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Shoko had dozed off, and she was aware of this because for one: she wasn’t planning to sleep at all. She’d stay up the whole night and get to work when the sun rose, but her body had definitely betrayed her around four in the morning. Two: she feels weird. Like she just entered a distorted reality.
And three: When she opens her eyes a younger Gojo is owlishly peering down on her. When she blinks just as owlishly back, he grins.
“ ‘Sup Shoko.”
“....What the hell?”
He laughs, tilting his head to the side. Shoko blinked a few more times, looking down at herself and realizing that she was in her old Jujutsu Tech uniform. It took her no more than a few seconds to finally register that this was a dream. She sees stretchy blue skies, an airplane, and no traces of the wreckage their country has become. It was daunting, how seemingly peaceful it was here. She stands up and reaches to feel her coffee-colored strands– they’re as short as she remembered –while wondering with detached fascination if she could find a preposterous way to stay forever.
Then as if just remembering his existence, she turns towards him. He was now sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him, hands folded behind his neck, shades tipping back as he stared back at her patiently.
She feels bile rise in her throat at how her memory can still serve her right enough that it can completely replicate how this Gojo looked but she ignores it. “Why’re you here?”
He offers a shrug, yawning. “My flight’s gonna depart soon.”
“What flight? Where are you going?” Stupid, stupid question. Battle. Shinjuku. Sukuna. Okkotsu-kun. Two Graves—
“Really?” She swallows, her mouth as dry as sandpaper. She reaches into her pockets and curses when she doesn’t find a cigarette stick in them. This is her dream and yet she has no cigarette with her. Awful.
“Yeah,” he smiles. There’s both not much and too much to say about the sight of a face she hasn’t seen in a long time; a face that hasn’t had to experience the first biggest failure of his life just yet. A rascal with too much power in his hands whom she played consoles and board games with and stole black-out shades from.
It makes Shoko feel horrible, though. She decides it was much easier to just reminisce on those days whenever she allowed herself to, rather than to face the spitting image of this version of Gojo that’s long gone.
She plops down beside him, shoulders hunched but she makes it a point to not let her emotions seep into her otherwise monotone voice. Trust her to force a habit even in her dreams. “Hm, just like that? You’re just gonna leave–”
“Well we won in the end didn’t we–”
She slips. “Leave me behind?”
Gojo and Shoko. Teetered the lines between close friends, classmates, strangers, and trauma buddies. Gojo and Shoko. It had been just them since Geto left. Gojo and Shoko.
She opens her mouth to say more but closes it upon seeing the expression on his face. It reminds Shoko of the many reasons why she’s as closed off as she is. Even to him– the one person she had left of that past, but even he had changed. Perhaps she had changed too. Things were just never the same.
She deflects. “This is a dream, right? How do I find a way to wake up?”
Gojo sighs before straightening his back, his posture reminding her of the mature and older Gojo she was more accustomed to. “Maybe? I don’t really know, but it wouldn’t make sense if it wasn’t a dream. You never died.”
“Yep,” she affirms humourlessly. She never died. They did. And now she’s stuck with two graves and death anniversaries on the same day for two consecutive years. Truly, abhorrently awful. She’d get white hairs before she reached thirty and it’s all because of them.
“Hey,” he nudges her shoulder with his, voice soft. “You’ll be alright.”
She shrugs and doesn’t say anything. She won’t be but she’ll survive as she’d always would.
“Suguru’s still here, y’know,” she stiffens, “Haibara, Nanamin, Yaga-sensei, and Amanai too.” He smiles lightly, nothing about its nature hiding any sort of hidden turmoil as it had for the past decade and so. “They’re all here.” His eyes cast towards the direction behind her and she turns her head to follow his gaze.
“Where?” She sees rows of empty chairs and airline employees and none of the aforementioned people.
“They’re waiting for me,” is all he says and she’s starting to get annoyed with his vague answers and a bit terrified that at this point she’ll suddenly just jolt awake and be forced to face reality again. Shoko knew, that this would be the last time she’d allow herself to mourn for a long while. Once she wakes up there’s no more going back— no more thinking and reminiscing, no more relapsing.
“Don’t care so stay a bit more,” just a bit longer. Please. “When does your flight depart anyway?”
His expression doesn’t change. “Don’t know when exactly, just know it’s really soon.” She briefly wonders if in reality, Gojo had really departed to God knows where, or if he’s still waiting, just like the Gojo in this dream.
Waiting or holding back?
Frankly, she doesn’t care, “Okay, but stay here until then,” she insists. He finally grins again. Her chest starts to constrict. Here’s to never seeing that again. “You owe me this much. I’ll be stuck with more work than I’ve ever had to handle since I started Jujutsu.”
“Riiight,” he drawls out cheekily. “That’ll suck, but good luck!”
She rolls her eyes and nods. He starts humming a tune and she allows herself to smile if only a little.
Gojo and Shoko. Teetered the lines between close friends, classmates, strangers, and trauma buddies. Gojo and Shoko. It had been just them since Geto left. Gojo and Shoko.
“Y’know,” he starts, “I was a bit pissed back then. You seemed like you didn't care at all that I was going to let myself get used like that."
If she were having this conversation in real life, she would’ve already pressed the end of her cigarette on the surface beside her before dropping it onto the floor and then reaching for another; “You know it wouldn’t change anything,” she’d say. But since this is a dream, since this is much younger her talking to much younger Gojo, and since there’s no way she’d get to talk to him again anyway, she contemplates it a bit more.
“Well,” she stares at her shoes. Were they always this shiny? “Did u want me to cry or throw a fit?"
".... Not really. But I think I was hoping you'd protest against the plan."
She hums. “My opinion mattered?”
He frowns, “When did it never?”
She thinks of times when he and Geto would start clashing in front of her. Whenever she didn’t run away they’d ask her opinion and her answers were always of the same wavelength.
“Ehh? I don’t really have an opinion.”
" Either should work, as long as we reach our objective right?”
“Figure that out yourselves later. Focus you idiots. We’re kinda straying from the main point.” And they listened. Most of the time.
That’s how she’s always been. Always on the middle ground, always on the neutral; it’s not that she didn’t care– she does, she always had and will and it was much easier if she just had an actual off switch for her emotions so that she didn’t have to repress them –she just didn’t want to complicate anything. Her friend becomes a mass murderer and defects: Oh... bummer. If you die down the line you had it coming for you. Her other friend becomes distant and allows himself to become a weapon to save their country and by extension, the world: Do whatever you want. If that’s what you gotta do, then sure. Was that so heartless of her? In a way, she had only been protecting herself and her heart. Emotions and distracting thoughts be damned. That was her mantra even when all she wanted to do was to break down in front of someone and be comforted. She’d imagined that said person to be the guy beside her but it was as impossible as stripping Gojo of his techniques. She’d cry and sob and he’d cry too and then maybe they’d hug and then talk– again, it was just impossible.
“But you know me,” she closes her eyes. Still, it was nice at least, to know that her opinion mattered even a decade later. Even a missing friend later. Even when a chasm that she never noticed until said missing friend left grew between them later. Even when the world and jujutsu society was all but fucked– her chest warms and it lingers. It was nice. “You know how I am.”
“I do,” she hears his exasperated sigh, and dare she say that there was a hint of fondness in it, “I know you, but I still wanted to hear it.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re my best friend too, after all.”
She snorts, but her heart skipped a beat. “No, that’s Geto.”
She isn’t looking at him but she knows he’s frowning. “And you. Suguru was my best friend because he was the only one who understood me and the power I yielded. But you,” Shoko ignored the fact that her heart skipped a beat again, “you were my best friend because we stuck together like this despite everything and anything.” This time, she looks at him and he’s smiling at her imperceptibly.
Gojo and Shoko. Teetered the lines between close friends, classmates, strangers, and trauma buddies. Gojo and Shoko. It had been just them since Geto left. Gojo and Shoko.
This is just a dream, and yet— “Do you mean that, Gojo?” Her breath catches in her throat as she asks, “You mean it, right?”
“I mean it, Shoko.”
They sit in silence and say nothing else and Shoko finds that she’s pretty okay with it. Earlier she was scrambling for more words to say when she was never good with them; for more time before she woke up to her dingy ceiling and before she said goodbye to him. But she supposed this would always be the epitome of their dynamic now, and unlike before where she’d find herself hating it and comparing it to how they were in their teenage years, she thinks that this was enough. This was safe. This was fine. She can only hope the real Gojo somewhere out there thought the same as her, if he ever really thought about it as much as she did that is.
“It’s time,” she opens her eyes and sees him standing up. She stands up too.
He stretches his long limbs and yawns again. “Don’t miss me too much, and quit smoking already, geez.”
“I won’t miss you,” it’s a promise. “Just one more question, what do you want me to do to your body?”
He hums before turning to face her completely. “Do whatever. I trust you.”
“Okay,” Alright. She slowly gestures for him to go, beaming in a way she’s only ever known to do before entering her 20s. “Hurry up, Satoru. ”
And he does. He walks ahead of her and waves like a five-year-old; beaming back at her, apparently bright enough for streaks of white to burst her vision, clearing, clearing—until she found herself staring at the ceiling of her room.
She takes a few moments to compose herself, to linger on the images in her mind a bit longer. After that, she stretches and stands up from her bed to start the day.
Gojo and Shoko. Teetered the lines between close friends, classmates, strangers, and trauma buddies. Gojo and Shoko. It had been just them since Geto left, and even then—
“You’re my best friend because we stuck together like this despite everything and anything.” The sentence lingered in the backdrop of her mind but it dissipates completely as she finishes dressing herself.
Even then— she smiles.