junie

From the moment you stepped into the palace, you were greeted with the reverence befitting of a princess. "Your highness," the butler bowed his head as he opened your carriage door. "Your highness," the line of maids murmured as you ascended up the steps. Your items were brought in your room before you even made it to the top of the steps, as if whisked away by winds themselves at your command. You opened your room door to see them already stacked neatly by your bed, a maid standing by.

"Oh, thank you-" you offer a warm smile, but she seems to jolt as she hears your voice behind her and scurries away before you can meet her eyes.

This sort of politeness, deference, - whatever you may call it - coloured your day from sunrise to sunset. Your servants looked at you trembling, as if one misstep could send them straight to the gallows. Your attempts at conversation were seen as trials, your smiles as mercy, before they hurried away like they always did.

True to his word, Gepard tailed you like a shadow, like a ghost. He was a spectral presence in your life, standing at attention when you opened your door, by the dining hall doors during your meals, outside the study while you read.

"Captain," you asked quietly one afternoon as he watched you eat your meal, "are you sure you wouldn't like any?"

No words. Only a sharp shake of his head.

One morning you sit by the windowsill, gazing at the garden grounds down below. "It's a beautiful morning, Captain."

He nods his head.

It seemed that his, like every other staff member under this roof's, goal was to fade from your life as much as possible and going outdoors as the new princess was out of the question.

You grew lonely. Horribly, suffocatingly, achingly lonely.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

You live for the nation, you die by the nation. That is what Gepard had drilled into his head from the moment he took his soldier's oath. In all the hours spent since his early youth, steel slashing against straw dummies, sparring with his comrades, memorizing just the right angle to kick an opponent, this is what he knew. Those words prepared you to be a soldier: one among a million, marching in mechanical synchrony, the flag raised proud above the infantry.

They did not prepare you to go from kissing your younger sister goodnight to watching your comrade, sent too young into the battlefield, die in your arms. They did not prepare you to go from affectionately ruffled hair and 'good jobs' to watching life bubble from your mentor's lips as you plead for him to stay.

They did not prepare you to be fifteen years old and watching a unit of men raise their heads to you, bowing their heads as they fell to their knees. "The captain has died in a mutiny. Awaiting orders, Captain Gepard Landau."

Gepard Landau was a soldier. Gepard Landau was the captain. At a certain point a soldier must learn to clear his head. Empty his heart and take up his sword. His body was a vessel to carry out the will of the crown.

He returned from the war with his gaze distant, his mind clear, and his heart still. He hadn't so much as smiled since he returned. Not when he was adorned with the captain's crest in front of the whole kingdom. Not when the army paraded through the streets, the children beaming up at him and the civilians gratefully shaking his hand. Not when he was assigned a post as the royal bodyguard, one of the highest responsibilities and honours. He moved through his days like a ghost.

Stand back. Stand guard. Stand by.

But Gepard Landau was no fool. And maybe that was why he felt the slightest bit guilty for his impassiveness as he stood and watched the princess standing, a somber expression on her face as she stared down at the garden rose bushes.

Gepard had met her in the spring and soon spring had bloomed to summer. Those days passed just as well as they could have for a soldier freshly returned from a war and immediately appointed captain. They passed like an incoherent blur.

As grateful was he was, the bodyguard position was not the most exciting one, but it was a welcome change of pace after the war. Most days he stood, that empty expression on his face as he tried to clear his head, the princess doing whatever it was she pleased, he supposed.

At times his silences would be interrupted by her occasional questions, to which he mostly responded with a polite shake of his head. A quick nod. If he was being honest, most times he wasn't even paying attention to what she had been asking at all.

He knew little about her despite being the person who spent the most time around her. When asked by the maids what her preferred colour was for her dresses he gave no answer and they blinked incredulously. When asked by the cooks what sorts of dishes she may appreciate he only shrugged. He paid little attention, his mind always elsewhere, and maybe that was why he didn't notice it sooner.

It was a hot summer's day, the kind that wasn't agreeable with the soldiers' uniform. When stepping outside, Gepard wore his helmet like he was meant to: his face out in the open air was a dangerously appealing target, and seasoned soldiers took no chances. Under the beating sun's heat he felt properly boiled in his suit of armor, but he had experienced far worse before. He stood tall, following the princess as she seemed to float around the garden, some faraway look on her face. Then she stopped, turning away from him, facing down at a rosebush, and she didn’t move for a long time.

Gepard half wonders if he should say something, but the words didn't come to him. He knew to speak with his fists. He was fluent in the exchange of punches. The whistle of an arrow. Gepard didn't break silences, he drew them out give him a chance to strike.

But there she stood, her dress fluttering in the summer breeze as if it may just carry her away, as if she wanted it to. Her hands fell to her sides, shoulders sagging.

She crouches there by the rosebush, but rather than lifting her face to the roses she dips her hands into the earth, the dirt sifting over and through her fingers. He watches her eyes close as she exhales. With her posture and her skirt deflated like that, crumpled to the ground, she almost looks like a trampled flower.

She stays there, as if rooted to the earth through her fingertips. Like she would crumble and stay there and the wind would grind her to dust.

She finally turns and looks back at him, expression unreadable. Distant. Through his helmet, he looks back at her. He curses it's limited visibility because for a moment he wonders if he can see a single tear roll down her cheek. Her lips pull into a tight line and she marches over, her feet beating steadily on the grass.

She raises a hand. For a moment her gaze is so intense he wonders if she's going to hit him.

She yanks his helmet off.

He looks down at her, head freed from the confines of his helmet, the open air hitting him like the relief of rising to the water's surface. His hair falls in his face. His cheeks are warm - from the humidity in the helmet, he was sure.

She looks at him, eyes looking at him like she was searching desperately for something there. His eyes flicker to her lip, which trembles. A pause. A breeze. She shakes her head and squeezes her eyes shut, turning around, her jaw tight.

"It's hot. Take that damned thing off."

Her words are far from ladylike but she doesn't seem to care. The helmet falls from her hand to the grass with a soft thud. She turns and trudges away, wiping furiously at her face.

Once, just this once, Gepard decides to disobey his orders and let her be.

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☾₊ ⊹ AN: i realized i never made a taglist for this fic eeee if you want to be added to the taglist please lmk by dropping a comment asking to be added/an ask with your username but for now i just tagged people who had a positive response to the last post so i really hope this doesn't bother u T_T i won't tag any of you next time unless you explicitly leave an ask/comment/tag asking to be put on the taglist i just wasn't sure if you wanted to see part 2 since you seemed to like part 1 slkdjfksdjfksdj anyways! i uh hope you liked this part it's a lot of backstory i know i know

And so it was that you arrived at the Gojo clan estate donned in the best (and only) kimono you had: your bridal kimono - a pure white.

You knew little about Jujutsu politics - you were thrown into that world after your first abduction attempt. Rifling through what scarce information your family bookshelves had on Jujutsu clans, their powers and ranks, you knew this much: that the Gojo family was revered and feared, and the current clan head beheld that terrifying power that made it so.

Looking up at the main hall of the estate, even the buildings themselves radiated regality, majesty, might. Stepping out from the transport car you almost wanted to fall to your knees right there in the building's shadow. Coming from your life in a humble courtyard in the countryside you had never seen something quite so terrifying in it's presence, your palms squeezing open and shut as your sandals scuffed the cobblestone as you walked, as gracefully as you could, up the steps.

When you stepped inside you saw nothing, the main hall dim. Then, like a dragon inspecting it's next meal, two piercing blue eyes from the shadows. He didn't even have to introduce himself. You already knew.

Keep your head down and he may show you mercy, your mother said before you left home. So you knelt. You knelt and prayed to the gods that you would be spared this man's wrath. That you'd shut up and take whatever was thrown at you - so long as your family got the money. So long as they would be kept safe.

He stepped forward. You kept your head down.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Satoru Gojo was raised untouchable.

Yes, the only real tenderness he likely had ever known to date was the warmth of his mother's arms the day he was born, the gentle way in which she swaddled him in his blanket before he was promptly whisked away from her care.

From the moment he Six Eyes gazed upon him, he was sentenced to solitude. He was the chosen one, the honoured one, the strongest, the ultimate trump card of Jujutsu society. He held the power of the universe itself in his hands, bending matter to his will. He was creation, he was destruction; he was birth and he was death. With a power like that he was strung up like a puppet on high, a Gods-eye view of the world itself, but that power wound around him like a noose, and the higher he seemed to rise, the tighter it seemed to wind around his neck until he choked. And choked. And choked.

And so he ran. He ran when he could, disappearing as a child into the city to watch. Simply watch. So those eyes that made men tremble since he could remember could finally look upon the world with gentleness, watch the people pass.

All this to say is he never knew kindness - not the politeness that was just a mask for fear, at least - never knew friendship, never knew love.

And yet here he was, thrown a woman and expected to love her like a husband.

She knelt before him, head low, hair spilling down her shoulders and back. He looked down at her like he looked at everyone he knew: a sort of disinterest, like a lion pawing at it's dying meal. Satoru knew little about love, yes, but he knew enough to know: wives do not bow to their husbands out of love.

And it was a sight that left him with a sour taste in his mouth, watching the entourage backlit by the sunset behind her. Shadowy figures and the bride, wrapped in her bridal kimono, bowed before him like a ritualistic offering to appease a god. This was far from a wedding. It was a sacrifice.

Maybe he didn't have to love her. He knew that was something you couldn't force anyway. But at the very least he wished that someone wouldn't look at him in horror, like the harbinger of death.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

"Get up," he says finally. "Don't degrade yourself like that."

His voice is neither stern nor gentle, but somewhere in between. His words read as a command, but he lets out a short exhale as he says it. Neither a huff nor a sigh. Fearing you'd done something wrong you lift your head to meet his eyes, finding no answers in his expression-

And that face. If his eyes had struck you first his face delivered the second blow. The only men you ever knew were your father and your uncles, for any women who bore sons deserted the clan. Their faces were twisted and baked with age, hard creases pressed into their foreheads and cheeks from years of scowls and sneers.

Gojo's face was like a winter morning breeze, the deceptively gentle whisper that followed the blizzard that reminded you that anything that came before him hadn't made it out alive. It was beautiful and it was terrifying.

"I'm sure this kind of entourage must be new for you," he says, noting the people behind you. After your first abductions you certainly were protected, but not to this degree. And the men of your family felt a woman must care for herself lest she become complacent, so they didn't have anyone waiting on you.

"I will admit it's different, yes," you say, your head tilted down ever so slightly in a gentle bow, as if still afraid to be so bold as to stand up straight in his presence.

"Does it make you uncomfortable?" Again, not a statement, not a question. Somewhere in between.

"... A little-"

His head turns to one of the servants behind you. "You heard her. Leave."

And so they were gone.

He paces to a window. Your body felt rigid as he walked away, unsure if you were meant to follow. Your instincts told you not to. But you were his wife - weren't you? Is a wife not meant to follow her husband-

"I imagine we're past introductions," he leans against an open window and turns his head away from you to overlook the estate grounds. "We both know why we're here."

"... We're married, yes," you feel a little stupid. You don't think you've said anything yet that isn't obvious and you feel like a dithering idiot.

His face is half lit by the golden sun, the dying sunlight that begins to creep it's way across the floorboards and illuminate you like a spotlight. Would you live in this spotlight forever, under the deferent whispers of those guards, guarded at all times, living with a target on your back? You suddenly wish you could have let yourself run through the countryside one last time. The air in here felt suffocating. His presence felt suffocating.

"I don't want to lie to you," he drums his fingers pensively on the windowsill. "I cannot promise you love. I'm not sure what kinds of stories you hear about marriage and true love, but this isn't going to be one of them."

It was your turn to speak. "I never expected love from this union." He lifts his head, mildly intrigued. His left eyebrow quirks, encouraging you to continue. "I was wed to you out of necessity, convenience, and strategy. It's me the higher ups arranged this for: for their purposes, for my family's benefit, and for my protection. I cannot imagine there is much I bring to the table for you. And so I want no pity for being in a loveless union, nor do I expect or even wish for you to try. I know what I signed up for."

"Tell me then," he strides back towards you. "what will this arrangement look like, since you've decided to spare me the trouble of forcing affection where there is none?"

"I will stay out of your way," you speak slowly. He stands still before you but the way he looks at you almost makes it feel as if he's encircling you. "I will be no more intrusive to your life than one of your servants, if you so wish. You can call upon me for your... Amusement," the word tastes like bile in your mouth, but you force it past your lips anyway, "if you so wish. So long as I am protected, the higher-ups placated, and my family safe, I can be nothing but a passing whisper if that's what you want."

"Really?" he almost seems to chuckle now, voice tinged with amusement. He leans in closer, as if studying your face, drinking in your features. "I didn't expect a young woman like you to be so... Nonchalant about the prospect of a loveless union."

"I've restored the reputation of my dying family line by bringing them back into the good graces of the most powerful in Jujutsu society." As you speak the words you begin to wonder if this is what you will be telling yourself for the rest of your lonely nights under this roof. "I am already satisfied."

"Noble," he says, crossing his arms, and you are suddenly aware of just how much he seems to tower over you. His eyes flicker with interest. "But I ask you this: since you've already served your purpose, what more is there to do with yourself?"

You blink. A thousand words sit on your tongue like pearls taking shape that you can't quite string into a sentence because when you thought about it you were done. All that was effectively left was to live the rest of your days just like this - to live for the sake of living. And that prospect terrified you. This whole encounter you moved mechanically, according to orders. According to expectations. But here he threw you a curveball - what did you want?

You hadn't expected a question like that and you couldn't quite understand why he would ask you such a thing, nor why when you fumbled for an answer he seemed to hum, a low, reverberating sound. He tilted his head, and for a brief moment you wonder if you noticed his lips curl into a cryptic smile.

"Interesting."

He turns and walks down the hall until he disappears, not beckoning for you to follow. As he walks his footsteps seem to punctuate sentences that you couldn't bring yourself to speak. Questions you didn't yet have any answers to.

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With your father's inexperience as a leader and your immediate family's life up to this point relatively out of the spotlight, it would take a miracle for the citizens to trust their new king and his family, especially as the kingdom was reeling from a humiliating loss at great political and economic cost -

A miracle like a young princess, wedding a well-off prince with just the right connections, just the right charm, with just the right love story to boot. And there was nothing the public loved better than a love story.

So while your brothers were off sailing across the seas, travelling to lands far and wide to really experience the world for all it had to offer, to see with their eyes what they had only learned through pages, were permitted to be brave, to be curious, to be daring... You were left to the balls to smile pleasantly and bat your eyelashes at the flattery of your long line of suitors. Your hopes and dreams of education were dashed and replaced by an education more befitting of a bride-to-be: housekeeping, sewing and embroidery, music and arts, and just enough maths to be able to maintain finances and go shopping. These were all things you enjoyed and excelled in, most certainly. But what your heart yearned for most of all was to crack open the spine of an encyclopedia and bury yourself in it: to get lost in an adventure somewhere halfway across the world, to decipher every formula that went into keeping a ship afloat, to walk through the woods and identify every track left behind by every passing animal.

Few things brought you solace in those lonely days that followed your father's coronation, for now you were the crown princess.

Except for him.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

He arrived with a firm knock on your door. Two knocks. Precisely timed. Kneeling on the floor of your new room, head in your hands, you lift your head, a stray lock of hair stuck to your tear-streaked face. You rub your cheeks, only adding to your red flush more so than hiding anything. "Yes?"

The first thing Gepard saw when he pushed the door open were your eyes - glistening with tears and the twinkle of a fresh-faced young girl. This was the first time he's seen a young princess in the palace. Your uncle had no daughters.

Your father stood behind him, his hand on his shoulder. "Gepard Landau," he says, "Captain of the Royal Guard."

The boy stood at perfect attention in his suit of armour, adorned with the family crest. His helmet tucked under his arm, his sandy blonde hair is freshly ruffled, cheeks dusted pink from the heat of his helmet, blue eyes gleaming like a sharpened sword.

"I thought the captain was dead," you mumble to yourself. From reading the papers you knew the previous captain, a stern and ruthless man, had by some tragedy perished on the battlefield of the last war. Oh, yes, you suddenly recall that he had died as his commander abandoned him, as the king, your uncle, abandoned him-

Gepard speaks.

"He is." If he felt bitter his voice betrayed no emotion. Landau. Landau. You realize too late that you made your comment too soon.

"I... I'm sorry."

He only shakes his head. Was he always this stiff? "I've been preparing to take this position my whole life. It's an honour if anything."

His face was unburdened by the lines of age, still just as fresh-faced as you were, the remnants of boyish features fading to young manhood, just as you began to bloom into your womanhood. He must be a formidable young man to take up a position this important, and to be trusted so faithfully by the royal guard at his young age. He couldn't have been a day older than you.

"... I see."

Your father interjects the suddenly tense air. "He is to be your bodyguard from now on. It's palace rules to ensure that you never leave his sight from the moment you step into your bedroom to the moment you rise for breakfast."

You dreaded this. And your father knew and would be lying if he said it didn't hurt a piece of him to have to confine his little explorer of a daughter to the cushy life of a princess. But he had to set an example now. And you understood that too.

You swallowed, hard, before you nodded, and rose from where you knelt as you watched a small crowd of guards stand by the doorway. You had read enough royal history books to know what came next. Gepard approaches you.

He had known all his life that to be sworn in as a personal protector of a royal family member was a momentous occasion. To hold the life of a kingdom's future in your hands. It was one of the highest honours, to be trusted with a responsibility like this, and one he never imagined taking up this early, not expecting his father to leave him so soon. In some ways he knew he was just a boy, sixteen and growing into his body, but in each footstep he took he stepped into becoming a man.

A young boy grown up too soon. A young girl grown up too soon.

He walked towards you.

The weight of the guards and your father behind him bore down on his back. They were here as witnesses. In any other scenario this would be a ceremony done before the kingdom, a pledge made publicly to declare his allegiance to the royal family, leave no shred of doubt in the kingdom's mind that he was bound to his duty. But with how hasty the shift in power was, there was no time for a grand ceremony.

And yet still, when he looked at you, watching him as you stood in the centre of your room, the curtains of your bedroom fluttered in the summer breeze in a way grander than any royal cape or train of any dress. The cicadas chirping outside, the gardens in full bloom below, and you, standing there, hair fluttering loosely around your face, he knew - this was a princess.

"Forgive me," Gepard says, voice soft enough that only you two could hear, "I know this is a bit unorthodox, but the urgency of this transition leaves no time for formalities."

He descends to one knee, his eyes bright as they looked up at you. From this distance you can see just how bright they seem to twinkle, peering through loose locks of blonde like fresh-cut gemstones. A richer blue than the royal blue of his uniform. Sapphire. He clears his throat.

"I, Gepard Landau," each word is spoken with purpose, reverberating with centuries of history, speaking as one with all his predecessors before him. "Hereby swear my devotion to you." He offers his palm to you, which you take in yours, what you knew was a symbolic gesture of a blood pact. His grip is firm, and yet in it you feel a hint of a tremble. "I bind myself to you in body and in spirit. Your pain is my pain, and I will protect your life as if it were my own. So long as you reside under this royal roof, I give to you my life in whole." He meets your eyes for the final words of the oath. "I offer in life my body, in death, my soul."

You bow your head in accordance with tradition. You know the words by heart, and yet speaking them out loud feels unfamiliar, different somehow, looking at this boy on his knees before you.

"Captain Gepard Landau," you speak. You wonder if he can feel your pulse in your wrist, "I entrust myself to you."

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Admittedly, the first few times this happened you immediately rushed to his side. What in the world could possibly be so strong as to overpower the Satoru Gojo?

That first time had been a complete accident, back when you both were just teenagers. You began your apprenticeship as a healer and dedicated less time to being deployed on missions, more time in the infirmary. And as strong as he was, Satoru was still a sixteen year-old, and had yet to perfect his technique (and his attention span), which earned him a clean slash to the chest and a blast out from under his feet, sending him rolling down the concrete.

He had stumbled in the infirmary, weakly raising his hand to knock on the doorframe to get your attention. "... Yo." That's when you saw the blood on his chest.

Your mouth fell open. You virtually shoved him straight into the infirmary bed.

"Calm down woman, it's just a scratch-"

"Oh my god -" your hand lightly dabbed the blooming wound through his jacket, "oh my god, oh my god, oh my god," you muttered under your breath. Hovering your hand over the wound you focused your energy to the source of the bleeding, your brows knitting together and lips pulled in a tight line.

"Damn it," you hiss, "I can't penetrate the fabric," you reach for the buttons of his jacket, tugging it open, hands so jittery you virtually tore the thing right off. He flashes a wolfish grin.

"Heh, at least take me out to dinner first."

"Can you shut up?!" you snap, exasperated. "Be serious, Satoru, you're hurt!"

You set your hands on his chest, solid and firm under your trembling. You tried to focus on the wound, but seeing the blood blossom from his chest -from Satoru's chest - made you queasy and terrified.

You were all sorcerers here, but your early years of sparring were small potatoes compared to the proper missions Yaga was sending the team out on now. In all fairness today's curse was a little bit above the team's pay grade, but Satoru knew he'd be just fine, anyway. Whether or not you believed that was another story.

Satoru watched your eyes flit from his chest, to his scratched arms, to his bruised abdomen, and your eyes were wild, frenzied, as if completely overwhelmed by the sheer extent of what you were seeing on a body you never imagined could even be touched. You grit your teeth. "Damn it," you hiss. You squeeze your eyes shut, shaking your head. "Damn it, Satoru."

Satoru blinked, his expression softening while he watched you, lips parting. You usually hated his guts. This was quite a change of pace for you two.

He could get used to this.

And so since then the visits became more frequent. An odd scratch or bruise on his arm or leg. A slash on his shoulder. Scraped knees. And since they became more frequent you realized... That little shit is doing this on purpose.

So now when he walked into the infirmary, bitching and moaning about some painful wound he'd picked up on today's mission, you barely even looked up from your phone as he slumped into the infirmary bed himself, falling over backward onto the pillow like some kind of princess. "Oh, my shoulder," he'd sigh, "won't someone take pity on this poor, injured sorcerer?"

And you'd sit there in your corner, feet up on the desk, idly scrolling your phone as if you hadn't even noticed his presence at all. So he'd walk up and collapse behind you, drawing his arms around your neck and pulling your back to his chest. "If only some kindhearted healer could help me out of the goodness of her pretty soul!" he declared to 'no one in particular', sighing dramatically and resting his head on your shoulder, flashing his eyes at you, innocent like a little puppy waiting to be pampered.

Noticing your concentration on your phone, he used his technique to lift your phone from your hand. "Hey!" you huffed, "I was watching something."

"Me first. Watch later." He has a pout on his lips like a toddler deprived of attention. You roll your eyes and raise two fingers to his forehead, gently pushing him off your shoulder. "Hey!"

It almost makes you want to laugh. He wasn't fooling anyone. Not even his students, who he often accompanied to the infirmary when they got injured (and who also noticed that he'd then get a little too excited seeing them get hurt). Your lips curl into a smile you hope he doesn't notice.

"Alright. Get on the bed."

He chuckles, leaning by his elbows back on the bed as you pull up a chair like you've done all these years. "Easy tiger."

"Don't test me, Satoru."

"Yes ma'am!"

EPILOGUE

Nobara, Yuji, and Megumi knew their teacher was kind of a wackjob but this was something else.

Satoru Gojo had his arms crossed, levitating the cursed spirit they were meant to be fighting in midair, his face right up to the thing's grotesque 'fist'.

"You can't be serious, right? You've gotta be able to hit me harder than that!" Satoru groans, "that was, like, nothing!" He turns off his infinity, grabbing the thing's hulking arm, miming the arm socking him in the face. "Like this, see! Preferably on my mouth," he flashes a wide grin.

His students stand back, dumbfounded. Yuji lowers his fists. Nobara lowers her hammer. Megumi shoves his hands in his pockets and frowns, unamused.

"... What's he doing...?"

"... No clue."

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Satoru felt like he was going to choke. The door to your dorm was ajar, Shoko standing beside it somber, an unreadable expression on her face.

The door hinges squealed as it slowly slid open. Lo and behold: A half empty bottle of tea on your desk. Empty bags of your favorite chips in your desk trash bin. The curtains fluttering in the open window like they always did because you liked the breeze while you slept. Your bedsheets made, just as they were every morning when you four set off for the day’s missions and drills for the last few years.

And your uniform, folded neatly on your bed, unworn.

Satoru’s mouth went dry, his hand went slack, uncurling from the fist he’d locked it in as he stormed over moments prior. “No. She’s coming back, she left her tea—“

Shoko interrupts him, "Satoru."

“She wouldn’t just up and leave, she—“

“Satoru-”

“Did Suguru rope her into this? Shoko, you haven’t seen them talking have you? Sure I was a bit preoccupied but maybe—“

“Satoru,” Shoko said, firm but resigned. “She’s gone.”

The longer he looked the more it set in: your bag missing from its hook. Your things missing from your desk. A photo of all of you Jujutsu sorcerers beaming at the camera unpinned from your cork board and fluttered to the floor, wrinkled at the corners from drops of water.

“I see.”

Shoko slipped a hand into her coat pocket.

Satoru turned on his heel and walked off down the hallway.

・・・・☆・・・・☆ ・・・・

Goodbye.

That’s a word he’s said so much of in the last few years that he doesn’t remember anymore how to say hello. What does he say? What does he say, knowing the reason he was here now — that he was sent to kill you for once and for all?

Satoru had tracked you all the way out here. You’d gotten sloppy after Suguru’s death. The higher ups didn’t think a dirty defector like you had the capacity to mourn like that - they were convinced it was bait. It's why they sent their silver bullet himself. But Satoru knew otherwise. He knew you were too careful, too sharp to make a mistake like that any other day, and here he found you - in an abandoned school building in a small town by the countryside.

You sat in the crumbling classroom, knees to your chest on a rickety chair covered in cobwebs, tracing patterns on the dust on the desk surface. You look up, your expression neutral. You weren't surprised to see him here, like you expected him, even knowing that meant certain death. It almost made him want to laugh.

So you were feeling nostalgic, huh?

It was sunset on a quiet late summer evening, the clouds streaking along the horizon like pink and golden brushstrokes against a violet sky. What a beautiful day to die, you think to yourself. Pink. Gold. Violet.

And there he stood, silhouetted save for his eyes.

Blue. Stunningly blue.

Perhaps this is mercy, then.

You speak first.

・・・・☆・・・・☆ ・・・・

“It’s a pleasure to meet you!” Hands at your side, you bow deeply and snap back up to attention. Your mother coached you extensively before you departed for Tokyo on how to be respectful to the city folk, and you rehearsed the self-introduction she taught you to a tee. Fresh-faced, thirteen and bright-eyed, from the moment the train stopped at Tokyo station you put on your brave face.

The boy standing in front of you, however, was not terribly impressed. He stared at you blankly for a few moments.

“Right,” he mumbled, before turning on his heel to walk away.

“H-hey!” you go red in the face, “I wasn’t done-“

He holds his hand up. “Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard enough.”

You scoff at his bluntness. Well this was no way to start off a relationship with someone she was meant to call her classmate. “You’re not going to bother telling me who you are?” You call out after him. He stops.

“… You’re being serious?” he looks at her over her shoulder. His eyes flash blue - blue enough to rival the hue of the sky above them. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen eyes that blue before.

“… Well yeah-“

“Damn,” he turns back around, though rather than venom in his voice there's almost a sense of amusement and curiosity. “They weren’t kidding. You really are a country bumpkin.”

Regardless, you felt a burning in your chest as you clenched a fist. “I’ll show ya a country bumpkin,” you muttered.

“Huh? Couldn’t understand your accent, country girl,” he called out over his shoulder. You grit your teeth.

“Oi!” you call out after him, “At least give me your name so I know what to call ya while I kick ‘yer ass!”

There was something endearing to him about someone who actually didn’t know who he was for once. Who didn’t approach him like some god or some weapon. He mutters your surname to himself. He remembers Yaga-sensei telling him something about how you came from an insignificant family of sorcerers in the countryside. Out of your entire lineage, only you turned out with a technique that could actually be useful. Of course you wouldn’t know much about Jujutsu clan politics or the heavyweight names. Alright. He’ll bite.

“Won’t need it. I’ll have your ass in the dirt first, kid.”

“Who ‘ya callin’ kid!” Your fists clenched at your sides. He raised an eyebrow.

“You gonna punch me, kid?”

“I’m the same damn age as you, don’t act cocky!” In your twintail braids and with your tiny stature it was hard to take you as a serious threat.

“You’re a little thing. Why would I be scared of you?”

You threw a punch. You didn’t know what would be coming next - of course you didn’t. Your hand hit an invisible wall and you yelped, withdrawing your hand back and feeling the stinging pain in your knuckles. You look at him with a sense of challenge, but also a sense of amazement. Who the hell was this guy?

“You wanted my name? Well, here it is, kid—“

・・・・☆・・・・☆ ・・・・

“Satoru.”

As if understanding just how his name coming from your lips made him feel, the clouds parted to allow a stream of sunlight to illuminate you like a spotlight. The doomed antiheroine of today’s tale, in all her tragic glory, looking up listless like the soul had long been drained from her eyes.

Why, oh why did you have to say his name like that?

“I think we both know why I’m here.”

You nod. You look away from him. You’re not sure if you can bear to look at him now. “It’s been a while since we’ve sparred, Satoru.”

He swallows. “That it has.”

“Maybe today is the day I finally catch up to you after all these years.”

He shrugs. Somewhere in that nonchalant shrug is the unbothered kid you knew all those years ago. “You can try.”

But you both knew how this ended and somewhere deep inside you knew you deserved it anyway for your sins.

You can’t stop yourself from cracking a bitter smile. “Well, then,” you drop your satchel to the ground, laying out your knives before you, and as if pulled by strings they rise around you on guard. “One last spar. For old time’s sake.”

Satoru’s lips curl into a smirk.

・・・・☆・・・・☆ ・・・・

“You’re on.”

You crack your knuckles. The other Jujutsu sorcerers may underestimate your technique, you remember your mother saying. Don’t let them. You put your hands on your hips and grin.

“Don’t underestimate me, though!”

“Can’t make any promises, country girl!”

You raise your fist and Satoru stands at the ready —

But your fist slams on the window behind you instead, shattering the glass. Satoru looks at you, confused —

And then the shards begin to levitate, forming a circlet around you.

“You think some stupid glass is gonna protect you?” Satoru scoffs. “You’ve got no idea what you’re up against here, squirt.”

You grit your teeth, close your eyes and concentrate. The shards go flying at Satoru. He’s got his eyes on you, his eyes on the shards —

And then your figure flickers. It flickers then it’s gone. He looks around, sensing that the cursed energy thrumming in the shards has grown stronger, almost humming with immense power. One shard passes just in front of his face, another just behind him, but rather than his own reflection in the glass he sees you.

You and a proud smile. You flicker behind him, and—

・・・・☆・・・・☆ ・・・・

The first punch is thrown.

His movements are fluid. Graceful. Like conducting the orchestra of life and matter itself. He’s gotten even better since you left. You didn’t even know that was possible.

Your glass knives go zinging around him just as he remembered, but your technique was no match for a man who could see everything. All you had to do to try to keep up was to be faster. Faster. Faster.

But you were fighting a hopeless battle and you knew it. This was Satoru Gojo and at the end of the day you were a curse user. You knew how this ended. At this point the back and forth was just a formality.

His punches landed like they always did, the familiar blasts of red and blue that you learned to dodge all those years ago — only something was different. Something was off. His punches just barely you, just close enough to feel the breeze around his enclosed fists. He was holding back. You knew him well enough to know that.

Your grit your teeth, “Don’t go soft on me now, Satoru.”

“Who said I was?”

What a horrible liar.

“Terrible time for you to suddenly grow a conscience,” the quips are bittersweet in your mouth, rolling over your tongue like the tooth-rotting sugar of a childhood candy. Something in this back and forth felt nostalgic. Something in this back and forth made your heart lurch. Something in this back and forth made you feel as if any minute now you would dust the dirt off your pants, sigh in defeat, and walk off with him and. the rest of your class for a popsicle at the 7-eleven nearby. But this wasn't what this was. Suguru was dead. Yuu was dead. You defected years ago. And Satoru was sent with a mission that he was going to finish, no matter how much it pained him to. You just prayed it would be over quickly.

You grit your teeth, "I thought I was fighting the strongest!" Another blast just barely misses you.

"You are," his palm extends outward, a thundering force tunnelling along the concrete to your position, stopping just there before your feet.

God, this would be easier for you if he could just kill you like a cold-blooded killer. If in the last few years since you left the Satoru you knew had been successfully replaced with the sharpened knife the higher ups spent their whole life training him to be. But the hesitation in his attacks said otherwise in the most heartbreaking way possible. The words left unsaid over the last ten years came through in every missed attack, every pulled punch. Even now, even after everything, he was protecting you.

"Then hit me like you mean it!"

Like you mean it. If Satoru did anything right now the way he meant it this would be going a lot differently. If he could do this the way he meant it he would've stopped a long time ago. He would have extended his hand, flashing that arrogant smile he knew annoyed you to no end and helped you back to your feet.

But you want a fair fight and you'll get it. It'd be an insult to the sorcerer you'd grown into for him to hold back now at this crucial moment. All those hours, all those extra missions you took on while you were peers, all those promises and challenges, if you were going out you wanted to go out right. That was the least he could give you after all, wasn't it?

And so what did it mean when his attacks began to ripple through the concrete, forcing you to jump and weave around his blasts until you could feel your legs giving out? When his attacks forced you to concentrate all your energy into whizzing around between your blades, the sheer focus of reading his attacks and focusing your cursed energy draining your mind? That he acknowledged you. That he would fight you here and now as the sorcerer he respected. As the sorcerer he admired.

Your movements are angles, refractions, jets of blinding light and flickering reflections against his tremendous power. Slivers of light streams shooting between each blade - here, then here, then here - distributing your cursed energy across them so it would be more difficult for him to detect, David against Goliath. A battle of light against matter.

Until you shattered.

You lay on the concrete and hear the crunching of Satoru's shoes as he walks toward you. He walks slowly. He's giving you more time on purpose and you can tell, as if willing you to get up and fight, if only to prolong the inevitable. So he could avoid it for just a minute longer. He could have killed you long ago. But he hasn't.

The ground seems to simmer, rumbling with the sheer intensity of Satoru's cursed energy as the dust clears. He'd shot you down to the ground and here you were again.

"Barely even a scratch and you're on the ground already?" The quip is obviously meant to get a rise out of you but his voice is tinged with sadness. Get up. Get up, please.

You cough once. Twice. You feel something warm trickle from your lips and the taste of iron. "Cut the pleasantries, Satoru. We both know how this ends."

The sun sets below the horizon as he walks over, casting a shadow on your crumpled figure. You spit blood onto the concrete and wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, lip stained scarlet. You're the picture of a pathetic and battered curse user, and you hope that the sight he sees before him now would be alien enough to him, that he wouldn't prolong this torture any longer. That his muscle memory would activate seeing something cowered before him and he would lift his hand and finish you off sooner or later. You hoped this way you wouldn't need to face him in this state, wouldn't need to get a torturously close look at the man you could have known in some other life had you chosen a different life.

The man you could have had.

To your anguish, he speaks. "I didn't want it to end like this."

You look away. You can scarcely bear to look at him right now without your heart aching. "...I know."

"I always hoped you'd come back on your own."

But that was wishful thinking. A sorcerer like you, after all that you' had done, would never be allowed to waltz right back into Jujutsu society, to return to that world and it's secrets and privileges as if you had never done the things you did when you followed Suguru all those years ago. No matter how much you might have daydreamed about it on occasion, no matter how many times you found yourself stopping by those campus gates and wondering what would happen if you walked your way back inside. Whether the key you kept in your pocket, a useless memento now, would still slot into your old dorm room. If your pictures would still be up on the wall, the hung up receipts from weekends out at the mall with Ieiri and Iori, the sticky notes Satoru had thrown at you in the middle of classes, ticket stubs from past missions.

And Satoru would be lying if he didn't say the same, if he didn't spend the first few weeks you left stopping by the freezer on his 7-eleven runs to reach for your favorite ice cream before remembering there was nobody to hand it off to. If he didn't learn a new trick or technique and didn't run to the dorm building to show you before stopping himself. If he didn't watch his students sparring from the bleachers, wondering if you would have been sitting by his side watching them too.

"They'd send me straight for the execution chamber and you know that-"

"You never should've left," he speaks bitterly, regretfully, as if his voice was straining just saying the words, "You should've stayed at Jujutsu Tech, you should've been there with the rest of us, we could've-"

You cut him off before he keeps talking and makes either of you ache any longer. "It's over now, Satoru."

"It didn't have to be, I -" he looks down, his mouth fumbling for words he can't find. His mind scrambles for any idea he could possibly have for bringing you back, and just as quickly as they come they form they dissipate, like a fistful of powder.

He squeezes his eyes shut, his voice breaking. "What am I supposed to do with you now..."

Your next words are spoken with finality. "Exactly what you were told to do."

The words make your throat tighten, make your arms tremble and struggle to hold yourself up. You keep your head down.

After a few moments he finally mutters a few words. "You're making this difficult."

"I'm sorry."

"Why," he whispers, "why did you do it?" His voice breaks. "Why did you leave me?"

Your face burns. You don't have the heart to tell him that when Suguru spoke, he spoke so convincingly. That after you saw the dead eyes of Riko Amanai in her shroud, young enough to be your classmate, young enough to be your sister, then walked back out into the swarming Tokyo streets wondering what she died for you wanted to throw up.

When you saw Satoru walk around like a living corpse, when you saw him have to force himself back into his usual self, that life had to somehow go on after all that had happened, you felt sick - sick.

So in your youth you thought that Suguru had found an answer. Some way that would bring us anywhere but here. Some world where you and everyone you loved wouldn't have to live and die like this.

"I thought I was doing the right thing-"

"You were one of the few good things I had left."

A silence settles between you two. Your eyes meet his.

Once upon a time he looked at you with the twinkle of a challenge in his eye, waking up in the morning looking forward to whatever stupid shenanigans you and the rest of your classmates would get up to that day. The way he looks at you now, with ten years in between your last meeting, since the last time you saw those eyes truly full of light and hope, he looks at you with the eyes of a dead man.

You couldn't live. You shouldn't. Or those eyes would haunt you forever.

When people look into the eyes of Satoru Gojo, they practically look into the eyes of God. The man who holds the balance of life in his very sight. Jujutsu sorcerers and cursed spirits alike cowered under his icy gaze.

But just as you had all those years ago, when you looked at him you only saw a boy. A boy whose heart left with you ten years ago.

You reach your hand up, sliding your fingers between his, and before he can even process it, his hand gently squeezes yours.

Please. Please.

For a moment he is quiet. For a moment his pulse jumps in his throat. For a moment he almost believes all those delusions in his head, that there was some way for you to return to Jujutsu. Return to him.

Your fingers fold around his, sliding and twisting his hand into a point directed straight to your forehead. You close your eyes.

"Satoru."

His name sounds devastating on your lips, the way you speak his name knowing it may be one of the last things you say and, God, if there was the right final word let it be his name.

Your name passes from his lips like a whisper in return. You two refuse to say anything more. You know if you say what you want to you run the risk of cursing him, and your shadow has loomed on him for long enough. Yours and many others'.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

The words sit, shapeless on your tongue. You don't dare speak them - for his sake. As much as it will kill you. As much as it would kill him either way.

Those unspoken words hang in the air, and Satoru breaks the silence.

"I-"

"Don't."

"Please-"

"I said don't-"

HIs voice begins to rise. "Please just say it, say something, anything-"

"You know what would happen if I do."

"I do! And does it look like I give a damn?! Don't leave me again, God, don't leave, stay with me this time. Give me that much, just don't go-"

"No," you say firmly, and you want to crumble when you feel the way he winces at your interruption. "... Please."

Satoru's hand trembles.

He swallows.

・・・・☆・・・・☆ ・・・・

“Another win for yours truly,” Satoru grinned, his hand held out to you. “Seriously, you’d think in three years you’d learn a thing or two,” he pouts pitifully.

“I’ve learned you’re an asshole!” You cross your arms over your chest, rolling onto your side. You huffed, a puff of dirt rising as you did. You hated meeting his eyes when he was gloating, he was always so full of himself after a match.

“Come on, don’t be like that,” he throws his head back laughing as he leaned over you, nudging you with his hand, “get up and let’s to already. You’re covered in dirt, country girl. I mean look at yourself,” he picks up one of your glass shards and holds it up to your face so you can see your reflection. He sticks his tongue out and mock gags. “Uuuugly.”

“Shut up, Satoru!”

He laughs again, a sound warm like the sunshine itself.

“Come on, come on. I’ll buy you an ice cream.”

You turn onto your other side and huff again. He rolls his eyes, exasperated, but smiles at your stubbornness. He shrugs and lays down beside you. “Or is the dirt that comfortable?”

The two of you lay there for a moment under the setting sun, wrapped in the warm of the golden hour. His eyes meet yours and he’s stumped into a pause. It’s been three years since you arrived at Jujutsu Tech and you both have grown since then - him into a young man and you into a young lady of your own right. The light strikes your eyes just so, making them glitter like the sunlight on the sea. Had your eyes always been so beautiful? Had your hair always fallen perfectly around your eyes? Had the little sun freckles on your skin from your childhood in the fields always been so endearing to him?

His heart flutters.

His silence stuns you too. Satoru Gojo was never quiet. When you turn over you see his perpetually smug expression soften, lips parted, eyebrows relaxed, opening those famous blue eyes to you. A breeze passes, the wind rustling the trees above you, and you realize your so close that some of your hair could brush his cheek from here. His silence makes you feel compelled to whisper.

“Satoru?”

In that moment he almost feels compelled to say something stupid. So stupid. With your face this close to him his head is filled with stupid questions. Stupid thoughts.

Instead he flicks your forehead. You yelp and your hand flies to rub that spot.

“What in the world was that for?” you cry out.

“For making me lie on the dirt when it actually sucks.”

“I didn’ make you do anythin’!” There was that little accent slipping out again. He laughs to himself as he gets up and stands over you again, waiting for you to join him. You look up at him and look up at the sky.

"One day," you huff, "one day we'll settle this for once and for all. And I'm gonna win."

He smiles down at you. "I'll be waiting."

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