Chapter Text
Gojo Satoru, the strongest sorcerer, was dying.
He was dying.
Worse, he had lost.
Failed.
He could still hardly believe it.
Darkness was quickly encroaching on his vision, a full, true absence of light he had never experienced before and had he breath to spare he would have laughed.
No Jujutsu sorcerer dies without regrets.
How many times had Yaga said that and how many times had he scoffed at it, rejecting the very idea of him dying a failure? Now, there was nothing but regrets left to him because he failed when it mattered the most.
And…
When you die, you’ll die alone.
Yes, it would seem all of his beliefs would be proven untrue today.
He was not alone, Utahime’s cursed energy still flowing around him and through him, golden and warm and loving. It tugged at him insistently, urging him to live. Begging him to. But it was too late. He had given his all—hell, double his all—and it had still not been enough. It could never have been enough because he had been an overconfident fool. He had nothing left now and the fight was lost.
Time had run out, infinity cut short, and it was all his fault.
Bitterness swelled in him because that was apparently not enough of a failure.
Only now—dying—he finally understood what emotions Utahime had woven into her technique. Only now, understanding what that warmth meant did he come to untangle the complex mess of feelings behind his compulsions and anxieties and baffling bodily reactions.
Oh, there was nothing but regrets–even the feeling of Utahime’s warmth desperately trying to hold onto him seeped into them—left to him as the now terrifying darkness twisted and swallowed him whole.
Death spat him out and slammed him into an unkindly hard surface and his world exploded.
Pain.
White-hot blinding pain.
Something torturous tore out of his throat and fire trailed a blaze down his back as merciless gravity dragged him down down down.
His eyes were wide open, he abruptly realized and slammed them shut to save himself from agony.
His lungs didn’t work, unable to draw into themselves the air everything in him so desperately cried out for.
His legs… were there, each beat of his heart sending a fresh jolt of pain through the nerve endings located in his lower half.
His hands were pressed into his face, his fingers clawing at it. He forced them away and down, ramming them into the solid ground instead.
He couldn’t feel Utahime and her warmth anymore, not truly, and what he felt in her absence was pure torture.
Suguru.
He punched the ground for good measure, driving the soft meat of his hands into the gravel again and again, smashing the fragile bones into the unyielding pavement.
A scream of pure rage tore out of him.
His eyes were closed, but he could still see the outline of his cursed energy right across from him. The residuals of it.
The residuals, because the body the energy belonged to was dead.
Suguru.
When all he wanted was Utahime.
He wanted…
His eyes snapped open.
This was wrong.
This was all wrong.
This was…
He had not cried over Suguru’s body. Not like this anyway. Not then.
And while there had been pain in his heart, there had not been physical pain. Not like this.
Some air finally entered his lungs on a sharp, shocked inhale.
This was not a dream.
He lifted his bloody hands and examined them with no small deal of fascination.
His Infinity was off. It had not been.
This was not a memory.
Judging by the red gouges and the grit stuck in them, his reverse cursed technique was not yet active either.
That… that was a little frightening because everything his eyes were seeing was telling him that this was… real.
Suguru’s body, slumped against the alley wall directly opposite, was real.
Satoru, crumbled against a wall of his own, was real.
The stars, winking into existence in the night sky high above the clouds promising snow, were real.
The date they and everything around him shouted at him was just plain wrong.
A year.
It was… exactly one year before his… death.
Exactly.
The Limitless afforded him many abilities, including teleporting across long distances, warping space, but warping time… that was impossible.
Had been impossible, he supposed.
His cursed energy reserves were almost completely drained, which was another thing that had been considered impossible. Mostly by him, but still. He was the preeminent expert on the topic.
And his reserves had been boosted by Utahime too.
He jerked back and his head smacked into the concrete wall behind him, the explosion of fresh pain jarring. There were slivers of her cursed energy still intertwined with whatever remained of his, weaving the ragged strands back together, nudging his recovery along even as the delicate golden wisps melted away with each passing second.
The Limitless on its own was not capable of time travel. It could bend space to its wielder’s will, but not spacetime.
Just how much of a boost had Utahime’s fully executed technique given him? And how the fuck had he managed to accidentally send himself back in time? Why? Why would he aim—consciously or otherwise—for the impossible rather than pouring everything into healing himself, surely the more attainable goal?
He stared at Suguru’s body, the residuals of his friend’s cursed energy settling heavily into the pavement, still seething with the poisonous negativity of the curses contained within.
Kenjaku had used this body to visit death and destruction upon Japan. The body that had been essential in distracting and entraping Satoru and all the evil that had followed.
The body that he absolutely would not allow to be desecrated in such a horrific way again.
He pushed off the ground and dragged himself over to Suguru only to collapse next to him, his head falling onto a stiff shoulder.
“I am sorry,” he whispered into the night. “I am so so sorry.”
He had not cried over Suguru’s body, but now he did. Now, he wrapped his arms around his best friend’s torso and pressed his face into his neck and sobbed like he had not allowed himself since he had been a little child.
Eventually, he would have to return to the school.
Eventually, he would have to bring Suguru’s body in and see to its proper disposal personally.
Eventually, but not yet and not alone.
His hold on Suguru tightened.
A new day was dawning by the time his frazzled self recovered enough to warp back to the school, specifically to its morgue.
He laid out Suguru on the cold metal slab and waited.
And waited.
The bodies would come, he knew, with Shoko in their wake.
But it was Windows that came first, wheeling the gurneys carrying the bodies of their fallen comrades, stumbling back at the sight of him, of them.
“Geto Suguru is dead,” he announced, not bothering to turn to face the door, his voice as cold and dead as the man himself. “The threat was eliminated.”
Shoko did not come, though Principal Yaga did. Satoru’s eyes remained determinedly glued to the cooling body of the dead man rather than risking the sight of the warm one. His eyes were uncovered and here stood another of his failures.
“What happened, Satoru?”
“I killed him,” he replied as evenly as he could. He had spent hours reassembling his strength and his composure and it all felt incredibly fragile still.
“Where did the blood come from?”
“Ah,” he blinked at his grimy hands and his clothes stiff with dried blood. With the Infinity up, that should not have happened. “That’s not mine.” Not most of it anyway. “Where’s Shoko?”
“Ieiri is sleeping. She was dead on her feet. She saved many lives tonight. You should go get some rest too.”
Satoru took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I will. Once Suguru’s body is cremated. I will keep my eyes on him until there’s nothing but ashes left.”
“Satoru—”
“Do not Satoru me! He was a special grade sorcerer and his body contains thousands of curses! We can’t risk anything but quick and proper disposal of the body!” His eyes burned.
He winced as the principal’s hand rose and pushed against the Infinity at his back. “You need to rest.”
“I will,” he repeated himself stubbornly as his sensei’s hand fell away. “Once he is cremated. The curses within him are too much of a threat otherwise.”
Yaga sighed and changed tack. “Your students need you.”
A bitter chuckle escaped him. He had missed whatever happened with Rika, but he had only offered an explanation the first time around. Surely, she did not need that to move on? Yuta would be confused but he could afford to wait a little. His students, or anyone else, for that matter, could certainly not afford to have a special grade sorcerer’s body—and the thousands of curses it had assimilated—resurrected to be wielded against them by an unspeakably evil ancient curse user.
“They need to rest,” he said instead and shut his ears to any further attempts to convince him to leave the morgue. There was nothing more important than seeing to Suguru’s body. Nothing.
When he was left alone at last, he walked over to a wall and slid down it to sit on the ground, watching the still body illuminated by the harsh too-bright-too-artificial lights of the morgue.
Fuck. He scrubbed at his face.
The lights put a particular strain on his eyes and he stuffed his hands into his pockets, searching for his blindfold, coming up empty. There was no blindfold there, only a phone.
Right. He was not using the blindfold yet. It had been bandages so far, but he had discarded them even before finding Suguru.
He banged his head against the tiles and fished out his phone.
Suguru is dead, he wrote to Utahime, his fingers moving without conscious input. Please come.
I need you. I don’t want to be alone, he added and erased before hitting Send.
He watched three dots appear and disappear for a good while before the phone vibrated with a question. Are you alright?
Bring alcohol, he replied.
When will you be here? was typed out and sent as well before he could think better of it.
Her response was almost immediate. 4 hours if I manage to catch the next train. More if not.
Too long. Were he not too scared to leave Suguru, he would have warped to Kyoto to get her. But he was. He was fucking petrified. He had failed, after all, completely and utterly.