Thinking of an Itadori time travel AU where he goes back right before the Star Plasma Vessel mission with pretty much zero memories. He wakes up, confused, with a teenage, overenthusiastic Gojo looming over him. He knows he should be dead, but to what extent?
The story progresses from there. He meets Geto, and Geto becomes concerned over this little bundle of trauma and shared fear/disgust of objects sliding down one's throat. Gojo begins to see Itadori as someone becoming close in his thoughts, and Itadori stays amnesiac. Gojo and Geto leave for the Star Plasma Vessel mission, and it goes the same way as canon.
Geto spirals into the same depression, only amplified from Itadori's attempts to get him to calm down. He begins to see Itadori as someone to protect, the first archetype in a sense -- the beginning of his view of sorcerers on a pedestal and non-sorcerers as...monkeys. Gojo grows distant as well, but still cares for Itadori in his own way. Meanwhile, Ieiri, Haibara, and Nanami are still worried for Itadori, but not as much as the other two. Geto and Gojo are beginning to spiral, seeing Itadori as their own rock in the river, the connection between the two.
It grows worse. On a daily basis, Itadori begins to break from the pressure as well -- not just losing his memories, but from Geto and Gojo's constant glances at him. He tries to hold them up, but his half-remembering, traumatized answers only make them more and more suspicious of these people he mentions from his past bearing an uncanny resemblance to some of the people they know.
Everyone is shattering under the pressure. Geto says something echoing Fushiguro on a whim on a particularly bad day, and it all comes flooding back to Itadori. What happened. How he died. So-
Runs from everything. And Geto follows, confused, but ends up stumbling into a subway station. A subway station with a Gojo that looks far older, far more jaded, and frozen -- with his body standing in front, satisfied smile set in place. Gojo spots this younger Geto. His thoughts begin to race, and he steps forward, breaking the Prison Realm's hold over him. The mystery unravels. How Itadori died. How he went back to 2006. And Geto finds out about his own future in the process.
Meanwhile, in 2006, Geto has disappeared, essentially. But when he reappears -- in shock, and with Itadori remembering everything, what happens to the present he just visited? And how does Gojo react?
God, I need to learn how to manage my WIPS.