, “the time will come when I do have to kill you.” And then, pleading, “Please don’t make me do that.” 

“I know,” Suguru says, a pained smile on his face. “It’s okay.” 

Satoru wants to argue that no, it’s not fucking okay, that Suguru can’t just leave him to chase a pipe dream and then expect him to put an end to it, but they are so close to each other that Satoru can feel Suguru’s chest falling and rising against his own, and he can’t really think, or even speak, for that matter.

“You should go,” Suguru tells him, hurried, his voice low. “We really shouldn’t…”

“No,” Satoru agrees, “we shouldn’t.”

And then he closes the distance between them and kisses him. 

He feels Suguru stiffen at the touch, but it’s only a second before he relaxes again, one of his hands coming to cup the back of Satoru’s head.

It’s brief, and it’s chaste, and it’s a kiss that feels like crystal shattering after years of cracking. 

Suguru is the first to step back. His face is red, and he’s breathing heavily, and Satoru desperately wants to lean forward and kiss him again. Instead, he takes a step back, and then another, and then forces himself to turn away and go.

“Satoru,” Suguru calls back after him. “You know that it doesn’t change anything.” 

He doesn’t say this - this kiss, this moment, this conversation - he says it . Like everything that just happened is more than just an act, it is an object, something tangible and real. A feeling, maybe.

Love?

“I know,” Satoru says, and walks away. 

***

Suguru lies dead in the infirmary at Jujutsu High, an arm and a whole chunk of his chest missing. Satoru is the one who put the hole through him, but he still keeps staring at it in confusion - he thinks he’s lost somewhere between the bargaining and depression stages of grief. He’d moved past denial and anger even before Suguru died, so now he’s just - well, he’s experiencing something, that’s for sure. His emotions in the past few days have been a bit of a jumbled mess, and Satoru isn’t sure he wants to unpack them any time soon. Maybe if he plays his cards right, he’ll be in his late forties before he has to process any of this. 

“Fucking hell,” Shoko says from behind him. She is supposed to be filling in paperwork, but instead she’s just sitting at her desk, a cigarette in one hand and an entire wine bottle in the other.

“Should you be drinking at a time like this?” Satoru asks, more to give air to his mouth than anything else.

“Since when are you responsible?” She says, her voice a little high pitched. “I don’t know how you aren’t drinking.” 

Satoru shrugs. He’s never been much for drinking, the combination of Six Eyes and alcohol being unpleasant, but he’d be lying if he said he hasn’t considered it in the past few days. Still, though, he’s pretty sure that drinking would just make things worse, it might make him sluggish and also - ugh, make him acknowledge his feelings. 

“Are you gonna autopsy him?” He asks, gesturing with his chin towards the very dead body on the mortuary slab.

Shoko shakes her head. “I think the cause of death’s pretty clear,” she says flatly.

Satoru can’t disagree with that one. 

He walks up to the mortuary slab to look at the body, tilting his head to the side as if to study it. He looks - well. Dead. Unmistakably so. Satoru felt it, the moment his cursed energy turned into residuals after he killed him. He’d allowed himself a minute to sob - properly, tears coming out of his eyes and everything, and then he’d taken a deep breath and gotten himself together, because his students needed him. Shit, maybe Shoko is right, he is becoming responsible. 

“When I get myself to do the paperwork,” Shoko says eventually, “we’re gonna have to destroy the body.” 

“No,” Satoru says firmly. When he turns to her, Shoko is looking at him in a way that he’d describe as disappointed but not surprised.

“It’s procedure.”

“Don’t care,” Satoru says. “I want his family to have the body.” 

“His family’s dead.” 

Well, no need to remind him. “His chosen family.”

“Right,” Shoko says slowly. “The higher-ups are not gonna like that.” 

Satoru almost laughs, but it comes out more like a shallow breath. “What are they going to do, fight me about it?” 

Shoko doesn’t argue. She takes a swig of her wine instead, and then asks, “You sure?” 

“We can’t lay any claim to it, Shoko,” Satoru says, the words painfully clawing their way out of his throat. There was more he was going to say, something about how Suguru hadn’t been theirs in years, but nothing comes up.

“I’m guessing you’ve got a plan to get him to them?” 

“I’ll deliver it personally,” Satoru says evenly. He refuses to refer to the body as a him, because Suguru is gone. Satoru made sure of that.

 Shoko frowns. “Is that a good idea?” 

Probably not. It’s definitely going to fuck with Satoru’s mental state even worse than now, but he can’t stand the thought of anyone else doing it, so he doesn’t have much of a choice, really. 

“No,” he says, “but it’s the safest way to do it. I doubt they’ll try to attack me, but even if they do, I’ll be fine. Not sure about anyone else.” 

Silence falls after that. They’re both just staring at the body on the slab, lost in memories of years ago, of a happy past that they will never get back to. Stupidly, Satoru thinks back to the first time he kissed Suguru, at the end of their first year. It had been a quick, experimental kiss, and they’d both laughed before kissing again, and Satoru had thought, in that moment, It would be nice to do this forever. Well, that’s not going to happen now.

“I don’t know if I’m ever going to forgive him,” Shoko says, breaking the silence.

“I thought you didn’t care about the murder,” Satoru argues halfheartedly.

“I don’t.” She takes another swig out of her wine bottle. “But I don’t forgive him for making up whatever genocidal bullshit he made himself believe, and I don’t forgive him for leaving, and I don’t forgive him for this goddamn mess he put us in.”

Satoru doesn’t say anything - he doesn’t have anything he can say to that. He is pretty sure that he has felt every single emotion it is possible to feel about Suguru Geto, and all he’s left with now is just the dull sense of emptiness, the knowledge that the person who made him feel so many things is gone now. The loss is colouring everything else now, spreading like rot, and it still isn’t enough to overshadow one fundamental truth about Suguru: that Satoru loved him, and he killed him, and now he has to live with it.

He loved him, goddamn it. 

Suddenly, it’s all too much, and he raises a hand to his eyes to wipe away any tears that might be coming, forgetting for a second that he’s wearing a blindfold. It’s stupid, but he changed his white bandages to a black band this morning, and no one’s yet had the guts or the lack of tact to ask why. 

He has to leave, now, he can’t - if he’s going to break down, which he thinks he might, he can’t do it in front of Shoko. She’d get it, of course she would, but that’s why he can’t do it here. 

“I’ll prepare the body for you,” Shoko’s saying, because he’s still turned away from her and she probably hasn’t noticed any changes in his posture. “It might be easier if you get him out before the higher ups realise what you are doing.”

“Thanks,” he says, strangled. 

“Satoru…” she says, slowly. When he turns to her, he can see that her brow is furrowed. “Are you okay?” 

The look of concern on her face is genuine, but he can also tell that she would rather be dissecting Suguru’s body right now than having this conversation, which suits him just fine, because Satoru thinks that if he actually opened up right now, he might get so angry and upset and desperate all at once that he could end up doing something stupid.

“I’m fine,” he exhales, making for the door, “please let me know when it’s ready to be moved.” 

He barely makes it to his bedroom before he breaks down into tears.

***

Satoru thinks he must look pretty funny, from the outside, a grown man sobbing in his bed fully clothed. Adele isn’t playing, at least not physically, but she’s definitely there on some metaphysical level.

Honestly, he cries more than he thought was necessary or even possible, but he does fall asleep eventually. That’s probably even worse, because with sleep come dreams and with dreams comes Suguru.

They are on the beach in Okinawa this time, which feels frustratingly fitting. This was the last place - the last time they had been thoroughly happy together, before things got even more complicated. Suguru is wearing the same floral shirt that he was wearing that time, but this time the beach is completely empty except for the two of them.

“So, you killed me,” Suguru says eventually, after what feels like decades of silence. Time is weird in dreams. 

“Yup,” Satoru says. They are sitting facing the sea, legs crossed. They are not too close, but still closer than normal friends usually are.

“Was bound to happen, eventually.” 

“Well, it wouldn’t have needed to if you hadn’t fucking tried to kill my students, Suguru,” Satoru knows he sounds bitter, but he thinks he’s allowed. Suguru isn’t the one who has to live with this. 

“You are angry.” 

“Yeah, of course I’m angry,” Satoru hisses. “I’m angry that you made me kill you and actually Shoko is right, I’m mad that you deceived yourself into believing all of that stupid bullshit you go around preaching, and I’m angry that you never told me that you loved me.” 

Who cares if he’s being whiny. This is his subconscious, literally no one can stop him. 

“I do love you, though,” Suguru says. He turns to face Satoru, raises his hand to cup his cheek. “You know that. You must know that.” 

And that’s almost worse, because Satoru knows, because Suguru told him , that he did this for the rest of the jujutsu world, and he also did it for him. Because maybe if he’d loved him less, they wouldn’t be here now. Maybe, if they hadn’t loved each other at all, Satoru wouldn’t feel like his heart has been ripped out of his chest.

He reaches for Suguru’s hand, meaning to swat it down like a grumpy cat, but he just finds himself holding it instead. “Shoko was right,” he exhales. “I don’t know if I will ever forgive you for making me do this.” 

“I’m sorry,” Suguru says, and he looks it. “I thought it was the right thing to do.” 

And that’s what makes Satoru angriest of all, because it’s not even Suguru he’s enraged at - well, he is, but that’s personal. It’s also the fact that he lives in a world that made Suguru, the kindest, most empathetic man he’s ever met, believe that this was the only path for him.

“I know,” Satoru says, “I’m angry about that too.” He leans forward, knocks his forehead against Suguru’s almost violently. “Hey, Suguru. What the hell am I supposed to do without you?” It’s almost a plea. 

“You’ve been without me for years,” Suguru says slowly, like he’s explaining things to a child. 

“Not like this.” 

Suguru hums, then raises his head and kisses Satoru’s forehead. “You are going to have to figure it out. I’m sorry.” He leans back, and Satoru forces himself to look away from him, at the sea. It is beautiful today, like it had been years ago, when he’d sat on the same beach next to the same boy and he’d thought that the universe itself must have been made so that he could enjoy the sunlight with Suguru. Now, instead, there is just the truth that he would never say out loud:

“I don’t know if I can continue to do it all alone.” 

“If you don’t, nothing is going to change,” Suguru says, sharply. “Besides, you’re not going to be alone. You have your students, no?” The last part is softer, gentle almost.

“That’s the hope.” 

And they are great, his kids, the most recent events only proving to him that he was right and they will grow up to become powerful, gentle allies. But that doesn’t change the fact that they are still children, and Satoru refuses to take that away from them. But until they grow, until they can choose to side with him, Satoru is alone, the only equal he had dead by his own hand. He exhales something that’s between a laugh and a sob.

“It’s so unfair.” 

And it all is. The world that killed Riko Amanai, the society that destroyed Suguru, the choices that made Satoru kill him. A long, heartbreaking saga of injustice.

“Yeah, it is,” Suguru stands up, turns to look at him. “That’s why you can’t fall to pieces, Satoru. Because for now, you are the only one who can do something about it.” He offers his hand to Satoru, who takes it after a moment of hesitation, allowing him to pull him up. “Do it for me?” He asks when they are at eye level.

“Fuck you,” Satoru says, giving him a gentle shove. “But I will.” 

Suguru smiles. In another world, maybe, they did it together. And it’s so fucking unfair that this isn’t that world, that Satoru has to keep living on with the blood on his hands and the heartbreak in his heart, but the only thing that feels more painful than that would be just giving up on it all. 

“Come on,” he grabs Suguru’s hand, drags him towards the sea. “Come swim with me.” 

“Fully clothed?” Suguru asks, an eyebrow raised. 

Satoru shrugs. “Dream logic.” 

And so they jump into the sea together, and they take turns splashing each other, and they play and laugh as if they were still teenagers. 

“I think this is the last time,” Satoru says when they pause to take a breath, standing in the sea with their clothes soaked. “That I see you like this.” 

“Yes,” Suguru nods, “I think so too.” 

Satoru doesn’t know why he’s so certain. Suguru - this Suguru has just been a figment of his imagination, a combination of memories and wishful thinking and Satoru’s own fears, and there is no reason he shouldn’t keep living on in his memory, as they say. But he’s killed Suguru in real life, and it feels wrong to keep clinging to him like this inside his own head. He worries, if he keeps doing it, it will drive him mad, and he can’t let that happen. He has things to do out there.

“Well then,” he says. “We better make the most of it.” 

He pulls Suguru and kisses him like it’s a dream, because it is. Suguru smiles into the kiss, and Satoru thinks he can taste the sea salt on his lips. 

Or maybe it’s just the taste of his own tears. 

***

To Satoru’s shock and annoyance, the world doesn’t stop in its tracks just because Geto Suguru is dead. He continues to have children (well, they are teenagers now) to raise, and curses to exorcise and students to teach, and when he has the free time he has to make sure that none of his students are too traumatised by recent events that they are about to go on a killing spree of their own, because frankly he is not doing this again. 

Grief is a funny thing. It is not difficult to keep himself busy enough that he can push it down almost easily, but even at the best of times it never goes away completely. Ridiculously, it makes him think of Yuuta - the way Rika clung to him when he first met, the physical manifestation of the friend he had lost, and ever-present weight. The grief Satoru carries with him feels like a curse in the same way that his love for Suguru did, and he carries it with him everywhere. If he lets himself linger on it for more than a moment the curse comes out, all claws and teeth, tearing his insides to pieces. So, yeah, he’s keeping himself busy, trying as hard as he can not to think about it. He did make the decision, he reminds himself. He killed Suguru, and now he has to live with it.

A couple of weeks after the Parade of a Hundred Demons, Keiko and Ai come to visit Satoru at Jujutsu High. They have graduated now, and relocated to Kyoto, so Satoru doesn’t see them very often anymore. But they are the first students he’s had, so he feels some possibly silly attachment to them, and they were at the Parade fighting on Kyoto’s side, so they must know more or less everything that happened. They come to see him on one of the rare occasions he’s actually in his office, pretending to write a mission report but actually just throwing a small rubber ball back and forth against the wall. Ai ducks to avoid the ball hitting her in the face, then dumps a mountain of sweets on Satoru’s desk. Keiko grabs the ball mid-air and pockets it.

“Before it causes any damage,” she says flatly.

“Hey!” Satoru complains. “I’ll have you know, I’m an expert at handling balls!”

Ai groans, hiding her face into her hands, and Satoru grins. Good, if he still has it together enough to embarrass his students it must mean he’s not on the verge of a complete and utter breakdown. 

“I regret every choice that led me here,” Ai says. “I’m leaving.” 

She makes for the door before Satoru can decide whether or not she’s joking, but Keiko raises a hand to stop her. It’s a small movement, but Ai stops in her tracks and turns back around.

“Fine,” she mutters. Her hair is dyed red rather than pink now, and it makes her look older. She has more tattoos too, a scorpion wrapped around her throat that wasn’t there before. “We were in the area,” she says curtly, “so we thought we’d come and say hi.” 

Satoru smiles, reaching for the sweets. “Aw, you came to see your old sensei? That’s so sweet.” He starts unwrapping some hard candy. “And what are these, gifts to tell me how much you miss me?” 

“I don’t miss the attitude, that’s for sure,” Ai says, throwing a glance at Keiko. Keiko’s always been the quieter of the two, but when she does speak she’s as sharp as a knife. Which leads to the obvious conclusion: that Keiko and Ai aren’t here just to say hi to Satoru because they love him and miss him so much. 

Keiko looks between Ai and Satoru for a moment, and then says simply, “We heard that Geto Suguru is dead.” 

Satoru freezes for a second. “Yep,” he says then, doing his best to sound casual, which he’s pretty sure is not fooling anyone. “Very dead. I was there.” 

“Uh,” Ai says, awkardly shuffling from one foot to another. “You wanna talk about it?” 

“Nope, would rather die,” Satoru says curtly. He knows they’ve graduated now, but they’re still his former students, which means he can’t in good conscience tell them any of the things that have been making him feel like crawling out of his own skin and living as an exposed lump of flesh would be less painful than this . And also, he would genuinely rather crawl out of his own skin and live as an exposed lump of flesh than talk about it with anyone, right now.

“Yeah, okay,” Ai says, waving her hand in the air vaguely. She exchanges a glance with Keiko, then adds, “We just wanted to say. Sorry for your loss, or whatever.”

“Since I assume not many people have said that,” Keiko adds.

No, they haven’t. Technically, not even Shoko, though Satoru thinks that coming from her it would have sounded like a fucking joke. 

The funny thing is, after that incident a few years ago, the last time Satoru saw Suguru in the flesh before he came to Jujutsu High to declare war, when he’d briefly met Keiko and Ai too, Satoru hadn’t really told them anything about it, and they hadn’t asked. He should have known that they’d probably figured at least some part of it out, they were clever girls, and they’d seen Satoru’s face after he’d left Suguru behind.

“Yeah, well,” he says. “He had been gone for a long time, really.” 

He throws another candy into his mouth, hoping that the sweetness will untangle the knot in his throat. Sneaky girls, taking advantage of his sweet tooth. 

“That’s why you’re teaching, isn’t it?” Keiko says after a moment, lips pursed. She always looks at people like she’s trying to read their entire life story through their brows, and Satoru thinks that this is the closest he’s ever going to get to being scrutinised by Six Eyes. “So that no one else has to go through what he did.” Despite himself, Satoru stiffens, and she adds, “I did my research.” 

Satoru lets out a low whistle. “You sure did,” he says. Then, in a desperate attempt to diffuse some tension, he adds, “Hey, whoever you sensei was, he taught you well. Would love to meet that guy.” 

“Too bad he never learned how to answer questions,” Ai says with a huff, but he sees a smile tugging at the corner of Keiko’s lips.

“You’re not wrong,” he says after a moment, standing up from the desk, because his nervous energy is skyrocketing and he feels like he’s about to jump out of his skin. 

“What Geto said to us,” Ai continues, not looking at him, “that time in second year, was that he didn’t believe jujutsu sorcerers should continue dying endlessly for non-humans. That was his opening argument, and…” she glances at Keiko, crosses her arms. “He wasn’t wrong. His beliefs are bullshit, but people died at the Parade, we lost colleagues and friends, and we’re supposed to what? Just go back in the field and do it all again? This world, it’s fucked.” 

Despite himself, Satoru smiles. These girls are so determined, so sure of how much everything needs to change. Maybe not all hope is lost.

“You are right,” Satoru says. He can’t tell them everything about Suguru, about their first mission that went to shit and how they were just expected to go back in the field the next day, scarred teenagers with no words for what had happened. But, he can tell them something else. “Did you two know I have kids?” 

Aoi frowns. “Aren’t you gay?” 

“Yes,” Satoru says, actually laughing. “Did my impeccable taste in fashion give it away?”  Both girls stare him down like they are going to argue with that, but Satoru waves them off before they can, because he doesn’t need to hear any more negativity about his floral shirts, thank you very much. “They’re adopted. My kids, I mean.” 

“Don’t get me wrong,” Ai says, brow furrowed, “but you don’t strike me as a natural father figure.” 

“Ai, I’m hurt ,” Satoru says, dramatically turning away from her. “And after everything I’ve taught you, too! Did my teachings mean nothing to you?” 

Ai opens her mouth to reply, and Satoru is almost having fun, but Keiko cuts her off. “You were talking about your kids,” she says, giving him a pointed look.

Satoru sighs. “Right, well, one of them’s just a regular human, but the other is supposed to start at Jujutsu High next year.” If he decides to, he doesn’t say, because the closer the time gets, the less Megumi seems convinced that he wants to enrol, and Satoru isn’t pushing it. While he had technically agreed that he’d send Megumi to Jujutsu High in exchange for funds to raise him and Tsumiki, that was years ago, and even if anyone still remembers, it’s not like there is much they can do if Satoru decides to support whatever decision Megumi ends up making. What are they gonna do, fight him about it? 

And, well, there is the other thing too. “I want things to be better for him than they were for me and Suguru,” he continues. “And I want that to be true for generations to come. One day, I want to rebuild it all from scratch. That’s why I’m teaching.” 

Keiko and Ai look at each other again. They do that a lot, which Satoru would find a little bit irritating if it wasn’t that there’s something about these two young women who are able to understand each other without a word that reminds Satoru of a different time, back when things were easy and Suguru and him were not just best friends, but partners in crime too. It kind of makes him want to cry, but it’s a little bit hopeful, too.

“Well,” Keiko says eventually. “If you ever need help with your revolution, you know where to find us.” 

“Yeah,” Aoi adds, “you’re annoying and your sense of fashion is terrible, but you’re alright.” 

Satoru grins. Suguru might be dead, and he is probably never going to recover from that, but maybe, just maybe, he really can make it so that there never has to be another Suguru. 

“What I’m hearing,” he says, refusing to get lost in some sappy speech, “is that you love me and you think I have brilliant ideas.” 

“Alright, don’t get a big head about it,” Ai laughs, waving him away, and that’s when Satoru sees the ring sparkling on her finger.

“Holy shit,” he says. “Wait a second, you two are engaged ?” 

Aoi freezes on the spot, looking at the ring like it just caused her a terrible betrayal. “Huh, yeah,” she says. “It’s kinda recent. Cause, you know, we didn’t know if we were gonna live past Christmas, so.” 

“Holy shit,” Satoru says again, almost a whisper. As stupid as it is, it hadn’t really hit him that while he might be doomed to mourn the love of his life forever, others’ lives go on. He’s definitely feeling a number of emotions at once, and at least a couple of those are negative, but he still finds himself smiling. 

“Hey, do I get to be best man at your wedding?” He asks with a grin.

Ai says, “Absolutely not!” at the same time that Keiko says, “We’ll think about it.” The two look at each other and laugh.

“Hey, I introduced you!” Satoru says, but he laughs too, a real laugh for maybe the first time since he killed Suguru. He feels almost high, and as much as he’d like to blame it on the sugar, he thinks it might be on hope. 

Maybe, just maybe, things are going to be okay.

***

Unsurprisingly, things are not okay. 

Months pass from Suguru’s death, the new school year steadily approaching. Megumi hasn’t quite made up his mind yet about whether or not he’s enrolling in Jujutsu High, and at this point Satoru thinks he’s leaning towards no, which is fine. Satoru was kind of looking forward to having him as a student, but whatever, it’s what he wants. It’s not like he needs Jujutsu High to hone his skills, and also Satoru thinks the Zen’in clan is going to be mad about him not enrolling, so that’s a good reason to stand by his side. Other than Satoru cares about him and wants him to be happy and all that. Briefly, it seems that things are settling down, which means that they go to shit shortly after.

Megumi calls Satoru when he’s in the middle of a mission. As a general rule of thumb, picking up your phone when you are in the middle of a fight is not the smartest choice, but Satoru is Satoru, and Megumi never calls him, which makes the back of his neck prickle with nerves when he sees the name pop up on screen. 

“Megumi!” He says picking up. “What’s up? Did you miss the-”

“Satoru, you need to come here,” Megumi cuts him off, his voice fragile, and Satoru’s blood freezes. The curse that he was fighting lunges at him only to crash against Infinity.

“Will you fuck off,” Satoru mutters, blasting it out of existence. “Sorry, I’m at work,” he tells Megumi quickly. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Tsumiki,” Megumi says, and Satoru can see how pale he must look in his voice. “She’s… I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” Fuck. “Please, I don’t - I don’t know what to do.” 

“Where are you?” 

“At home. She just… collapsed.”

Satoru sighs. “Alright, I’m on my way,” he says, taking a look at his surroundings. There’s a few more curses around, a bunch of minor ones plus at least a couple of first grades. “Stay calm, okay? I will be two minutes.” 

Well, there is only one way to clean this up quickly, and it’s going to blast every building in the area to pieces, but desperate times. He’s going to have to fill out so much paperwork. Or, well, Ijichi is going to have to fill out so much paperwork, Satoru is just going to have to sit through a scolding by Yaga.

He casts Purple, and then teleports away without warning Ijichi. In the end, he makes it to Megumi and Tsumiki’s flat in one minute and thirty-three seconds. 

He finds Megumi and Tsumiki in the living room. Tsumiki is lying on the couch and Megumi is sitting on the floor in front of her. He looks as if he’s about to throw himself into a fight. 

“What happened?” Satoru asks, walking over.

“ I don’t know, ” Megumi says, bitterly. “She was talking, and then that mark appeared on her forehead, and she just… passed out.” 

There is some kind of seal on her forehead, something intricate and old, but Satoru can’t place it, at least not off the top of his head, which is not a good sign because his head is very good at remembering things. 

“Her cursed energy, it’s…” Megumi starts, his voice growing more high pitched.

“Yeah, there is definitely something wrong with it,” Satoru agrees, leaning over to get a better look at her. He knows what Tsumiki’s cursed energy feels like, he’s known her for long enough that it feels as familiar as his own. This, whatever this is, is - wrong. More bitter, like iron, or blood. And it feels stronger than usual too, even though she’s just sleeping. And of course, there’s that: she’s sleeping. Her cursed energy is all over the place, and there’s that seal on her forehead, but for now, Satoru can’t ascertain much more wrong with her other than she’s asleep.

“Have you tried waking her up?” He asks. Worth a shot, at least.

“Have I…” Megumi mutters, annoyed. “Yeah, of course I tried waking her up. I poured water over her and everything.” 

Now that he looks more closely, Tsumiki’s hair does look a bit damp. The problem now is, other than waking her up the normal way, Satoru is not sure what to do about this. Some sort of Reverse Curse Technique to jolt her awake, maybe? But she doesn’t need healing, she seems pretty healthy if you exclude the fact that she’s not waking up. And Satoru’s never been very good at using Reverse Curse Technique on other people, meaning he’s always been pretty terrible at it. 

He claps his hands together. “Alright, we’re taking her to Shoko,” he picks her up off the couch. She’s so light in his arms. “She’s going to know what to do better than me. Grab my arm, we’re teleporting there.” 

He’s already teleported once today, and did some pretty intense fighting, and now he has to carry two people with him. He’ll be fine. 

Satoru takes the three of them just outside of Jujutsu High’s barriers. He considers going for Shoko’s rooms, but he’s fairly sure she doesn’t really spend time there anymore. He thinks that, in her own way, she’s also grieving. In another world, they could talk about it.

“Infirmary’s this way,” Satoru says, starting to head over. He’s walking fast, and Megumi has to jog to keep up with him, but he doesn’t seem bothered. With the corner of his eyes, he catches Megumi taking in the surroundings. He’s been to Jujutsu High before, sometimes taking advantage of the training grounds and other times accompanying Satoru back from missions, but he always gets a little tense while he’s here. Satoru can basically see the cogs turning in his brain as he wonders about this place.

As expected, Shoko is in the infirmary, sitting at her desk, a pile of smoked cigarettes in the ashtray next to her. She barely looks up at him when he makes his way in. 

“What are you doing here?” She asks, disinterested. 

“Not me. It’s Tsumiki, I need help.” 

Shoko looks up at the urgency of his tone, furrows her brow when she sees Tsumiki in his arms. 

“Set her down on the bed,” she says, her tone suddenly more alert. “What happened?”

Satoru turns to Megumi, who swallows. “She collapsed,” he says stiffly. “That mark appeared on her forehead, and now she won’t wake up.” 

Gently, Satoru sets Tsumiki down on the bed. She just seems like she’s asleep, like maybe she went out with her friends and had one drink too many, you know, those things teenagers do. And yet, Satoru feels like his heart has frozen in his chest. 

“Do you know what the mark is?” Shoko asks, leaning over to take Tsumiki’s vitals.

“No,” Satoru says, frustrated. Six Eyes and the powers of a god, and he can’t recognise a stupid scribble on his kid’s forehead. 

“That’s not good,” Shoko says. “Right, try not to pace a hole into my floor while I examine her.” 

The last comment must be aimed mostly at Megumi, who’s pacing back and forth, hands clenched into fists. He looks more or less like Satoru feels, which is nervous out of his mind. Instinctively, Satoru goes to fish some sweets out of the bowl on Shoko’s desk, more to have something to do than because he’s particularly bothered about sugar right now. He offers one to Megumi, but he just stares Satoru down, unimpressed. More for me, Satoru wants to say, but the words die in his throat. 

“Okay, bad news or good news first?” Shoko asks after what feels like hours. Both Satoru and Megumi look at her in silence. “Yeah, fair,” she sighs. “Okay, the good news is that, as far as I can tell she’s in good health. She’s not about to drop dead on us. However,” she purses her lips, nervously, “that means that there is no obvious way to heal her. I don’t think she’s asleep because of the seal on her, I think the sleep is just a symptom of whatever the seal is actually doing. But I don’t know what the fuck it is doing.” 

“So what?” Megumi asks. “There is just nothing you can do?” 

Shoko levels him with a look that says that she’s dealt with too many patients’s families being arseholes, and she’s not impressed with Megumi’s attempts. 

“For now,” she says flatly, “we’re just going to monitor her to make sure nothing changes. Like I said, she’s not about to die on us, so we have time on our side. While we do that, we’ll try to figure out what the seal on her forehead actually is. Hopefully, if we can figure that out, we can also figure out how to dispel it.” She throws a glance at Satoru, who’s just been leaning against the wall, letting the words wash over him. “You hearing me?” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Satoru says blandly. He has heard, he’s just struggling to wrap his head around the whole thing. “Just so I have this right,” he starts slowly, “Tsumiki got cursed, and we don’t know what’s wrong with her, and there is no obvious way to fix it?” 

“Pretty much,” Shoko shrugs. She is looking at him like one looks at a delicate vase about to fall off a great height.

“Oh,” Satoru sighs. “Okay.” 

And then he bursts out laughing. 

It’s an insane reaction, he knows that, and he still can’t bring himself to stop. He laughs so hard that he can barely breathe, tears coming to his eyes as he holds his sides. Somehow, it hurts like hell, and he’s pretty sure that bursting into tears would be less painful than this, but Tsumiki is cursed and Suguru is dead and this year is clearly coming for the very last shreds of his sanity, because he just cannot stop laughing. 

Megumi and Tsumiki are looking at him like he’s lost his mind. He probably has.

“Sorry, sorry,” he exhales. “It’s just,” he tries to say, still doubled over with laughter, “this sucks so much.”

And then, Megumi throws a punch at him. Satoru sees it coming, and despite the fact that he can’t stop laughing, he could dodge it easily, or he could make sure that his Infinity is raised, but instead decides to let it happen, Megumi’s fist connecting painfully with his face. He packed some real strength into that punch.

“What the fuck, Gojo,” Megumi says. Ouch, that hurts more than the punch.

“Sorry,” Satoru tries to say, but he barely gets the word out before he is taken over by another fit of giggles. 

He really, really shouldn’t be doing this, because Tsumiki is comatose and Megumi is upset and he should be a helpful mentor or something, but Satoru has been taut as a bowstring for months and he thinks he’s finally snapping. 

“Ok, I can’t deal with this right now,” Megumi says. If looks could kill, Satoru is pretty sure he would be incinerated by now. Megumi glances at Tsumiki, then gives one last glare at Satoru before leaving, slamming the door behind him. 

Satoru’s chest contracts painfully, but even so, he cannot stop another fit of giggles from overtaking him. He’s honestly starting to struggle to breathe a bit. God, that would be such a funny way to die, he thinks, the Strongest Sorcerer laughing himself to death after one personal tragedy too many. That definitely would shake up jujutsu society one way or another, and the idea is so nonsensical that he laughs even harder. 

Somewhere in his vicinity, he’s aware that Shoko is searching through her drawers, but he’s too lost in whatever the hell is going on with him right now to be fully aware of what she’s doing. At least, until she walks up to him with a spray bottle and sprays him repeatedly. Satoru doesn’t even bother with Infinity, which is still down after Megumi’s punch, and the cold liquid hits his face. Some of it goes in his mouth, and it is unpleasantly bitter.

“What the fuck, Shoko,” he says, but to her credit it is enough to shock him out of his fit of laughter. He takes a few deep breaths, telling himself to calm the fuck down. 

“Well, it worked,” she says flatly.

“What the hell is that?”

“Oh,” Shoko looks down at the bottle, “it’s the detergent I use to clean up blood.” 

“Right,” Satoru says. He’s breathing shallowly now, still trying to calm himself down from the laughing fit. He sounds like an overheated dog.

“Are you having a breakdown?” Shoko asks, raising an eyebrow at him. To her eternal credit, she doesn’t sound particularly impressed.

“Mm-hm,” Satoru nods, “I think so.” 

“Surprised it took you this long,” Shoko shrugs, turning away from him. “I am putting this away, but if you start laughing again I am spraying you again.” She puts the bottle down on her desk. 

Now that he’s starting to calm down, the gravity of the situation starts dawning on Satoru.

“So, about Tsumiki,” he exhales, “do you really think there is nothing we can do?” He’s still sort of breathless, which is just typical. He fights special grade curses without breaking a sweat, but he’s completely undone by his own hysterical laughing fit.

“Not for now,” she says with a shrug. “Not unless we figure out what that seal is, I think.” 

“Well. That sucks.”

“Yeah,” Shoko agrees.

It’s so, so unfair. Isn’t Satoru supposed to be the Strongest ? Isn’t he supposed to be able to do anything with ease? And yet, whenever it matters, his powers fail him. Tsumiki falling asleep, Suguru leaving him and then dying, Riko Amanai being shot in the head. It hits him all at once, the same feeling he felt as a teenager, standing in Memory Lane watching Suguru walk away, watching his dead body as his cursed energy turned into residuals, and now this. The complete helplessness of it all. 

Before he’s even fully aware of what he’s doing, he raises his fist, throwing a punch against the wall next to him. Because he doesn’t want Shoko to be angry at him too for poking a hole in her wall, he raises Infinity again so that his fist stops millimetres from actually making contact, but it’s satisfying anyway. It still feels like hitting a wall, even if the wall was raised by Satoru himself. 

“Don’t destroy my infirmary,” Shoko says, barely looking at him. 

Satoru takes a deep breath. Then, another one. He puts his fist back down, then shoves both of his hands in his pockets. Takes them out again, then puts them back in for good measure. 

“Hey, Shoko,” he says, his voice coming out smaller than he expected. “Why does this keep happening to me?” Shoko looks at him properly this time, her head cocked to the side. “I thought I was supposed to be strong. Why do I keep losing the people I care about? Suguru, and now this, I just…” he takes a sharp breath. “What’s the point of being the strongest if I can’t even hold on to them?” 

When Shoko looks at him, she doesn’t seem pitying. She has the same flat expressions that he’s seen on her face countless times before, when she wonders how much she wants to involve herself in other people’s problems. 

“It’s because you are just some guy, Satoru,” she says eventually, nothing particularly gentle about her tone. “Yeah, so you are the Strongest Sorcerer. You are not a god, Satoru, no matter how much the higher-ups like to pretend so, and no matter how much you have been telling yourself.” She pauses for a moment, like she’s weighing her words. Then she adds, “You might be super strong, but not everything can be under your control. And it sucks, but the life of a sorcerer is shitty. Whether or not you’re the strongest.”

“Awfully cynical of you,” Satoru hums as her words settle in.

“What can I say,” she shrugs. “Do you know how many dead bodies I handle on a regular basis? That’s bound to make anyone cynical.” 

It suddenly hits Satoru, no one’s ever told him that while he might be the Strongest Sorcerer, he’s still just some guy. No one since Suguru left. 

“I am sorry,” he says, and he’s not certain it’s just Shoko he’s apologising to. “You’re right.” 

“I very often am,” Shoko says, a hint of a smile playing on her lips. “Have you calmed down?” 

“A bit,” Satoru says, because while he still feels like his heart has been ripped out of his chest and put through a food processor, he’s feeling considerably less out of his mind than he did a few minutes ago. He digs the back of his hands into his blindfold, an approximation of rubbing his eyes. “I’ll be okay.” 

“Good,” she says, “because, and I am going to deny saying this later, but unfortunately you’re one of my best friends, and it would be awful if you also went off the fucking rails.” 

Objectively, Satoru has a vague idea that he and Shoko count as friends. They tick all the boxes, from having known each other for a long time to spending time together. But there has been a barrier between them for years now, realistically since Suguru left, the weight of too many memories and too much lost happiness pulling them apart. For a while, Satoru had given up altogether on having such a thing as friends, accepting that being who he was - what he was, was always going to keep him shielded from everyone else, for better or worse. So, hearing her say this now, it’s… well, it’s a lot. But Satoru’s heart settles a little more in his chest. 

“Aw, Shoko,” he huffs out, grateful that with the blindfold on she can’t see the tears that might or might not be forming in his eyes, “I am your best friend? That’s kind of embarrassing.”

“Shut up,” she says, but she’s smiling. “I tolerate you at best.”

“No, you said I’m your best friend! No take backs!” 

“I’m going to spray you again.” 

“Shoko! You would do that to your best friend ?”

Shoko laughs, goes to give him a little shove when her hand is stopped by Infinity. She quirks an eyebrow at him, so Satoru drops Infinity and then bump his shoulder against hers. They both laugh, openly and freely, and for just a moment, things don’t look so bad. Of course, it can’t last. 

“What are we going to do about Tsumiki?” Satoru asks after a moment. 

“I’d say move her out of the infirmary, for now,” Shoko says. She’s taken a cigarette out of her pocket and is lighting it, and Satoru decides not to ask whether or not that’s something she should be doing in the infirmary. “No point in her taking up a bed in here while her condition is stable. Then we figure out what the hell it is that got cast on her and we dispel it. And then we find who it was that cast it on her and I assume you blast them to pieces, or something.”

“I like that plan,” Satoru nods. “Sounds easy when you put it like that.”

“Well, yeah, I’m a doctor. I’m plenty comforting.” 

Satoru turns to her, and while she can’t see his eyebrows raising under the blindfold, he’s pretty sure she can feel them, because she simply takes a drag of her cigarette and blows the smoke back in his face.

“See? Comforting.”

“Whatever you say.” To be fair, she did just calm him down from a panic attack. 

They end up waiting in silence for Megumi to come back - he will come back, right? Satoru knows that he upset him, and that Megumi’s probably mad at him now, but he’s been mad at him before, and he’s never ended up doing anything stupid because of it before. Satoru really hopes that Megumi just comes back without getting himself into trouble, because he’s pretty sure that having to worry about his other kid too might be just what does him in. He does feel calmer now, but he’s not going to try and pretend to himself that years of really complicated bottled up feelings can be solved with just a minor breakdown and the power of friendship. 

Shoko offers him one of her cigarettes at some point, but Satoru brushes her off, because cigarettes taste like cement to him, thank you very much. Instead, he reaches out to Shoko’s snack bowl and grabs some sweets. Shoko shakes his head at him with a smile, and Satoru unapologetically shoves a whole handful of sweets into his mouth. She actually snort-laughs at that, choking on her own cigarette, which makes Satoru feel incredibly smug. 

It’s nice, this. Friendship. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like. 

Shoko is on her third cigarette when Megumi makes it back to the infirmary and immediately glares at Satoru. Satoru briefly considers apologising, then decides that that’s simultaneously embarrassing for him and Megumi, so he just updates him on what the plans to take care of Tsumiki are.

“So there’s nothing we can do now?” He asks, frustration seeping clearly through his voice. 

“Not for now, no,” Shoko says, “but I think we’ll get there.”

Megumi nods, then closes his eyes like he’s bracing himself to say something. When he opens them again, he looks straight at Satoru.

“I’m starting at Jujutsu High next year,” he says evenly, though his cursed energy flickers with the words. 

“Wait, what?” Satoru asks, leaning forward towards him.

“I couldn’t do anything to help her today,” Megumi says, fists clenched. “If I’d been stronger, maybe…”

“Megumi, no,” Satoru interrupts him, raising his hand. He can’t have Megumi going around blaming himself for this. “Both Shoko and I couldn’t do anything to help, it’s not your fault if…”

“Still,” Megumi says, unrelenting. “I need to be stronger, and I need to learn more. So I’m enrolling here at Jujutsu High.” 

Well. Satoru did not see that coming. He turns slightly towards Shoko, who gives him a shrug, so Satoru pulls down his blindfold to look Megumi in the eyes properly. People have a tendency to get nervous when they are under the full scrutiny of Six Eyes, but Megumi doesn’t look away.

“Are you sure?” Satoru asks.

Megumi doesn’t drop his gaze. “Yes.”

“Well, then,” Satoru says, allowing a smile to make its way onto his face. “Guess I’m going to be your sensei soon.” 

“Don’t,” Megumi scowls. “I’m still mad at you.” 

Yeah, that’s fair. “You can enroll in the Kyoto school if you want, Megumi,” Satoru reminds him. Sure, it would kind of break Satoru’s heart because he was looking forward to teaching Megumi, but, whatever. He needs to let him fly out of the nest or something.

“No, I want you,” Megumi says. Then, “Don’t get a big head about it. I’m doing this for Tsumiki, not for you.” 

Despite everything, Satoru smiles. “Of course not.” 

***

And then a teenager eats a finger, and things take an interesting turn. 

For the second time in two years, Satoru finds himself standing in front of the higher-ups, arguing against them flat out killing a teenager, no matter how dangerous. Really, with how short-handed they constantly are, you’d think that they’d jump at the opportunity of welcoming a few more powerful people into their ranks, but nooooo , they might threaten their precious status quo! God, they’re such a bunch of blabbering cowards, that sometimes Satoru hopes they would just try to get in his way, only for the satisfaction of finally blasting them to pieces and getting rid of them once and for all. 

But no, that would not work in the long run, so he takes deep breaths, and when Megumi asks him to save Itadori Yuuji’s life, Satoru talks, and argues, and threatens just a smidge, until the bastards accept that killing him now would be a waste, not when he’s got such strong potential as a vessel. Keeping him alive until they’ve found the rest of the fingers will do for now, and when that’s done, Satoru will figure out the rest. And if Yuuji does lose control at any point, Satoru can just take him down. But Megumi would probably be upset at him if he did, so hopefully that doesn’t happen. And also, Satoru likes Yuuji. Jujutsu sorcerers are, by nature, depressed bastards always ready to go off about the unfairness of life, and while Satoru is certain that Yuuji’s happy-go-lucky demeanour must be hiding some flavour of mental illness of its own, it is a nice change from the depressing schmucks Satoru usually deals with. 

Maybe it’s because of Yuuji’s carefree attitude, or because Megumi seems to be settling in well at Jujutsu High, or because the new first year trio reminds Satoru of happier times, but the start of the new year does bring a new sense of peace with it, something that Satoru had been fully ready to give up on. Megumi, grumpy as he continues to be, seems to be happy with his classmates, and as much as he complained about Satoru putting Yuuji in the room next to his, Satoru gets a feeling that he does enjoy his presence more than he lets on. Satoru keeps thinking back to the way he’d said yes when he’d asked him if he wanted to save Yuuji because of his own personal feelings, with absolute certainty. It is unusual for Megumi to openly display such a level of care towards anyone other than his sister, so Satoru keeps mulling it over in his head, a small buzz in his ear every time he does, like something in his subconscious is telling him to pay attention. Regardless of Satoru’s weird gut instincts, though, it is good for Megumi to have friends his age, which is why it breaks Satoru’s heart to find Megumi sitting in the rain outside an evacuated prison, Yuuji’s dead body laid out next to him. 

“Megumi,” Satoru says to announce himself. Megumi looks up at him, and Satoru is almost certain that the wetness on his cheeks is not just rain. Next to him, Yuuji is shirtless, a hole where his heart should be. For a moment, Satoru staggers, thinking he might fall. He’s never lost a student before. 

He was supposed to be gone, a mission overseas, but Ijichi called him as soon as it became clear that things at the prison were taking a bad turn, and Satoru had teleported over as fast as he could. Not fast enough, clearly.

“What happened?” Satoru asks, not quite sure what to say. Experience has proven time and again that he’s not the best at comforting people.

Megumi stands up, walks towards him shaking his head. It’s clear that he’s trying to answer the question, but the words are just not coming up. Alright, then. Not talking is easier, so Satoru just opens his arms gingerly, an uncertain offer. He half expects Megumi to tell him to fuck off, but he dives into Satoru’s arms instead, burying his head into his chest, and now he’s straight up sobbing against Satoru’s clothes. Satoru hugs him properly, rubbing what he hopes are soothing circles on his back.

“Hey,” he says, feeling stupid and angry and heartbroken all at once, “It’s okay, it’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.” 

Megumi sobs harder. Fuck. 

“He did it for me,” Megumi says, the words choked out. “He was going to… He…” 

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” Satoru says slowly, fighting against the knot in his throat. “You don’t have to tell me now. It’s okay.” 

He doesn’t know how long he stands there with Megumi in his arms, whispering soothing nonsense and trying to quell down the desire to punch something or join in with the crying or maybe just lie down in the dirt and never get up again. Every time, every single time, Satoru thinks that he’s reached the peak of how helpless he can feel, and every time he manages to be surprised. Eventually, by the time Ijichi comes back to pick them up, Megumi’s mostly calmed down, taking uneven breaths against Satoru’s chest. Out of a wise sense of self-preservation, Ijichi does not say anything as they load Yuuji’s body into the car, and he drives them back to Jujutsu High in silence. The next couple of hours are a blur, between bringing the body to the morgue, checking on Kugisaki Nobara, and shouting at Yaga that Megumi will give a mission report once Shoko’s made sure that he’s not about to drop dead, he just fought a special grade, for god’s sake. 

Eventually, Satoru catches Megumi alone in the infirmary, Shoko having mysteriously disappeared while still leaving the “I’m with a patient so you better fucking knock” that she has on the door up. Slowly, Megumi, explains what happened, from the special grade curse that they were expected to fight to Yuuji snapping back in control of Sukuna to defend Megumi. 

“I’m sorry, Megumi,” Satoru says when he’s done talking. “That sucks.” He never claimed to be good with words.

Megumi lets out a little breathless laugh. “Yeah,” he exhales.

Satoru narrows his eyes at him. “You know that this isn’t your fault, right?” 

Megumi shakes his head. “If I’d been stronger…”

“No,” Satoru cuts him off. “Even if you’d been stronger… Megumi, you were never supposed to be there.” 

He can see it now with crystal clarity: how he was sent overseas, how every sorcerer able to deal with a curse such as the one at the detention centre was somehow unavailable. Sure, now that Suguru is dead and both Tsukumo Yuki and Yuuta are overseas, Satoru is literally the only special grade they have on hand, but in any other situation, they would have spared a couple of first grades to sort the curse out. But no, someone - Satoru’s money is on Gakuganji, the old bastard - wanted Yuuji dead, and was willing to sacrifice two other young sorcerers to do it. Satoru allows himself a few seconds to think about how easy it would be to snap Gakuganji’s brittle bones, complicated plans of rebuilding jujutsu society be damned. It would be so satisfying, to look him in the eyes just for a moment before blasting him to pieces, to make him understand that there are consequences to endangering his students and to making his kid cry, and that Satoru is fucking done letting them destroy generations upon generations of young sorcerers. Satoru lets himself wallow in his rage for another few seconds. And then he calms himself down, and makes himself go back to the issue at hand, which is that Megumi just watched his classmate die in front of him.

“You said I had potential,” Megumi is saying. “Why can’t I save anyone? Tsumiki, and now Itadori…” His ears are slightly red, like he’s embarrassed to admit that he’s worried.

“Megumi, no, listen to me.” Satoru says, raising his hands in what he hopes is a placating gesture. He has never been very good with comforting people, but what Megumi’s feeling right now - the helplessness, the frustration - he understands it perfectly. It weighs on him every day like its own curse. “I meant what I said about your potential, and I still think one day you will be very, very strong. But you were not supposed to be on that mission, alright? Not yet, not until you’ve had time to reach your potential. I am your teacher, I’m supposed to be looking out for you. What happened, it’s more on me than it is on you.” 

He doesn’t tell Megumi his suspicions about the reason why they were sent there in the first place. If he’s right, which he probably is, he is better off staying quiet until he can challenge Gakuganji about it directly. 

Megumi shakes his head. “Don’t treat me like I’m a kid,” he says, his tone full of the annoyance that teenagers get when they think they are being underestimated. “Maybe I wasn’t supposed to be on that mission, but Itadori wouldn’t have died if I’d been strong enough to exorcise the curse before he had to bring out Sukuna.”

“Alright, listen up,” Satoru sighs. “We can spend however long you want debating whether there was a way for you all to get out of that mission alive. But you know what? I wasn’t here to protect you, despite the fact that that’s literally my job. I wasn’t able to help with Tsumiki, either. And before that, I…” he stops himself, because Megumi has known him for a long time, but to this day, he doesn’t know about Suguru. Satoru just can’t stand the thought of telling him. But the words are rushing out now, and he has to say something . “You think I haven’t lost people? You think I haven’t had missions go to shit? Of course I have! And I’m the Strongest. What makes you think you could do so much better than me? You’re just a kid, Megumi.”

For a moment, Megumi looks like he’s been slapped, and Satoru thinks he’s about to storm off, which would probably be fair. Instead, he looks down, running a hand through his hair, and asks, “How do you live with it? The friends you couldn’t help?”

Satoru thinks about it. “With a lot of guilt,” he says eventually. 

Megumi nods. 

“At the end of the day, I can be the strongest sorcerer out there, and it won’t change the fact that the the life of a jujutsu sorcerer will always suck,” Satoru continues. “But you can’t let the regrets get to you too much. We wouldn’t get anything done otherwise.”

“That’s…” Megumi starts, and Satoru can think of a number of ways to end that sentence. Awful. Unfair. Just really fucking depressing. “Surprisingly self-aware coming from you,” is what he says instead. 

“Well, you know me,” Satoru says with a shrug, “I’m really introspective and shit.” 

Megumi narrows his eyes at him. “You really aren’t.” 

“Well, that,” Satoru shoves his hands into his pockets, “and a friend recently talked some sense into me.” 

For a moment, he thinks he sees the hint of a smile on Megumi’s face, but it’s gone as quickly as it came. “This doesn’t change anything, you know,” Megumi says. “I still want to get stronger, and I still want to be a jujutsu sorcerer. I don’t regret saving Itadori, either.” 

Megumi is so young, still. But sometimes, when Satoru catches glimpses of the man he will become, he remembers the hope he felt years ago, when he decided to become a teacher, and sees what might be a better future unfolding before him. 

***

Good news: Yuuji turns out not to be dead. Or rather, he turns out to be very, very dead, and then not to be dead anymore. Satoru’s fairly certain that there will be consequences to this coming back to bite them all in the ass at some point, but for now he decides to take the win, it’s not like he’s had many, in recent times. Also, he can’t wait to see Gakuganji’s face when Yuuji comes out alive and well at the Goodwill Event. If they get lucky, maybe the old man will just drop dead from the shock and they will all have one less problem. 

Because they are keeping Yuuji’s survival a secret for now, Satoru ends up spending a lot of time with him. They watch movies together, and when Satoru laughs too hard when Yuuji gets punched by Yaga’s doll, Yuuji pulls an offended face but always laughs along with Satoru. Yuuji even cooks dinner for him, and while he, like everyone else in his life, teases Satoru about still not being able to cook, he never gets mean about it, and even teaches him some basic recipes. 

They are having dinner together one evening, and Yuuji keeps looking back and forth between his bowl of ramen and Satoru, brow furrowed.

“What is it?” Satoru asks after a few moments. “Have I got something on my face?”

“Well, you do have a blindfold,” Yuuji says easily. “Why do you wear that anyway? Does taking it off summon your domain?” 

“Oh? No,” absentmindedly, Satoru raises his hand to touch the side of his blindfold, “my eyes are just too pretty, can’t go showing them off all the time.” 

Yuuji frowns. “Is that true?” 

“Yeah, of course,” Satoru says. “Can’t have people swooning around me whenever they look me in the eyes.” 

Yuuji’s now seen him without the blindfold, when he watched him summon his domain to fight that special grade curse, which is - it’s fine. Satoru’s been taking the blindfold off less and less these days, not even because he needs to, just because he’s becoming unused to the degree of vulnerability that comes with having it off, but Yuuji’s his student, he doesn’t need to know about how his eyes still get tired if he has it off for so long, and how he’s come to dislike the feeling of nakedness that he gets without it. Plus, Satoru thinks it makes him look kinda cool and mysterious.

“Oh, do you have a girlfriend, Gojo-sensei?” Yuuji asks, instead of calling Satoru out on the blatant lie, which Satoru appreciates.

“Nah,” Satoru waves him off, “I’m gay.”

Yuuji gives him a little smile. “Oh, cool!” He says, and he sounds like he genuinely thinks it’s cool, instead of just doing that fake supportive thing that people usually do. Interesting . “Do you have a boyfriend, then?” 

“Nope,” Satoru says, a tad too quickly. “Too busy living that bachelor life.” He doesn’t say, I think I’m a widower despite the fact that I never got married, even though it would be funny. One thing that Satoru’s learned, is that despite not being the most academically intelligent, Yuuji is pretty good when it comes to other people and their emotions, so Satoru feels kind of uncomfortable under his gaze now. But, maybe because Yuuji is emotionally intelligent, he doesn’t remark on the way Satoru got fidgety at the question. 

“Hang on, why are you asking about this?” Satoru asks after a moment, eager to move the conversation on from his own romantic life, which is quite literally dead. “Do you have a crush, Yuuji?” 

“Huh? No,” Yuuji says evenly. “Wait, you brought this up, when you said people swoon at the sight of your eyes.”

“Ah, yeah, I did,” Satoru shrugs. “But I only brought that up because you were looking at me weird.” 

“I wasn’t…” Yuuji starts, then stumbles on the words, his cheeks going slightly red. Maybe he does have a crush, after all. “I was just wondering if you could tell me a little about Fushiguro and Kugisaki,” Yuuji says eventually, the words spilling out quickly. 

“What brought this on?” 

“Just, you know,” Yuuji says. “I haven’t seen them in a while, and I kind of miss them? Not that I don’t appreciate your company, sensei!”

Oh, God. Satoru’s heart sinks. Yuuji is so young, and so kindhearted. Of course he misses his classmates. Once again, Satoru lets himself picture reducing Gakuganji to dust for a few moments. It’s a mental image that’s been bringing him a lot of comfort lately.

“Of course,” he tells Yuuji. “What do you want to know?” 

“I guess, just, how they are doing,” Yuuji fidgets with his thumbs, then gives Satoru a little encouraging smile. 

“They are doing well,” Satoru says slowly, trying to think of the last times he saw Megumi and Nobara. “Their training is going great, actually, though maybe they’re not progressing as quickly as you are.” And then, there is the obvious thing. “But they are very motivated, because they miss you.” 

“Oh,” Yuuji says, sheepishly, the tips of his ears going red. “I miss them too.” 

As someone who is very lonely and also tends to go insane when spending too much time alone, Satoru has seriously considered whether keeping Yuuji secreted away is good for his health. He’s come to the conclusion that for now they don’t have much of a choice, which is why he’s trying to spend as much time with him as possible, but it still nags at him. This was one of the reasons why he became a teacher at Jujutsu High, because he wanted to make sure that his students could live out their youth better than he did, better than Shoko and Haibara and Suguru got to. It’s just for now, he reminds himself. A couple more months, and Yuuji will be back with the others. This is not like - this is not like the people they lost back then, the ones who never came back. 

“Sensei, could you tell me a little about them?” Yuuji asks after a moment. “Like, how did you meet them?” 

“Well, I haven’t known Nobara that long,” Satoru says, “We only met when she applied for Jujutsu High, so you know most of the stuff I do.”

“Does that mean you have known Fushiguro long?” Yuuji asks. It’s just a tad too quickly, and something tickles in the back of Satoru’s head. 

“Oh, yeah, since he was a little kid,” Satoru says, and if he sounds annoyingly proud, what of it. “I’m, like, basically his dad.” 

“No way!” Yuuji says, a wide smile opening up on his face. “I can’t even imagine what Fushiguro would have been like as a kid.” 

“Honestly, he looked just like he does now, just smaller,” Satoru considers it for a second. “You know that face he does, like he just bit into a lemon? Yeah, he’s been doing that for years.” 

Yuuji laughs. “Yeah, I can totally see that.” 

“Hang on,” Satoru says, reaching into his pocket for his phone. Oh, Megumi is going to kill him for this. He scrolls through his photos, careful to pick out something that doesn’t have Tsumki in it, because there’s only so much he’s willing to test Megumi’s patience. When he finds the perfect candidate, he hands the phone over to Yuuji. “There you go.” 

Yuuji’s eyes widen. “Aww,” he squeals, “he looks so cute!”

Truth is, he kind of does. The photo is pretty old now, from when Megumi was about eight, when he’d ended up wearing a fluffy bunny onesie for a school event. The sour expression on his face as he sports his pink, overly cute costume makes Satoru’s heart contract with fondness. 

“We got dressed up for a school event,” Satoru says, scrolling to the next picture, which shows Satoru in a matching onesie, holding Megumi up in his arms. Megumi looks like he’s about to kick him in the face. “This was back in primary school.” 

“Wow, so you have known him for a really long time,” Yuuji says excitedly. “How did you two meet?”

Ah, yeah. That. 

Satoru selects a simple version of the truth. “His parents died when he was little, so I took him in,” he says. “So yeah, I am basically his dad.” 

No need to dwell on what happened to Megumi’s actual dad. The less Satoru thinks about Toji, and about what will happen when Megumi finds out everything about him, the better. 

“Oh,” Yuuji looks down, lost in thought. “I didn’t know that about his parents. I guess we have that in common.” 

Satoru swallows. He knows he doesn’t really have the best concept of what familial relationship should be like - his own parents were distant figures to him, lost among the countless clan members who treated him like a delicate crystal ornament even when he was a child. Now that he thinks about it, he hasn’t seen them in years, and in that time he has never felt their absence. They haven’t been present enough in his life to imagine missing them if they died. The closest he ever got to experiencing what a real, normal family was like was years ago, going to dinner with Suguru’s parents. The way Suguru’s mother had cupped his cheeks as she asked how he was doing, the way Suguru’s father had said, half-joking and half-serious, that wasn’t it sad that their own son called so little. Even Satoru, with his less than ideal interpersonal skills, had been able to tell that things were complicated in that family, that Suguru’s parents truly loved him and still had hurt him, and he had hurt them in return. Maybe that’s just what families were. 

He had liked them, Suguru’s parents. 

His two main examples of what a family is like being his own and Suguru’s means that Satoru doesn’t really know what to tell Yuuji about his dead parents, the same way he hadn’t really known what to tell him about his dead grandfather. Thankfully, Yuuji doesn’t really seem to expecting an answer, taking a sip of his water instead. 

Then, he stops with the glass mid-air and asks, “Wait, if Fushiguro’s known you for that long, why does he call you Gojo-sensei?” 

“Oh,” Satoru says, gesturing vaguely, “because he’s a teenager having a rebellious phase and he knows it bugs me.” Honestly. He makes a joke about being Megumi’s sensei once, and now Megumi won’t call him by his first name anymore. Teenagers.

Yuuji snorts and water comes out of his nose, which just makes him laugh even harder. He coughs a couple of times, face red, and then, taking shallow breaths, he says, “Oh man, that would have been a really embarrassing way to die, after all that.” 

They both laugh now, and something in Satoru tips over. It’s been in the back of his mind for months now, of course, but he decides, then and there, that he’s going to save Itadori Yuuji. The time will come when the higher-ups will call for his execution, but Yuuji is his student, and Satoru likes him, and Megumi clearly cares about him, so Satoru is just going to have to stand in their way if they get serious. What are they going to do, fight him about it?

He doesn’t say that to Yuuji. Instead, he says, “Come on, can’t have you dying on me before of the big reveal.” 

Yuuji smiles. “Thanks for hanging out with me, Gojo-sensei.” He looks down, then back at Satoru. “I know you must be really busy, so I appreciate it.” 

Something in Satoru’s stomach contracts, something that he recognises from years ago, when Megumi and Tsumiki were little and were always so surprised to see him showing up at their door with ice cream. 

Alright, yeah. Itadori Yuuji is under his protection now, and if the higher-ups decide otherwise, well. They can bring it on. 

***

If it wasn’t for the missing cursed items, Satoru would say that all in all, the Goodwill Event went pretty well. Sure , a special grade cursed spirit attacked, and sure, they lost a few people, but all of the students are mostly unharmed, and it was certainly great training for all of them so, at least as a teacher, he’s putting this one in the win pile. As a - well, he’s never sure if he can call himself a parent, but as a mentor - there is the fact that Megumi is in the infirmary. He is okay - he is okay, thank god - but Satoru’s still irritated, so he takes his first free moment once post-emergency briefings are over to go check on him. 

“Oh look,” Megumi says when he sees him come in, “I can feel my headache coming back.” He’s sitting up in his infirmary bed, and while he doesn’t look about to drop dead then and there, he is looking a little paler than usual. 

“Very funny,” Satoru says, unimpressed. “I came to check how you are feeling, because that’s how nice and considerate I am.” 

“Sure,” Megumi narrows his eyes at him. “Is that why you didn’t tell me about Itadori being alive?” 

“Hey!” Satoru says in an outraged tone, but still raises his hands in surrender. “You know I had to do that for his own safety!”

Megumi looks down, a twist to his lips that could almost be a smile. “Still, though,” he says, “you could have been a little less tasteless about telling us.” 

Okay, that might not have been one of Satoru’s brightest moments, but to be fair, he thought they would be happy to see him! 

“It was a great surprise,” he tells Megumi, “I can’t believe you weren’t delighted .” 

“Satoru, honestly,” Megumi runs his hand on his forehead, a bit too pointedly to be honest, like he is a middle-aged father of five dealing with a particularly irritating toddler instead of a teenager talking to his teacher. The cheek of this kid, honestly. Satoru wonders where he got it from. “How would you feel if the classmate you had thought dead for months suddenly turned up out of the blue?” 

Okay. To be honest, if Suguru just suddenly showed up out of nowhere, Satoru would consider himself lucky not to freeze, overwhelmed with memories from a simpler time. Actually, now that he thinks about it, that would be a really good way of taking him by surprise in a fight, something that doesn’t happen often and would definitely cause a number of problems. Oh well, good thing that Suguru is dead, Satoru made sure of it, and he doesn’t have to worry about that. 

He doesn’t say any of that to Megumi, though. Instead, he waves his hands in the air, pulls a face and says, “You’re no fun.” 

Megumi rolls his eyes, then tilts his head to the side, staring Satoru down like he can’t quite figure out what to make of him. 

“Seriously,” Satoru says, dropping his tone a little, “how are you feeling?” 

Megumi snorts. “It’s creepy when you worry,” he says, not looking up at him. But then he adds, “I’m fine.” 

Satoru doesn’t say I always worry about you , because that would be cheesy, so he just says, “I’m gonna be honest, you look like shit.” 

This time, Megumi laughs. “Oh, god, you’re the worst,” he says. 

“I just mean, like, you look, like, really pale! You should eat something!” 

“Sure, sure,” Megumi says. “What was it you said earlier? Nice and considerate?” He’s giving Satoru that look, the one like he just swallowed a whole lemon, but then he shakes his head and huffs out a laugh and Satoru joins in, the knot in his chest loosening slightly. Megumi’s okay, he is going to be okay. Satoru is not going to lose another kid.

Silence falls, calm and comfortable. It reminds Satoru of bright afternoons when Megumi and Tsumiki were younger and they would fall asleep on the couch after he’d taken them to the zoo or to the amusement park or even just to get ice cream. They had been lazy, quiet afternoons, the only times the screaming in Satoru’s head dampened. 

After a few moments, Megumi says, “I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me about Itadori.” 

Satoru shrugs. “Figured that, with the conservative faction wanting him dead, the less people knew about him, the better,” he says. “You know, cause I’m responsible and careful with my students.” 

Megumi shakes his head, but he says, “Yeah, yeah, I know.” He looks away from Satoru and out of the window, like he’s lost in thought. “How did it happen?” He asks after a moment.  “Did you already know when I told you about how he’d died?” 

“No, no,” Satoru shakes his head quickly. Maybe if he’d known then, he would have told Megumi, even just to make him feel better. “It happened later, when Shoko was about to autopsy him. He just, got up from the mortuary slab and there wasn’t a hole in his chest anymore.” 

“Sukuna.” It isn’t a question.

"Yep," Satoru says anyway. 

Megumi purses his lips. "So what's the catch? There has to be one."

"Haven't figured that one out yet," Satoru says, because Megumi is right, there has to be a catch. Still, though. "I've decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth, for now. Worse come to worse, I can take Sukuna."

Megumi frowns. "How can you be sure?"

Satoru shrugs. "I'm the strongest."

Megumi gives him a long look, like he is going to argue, but then he sighs instead. "Itadori's gotten stronger," he says after a moment. The way he says it is - surprising, full of not quite admiration, but longing. By now, Satoru's had plenty of students who like to go and pick rivalries with each other, but it doesn't sound like that's where Megumi is coming from. There's a different, cautious edge to his voice. Satoru catalogues it in his head for future reference. 

Still, Satoru grins, because Megumi is right. Yuuji always had raw strength, but he's been improving leaps and bounds in the last few months. Satoru thinks he's allowed to gloat a bit. "Aoi Todo tells me he landed four Black Flashes in a row. Nanami is going to be so mad he matched his record already."

Instead of being impressed with Yuuji's prowess, Megumi rolls his eyes. "Ugh, Todo."

"Aw," Satoru laughs, "are you jealous that Yuuji's made a new friend?"

"No, shut up," Megumi says, and it's way too loud and way too fast. 

"Oh my god, you are," Satoru realises. Oh, this is hilarious.

"Will you shut up," Megumi glares at him. The tips of his ears are tinged pink. "Todo is just insufferable, is all."

"I like him," Satoru says with an easy smile. 

"You would," Megumi says, still glaring at him. "Did you know he beat me up when he didn't like my answer about who my type was?"

Satoru knows that that shouldn't be his reaction to his kid getting beaten up, but he laughs. "That sounds like him," he says. "Must have got it from his teacher."

Megumi frowns. "That definitely does not sound like Utahime-sensei."

"Oh, I meant Tsukumo Yuki," Satoru specifies, though it is very funny to imagine Utahime going around beating people up about what their type is.

Satoru has only actually met Tsukumo Yuki a few times, the first not long after Suguru had left. She had asked what his type of woman was in place of an introduction, and when Satoru had tried to slither out of the question with a noncommittal "don't swing that way" she'd given him an unimpressed look, and said, "alright, man then". Satoru had shrugged and said, in spite of himself, "dark and tortured, I guess". She had laughed and told him it was a good answer, and the look on her face had said that she knew exactly who he was talking about. When he'd asked "what about you?" she'd said,"someone who can keep up with me," without missing a beat. 

Satoru liked Yuki. Call it special grade solidarity.

Megumi still looks grumpy, so Satoru adds, “Come on, I’m sure Yuuji will still want to hang out with you, even if he’s made a new friend.” 

“Ugh,” Megumi hides his face in his hands, “you are the worst.” 

“Aw, you love me, really,” Satoru says, waving him off. And then, partly because it will make Megumi happy and partly because Satoru is pretty sure he’s found a new joint in Megumi’s life and he wants to poke at it, he adds, “Yuuji asked about you, you know. When he was hiding.” 

Megumi looks up at him sharply. “Really?”

“Wanted to know how you and Kugisaki were doing,” Satoru says, “and he asked about what you did before Jujutsu High, too.” 

That’s something else that Satoru’s been thinking about for a while - that Yuuji always asked about Megumi and Nobara both, but when he asked after Nobara he did it like he cared about her, and when he asked about Megumi he did it in a slightly more tense way, like he was trying to figure something out. 

“What did you tell him?” Megumi asks. His voice is just slightly strained. There is something in his demeanour, something that Satoru knows he has seen before, but he can’t quite place it. Every time he reaches for it, it feels like knocking against an invisible wall, which is pretty novel for Satoru. 

“Oh, you know,” Satoru gestures vaguely. “I didn’t tell him about Tsumiki or anything big, just that I’ve known you for a long time. I showed him some of your baby pictures.” 

“Oh my god,” Megumi says, hiding his face in his hands again, “why would you do that?” 

“Oh, don’t worry,” Satoru says, not trying too hard to stifle his laugh. “He thought they were adorable!” 

“I am going to kill you,” Megumi says. “I swear, Infinity or not, I am going to kill you.” 

Before Satoru can say anything other than laugh, the door swings open and the Itadori Yuuji in question comes in, carrying what looks like a pizza box. Nobara trails in after him.

“Fushiguro!” Yuuji says, his tone full of excitement. “We brought you pizza.” 

Megumi immediately schools his face into something resembling his usual scowl, but the tips of his ears remain red. 

“Itadori, Kugisaki,” he says instead of a greeting. Honestly, Satoru should have taught him to be more expansive. 

“Don’t be too excited to see us,” Nobara says, grabbing a chair and sitting herself down next to the bed. 

Megumi pointedly looks at his blankets. “Well, I’m supposed to be resting.” 

“Aw, but I haven’t hung out with you in months!” Yuuji says, sitting directly on the bed next to Megumi. “Hey, sensei,” he adds, waving at Satoru when he spots him. Satoru raises two fingers in greeting.

“And they were such relaxing months,” Megumi says, but there is no real edge to his voice. 

“Come on,” Yuuji says, leaning over to brush Megumi’s shoulder. “I missed you.” 

"Huh," is all Megumi says, visibly stiffening under Yuuji's touch. He is still staring at his blankets like they are going to save him from something.

And then something else happens - Yuuji's bright smile dims for a second at Megumi's lack of response, and then Nobara gives Satoru a look, a look that very clearly says, "are you seeing this shit?"

Stupidly, it's Nobara's look that makes it all click. Because Satoru's seen that look before, many times, but not on Nobara, on Shoko. It's the look she would put on whenever Satoru leaned over to touch Suguru's hair with the excuse of taking out some fluff, or when Suguru's hands lingered a bit too long on Satoru's chest when, supposedly, fixing his uniform. It's a look that means, Satoru's come to understand, "I can't believe I am here thirdwheeling two idiots". 

Which means - oh.

Oh .

Nobara clearly notices the moment the realisation dawns on him, because she rolls at eyes - Satoru is not sure if it's at him or at Yuuji and Megumi, which. Holy shit. Yuuji and Megumi.

"Gojo, weren't you leaving?" Megumi says, shaking him out of his stupor.

"I was?" Satoru asks. He's not sure what his modus operandi should be here, Megumi's never had a crush before. Okay, maybe he has, Satoru can't expect to know every single facet of his life, but definitely never such a big puppy crush, on someone Satoru knows. Should he offer Megumi relationship advice? Admittedly, Satoru's only really been in one, and it hasn't, by any standards, gone great. For now, maybe he can take up Megumi's request and leave the two lovebirds alone. Or, well, alone and with Nobara, but that's okay, they can work it out. "Yes, I was," he says, pushing himself off of the wall. "Duty calls, and all that. Stay peachy, kids!"

Nobara gives him one last unimpressed look as he heads to the door, but Satoru lets it shut behind him anyway. 

The last thing Satoru hears before the door shuts is Yuuji going, "Huh, what?"

He runs into Shoko on his way out of the infirmary. She is carrying a stack of papers and looks like she hasn't had any sleep in months, so like normal.

"Holy shit," Satoru tells her as he passes her in the corridor. "Megumi has a crush on Yuuji."

She furrows her brows at him for a moment, then opens her mouth slightly when the realisation hits. "Absolutely do not tell me," she says, raising her hands like she's trying to tame a skittish horse, "I do not want to know."

"Aw, why not?" What's the point of a friend when he can't gossip about his kid's love life with her?

"Because," Shoko says, dropping her voice a little, "if I have to deal with you and Geto 2.0, that's genuinely gonna be my last straw."

If anything, she sounds vaguely amused, but Satoru kind of feels like she just punched him instead.

"Wait, what? What do you mean?" Hey, just because Megumi's his kid, it doesn't mean that he's doomed to the same tragic love life that Satoru had! Probably. Hopefully.

"Come on, super genius," she says, rolling her eyes. "A prodigy from an important family and a boy from the outside world who eats curses? I guess their personalities are swapped, but like…" she trails off, giving Satoru a pointed look.

Oh. 

Oh.  

Oh no .

All that Satoru can manage to say is, "Well, shit."

***

Steadily, the months pass. Things change and things stay the same. Five of Satoru's students are up for First Grade status now, something he has a right to feel incredibly smug about, and so he does. There are no developments on Tsumiki's condition, though Megumi offhandedly mentions to Satoru that he's told Yuuji and Nobara about her. Watching the three of them fills Satoru with equal longing and hope, with bittersweet memories of a past he can never go back to.

As far as the grief is concerned, it is still there. It's never going to go away, Satoru's accepted that by now, it will stay with him like a constant companion, sharp and cutting. It is never going to get smaller, so Satoru starts to grow around it. He looks after his students, and he gets dinner with Shoko and he exorcises curses and he laughs, and if some nights when he is alone he lets himself get lost in the memories of Suguru's skin against his, well, that's between him and god.

Megumi and Yuuji don't seem to make any progress, which leaves Satoru a bit irritated, but when he mentions it to Shoko she rolls her eyes and laughs at him.

"They've only known each other for a few months, Satoru," she says taking a sip of her drink. "At this stage, you and Geto were still beating each other up just to have an excuse to touch each other, you weirdos."

"Yeah, well," Satoru whines, "I want them to do better than us! Not waste any time and all!"

She shakes her head. "They'll figure it out, drama queen."

Despite his general dislike for alcohol, Satoru accepts a sip of her drink.

For the record, Megumi and Yuuji do not figure it out, so Satoru decides it's time to do some poking. The perfect opportunity presents itself a few weeks before Halloween, when Satoru takes the first years back to Jujutsu High after a mission. They exorcised the target without trouble, but the thing then exploded in a bubble of green goo, leaving Nobara, who was in its immediate vicinity, with clothes and hair drenched. While to no one's shock or surprise she already had a change of clothes on hand, she gets out of the car quickly once they reach the school, wringing green goo out of her hair.

"Ugh, this is gross," she says, making a beeline for the dormitories. "I am going to wash this off." 

"See you at dinner?" Yuuji asks, climbing out of the car after her. 

"Sure," she says, as everyone else but Ijichi follows her out of the car. Then she stops in her tracks and turns back around. "Actually, Itadori, come with me and help me dye it again? I'll do yours."

"Oh, sure!" Yuuji says, excitedly following after her. "I didn't want to mention it, but your roots have been showing."

She gives him a mostly playful punch on the arm. "That's not how you should talk to girls, idiot." 

"Ow!"

Satoru and Megumi both laugh, Megumi's laugh stifled in an attempt to continue to appear the dark and brooding one. Satoru gives him a knowing look, then gestures to Ijichi that he can leave. Ijichi gives him his usual long-suffering face before driving off.

"Fushiguro, do you want to come with us?" Yuuji asks, turning back towards them and taking a few steps in their direction. "You can keep us company."

"Or we could dye your hair too," Nobara adds, giving him a look over her shoulder. "It looks kinda boring like this."

"Nah, I'm good," Megumi says, raising a hand. "You guys go ahead."

Yuuji's face darkens for a second, but he recovers quickly. "We'll see you at dinner though, right?"

Megumi shrugs. He is not as cool and aloof as he wants to be, Satoru thinks, but it seems to work on Yuuji, so good for him. "Sure."

"Nice," Yuuji smiles again, brighter. "See you later, then!" He leans forward to bump Megumi's shoulder with his fist before running off. Megumi takes it without giving too much of a reaction, but Satoru knows what he is looking for, and he doesn't miss the way Megumi's ears go bright red.

"What?" Megumi asks turning to Satoru once Yuuji and Nobara have left. 

Satoru grins at him. "Nothing." Megumi simply glares at him, so Satoru decides that it's time to be a menace and asks, "Are you going to ask him out?"

"What?" Megumi repeats, but now it's not just his ears going red, it's his whole face.

"I think he'll say yes."

"What are you talking about," Megumi says, his voice strangled.

Satoru leans back, hands in his pockets. "You like Yuuji, right?"

Megumi freezes for a second, then opens his mouth and shuts it again quickly. Satoru knows that he's done this exact kind of squirming about this exact same topic when he was Megumi's age, so this entire interaction feels kind of vindicating.

"I mean, yeah, he's fine," Megumi says eventually, not really looking at Satoru. 

Satoru almost laughs. "Come on, I raised you, you can deflect better than that."

"I," Megumi says cleverly. Then, "I can't stand you."

This time, Satoru actually laughs. Megumi's adorable when he decides to be all edgy. "I'm not wrong, though."

Megumi inhales sharply. He shoves his hands into his pockets and then says, very low, "No."

Satoru’s chest fills with warmth. He smiles again, softer than before. “Knew it.” 

“Go on,” Megumi says. “Tell me all the reasons why this is a bad idea.” 

“What?” 

Megumi is holding his chin high, shoulders squared like he is preparing for a fight. “You know,” he says, rushed, “tell me that he’s a dead man walking and a ticking bomb and that the best case scenario is that he gets executed once he’s done eating those stupid fucking fingers, and that the worst case scenario is that he loses control and kills god knows how many people, and then you kill him.”

“What?” Satoru repeats, feeling incredibly stupid. 

“It’s not anything I haven’t told myself already,” Megumi says, almost mumbling. His face has gone pale. 

Oh.

“Megumi, no,” Satoru says, taking a step toward him. He kind of wants to reach out, put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but Megumi looks like he’s going to shatter like porcelain at the slightest touch right now, so he just lets his hand hover awkwardly in the air near him. “I am not going to say that.” 

“No?” Megumi says, still not looking up at him. “Because you’d be right.” 

“Maybe,” Satoru says, “but it’s your feelings. And…” God, how can he explain it to him? How can he tell him that really, Satoru understands better than anyone what it means to love a living ghost? He exhales, sharply. “Believe me when I say that I am absolutely in no position to tell you anything like that.” 

Now, Megumi’s eyes shoot up to meet his. “What does that mean?” 

Fuck. “No, I…” Satoru shakes his head. “Never mind, I shouldn’t have said that.”

Megumi gives him his usual glare, which is a comforting friend after his awkward anguish from just a few minutes ago. “Satoru,” he says, and Satoru is undone, because Megumi hasn’t called him by his first name in months, because he’s raised him for years without ever telling him anything about the person who was most important to him, because Megumi’s in love and he thinks it’s doomed and because Satoru couldn’t save Suguru, but maybe it’s not too late to save Yuuji and Megumi. 

“What do you know about Geto Suguru?” He asks. His voice sounds like lead.

Megumi frowns. “Uh, he was a curse user,” he says carefully. “He was a jujutsu sorcerer, and then turned his back on jujutsu society to embrace a philosophy of violence against non-sorcerers.” He lists it all off like he’s reading a paragraph from a history book. Hell, that’s probably where he learned it from. “He’s considered one of the worst curse users of recent times, and he continued to be until… well-” he hesitates.

“Until?” Satoru nudges him.

“Until you killed him last year.” 

Nonsensically, Satoru claps. “Correct! Points for accuracy and everything!” Fucking hell, it hurts to realise that fifty, a hundred years for now, this is what’s going to remain of Suguru. The history books that future sorcerers read will talk about Suguru’s madness, they will talk of the people he hurt and of the way he died, a simple footnote in the biography of Satoru Gojo, bearer of Six Eyes and Infinity, strongest sorcerer. They won’t talk about how Suguru always had bangs only on the left side of his face, and how he used to truly believe in standing up for the weak, and how dimples formed on his cheeks when he laughed and how he liked to befriend street cats, and they won’t talk about how Satoru loved him before he killed him, and how he loved him after that too. It’s so unfair , and so Satoru says, “That’s what the official records say, anyway. But those leave some stuff out.” 

Megumi furrows his brow at him. “Like what?” 

Satoru inhales. “Like that he was kind, before he spiralled.” Megumi does not say anything. He’s looking at Satoru with the same look of concern someone might give a slightly deformed animal, so Satoru adds, “Did you know that he was my classmate?” 

He sees Megumi do the math in his head, realising that Suguru must have been the right age to be in Satoru’s class. “No, I didn’t know that.” 

“We were inseparable,” Satoru says, the words crawling out of his throat holding daggers. “He was a special grade too, so he could keep up with me, and for a while…” he swallows. “It was the two of us, you know? We were the strongest. Together.” He crosses his arms, and he doesn’t know if it’s because he’s cold or if he just wants the comfort. Megumi is still staring at him, clearly waiting for him to talk, so Satoru grabs his courage with two hands and adds, “And I was head over heels in love with him.” And because he’s being honest, he adds, “Actually, scratch that, who am I kidding? I still am.” 

“What happened?” Megumi asks, not looking away from Satoru.

Satoru inhales. “A mission went very wrong in our second year, and it just… it broke him.” 

He can’t tell Megumi the whole truth, not now. He will, one day, when Megumi asks, but not now. 

 Megumi lets out a deep breath, like he’s exhaling for Satoru too. “Shit,” he says eventually. “Is that why you are…” he gestures vaguely in Satoru’s direction. “Like, the way that you are?” 

Satoru laughs, but it rings hollow. “You mean super cool and charming? Sure, that’s part of it, I guess.” 

Megumi rolls his eyes, and for a moment, everything seems normal. Then he says, “For what it’s worth, I am sorry about Geto. That must have been awful.” 

“Yeah, well,” Satoru shrugs, “I am not telling you for you to feel sorry for me. I am telling you because I want you to know, I don’t think you are being stupid about Yuuji. I think you’re just being honest.” 

Megumi sighs, strangled. He looks annoyed with himself, still, but his shoulders are a little less stiff. “I hate it when you’re being nice,” he says after a moment. 

“I’m always nice,” Satoru says, easily slipping into a grin at the familiar banter. And then, because he needs Megumi to know, “Hey, Megumi? When the time comes, I’m not going to just let them kill him, okay?” 

Megumi frowns, recoiling at the words. “What?” 

“One day, the higher ups will call for Yuuji’s execution,” Satoru says simply. “And when that happens, I am going to take Yuuji’s side, and stand in their way.” 

Megumi is staring at him like he’s just grown a second head. “How?” 

“I am the strongest,” Satoru shrugs. “What are they going to do, fight me about it?” 

Megumi frowns, still looking like Satoru’s just told him he’s planning on going on a world tour as a drag queen. Which, by the way, Satoru would be fabulous at. “You’d do that for me?” 

Oh, dear. It makes Satoru want to scream, the fact that Megumi doesn’t know that there is very little Satoru wouldn’t do for him. You’re my child, he wants to scream. You will never know how much having you and your sister saved me in the worst time. I would turn the sun cold for you. 

That’s all a bit intense, so he just says, gesturing vaguely, “First of all, yes I would.” And then, for full disclosure, “But I actually made up my mind about this ages ago. I like Yuuji, and I am fucking fed up with those old bastards destroying people’s lives from their goddamn ivory towers. I am not letting it happen again, not if I can help it.” 

Megumi gives him a long, evaluating look. Then he just nods. “I’ll help you beat their ass.” 

Aw, fuck. It would be really embarrassing if Satoru cried now, so he just leans forward and ruffles Megumi’s hair. “In a few years, maybe,” he says. 

Megumi pushes him away, with no real strength behind it, so Satoru puts him in a gentle headlock instead. “Let me go ,” Megumi groans, but he doesn’t try to slither away.

“No, shut up,” Satoru says. “We’re having a moment and a hug would be awkward.” 

“Ugh,” Megumi says, but he still doesn’t try to pull away, so Satoru decides to enjoy it while he can.

“Satoru?” Megumi says after a few seconds, having gone basically limp in Satoru’s hold.

“Yeah?”

“I will deny saying this in the future, but you’re alright.”

Satoru squeezes him tighter.

***

Unsurprisingly, things go to shit shortly after that. 

His time in the Prison Realm is - confusing. First of all, time doesn’t pass properly, so he has no idea how long he has actually spent inside of it. At times, he could swear it has been years, decades even, and at others, it feels like it’s only been a few seconds since he saw Suguru in Shibuya. It wasn’t actually Suguru, he knows that, but he can’t stop himself from replaying it in his mind - seeing that body move again and talk again, something that Satoru had thought impossible, and now he’s stuck in a box for, according to the impostor, a thousand years. Satoru is pretty determined to get out earlier than that, mainly because no one gets to just wear Suguru’s body like a fucking meatsuit and live. And the worst part of all is that he knows Suguru is still there, Satoru saw him move when Satoru told him to. Somehow, nonsensically, impossibly, there is something of Suguru left in a body that should be dead, and he remembers Satoru, and he is itching to get out, which means that Satoru has to trust that the others - his students, his colleagues, his friends - will get him the hell out of here.

Another thing: the Prison Realm likes to keep him entertained. He keeps drifting in and out of consciousness, sometimes slipping into memories, other times into a past that never happened and into a future that will not take place. 

He is fifteen, picking up the new first year student with Shoko, a guy with stupid bangs and a gentle smile who doesn’t know who Satoru is, and who seems to actually see him when he looks at him. 

He is sixteen, and he is kissing that same boy for the first time, late at night in a secluded corner of Jujutsu High, an awkward, simultaneously too excited and too cautious kiss that makes Satoru feel, for once, anchored to the world around him instead of floating in Infinity. 

He is sixteen, and him and Suguru are slow dancing under the moonlight, laughing every time they step on each other’s feet. This one is a fake memory. They have danced, but never like this, never outside under a starry sky full of possibilities. 

A few months later, him and Suguru are taking turns splashing each other at the beach in Okinawa. Riko Amanai is there, laughing so hard at their playfight that she doesn’t notice when they gang up against her and gets soaked. It’s okay, she gets them back fiercely. This one is real. It hurts like hell. 

He is seventeen, watching Suguru walk away into the crowd. His heart and his mind are a tangled mess of wires, anger and sadness and frustration and love battling each other, threatening to overload Satoru more than Six Eyes ever could. 

He is - twenty-four, maybe? And he opens his door to find Suguru standing there, his hair down and an apology on his lips. Satoru just holds his arms out to him and Suguru hugs him, their bodies fitting together like clockwork even after years. This never happened. 

He is twenty-seven, and he’s just told Suguru he loves him for the first time. This time, Suguru says it back. This time, Satoru doesn’t kill him. This time, they go home together, and start rebuilding a life they thought lost. 

This time, when Satoru goes to meet Sukuna’s vessel at age twenty-eight, Suguru is at his side, and he’s at his side when he argues with the higher ups about Itadori Yuuji’s fate. This time, together, they manage to get his death sentence permanently voided. 

Of course, none of this has happened either.

***

The visions are like a perverse form of lucid dreaming, not real enough to fool him completely, but real just enough to make him sore with longing. He has no idea how long he spends drowning in them, but when he wakes, it feels like gasping for air for the first time in years. 

He comes to with a jolt. There is a number of things that he is immediately aware of: first of all, he is lying on the floor and out of the Prison Realm. Second, he is not sure he can move. And, perhaps most important of all, his powers feel very, very off.

Before he can decide on what to do, a voice somewhere in his vicinity says, “Isn’t this interesting.”

When Satoru forces himself to open his eyes, he finds a figure staring at down at him. His vision swims in and out of focus, until he can finally recognise their features. For a single moment, relief runs through his chest.

“Suguru?” He asks raggedly, except, of course, this is not Suguru, it is the goddamn impostor. 

“I’m afraid not,” the impostor says. “He’s dead, didn’t you hear?” 

If Satoru didn’t feel like he’d been ran over by a truck, right now, he might laugh. Also: his eyes are fucked. It has been years since Satoru has been able to open his eyes without having to use Reverse Cursed Technique just to deal with the constant sensory overload of Six Eyes, but right now, all the information that he usually gets in knife sharp detail is faded, almost invisible. Which might be a good thing, because Satoru is not confident that he is in any condition to use Reverse Cursed Technique right now. 

“You’re all spent, aren’t you?” The impostor says, kneeling down next to him. “Does that mean…” He leans forward, and gently cups Satoru’s face with his hand. Satoru’s breath catches when the impostor’s hand touches him, no Infinity in the way. Satoru hasn’t been touched - not like this, not without expecting it, not without making a conscious decision to let it happen - in years and years and years. If he wasn’t so tired, he would scream. 

Oh, this is bad. This is very, very bad.

“This is kind of intimate,” Satoru rasps out, nonsensically. He feels - bad. Which seems like a bit of a simplistic but very apt description. “You sure you haven’t got a crush on me?” 

He still can’t move. Somehow, he feels worse than that time he got literally stabbed to death. At least, that time he wasn’t conscious enough to feel the exhaustion that’s currently flooding through his bones. 

The impostor laughs. His laugh is different than Suguru’s was, somehow sharper. “I like you, Six Eyes,” he says. “Unfortunately, this is a unique opportunity for me.” He leans forward again, his hands now wrapping around Satoru’s neck, gently at first, then squeezing. “I shall bring your greetings to your students.” 

Holy shit, he is going to die here. The more powerful he got, the more Satoru had given up on dying ever being something that would happen to him, but no, he is going to die here and now. He is going to die with Suguru’s hands around his throat.

Of course, it is not Suguru, it is an impostor puppeteering his body, but it is still Suguru’s hands that are squeezing the life out of him, it is still Suguru’s face that Satoru sees swimming in and out of his vision as the lack of oxygen makes it harder and harder to focus.  At least, if he dies now, it will be his body that the impostor takes over, and Suguru will get to rest properly. Of course, that’s meagre comfort, because the impostor taking over his body probably means the end of the jujutsu world or maybe of the world at large, but hey, it won’t be Satoru’s problem. He is not sure what he is supposed to do in the last handful of seconds of his life, and there is nothing that he can bring himself to focus on. What a fitting way to go, in his best friend’s arms. It’s a circle closing, he thinks, slightly nonsensically. Suguru died at Satoru’s hand, and now Satoru is going to die at his. 

It’s Suguru’s eyes he tries to focus on, still warm brown despite the cold sharpness of the impostor controlling him. It must be a trick caused by the asphyxiation, but it looks like Suguru is crying. Satoru watches him fade out of view, together with the last of his strength. As final sights go, it’s not so bad. 

And then, the pressure around Satoru’s neck eases, and suddenly he can breathe again, and gentle hands are touching his face, taking his heartbeat against his neck, brushing hair out of his face with aching gentleness. Water drops are falling onto Satoru’s face - has it started raining? 

“Satoru? Satoru, come back to me.”

Finally, Satoru’s vision starts coming back, and Suguru is still leaning over him, and there actually are tears streaming down his faces, and despite the row of stitches still on his forehead, it is Suguru. Satoru knows it with absolute certainty, the same way he knew to recognise the impostor before, because he and Suguru are somehow intrinsically linked, and  his soul is singing out in recognition. 

“Suguru?” He manages to exhale, his voice crumpled from the lack of air.

“Oh, Satoru, thank God,” Suguru says, clear relief flooding through his voice as he wraps his arms around Satoru’s back and props him up. “I’m sorry, god, I’m so sorry, I…” 

Satoru just shoves his face into Suguru’s shoulder. “Don’t,” he manages, still breathless. 

He feels Suguru nod against the back of his head. “I’ve got you,” he says softly. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.” 

Despite his throat hurting like it was rubbed with sandpaper, Satoru finds himself laughing against Suguru’s shoulder - or maybe he’s crying, there are a lot of emotions going on right now and it’s kind of hard to tell the difference. Suguru’s chest is also jumping up and down frantically, whether because of laughter or sobs Satoru can’t tell, but they are somehow both here, and they are alive and they are basically hugging, and maybe things are going to be alright. 

Then, Satoru passes out. 

***

He only catches glimpses after that. At some point, Suguru is carrying him in his arms, and wen he comes to they are flying through the air. It’s got to be one of Suguru’s curses, Satoru muses, barely conscious, because he is pretty sure Suguru can’t fly on his own and Satoru definitely isn’t the one doing it. Then, conceited voices somewhere nearby are talking, possibly arguing. Satoru decides he doesn’t care much for that, so he just lets himself fall asleep again.

When he comes to again, he’s lying in a bed. The familiar smell of antiseptic and smoke convinces him that he must be in the Jujutsu High infirmary, which does raise a whole load of other questions.

“-been keeping everyone else out,” Shoko’s voice is saying somewhere to his left. 

“And he let me in?” New voice. It is definitely Suguru. 

Satoru still doesn’t open his eyes, but he can practically see Shoko’s shrug. “He probably realised you were carrying Satoru, decided it was worth the risk.” 

“And he’s helping because…?”

“Oh, Yuki Tsukumo is acting as his bodyguard.” He hears Shoko fumble with something, then ask, “Cigarette?”

“No, I stopped,” Suguru says. Well, that’s good news. Satoru never liked the taste of cigarettes in Suguru’s mouth.

“Really?” 

“I had kids,” Suguru says. “I was trying to set a good example.” 

Oh . That’s interesting. 

“While teaching them mass murder?” Shoko sounds unimpressed.

Suguru doesn’t say anything, which might be a good sign. Realistically, Satoru knows that he should let them know that he’s awake, but he still feels exhausted and he hasn’t heard the two of them banter in far too long.

“Do you know what happened to them?” Suguru asks after a moment. He sounds sheepish. “Mimiko and Nanako, I mean.” 

“Oh yeah, we have them,” her tone is nonchalant, but Satoru knows her well enough that she was waiting for the right moment to spring that on Suguru. 

“What?” Suguru asks, incredulous. “How? I swear to god, Shoko, if they are prisoners…”

“Alright, calm down,” Shoko says firmly. “They are here of their own free will. They ran into Yuuji in Shibuya, and he power of friendship-ed them into joining our side, or something.” 

Right, so Yuuji at least is okay. That’s good. And Suguru’s girls are okay too.

“Sukuna’s vessel?” Suguru asks, still unconvinced. “How?” 

“That’s just what Yuuji is like. It hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing, since, you know, someone put some insane beliefs in their heads.” Again, Suguru doesn’t jump to defend himself. Instead, Shoko asks, “Hey, I don’t need to worry about you going off on a genocidal spree right now, right?” 

There is a moment of silence.

“No,” Suguru says eventually. “Not for now.” 

“Good enough for me,” Shoko says. From the whiff of smoke that Satoru gets, she’s waving her cigarette around. “Hey, do you want me to go get your kids? They’re around here  somewhere.”

“Not yet,” Suguru says. “I don’t want to go anywhere until…” he trails off.

“ Of course.” Satoru can practically see the eye-roll in Shoko’s tone. 

After a beat, Suguru says, “He is going to wake up, isn’t he?” 

Oh. It is Satoru he is waiting for. 

Well, Satoru’s not going to get a better entrance than this. “What, worried about me?” He opens his eyes to find Shoko and Suguru both leaning on the wall across from him. Shoko is holding a cigarette between her fingers, and Suguru has changed out of his monk robes, wearing something similar to his old school uniform instead, which makes Satoru’s heart do all sorts of funny things. 

Instead of jumping to his bedside and kissing him senseless, which is what Satoru was going for, Suguru raises an eyebrow at him. 

“Satoru,” he says, a corner of his lips turning up in a smile. “How long have you been eavesdropping?” 

“Long enough,” Satoru says, trying to pull himself up. His head is spinning, but he could be doing worse. The lack of sensory overload from Six Eyes is probably helping. “Hey.”

Suguru catches his gaze and smiles, oh so gentle. “Hey.”

“Ok, so you two are doing this,” Shoko says.

“Hi, Shoko,” Satoru says, making himself look away from Suguru to look at her. “Did you miss me?” 

“Asshole,” she says. Then she purses her lips, and after a moment adds, “Yes, so I hope you’re not about to just go and die on me.”

Satoru considers how he feels. Overall, it’s less bad than when he had just gotten out of the Prison Realm, but that was the worst he’s ever felt in his life, so that doesn’t say very much. Okay, the worst he’s ever felt physically . If he counted emotional hurt in the rankings, how he is feeling now wouldn’t even make top three.

“Hey, remember that time I literally died?” He says. “Yeah, I feel worse than that. But I think I’m okay.” 

“Yeah,” Shoko says slowly, evaluating him. “Your cursed energy is the weakest I’ve ever felt it.” 

Objectively, Satoru knows that this isn’t good. He knows that he has basically built his entire life around the fact that he was the Strongest, that he could take on whatever the world threw at him. If he has lost that, things could take a very, very, bad turn. But Shoko and Suguru are here, and right now, he’s too tired to care. 

“It was worse when he’d just gotten out of the Prison Realm,” Suguru says. He is looking at Satoru very carefully.

Shoko nods. “It’s definitely improved since you got here. But it’s going to be a while until you get back to your usual level, I think.” 

Well, this is quite novel. Satoru has basically never managed to burn through his powers like this. 

“About that,” he says, rubbing his eyes, “someone is going to have to catch me up on what’s been happening.” 

Suguru clears his throat. He still hasn’t looked away from Satoru, and he’s fidgeting with the edge of his hoodie. “I think you burned through the Prison Realm. It probably wasn’t made to hold so much power for so long. I was…” he stumbles, “I mean, he…”

“The impostor,” Satoru says, because he needs Suguru to know that he does not, in any way, blame him for anything the goddamn brain did. 

“Yeah,” Suguru says, slightly breathless. “He liked to keep the Prison Realm on hand, so I always had an eye on it. In the last few days, it started shaking, and then it just… came apart and you were lying there.”

“Damn,” Satoru says. “I’m so cool.” 

“Would have been cooler not to get locked into the Prison Realm in the first place,” Shoko says. 

Satoru crosses his arms. “Hey, I was taken by surprise!” 

He sees Shoko try to argue, then consider the circumstances and think better of it. Satoru rubs his eyes again. They’re not hurting exactly, not the same way they do when he has his blindfold off for too long. It’s more like, he is unused to seeing everything without the usual overlay of Six Eyes. He keeps thinking there’s something off with them.

“How are the kids?” He asks Shoko.

“Fine, mostly,”  she says. “But you being gone hasn’t been easy. The only reason we are safe here is that Tengen is keeping everyone else out.” 

“We are going to keep quiet about my powers being… lacking, for now,” Satoru says, because the last thing they need is for the higher ups to get any ideas. “About Suguru being here, too.” Which, of course, leads him to the question he really doesn’t want to ask. He catches Suguru’s gaze. “Are you staying?” 

“I…” Suguru says, then swallows.

On Suguru’s side, Shoko claps. “I am going to let you two have this conversation,” she says, making for the door. “Call me if it looks like either of you is about to drop dead.” She leaves, giving them a long, evaluating look.

Satoru turns to Suguru, who is already looking back at him. It’s incredible, the way he’s just standing there, hands in his pockets, loose hair falling over his shoulders, looking like a miracle.

“So,” Satoru says, for lack of a better way to start.

“So,” Suguru repeats, and then exhales in what’s almost a laugh.

“Come sit next to me?” Satoru asks, tapping the side of the bed. Suguru hesitates for a moment, then takes him up on the offer and carefully sits down next to him, leaning onto Satoru’s shoulder. For a few moments, they stay very quiet.

“Are your eyes hurting you?” Suguru asks eventually, breaking the silence. “I saw you rubbing at them.” 

“No,” Satoru says, and in a moment of bravery he takes Suguru’s hand in his. “I actually feel weird because I’m getting a lot less information than usual. God, is this how normal people see ?”

Suguru huffs out a laugh, intertwining Satoru’s fingers with his. The touch is gentle, but it makes Satoru’s heart jump in his throat. “I see the god complex is still there.” 

Satoru shrugs. “It’s justified.” 

“No, it’s not.” Suguru says, pinning Satoru down with his gaze, and Satoru’s breath catches. He never expected for Suguru to look at him like this again, like he is just a man, and like Suguru loves him anyway. 

“Please don’t leave again,” he says before he can think better of it. 

Suguru frowns. “You want me to stay?” 

“Of course I want you to stay,” Satoru says, and then holds back a confession. Instead, he asks, “Did you mean it? When you told Shoko you are not going on another murder spree?” 

Suguru looks down, then swallows. “Yeah,” he says. 

“Why?” 

When he looks back up at Satoru, Suguru’s eyes are shining with tears. He blinks a couple of times, trying to get rid of them. “I died for those ideals once,” he says, slowly. “And it didn’t change anything. If anything, it made everything worse. So maybe it’s time to try another approach.” 

God, this is what Satoru had both been hoping for and fearing at the same time. For Suguru to realise that his stupid quest had no meaning, that it wasn’t gonna achieve anything except more pain and death. And now here Suguru is, back by his side against all odds, telling him exactly what Satoru wanted to hear. For a moment, Satoru worries that he is actually still in a dream given to him by the Prison Realm, but he is not, because he can feel Suguru’s arm against his and his hand in his, too real to be a pipe dream. 

“Just like that?” He asks, his voice coming out strangled.

“No, not just like that,” Suguru says with a trace of bitterness. “I still hate…” Satoru sees the moment Suguru catches himself before saying something horrible. “I still hate them,” is what he settles on. “But I can’t pretend that my previous plan worked, so I am going to find a new strategy.” He squeezes Satoru’s hand and then says, almost rushed, “And I am not willing to lose you over this. Not again.” 

“Careful, it almost sounds like you like me,” Satoru laughs bumping his shoulder against Suguru’s, because anything else would be too much. 

Okay, this Satoru can work with. It will take a while, but he thinks he can ground Suguru back to a normal level of hating people, given enough time, and for the first time, it is just starting to look like they might get that time. Which, of course, leads to another question. “What about the, you know…” he gestures to the stitches on Suguru’s forehead.

“Oh,” Suguru says, raising a hand to touch his temple. “He’s still there. I can feel him, in the back of my head, itching to get out, but I think… I think I can keep him under control. At least,” he hesitates, and Satoru recognises the way the tip of his ears turns red, “at least as long as I have you to anchor me.” 

“Is that how you snapped back, before?” Satoru asks, almost a whisper.

Suguru nods. “I couldn’t let him hurt you.” 

Something roars inside of Satoru, proud and victorious. “Again,” he says, letting his most shiteating grin form on his face. “Sounds like you like me.” 

“Oh, Satoru, I…” Suguru starts saying, then cuts himself off. He closes his eyes for a second, in that way he does when he is trying to shut the chaos of the world out, then opens them again, his mouth setting into a thin line like he’s made up his mind about something. Satoru’s stomach churns.

 “Satoru,” Suguru says, searching for his gaze. “I love you. I’m sorry I didn’t say it back before.” 

Satoru’s heart does a complicated series of flips, and his brain completely short-circuits. Suddenly, there is absolutely nothing of note in this room, in the world, in the universe, that isn’t Suguru saying that he loves him. 

Suguru must interpret his moment of stunned silence as some sort of refusal, because he says, “I am not saying it to get anything in return. I just need you to know now.” 

Satoru takes a split second to decide if the best way to reassure him is to tell him he loves him back or to just lean in and kiss him, but before he can do either, the door scrapes open and Megumi bursts in, looking like he’s ready for a fight before stopping dead in his tracks once he’s made it through the door.

“Shit,” he says, his gaze fixated on Satoru. “You are actually back.” 

Suguru jumps, getting up from the bed and, in an awful turn of events, letting go of Satoru’s hand. When Satoru squeals in protest, Suguru gives him a sheepish look. 

“Hey, Megumi,” Satoru says. “Missed me?” 

“You dick,” Megumi says, crossing his arms, and then something unexpected happens, because Tsumiki comes through the door after Megumi. The mark on her forehead is gone, and even though it’s been less than a year since Satoru last saw her conscious, she looks years older.

“Tsumiki?” Satoru asks, freezing on the spot. Fucking hell, is this how people feel when they see Limitless Void?

“Satoru!” She exclaims, running over to him and throwing her arms around his shoulders. 

“What happened?” Satoru asks, hugging her back. 

She takes a step back. “Could ask the same to you,” she says. Her smile is wide, but slightly dimmer than it was before.

“We didn’t all just sit on our ass while you were taking your Prison Realm holiday,” Megumi says as an explanation. Then, he turns to stare Suguru down. “Are you sure we can trust him?” 

“He’s not the impostor, it that’s what you’re asking,” Satoru says, slowly, but Megumi simply narrows his eyes. 

“Not what I was asking.” 

“I am not going to hurt Satoru,” Suguru says, carefully. “Or any of you, for that matter.”

“Sure,” Megumi says, crossing his arms. He lifts his chin defiantly. “Only, you’ve hurt him before.” 

Oh, shit. Megumi is defending his virtue. Well, that makes Satoru feel absurdly pleased with himself. 

“Megumi,” Tsumiki says evenly, walking over to him and placing a hand on his shoulder. Then she turns to Satoru. “I don’t know who he is now, but the impostor was the one who put me in that coma. So, again, can we trust him?” Her voice is iron. She sounds very different than she did months ago, and Satoru can’t help but wonder what the hell happened while he was away. 

“He is in control of the impostor,” Satoru says. “And as far as Suguru is concerned, I trust him. That should be enough.” 

He sees Megumi’s shoulders relax very slightly. Tsumiki lets go of his shoulder, and goes to offer Suguru her hand.

“Hi,” she says, and for a moment she looks like the child Satoru met years ago. “I’m Fushiguro Tsumiki. It’s nice to meet you.” She turns towards Megumi, pointedly raises her eyebrows at him.

“Sure, whatever,” Megumi says. He’s still glaring at Suguru, but Satoru supposes that’s progress. 

Suguru, meanwhile, is not displaying the expected level of excitement about meeting Satoru’s kids. Instead, he’s staring between the two of them like he’s just been slapped.

“Satoru,” he blurts out eventually, “these are Toji’s kids?” 

Right. That. 

“Huh, yeah,” Satoru says. Suguru shuts his eyes like he is getting a headache, which Satoru supposes is fair. Nonetheless, he says, “Hey, remember what you said! No murder!” 

Suguru opens his eyes to look at him, unimpressed. “I’m not going to…” he runs a hand across his forehead. “Just, fucking hell, Satoru.” 

“Okay, what the fuck,” Megumi says, for the first time looking at Suguru with something other than pure hostility. “You knew my father?” 

Suguru makes a face and, okay, fair enough, this is what Satoru gets for not addressing this entire conversation before now.

“Okay,” he says, before the situation can devolve even further. “This is definitely a conversation we need to have soon, but can it wait until I’m not in the hospital and my ex isn’t back from being dead and also possessed?” 

“Oh god,” Suguru says, hiding his face in his hands, the tips of his ears going red in a way that makes Satoru’s heart skip a beat. 

“Yeah, sure,” Megumi says, pointedly looking away from Suguru. “I have told you before that I don’t care about him.” 

“I know,” Satoru says, “but I think you should know anyway.”

Megumi doesn’t look away from him, and after a second, he nods. Then he leans back, running a hand through his hair in a gesture that he probably thinks is very cool and nonchalant. 

“How are you, anyway?” He says quickly, looking intensely at somewhere on Satoru’s left. 

“Aw, worried about me?” Satoru asks with his best shit-eating grin.

“Shut up,” Megumi says, at the same time Tsumiki goes, “He is.” When he glares at her, she gives him a smile. 

Satoru laughs, genuinely this time. For a moment, he catches Suguru’s lips curling up as well.

“I’m okay,” Satoru says, stretching his arms out. “But my powers are on hold for a while, so we are going to keep a low profile until I’ve trained them back up.” 

“That’s the plan?” Suguru asks. “You know, they are going to ask for my execution, again.” 

“I learned it all once, I can do it again,” Satoru shrugs. “The higher ups don’t need to know any of this until I have recovered my powers. And once I do, well, what are they going to do, fight us about it?” He makes eye contact with Suguru, and adds, “Besides, you know, training up gives me a chance to take a small break. Spend time with the people I love.”

Suguru’s eyes widen for a second before he looks away, flustered. Satoru grins, and Megumi groans a complaint.

Then, the door bursts open again, accompanied by some unintelligible but definitely annoyed comments by Shoko. This time, it’s Yuuji who makes his way in, hands in his pockets and a hint of a smile on his face. He also looks older than he did a few months ago, and there is a scar on the side of his mouth now.

“Hey, sensei!” He says with a wave when he spots Satoru. 

“Yuuji! Missed me?” 

Yuuji walks over to bump fists with Satoru. “Yeah, I did!”

“Well, good to know someone appreciates me.” 

“Don’t encourage him,” Megumi tells Yuuji. 

Yuuji smiles and walks over to him, leaning into his shoulder. “Aw, come on, he was gone for months.”  

“And he’s still as insufferable as he was months ago, trust me,” Megumi says, then he frowns. “Wait, actually, what are you doing here?” 

“I was looking for you,” Yuuji says evenly. “Nobara told me that Maki told her that Yuuta told her that Gojo-sensei showed up with him on a dragon last night, so I figured you’d be here.” 

“If you say anything about that I will punch you,” Megumi says, raising a hand toward Satoru. “Bedridden or not.” 

“So mean,” Satoru whines, but doesn’t remark upon it, instead marking down the win in the tally he keeps in his heart.

“Hey, Gojo-sensei,” Yuuji says after a moment, throwing a cautious glance in Suguru’s direction. “I’m assuming it’s fine if he’s here, but it’s him and not the brain, yeah? Cause he was, huh,” he stumbles for a second, rubbing the back of his neck. “He was pretty awful last time.” 

Satoru looks at Suguru first, who swallows. “I remember you,” Suguru says after a moment. “I’m sorry.” 

Yuuji doesn’t reply, and instead gives Suguru a small, uncertain smile. And then, Megumi reaches out, taking Yuuji’s hand in his.

Oh. Oooooh.

“Do not,” Megumi says, seeing the smile growing on Satoru’s face, “say anything.” 

Satoru mimes zipping up his mouth as dramatically as he can. Megumi rolls his eyes. 

“It would actually be nice to get your approval, sensei,” Yuuji says, his cheeks going slightly red. “Since you’re like, Megumi’s dad and everything.” 

With the same amount of drama as before, Satoru mimes unzipping his mouth, then bursts into laughter. 

“Honestly, Yuuji,” he says, “you could probably do better than him, but the heart wants what it wants, so godspeed.” 

Despite himself, his gaze darts to Suguru as he says that, who is already looking back at him, carefully so.

“I hate you,” Megumi says. 

Tsumiki adds, “Satoru, that’s rude.” 

Satoru lets out a chuckle, then adds, without looking away from Suguru, “And to answer your earlier question, Yuuji,” he says, “yes, this is Geto Suguru, my ex boyfriend, and you can trust him.” 

Suguru hides his faces in his hands. “Will you stop introducing me to people as that,” he mutters. 

“Nope,” Satoru says with a grin. “This is what you get for breaking up with me.” 

“It was a bit more complicated than that,” Suguru exhales, but he doesn’t seem too bothered. After all, he’s had a lot of practice dealing with Satoru’s drama.

“Regardless,” Satoru says, looking back to Yuuji, “Suguru is going to be staying. Hey, maybe you two can bond over eating curses!” 

“You eat curses?” Yuuji asks, turning to Suguru with wide eyes.

Suguru looks up at him. “Huh, yes,” he says, shifting awkwardly on the spot.

“I eat cursed items!” Yuuji says, now smiling brightly. “They’re so gross, right?”

“Ugh, yeah,” Suguru says, a hint of a smile appearing on his face. “Like a cloth that’s been used to clean up vomit.” 

“That’s exactly it!” Yuuji laughs. “This is great, I can never find a good way to describe it!”

Suguru, for the first time since the others came in, lets out a small chuckle. It’s a lovely sound. For a moment, Satoru sees a glimpse a future that he had hardly dared dreaming of, a future where Suguru teaches by his side. Maybe, just maybe, that future might still come true. 

“Hey, Suguru, this reminds me,” Satoru says. “If you are staying here, you owe Yuuta an apology. And Maki, too. Especially Maki. Actually, where is Maki?”

“She’s here,” Yuuji says. “She’s, uh…” 

“She murdered the entire Zen’in clan,” Megumi finishes for him. He says it firmly, like he wants Satoru to know that he’s already processed his thoughts about this and he definitely does not want to talk about it.

“Nice,” Satoru says, “never liked them.” 

Also, with the Zen’in clan gone, his plans of rebuilding jujutsu society have suddenly gotten way easier. He should get Maki a cake. 

“See?” He tells Suguru. “You have mass murder in common now, you’ll get along!”

“I don’t-” Suguru starts, then shuts his mouth quickly. Satoru’s pretty sure he just stopped himself from saying something awful again, which is progress. “We’ll see,” he says eventually. 

“I’ll take it,” Satoru says. He smiles at Suguru when the other gives him a questioning look. Little steps. 

The door opens again.

“How many of you are…” Suguru starts saying, then goes quiet for a second. “Oh, hi Shoko.” 

Shoko looks somehow more exhausted than she did an hour ago. “Okay, I can’t believe I’m having to do this,” she says, “but everyone, get the hell out. Satoru, you need to sleep, or so help me god.” 

“Hey, we were just catching up!” Satoru says. 

“Yeah, and I let it slide for too long,” Shoko replies, unimpressed. “Out, everyone, or I’m not dealing with your injuries next time you get hurt, and that is a threat.” She starts ushering the kids out of the door. 

“See you later, Gojo-sensei!” Yuuji shouts as he leaves.

Shoko sighs. “You too, Suguru,” Shoko says once he’s the only one left. 

Satoru lets out the most pathetic whine he can manage. 

“It’s okay,” Suguru says, gently placing a hand on Satoru’s shoulder. “I need to go see the girls, anyway.” 

Satoru catches his gaze. “You’ll stay, yes?”

Suguru smiles, leaning forward to kiss him on the forehead. “Go to sleep, Satoru. I’ll be here when you wake up.” 

***

Satoru sleeps.

For once, he doesn’t get nightmares, or memories that he doesn’t want to relive or hallucinations of the life he wants.

For once, he just sleeps, more peacefully than he has in years.

It’s already night when he wakes. Shoko is gone, but like he promised, Suguru is by his side. He doesn’t even need to open his eyes to know, Suguru’s cursed energy curling up in his senses like an old friend. When he finally does look, he finds that Suguru has dragged a chair to the side of his bed and is all curled up on it, a book open on his thigh. 

It looks so much like any of his dreams that Satoru’s heart drops for a second, but it’s all too real, from the taste of Suguru’s cursed energy to Satoru’s exhaustion to the way Suguru purses his lips while he reads. 

“You stayed.” 

Suguru looks up at him and smiles. “I said I would, didn’t I?”

Satoru shrugs. He doesn’t know how to say, yes, but you have left before without sounding like an accusation, so instead he says, “Why don’t we get out of here?” 

Suguru smiles.

They don’t go very far, just out of the infirmary and into a secluded corner of the gardens, because Satoru wants the fresh air and because he wants to look at Suguru under the moonlight. 

They settle together under the stars, a blanket grabbed at the infirmary shared between the two of them like a promise of peace.

For a long while, they savour the silence, the night sky, and each other’s presence. 

Eventually, Suguru shifts slightly closer to Satoru, and says, “I saw my girls.” 

“Huh?” Satoru asks. “How are they doing?” 

Suguru huffs. “Better than I thought,” he says, slowly. “Your kid, Yuuji, I think he… I think he made them think about a lot of things.” 

“He’s a good kid,” Satoru says. Then, he remembers the way Yuuji and Megumi held hands earlier, and adds, “Shit, I guess I’m his father-in-law, now.” 

“I think it’s still a while to that,” Suguru says. “They are, what? Fifteen?” 

“You never know,” Satoru shrugs, leaning into Suguru for a second. “I met the love of my life at fifteen.” 

It’s almost comical, the way Suguru freezes at those words. “Satoru…” he starts, then stumbles. “I am sorry I left you alone.” 

“Yeah,” Satoru says, strangled. “It really sucked, you know?” 

Suguru turns to him and gently cups Satoru’s cheek with one hand, his brow furrowed with heartbreaking tenderness. “Tell me,” he says. “What was it like for you then?” 

Satoru thinks about it. He’s never had to explain it all, the heartbreak and the nightmares and the wishing, despite all hope. He leans into Suguru’s hand. “You were my only one,” he says, slowly. “The only one who was ever my equal, the only one who truly saw me. You made me feel…” he hesitates. “-Real. And then you left me, and there was nothing I could do to bring you back despite all the power in the world, and you said all those things-” he’s almost rambling now, but there is so much that has lived only in his heart for too long, and it’s now spilling out like a flood. “-You said all those things, about how I was the strongest, and it still wasn’t enough to have you back, and suddenly I was alone again. The heartbreak felt worse than not having my powers does now.” 

Suguru nods, slowly. His eyes are shining with tears, and Satoru isn’t that far off. “I’m sorry,” he says simply, gently caressing Satoru’s cheek with his thumb.

“What was it like for you?” Satoru asks. “You broke my heart, but you were just… breaking.”

“Yeah,” Suguru exhales, “that’s a good way to put it. I was always so sure, before, and then Riko died, and Haibara died, and nothing made sense anymore, and then those girls… those poor girls…” he sobs, and Satoru leans forward, also cups Suguru’s cheek with his hand. If someone saw them from afar, they would think they are a strange, conjoined creature. “It was never about you, me leaving. I mean, it was, I wanted it all to be better for you , but I didn’t think of you as I… I did any of the things I did. And when I did think of you, it was too late, and I thought…” he looks down, lets go of Satoru’s cheek only to take Satoru’s other hand in his. “I thought maybe it was for the best. You had gotten so much further than me, I didn’t think…”

A pinprick of frustration poisons Satoru’s chest. He lets go of Suguru’s cheek to gesture wildly. “Suguru, I loved you,” he says. “What did you think was going to happen?” 

“I thought you would stop.” He says it simply, evenly, like it’s a given. Suddenly, Satoru is remembering all the times when they were younger and threw hands with each other.

“Suguru,” he says, slowly, calling every last bit of his patience, “do you know what it’s like, living with Six Eyes?” 

“A lot of sensory overload,” Suguru replies quickly.

“Sure,” Satoru says, waving his answer away. “It also means having a really, really good memory. It means that every time I look at you, I remember the day I first met you at the train station, and the first time I heard you laugh, and the first time I kissed you, and the first time I realised I was in love with you.” He pulls Suguru’s hand up, holds it to his chest, where his heart is. “You are a fundamental, unchangeable part of me. I think it is physically impossible for me to stop loving you.” 

A single tear makes its way down Suguru’s cheek. Satoru sees him close his eyes at the confession, then open them again with a deep breath. “I am not leaving again, I promise,” he says. “I might not have a super powerful technique that gives me ‘never get over your ex’ disease, but I love you too. I tried to tear you out of me, and I could never get it to stick.” 

Satoru laughs. It is borderline hysterical, but differently from the time he completely lost it in the infirmary, this feels liberating. Happy, even. 

“Suguru,” he says eventually, “I swear, if you don’t kiss me right now…” 

Suguru clicks his tongue. “Someone’s impatient,” he says with a smile.

“Well, yeah, I’ve been waiting for years, ” Satoru complains. “Seriously, are we just gonna leave it at the whole love confession? Because-” and then he has to shut up, because Suguru kisses him. It’s a gentle kiss, light like the sky after the rain.

Satoru pulls back, just for a second, just to see the way Suguru is smiling at him when he does. 

“Okay?” He asks Suguru, a memory of a long time ago.

“Oh, Satoru,” Suguru says, his voice almost painful with tenderness. “Always?”

And so Satoru leans forward and kisses him again, and again, and again, and again.

Of course, they have kissed before. Hell, they’ve even kissed in this exact situation, in the gardens of Jujutsu High in the refuge of night. But these are the most honest kisses they’ve ever shared, and differently from any other, they carry the weight of a confession and the promise of many, many others still to come.

They carry the promise of a never-ending future.

Maybe, this is what infinity is.