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Yuuji is not a particularly optimistic person. He wouldn’t call himself a pessimist - not even now, after everything - but he'd been raised to be practical and whatever magic he might have secretly believed in had been thoroughly snuffed out by his grandfather’s cancer diagnosis. Then he’d found out that magic really did exist, made from bitter grief and bloodspill and hurthurthurt, over and over, the endless pain of humanity versus the few made to bear the weight of it. Talk about a slap in the face, but what was he supposed to do about it besides shoulder what he could alongside the others? He’s got a part to play, something to work towards, and that’s always been enough to keep him moving.
He thinks maybe Gramps would approve of his pragmatism, even if Yuuji’s going to let him down in the long run.
Realist. Yuuji is a realist. But right now, there’s a feeling in him he can’t swallow back, can’t rein in. It’s big and bright and nearly hurting, welling up from under his heart and filling the aching, arching hollowness of his ribcage so that there’s barely enough room for his lungs to fill with air. It’s anticipation, and something else, something less concrete. He’s ducked down behind a sandbag barrier in an empty quarry, rough plastic scraping against his calloused palms and Inumaki-senpai a line of heat at his side, and for the first time in nineteen bleak, miserable days, Yuuji has hope.
Angel is high above them, and at his senpai’s command a searing pillar of light and power thunders down from the heavens like the almighty hand of some vengeful god, like Gojo-sensei himself. Yuuji covers his eyes against the burn of it, heart in his throat, and this is the end, it has to be, Gojo-sensei will fix everything - will fix Yuuji’s mistakes. Yuuji won’t have to be alone anymore.
He calls out around the obstruction of his heart, asks if it’s okay, if he can come close, but there’s only the same echoing silence, that helpless absence that’s defined November for him. When his vision finally clears, the quarry is still empty. He’d heard someone somewhere say once that hope dies last; Yuuji just wishes his had never existed at all.
--
Satoru comes back to a world that is wrong.
It’s not immediately obvious, or important, because he’s suddenly at the bottom of the sea, but it’s the work of a moment to tear apart the pathetic wards between him and the surface and then he’s high above Japan, staring out at the ruins of what must be Tokyo, and even that doesn’t strike him as out of place. Those fools had sealed the Strongest away - what had they expected to happen? Of course everything has gone to shit.
There’s a ragtag little cluster of cursed energies milling about one of the school’s training grounds. Satoru recognizes most of them, and a cold kind of fury sparks in his chest, spreading like ice in his lungs. It’s tempting to go straight there, to exact swift and bloody vengeance on the pathetic little cowards who had turned on him, who had stood by while he’d been trapped, but he spies movement in the ruins below, someone far more pressing for him to deal with.
Geto Suguru smiles up at him the moment he appears, and the other man's expression is off, bland and cruel, with none of the edge to it that had always resonated with Satoru. He’s talking, spewing some inane bullshit about crushing Satoru with the weight of water, taunting him, going on and on, and Satoru can feel the ice of his anger spreading, can feel the way his cursed energy surges in response, stirring his hair and lifting the ends of his long coat around him. He lets it, doesn’t even try to restrain the urge to lash out.
“Hey,” he calls, interrupting the endless stream of annoying nothing, and Suguru raises his brows but falls silent. “You should choose your words more carefully. After all, they will be your last.”
Strange behavior or no, this is still the man who had betrayed him, who had sealed him in the Prison Realm and left him to rot, and Satoru doesn’t hold anything back when he flicks his finger and fires off a bolt of brilliant purple light. Suguru dodges it - barely - but Satoru is kept from following through with his attack the way he’d meant to by the arrival of a pair of sorcerers he doesn’t immediately recognize. One of them meets him in the air, matching him blow for blow, and the cursed energy slithering off of him like smoke is like nothing Satoru has ever seen before. Excitement shivers down his spine, leaving hairline fractures in the ice of his rage.
There’s something familiar in the angle of the man’s jaw and the inky dark of his hair, but it’s the disdainful slant to his eyes that finally sparks Satoru’s memory. “You’ve changed quite a bit since the last time I fought you,” he tells Zen’in Megumi, and he knows he’s got it right - the Ten Shadows technique is imprinted in every cell of the younger man’s body - but it still feels wrong. The cursed energy clouding his Six Eyes is too dark, too potent and refined, to belong to the angst-riddled teenager Satoru had known. Even more damning is the fact that Satoru had long-since decided that there was no point in letting history repeat for them: he’d killed the Zen’in heir himself.
Something is very wrong.
“Do you still remember?” Zen’in asks, his expression calm, his voice steady and self-assured. “After I take this brat’s body for myself, you’ll be the first person I kill.”
Satoru throws his head back and laughs, as obnoxious as he knows how to be. “I think you’re confusing me for someone else.” Even as he says it, he knows it isn’t true. Who could mistake Gojo Satoru for anyone but himself?
Ah. All at once, everything clicks into place.
Suguru leaps to the ground, joining them with a chuckle. “Our Gojo Satoru entered the Prison Realm and a different one came out? How interesting.”
It’s been buzzing along the edges of his nerves, that wrongness, the sense that everything is two steps to the left of where it should be, but the confirmation settles something in him. He smiles, feeling the tightness slide from his shoulders, leaving him coiled and loose; the easy comfort of a predator with none of the trembling tension of prey.
So he’s out of place, but what of it? It’s not like he ever had somewhere to belong in his own world. The only thing waiting for him there is revenge, and then what? He’d been so bored - endlessly, insufferably bored, untouchable at the top. But here? He considers the four-eyed being wearing the body of a man Satoru had killed before he’d become strong enough to be interesting, and decides that he can have some fun here. He’ll gladly welcome a challenge.
Whatever reality he’s found himself in, the universal truth is this: Gojo Satoru will always be the Strongest. It's been too long since he's had the chance to prove that.
--
He’s cutting down the stitched-up Suguru look-alike when the others find him, and with his blood up, singing with the thrill of the greatest fight of his life - the greatest victory of his life, against the all-powerful King of Curses - he very nearly adds the entire herd of them to his body count. It would be so easy; Reversal Red, maybe, no need for Hollow Purple, but then, how often does he really get to let loose? There’s an entire, empty city around them and he knows, now, the full extent of his power, how much further he can push himself than he’d ever even imagined. It would be nothing to him to kill them all, it would be fun -
“Gojo-sensei!!”
He straightens from his crouch over the broken body of his oldest friend and turns in time to spot a haggard young man bounding towards him. He’s smiling; beaming, really, bright enough to light the gloom around them, and he raises his arms and opens them wide - not to attack Satoru but to embrace him (him?) - and Satoru barely has time, past the confusion (past the tiny curl of longing), to realize that the kid is going to slam face first into Infinity.
If he knows Satoru, and he obviously must (but the raw joy on his face is almost painful to look at and why would anyone ever look at Satoru that way?), then he knows Satoru’s technique. And if he knows Satoru’s technique then it’s clear that he’s not expecting it to be an issue.
He’s nearly reached him, moving fast, faster than Satoru had expected, and when he gets close enough he plants his foot in crumbling concrete and launches himself at him, fearless, calling his name. Satoru hasn’t figured out how he’s going to play things in this new world yet, hasn’t decided what kind of approach he’s going to take with these strangers wearing familiar faces. If he shuts this kid down here, it will be so terribly obvious that he’s not who they think he is so, really, what other choice does he have?
For the first time since his childhood, Satoru lets Infinity drop.
A stout, burning body slams into him with enough momentum to knock out his breath. The kid is strong but Satoru is stronger, bracing his feet against the unexpected weight of him so that they don’t tumble to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Sturdy arms wind tight around his waist and a face presses itself against his sternum and the rapid heart beneath. Satoru holds himself still, hands hovering at his sides, uncertain, because he understands the mechanics of a hug and what’s expected of him here but the reality of it is nothing, nothing, like watching it happen to other people from the safety of Infinity.
“Sensei, you’re back,” the kid says, voice breaking around what must be a sob. He’s clinging to Satoru like flotsam in a sea’s storm, like he’s his one and only chance at salvation, and something in Satoru cracks open, some deep, frozen part of himself he’d buried and forgotten a lifetime ago. “You’re back.”
“I’m here,” Satoru whispers past the knot in his throat, past this addictive, heady feeling thawing the ice in his heart. (He’s never been wanted before and this? This is even deeper than that. This boy needs him. Him. Not the Six Eyes.) He curls his fingers against the tremble in them and gently cups the back of his head, stroking carefully over greasy pink hair and the fluff of his overgrown undercut.
He doesn’t know how long they stand like that. He doesn’t bother to measure his heartbeats or the passage of time. Gradually, Satoru’s pulse slows, and the younger man’s desperation eases off, though he doesn’t loosen his grip. Neither of them make any move to part.
“Yuuji,” someone in the group behind them dares to say, intruding where he isn’t wanted. Curse, his Six Eyes whisper. And a man. Satoru himself doesn’t bother to look up, instead quietly spreading Infinity around the both of them so that nobody else can try to interrupt this moment that’s just for them. Just for Satoru.
The boy, Yuuji, lifts his head, but he doesn’t turn to the mancursething that had called out to him. He doesn’t even acknowledge that the others are there. Satoru can see it in his expression, the almost obsessive way he’s drinking in the details of his face: right now, there is no one in the world to him but Satoru. (Satoru and Yuuji.) Nobody has evereverever looked at Satoru like this, with joy and relief, like they missed him, and, for a moment, something hot and black and ugly rears up in him, curls his lip and tightens his grip in soft pink locks because what had that other him done, to be so special? Why had he gotten to have this, have Yuuji, while Satoru was left alone, to be feared and sealed away?
The boy in his arms makes a quiet noise and Satoru softens, brings his other hand up to cradle the curve of his cheek in a calloused, crushing hand, tucking his thumb to the scar-marred corner of his mouth. It’s strange for him, to be so gentle, but Yuuji’s lips curl into an awed kind of smile and the tears in his eyes turn them luminous, molten gold and grief, and Satoru’s heart shudders, more ice falling away in sharp-edged sheets. He has a thought, distant and not-quite formed, that he’d like to know if Yuuji would have the same response to the press of Satoru’s kiss. He resolves to find out. Soon.
“I missed you,” Yuuji whispers, like a confession. “It’s been -” He stops, choking back words, and Satoru hushes him, curving his thumb over the plush of his raw lower lip. He can see how it’s been. He can see the suffering writ through every line in Yuuji’s beaten, beautiful face.
“I’m here,” he says again. “I’ll take care of all of it, Yuuji-kun.” He watches the words land, watches the way Yuuji shudders, the way his strength starts to waver, now that it’s no longer needed. Satoru has known Yuuji for only a handful of minutes but already he’s learning to know him. Yuuji hides nothing from him, safe in his arms where nobody else can see. His strength is evident in every centimeter of him but whatever their connection, he is not afraid to show Satoru his weakness. Satoru accepts it greedily, jealously. He knows, with the same unshakable certainty that he knows his own strength, that this is just for him - that it will only ever be for him. He won’t allow anyone else to have this part of Yuuji - perhaps any parts of him. Not the mancurse behind them, and certainly not that other version of himself.
Whatever the him of this world had done to deserve the way Yuuji is looking at him now - the way he’s clinging to him, adoring him, he’d lost it. Satoru will not be making the same mistake, no matter who he has to lie to, threaten, or kill to keep him close.
“Sensei is going to fix everything,” he promises. The title feels strange on his tongue, but even as he says it, he can feel himself settling into the role. Yuuji needs protection, guidance. Satoru can see the power in him. He will nurture it, help to turn it along the correct path. He’ll help Yuuji grow into everything he’s meant to be, at Satoru’s side, and together, anything and everything they desire will be theirs.
Satoru comes back to a world that is wrong, but it doesn’t take him long to make it his own.