Chapter Text
People struggle to ask him about how he felt about killing his best friend. They don’t ask. No one wants to corner the most powerful jujutsu sorcerer who’s ever lived, and ask him how he’s dealing with killing Geto Suguru. No one wants to hear it, honestly. Gojo Satoru has learned, over the last several years, that people don’t really want to know how he feels about anything. He’s supposed to be strong, and cool, and that’s it. He’s not supposed to have feelings.
Maybe they’re afraid he’s despondent, guilty, and on the verge of walking away from the entire jujutsu world. That’s what Nanami thinks, maybe. Nanami did the same thing when his best friend died, didn’t he? Walked away from the whole thing, spent four years turning into the oldest-looking 22-year-old in the world, and slowly killing his soul in an office every single day.
Maybe they’re afraid he doesn’t feel much of anything at all. Maybe Yaga thinks that the part of him with feelings, the part of him that felt guilty over not stopping Geto’s rampage ten years ago, the part of him that laughed on a tandem bike and held buckets of water outside classroom doors for cursing in class, the part of him that still feels emotions that aren’t confidence and battle fury, is long dead.
Maybe they’re afraid he secretly enjoyed it. There are some, like Utahime and Gakuganji and the higher-ups, that have always been convinced that he’s a monster just waiting to be unleashed on humanity, when the very last of his “fun guy” facade melts away.
So none of them ask. No one wants to comfort Gojo Satoru, after all. He’s supposed to be invincible. He’s at least supposed to be able to handle his own shit. His students don’t ask, because that’s not their place, and his colleagues don’t ask, because they’re afraid for him, and no one else asks, because they’re afraid of him. So no one gets to know the way that Gojo actually feels about having killed Geto Suguru.
Which is good.
Because whoever asked, he would have to lie.
Gojo whistles cheerfully to himself as he disarms several wards on a nondescript building, cleanses his residuals, and turns two keys in the lock at the same time, before sliding open an immensely heavy door. Warded against magic, lock picks, and human weakness, check, check check.
He slides and locks the door behind him, turning on a tiny soft light in one corner. The room is utilitarian, about two hundred square feet, the size of a tiny Tokyo apartment, with a paper privacy screen around a toilet, a bed, and a sink. There’s a shelf full of cup noodles and oranges (for the scurvy) and some jerky for protein, but in his defense, he’s got an arm full of grocery bags this time. It was a bit slapdash, when he set the whole thing up on short notice.
He turns the light up, enough to illuminate himself, and his haul. “Gooooooood mooooooorniiiiiiiiing,” he sing-songs cheerfully, a huge bright smile on his face. He sets down the groceries, standing over the bed, bringing up a pair of massive cue cards, as if he’s working behind a teleprompter. “Yes, okay! Today’s first lesson, start! Question number one: when a human bumps into you in the street, which of these is the right answer? Number one, or number two?”
He holds up one card, which says, “Out of my way, monkey scum,” and another that says, “Excuse me.”
The light makes Geto Suguru stir more than Gojo’s voice at first, which sounds like garbled nonsense when filtered through his ears, like he’s listening to it all under water.
That would be the sedatives—or the wards? He can’t tell. The first time he’d woken up, Shoko had been there, and his initial, startled reaction had actually begun to fray enough of the ward bindings on his arms and legs that she had hastily sedated him with enough horse tranquilizers to fell an actual horse (or a special grade sorcerer, in this case).
Two arms. When did that happen? Right. Shoko had been there. Shoko, probably, had done something about that pesky exploded one. But wasn’t he supposed to be dead? That would’ve been Gojo, crouched in front of him, a concentrated, flickering orb of light at the ready, after he had said…
Finally, Geto groggily cracks his eyes open. He certainly sees Gojo there, but processing him—and what he’s asking—doesn’t fully compute. Not yet. “…Huh?” he deadpans. His head pounds. That would be the wards. He feels strangely light underneath their thrumming pressure minus about four thousand curses, as if the pool of his cursed energy that they should reside in is a vast, empty reservoir once more, waiting to be filled again. Unlikely. That seems very unlikely, seeing Gojo’s beaming face. Perhaps he did die, and this is his hell, though it would be a strange one, all things considered. Any amount of Gojo should be considered a reward, these days… “Satoru…what on earth.”
“BZZZT! Wrong answer!”
Cheerfully, Gojo tosses the cards to the side, then flicks a finger.
Gravity crushes suddenly down on Geto, flattening him like a car landing on him. Then it lets up, Gojo still smiling. “Want to try question one again?”
Never mind, this is a certain, particular kind of hell—the hell when he can’t punch Gojo Satoru in the face when he sorely deserves it. No, it doesn’t matter that he attacked Jujutsu High first. “I’m going to kill you,” Geto grinds out, heaving himself up onto an elbow, grateful at least that his arms are bound in front, not behind. That would just be impossible. He blows a mussed strand of hair out of his face, scowling over at Gojo. “At least unbind me, Satoru. I can feel how many wards you have on this place, I’m not going anywhere.” All right, so he can’t really feel it so much as he’s guessing. Being ward-bound hand and foot makes it impossible to sense anything, but it’s Gojo—so he would take no small amount of precautions.
“You can’t feel shit, with that metal on your wrists and ankles,” Gojo says, cackling out a laugh. He hops up on the countertop, legs swinging. “That’s not normal metal, I put some pretty cool sorcery on it. I know you’re not going anywhere. Besides, what are you gonna do with your, oh, two Curses left?”
“Exactly,” Geto curtly retorts, staring up at him through his bangs. Two. Smallpox Deity, and of all things, Kissymonster. That’s a special kind of stupid, keeping that one—even for him. “So unbind me. Obviously, you have nothing to worry about.”
Gojo doesn’t move, gazing through his new swanky black blindfold at the bound man. “You think you’re giving orders here, huh?”
Ooh, that’s the game they’re going to play. Geto heaves a sigh, surrendering immediately. Or at least, he can pretend to. “I can ask nicely, if you’d prefer. Lick your boots, maybe? Please tell me the rules, Satoru-sama, I already know you decided not to kill me for some reason.”
Gojo’s head tilts to the side. “Did I? Nah, that doesn’t sound right. I did kill you. Ask anyone.”
That makes something startled and wary thrum down Geto’s spine. “…Shoko was here, though.” Unless he imagined that—but that’s doubtful. He remembers her, very clearly. “How do you expect to keep that a secret? They’ll want a body.”
“Yeah. I gave them one. Fortunately for me, some asshole led something called the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons. Wasn’t that hard to find a corpse with long black hair and blast an arm off.” Gojo is quiet for a second, just a second, then adds, “And Shoko will keep her mouth shut.”
Geto’s mind rapidly swivels, changing trajectories as much as he can when everything is still fuzzy, and nothing quite makes sense. The rest of his family—no, he remembers that. Gojo had said they had all gotten away. That’s a sliver of relief at least, and allows him to focus more on his own situation, which…is troubling, to say the least.
“…Why?” he finally, faintly settles upon. “There’s no way you can hide me forever. Wherever…this is.”
“Oooh. Really? I seem to distinctly remember you telling me nothing was impossible for me.” Gojo grins. “Sure I can, if I feel like it. Want to try Question One again?”
“Can you cut out the crap for a moment, Satoru?” Geto snaps. “I’m not answering your stupid questions. Unbind me—you know I’ll lose if I try to fight you, so I’m not going to try. Unless you’re that afraid of what I’ll do, even still.”
“Ahh, maybe this was too early,” Gojo says with a sigh, resting his chin on his hand, elbow on his thigh. “You still don’t seem to get that you don’t make the rules here. Too long with all those guys worshipping you and kissing your feet, I bet. Just let me know when you’re ready for Question One, because we have a lot of them to get through.”
“What the hell is that even about?” Geto flatly asks, staring up at him. “Did you seriously make question flashcards? And why?”
“It’s for your re-education,” Gojo informs him, very seriously. “I don’t think it’s cute, to have a best friend who can’t tell the difference between right and wrong. And I was so stupid, huh? Just let you get away with it. Yikes! It’s fine, I’ve got a handle on it now. We’re fixing you.”
“I don’t need to be fixed.” Geto’s voice goes cold. “I know the difference between right and wrong. It’s the rest of the world that’s in the dark. You’d realize that, if you actually thought about it and stopped letting every higher-up control your life.”
Gojo observes him for a second, then raises his hand, fingers crossing. He takes off the blindfold, his eyes brighter than the light in the small room. “Limitless Void.”
He only leaves it up for a second. About a hundred times longer than a human could endure, without dying. He deactivates it, and tugs the blindfold back on. “Get it yet? There’s so, so much you don’t have allowed in that head of yours. There’s so much in my mind, all the time. You haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what this world has to offer. There’s a reason that in all the Heavens and Earth, I alone am the Exalted one.”
Excellent. This is how he’s going to die, not quickly and easily at the hands of something blue or red or purple and pinpoint. He’s going to die because his best friend has gone utterly insane.
Now, to be fair, he has also gone insane—he just did it a long time ago, at this point.
Geto’s vision swims, and he slowly flops back down, breathing shallowly as he shuts his eyes. If there’s one thing he knows about Gojo Satoru, it’s that if he doesn’t get the reaction he wants, he’ll try something else. Whatever that is, Geto doesn’t know. Right now, though, he hopes it’s just to be frustrated and leave him alone. “Fine,” he breathes, and slowly, sluggishly rolls over, offering up his back. “Go be Exalted, then.”
“Ahh, maybe it was too early for you, after all,” Gojo says, shaking his head and hopping off the counter. “All right, sleep well. If you’re hungry, well. I’m sure you can figure it out. There’s Cup Noodles, you used to like those.”
With that, he leaves, through all of his wards and locks, securing everything vice-tight behind him.
Gojo leaves, and Geto waits a long moment, breathing, reorienting himself amongst the living, and then flops onto his back again, staring up at the ceiling.
Well.
Shit.
Thinking he understands how Gojo’s mind works is actually not that great in a situation like this. He knows how Gojo’s mind works, which means he knows that Gojo wants something out of this. ‘Re-education’ is a thinly veiled explanation for something else—he just doesn’t know what that is yet.
Absently, he flicks a bit of cursed energy against the wards on him specifically—surely enough, it pings off uselessly. This isn’t the sort of binding ward that one slaps on out of nowhere, either. Either these are from the depths of the schools’ vaults, or Gojo had planned for his first chance to do something like this. Either thought is kind of troubling.
The rest of the building is no better. Not that he can feel it—he can’t feel shit, with his cursed energy effectively dampened to zero, bubbling under so many layers that it actually starts to give him a headache when he reaches for it and can’t find it. Damn. Damn, damn, damn.
He’s going to have to start playing nice, if he’s going to change any part of this situation. If there is one other thing he knows about Gojo Satoru—it’s that he’s a control freak, and he loves having the upper hand. This kind of situation after Geto has thwarted all attempts at contact, capture, and control for over ten years? Yeah. No wonder Gojo wants him underneath his thumb this thoroughly.
“Bastard,” Geto sighs underneath his breath, and closes his eyes, deciding to give up for now, and goes back to sleep. He can play nice later. Very nice, because he, if nothing else, is a convincing liar.