Work Text:
Autumn leaves fall slowly and without fuss.
His blindfold holds his hair back, much like a headband, and all of his god damned eyes are exposed to the sickly sweet daylight of a workday afternoon, the kind of warmth thats giving slowly into winter. Satoru can see clearly every shiver of a leaf before it breaks off. He can see how they don't really break off at all: rather, the tree branches let go of them with a soft snap, like an eyelash falling off to settle upon a cheek.
The trees let go of the leaves, and they wait patiently for their return, in another body, on another spring.
The reason he took off the blindfold (other then because it's generally not the most comfortable thing, and one would be surprised with how much eyebrows are able to sweat,) was to watch his students as they spar more closely without moving from the shade of the tree he settled under, a considerable length away from the training ground. Not so he can gaze longingly upon autumn leaves. But he digresses.
So far, sparring without cursed energy was looking more like Kugisaki trying to see for how long she can get away with sitting atop poor Yuuji's back, gloating over a rare victory over the pink-haired boy. Fushiguro is on the sidelines, looking rather content with his position a few steps away, and not at all interested in freeing his friend. Yuuji struggles much akin to a fish on dry land.
Whatever. The day had been long, the children up since dawn, in classes and on training grounds. So what if they were laughing while sparring, what if it was mostly slacking off?
Satoru watches them and thinks he can almost remember the kind of lightness in his chest that came from times like those, from laughs easy enough to forget their cursed predicament, time stolen between missions to act like children they were.
He had smelt Shoko's cigarette when she was meters away, and had sort of assumed she'd pass down the road with her after-work cig and settle in for the night, but she plops down next to him, the tree wide enough for both of them to lean back.
"Aren't you their teacher? Shouldn't you be telling them off or something?" She asks, with the low voice of a woman who couldn't actually care less.
Satoru sighs, pulls off his blindfold completely, letting the breeze cool the skin that had clamped up under it, tickle it with white hairs that finally fall freely. He replaces them with his glasses. They're square and pitch black and sit on his cheeks completely unlike the round ones he wonders if Shoko remembers.
"Eh," He shrugs with that sort of practiced ease, the kind that's hard to keep faking but even harder to drop. "They're kids. It's been a long day."
Ieiri raises her eyebrows a little, and takes a drag with only a slight twinkle of interest in her tired eyes.
From her angle beside him, he can feel that she can see his eyes, despite his glasses. That's usually alright. Shoko Ieiri is one of the last people alive he doesn't feel like he needs to put all his walls up in front of: however, sometimes, like right now, he feels uncomfortably bare around her, like she can see even though the ones he leaves up.
(They've known each other for so long. She probably can.)
She follows his gaze towards the trio, who might vaguely be aware of the pair thats resting under the tree, but seem completely unaware of how closely they're being spied on. The faraway voices, laughter and teasing and banter, fly down the breeze and towards their tree, the kind of song Satoru enjoys to hear around the college, ruthless in its youth.
Yuuji, who's since been freed from his friend's heavy weight but doesn't seem interested in moving from the floor, laughs loudly at something Nobara said, in what's obviously a teasing way, because she turns an impressive shade of red and slaps the back of his neck. Megumi quips something that seems to worsen the situation, and Satoru wonders if Ieiri, with her normal eyes, can see the beginnings of a small smile on the usually-stoic boys face.
Their innocence is bright and unreasonably light considering the heaviness of their lives, so much so Satoru can feel it tightening his throat in thick strings of grief for a youth long lost. Until this particular trio started their school year, he hadn't known how well he remembered being in their place.
"She's not at all like me, you know?" Ieiri says, as if she can read his thoughts, abruptly enough for Satoru to frown.
"Hm?"
She exhales slowly before speaking, completing unhurried, smoke white and thin from the time it spent in her lungs. "I can practically hear your nostalgic wallows, you know? You're not at all as mysterious as you think you are."
So what if she's right? So what if Gojo doesn't even need to ask her what she means? He looks at the trio, at Yuuji's large, kind but teasing smile, at Megumi's softer one as he watches him, and at Nobara's expression that tells him she's completely tired of being the only one that notices the looks the two boys send each other, themselves included. Can you blame him for seeing himself in them, for seeing Shoko in them? For seeing another head of black hair and another pair of eyes that look for too-long at boys that smile like the sun?
"I mean... Come on, they're pretty similar to how we were." He says, signature smile in place, as Nobara plops decidedly back down onto Yuuji's back. He could probably throw her off easily. Somehow, he just whines and pouts as she bullies him good-naturedly. It seems it rarely crosses the young man's mind that he's as capable of hurting friends as he is foes. It seems it would never occur to him to use his strength in an improper direction, like it's completely out of the question.
Shoko clicks her teeth. "Kugisaki is not at all like me. Just her hair and her gender are making you project me onto her."
Satoru looks from Ieiri's relaxed form and dulled down colors, her smoking cigarette, to Nobara and her triumphant laugh as she pokes some fun at the poor boy still trapped under her. Perhaps she's right, the two are nothing alike in personality. But their roles in this story of three children that seems to be repeating like a curse are hauntingly alike.
"Sure. She's missing that 'kill-me-please' attitude of yours." Gojo quips, and Shoko rolls her eyes, but even to that she gives little commitment, irises only flicking up slightly to show her indifference. "But the boys..."
Nobara had finally gotten off Yuuji, and is still talking to him about something as she dusts herself off.
Megumi wordlessly gives Yuuji a hand, pulls him up.
Shoko regards them too. "Yeah, sure. They act like you had."
Every time Satoru thinks he's grown used to the squeeze in his chest that appears when he thinks of those years has died down, what's supposed to be a casual callback to the past ends up feeling like bile in his throat. He and Shoko are close, and the tragedy that had plagued them for more years of their friendship than it hadn't is, predictably, not that hard to lightly mention around her. She was there, after all. There when they were sharing soda and cigarettes under this very tree and every other one on campus, there when someone had to wrap up his bleeding palm.
He's not entirely sure what the three kids are currently doing. Discussing punching techniques, maybe? Yuuji is trying to explain something by using a rich array of onomatopoeic noises, and Megumi looks throughly unimpressed.
"Yeah," He laughs, a bit softer than he does around anyone but Shoko, but still as light and as teasing as he can manage. "They're complete idiots."
Perhaps his tone isn't light enough to pass as teasing, because Ieiri's lip quirks around her cigarette. "Damn," She plucks it out of her mouth after an inhale. "I've never seen you with such a soft spot for a class before."
Satoru leans back against the tree, stretching his back like a lanky cat in the sun. "Ah, I wish I didn't. I'm supposed to kill the poor sod, eventually." He says with the air of someone discussing what's for lunch, rather than the execution of a child.
Shoko's stupid perceptive eyes dig into the side of his face. Another drag of her cigarette, a long look at the pair of boys explaining some sort of punching stance to each other, and she's saying: "The kid will try to stop the execution, you know."
Satoru isn't concerned about that. Even if Itadori did decide he suddenly wanted to back out of their deal, or if he couldn't control Sakuna any longer, well... Gojo was the strongest.
"Yuuji? Nah, he's got the 'greater good' thing down. He'll take it like a champ."
Ieiri exhales. "I mean Fushiguro."
Gojo's gaze flicks towards the boy in question. Nobara is now sitting on a low bleacher of the training ground, legs crossed and foot twirling around as she provides whats probably unnecessary commentary as the boys take up the sparring range. They aren't sparring, though. Megumi's got his hands around Yuuji, standing behind him and showing him how to position his hands for a more sophisticated punch rather than his usual street-style stance.
Nobara is raising a fond eyebrow at them despite her constant chatter, Megumi looks unfazed, and Yuuji's face is tomato-red. It's such a hauntingly familiar picture.
Satoru's chest feels undoubtedly hollow.
"No," He says, more convincing himself. "Megumi's a smart kid, he'll understand." Gojo says, pointedly not thinking about Fushiguro's face in that highschool all those weeks ago, asking of him to keep the mysterious boy alive.
("I don't want him to die."
"Your personal feelings?"
"My personal feelings.")
"You think? You think he'll understand what needs to be done?" Shoko's cigarette is nearing its end. By the sound of it, by the smallest tones of actual emotion in her voice, Satoru fears her patience is too "Or will he dig a button into his palm and demand another way?"
She doesn't flinch at the blue gaze that abruptly snaps to her. Satoru doesn't say anything immediately, terrified by how inadequate he feels to respond with some sly comment in a way he hasn't been since he was a teenager. Ieiri has a strange way of creeping around and through his shields, his walls, catching him on a late summer afternoon to fill his head with long abandoned memories of golden eyes and silky black strands.
Or perhaps it was Yuuji and Megumi that had brought this onslaught of nostalgia on. God, who knows. All he's aware of is the way it currently feels like a knife twisting into his ribs.
He manages to raise an eyebrow, all though he fears that the eyes Shoko can see are betraying a hint of surprise at her comment. She shrugs at him. "Just saying. You basically raised the poor kid."
He shakes his head. "It's different. Megumi knows what he's signing up for."
He does know. He's known since Satoru had first explained Itadori's situation to him, post higher-ups meeting where his fate had been decided. Or at least narrowed down to two choices.
And yet, staring at his ghost of a smile, fifteen years old and falling in love on a training ground, it sounds like a song someone's already written before. It seems like the beginning of a story he's already watched unfold.
Shoko looks at him like he's said something particularly stupid.
"And you think, if you knew, even then, that it would end in blood, you wouldn't have fallen in love with him?"
A part of Satoru hates how his name doesn't even have to be uttered. He hates how Shoko says 'him'. 'He', like Suguru's some sort of divinity, present all around long after all proof of their love had been burned down.
When she says 'he', she speaks of that version of him that's young and bright and kind, that walked down these paths and halls, the version of him they've been grieving for longer than the man's been dead.
He thinks of whispered confessions, of hushed gasps and mindlessly blabbered praise late in his dorm, of secretive hands on the small of his back in public. He thinks of eyes so kind he could never have imagined the cruelty that would end up brewing behind them. He thinks about the years when only one person's touch was allowed beyond the vail of Infinity.
His thoughts, perhaps against his will, decide to humour Shoko. If he'd been warned, if he could have braced himself, would it have hurt less when it happened? Would he have been able to let Suguru go that day, like a branch lets go off a leaf, or would every fucking inch of his being still have been begging for him to turn around, to walk back into his arms? (There has to be another way, there has to be another way,)
He sighs somewhat theatrically, not because he thinks he can fool Shoko, but because he needs to fool himself, and he knows she will let him. He shrugs like it doesn't matter much.
"I guess I would have." He says in the most nonchalant tone he can manage. "I just can't quite imagine ever guessing what ended up happening."
Shoko doesn't reply, but her silence sounds like 'Yeah, me neither.'
Her silence sounds like her own memories of six feet crushing these very leaves on a leisurely walk, a trio with the kind of arrogance only young people have, as if they rule the streets they're nothing but life's students in. Her silence sounds like 'You need a light?', and like missing someone that died much longer than a year ago.
"I can deal with Megumi." He says, upon further inspection, accepting that whatever circumstances the execution finds them in, the boy will grip onto his best friend knuckles white and cracking, daring Gojo to pry him from his cold dead hands. "I just hope I won't have to kill him too. Kinda fond of the kid by now."
Shoko shrugs. "Who knows. Gathering all the fingers might take awhile."
She stubs out her cigarette, then says: "Maybe by then they'll get more time than we ever had. Then you two ever had."
He barely notices himself dropping the thin sheet of divine protection he always wears on his skin, but his shoulders are slightly sagging, and slowly, he starts to feel Ieiri's shoulder against his, properly, not just through a muted layer of Infinity. She notices, he knows she does because he can feel her bicep settle more firmly against his. She doesn't mention it.
He's grown now. His eyes stay cool and his gaze stays levelled and his fingers don't dig into his palm, but they still twitch, betraying him.
Far away, Megumi swipes one precise kick to Yuuji's loose stance, and the poor guy finds himself on the floor again. Itadori looks up at his friend, some whine on his lips about being sent down on his ass, but there's this... This look in his eye. So full of adoration, so nauseatingly full of trust, so horribly known to Satoru, and Yuuji doesn't know yet. Doesn't know yet how little the training ground prepares them for their fate.
Neither of them dare to be aware of how capable they are of hurting each other. Neither of them know how well their powers could destroy the other, how much unbridled energy curses through their veins.
They will grow and they will train and they will get stronger beyond comprehension, and not once will it cross their minds that they could direct that power at each other. No, the power which they wield only serves the purpose of protecting each other. No force could turn them on each other, no circumstance and no heartbreak, no curse could make their bodies forget the muscle memory of caring for the other.
He thinks, even once all twenty fingers have been consumed by the unfortunate boy that now finds himself a vessel, every muscle in the body that still calls itself Itadori's would twitch against the idea of ever hurting Fushiguro. Even with the tie between his soul and his body worn thin, he would rather will his hand around his own throat.
Shoko's small, boney hand lightly soothes his bare, twitching fingers. The friendly warmth is a shock to his system these days, these days when he never lets his walls down.
He doesn't look at her, but speaks anyway. "They're smart kids. They'll deal with it better than we have."
The trio's mindless chatter continues down the breeze that cools as evening approaches, colours turning orange with the low sun. They move with a lightness in their limbs every older sorcerer has long forgotten, and they're bright and young and as green as early spring leaves.
This time around, Satoru will watch them
bloom through their summer, and hope their fall will come softer then his had. He'll try and teach them the cautionary tales of winter, of faits doomed and sealed. He will watch them, somehow, against all reason, hope it will never be time to let go, that this youth and this love will carry on forever. He will watch their arrogance grow and their power convince them they are untouchable, gods of Olympus bathing in adventure and in kisses, worshipping nothing but their bonds and each other's flesh. He will watch and he will remember all too well the same arrogance in his own bones, and he won't be able to save them.
He kicks off the grass, pushing his glasses further up his nose until his true eyes are barely peaking out the sides, and he gives Ieiri one solid, bare hand, to hoist her up as well. She squeezes it once before letting go immediately after, and it's comfort enough.
His walls come back up as quick as they crumbled, each feature of his contouring back into his usual expression, arrogant and delighted at anyone else's annoyance. The twitch of his fingers is gone in a blink of an eye. He turns on his heel, and Shoko watches him as if she's the one that can see through everything.
"Alright!" He says some meters closer to the training grounds. "Fucking-around time over! The armoury still needs clean up." He says cheerfully, and is rewarded with three groans of varying intensity.
"Sensei, we've been up since, like, yesterday," Nobara, ever annoyed with Gojo, complains.
"Poor you!" Is his delighted response. The kids seem to accept their defeat and appear to be bracing for another hour of a tedious chore.
Shoko dusts herself. "Any of you kids need me?" She calls from behind Gojo, as if anyone could need medical attention after that joke of a training session, and is met with a three politely shaking heads. "Alright. Then I've been here overtime enough," She says, forever sounding done with any and all antics surrounding the collage.
She turns to him. "Good night, Satoru." She says, as if either of them sleep before the daylight.
"Goodnight~" He all but sing-songs, and she doesn't necessarily roll her eyes, but the look in them tells him she would if he were worth it.
She turns at the same time he does, and Satoru claps his hands.
"Let's go! The shelves demand dusting, and I need to turn you in for curfew before I'm off the clock."
"In that case, I'm taking my sweet time." Megumi grumbles as they fall into step in front of him.
"You wound me so! Don't you know soap reruns start at nine? And you'd have me miss it!"
"Poor you!" Yuuji parrots his snarky response from earlier, and it's all so fucking ironic.