Work Text:
Autumn ‘17
The first time Okkotsu Yuta meets Geto Suguru, the leaves are steadily losing their green color and falling to the ground, painting the campus in shades of red. This is only the beginning of the great decay that will follow, of dozens of leaves, of dozens of sorcerers.
Geto folds Yuta’s hands between his own and asks for his help, something Yuta is always eager to give, something this strange man in strange robes seems desperate for, with his crazed eyes and frightening demeanor. And Yuta wants to help him.
Until Geto’s words sour the sympathy brewing in his gut, churning it into something violent and ill. His nerves ease only a fraction when Gojo-sensei steps between them, though the tension in the air is palpable, crackling, branching out like curses in the air.
Geto leaves shortly after his declaration of war, and Yuta’s eyes don’t follow him.
Instead, they linger on his teacher, who’s bandaged face stares at the sky for much longer than Geto is visible to Yuta’s two eyes on the horizon.
And Yuta begins to understand.
*
Winter ‘17
The next time Yuta sees Geto Suguru, it is on school grounds that have already been bloodied, grounds that will soon become a battlefield.
Rage, like he has never felt before, boils in his gut until it comes spilling out of him. He’s not sure if he’s releasing cursed energy anymore, or if it’s pure hatred emanating into his environment. All he knows is it feels like inhaling black tar every time he looks at the face of this intruder who has nearly taken all his friends from him. Who has hurt them beyond recognition. Beyond forgiveness.
Focus all your energy on him, Yuta reminds himself. Until he’s drowning under it.
For almost the entirety of their fight, Yuta is convinced he will be the one to kill Geto Suguru. In the undercurrent, beneath the boiling rage, there lies a neglected truth: he doesn’t want to kill anybody. He wants to understand, he wants to help. But his friends' bloodied bodies keep rising into his vision, and he’s not sure he has the luxury of choice.
Witnessing Uzumaki is the true end to Yuta’s illusion that he might yet escape this conflict without blood on his hands. So many thousands of curses spun into a tight fabric of screams, woven together in front of him, the air so thick with Geto’s presence it nearly chokes Yuta up. If he wasn’t so used to Rika hanging over him, he’s sure he would be smothered by the blanket of curses. By this lunatic who justifies his cruelty with convoluted, petty bickering.
Yuta gives everything, to stop him. And then he promptly passes out.
When he wakes, it is to the astonishment of his friends peering over him, making sure he’s okay. And he knows it must be over, that it must have ended the only way it could have. To pay for the death he’s caused, he has to go with Rika. Or so he believes, until she grants him one last miracle and proves him otherwise.
Gojo-sensei doesn’t tell them until after Rika fades from view that Geto is dead. To be completely honest, he doesn’t tell them at all. Just an easygoing, “It’s done,” that everyone glosses over.
Yuta’s ears are already ringing, from the fight, from Rika’s goodbye, from emotion after overwhelming emotion battering him on all sides. He cries for Rika, who didn’t deserve to be cursed. For his friends, who didn’t deserve to be hurt. For himself, though he’s not entirely sure he deserves it.
“You didn’t kill him,” Gojo-sensei tells him, a whisper of a breath into the dusk air. And Yuta thinks that should make him feel lighter somehow, the fact that he didn’t take someone’s life tonight. But it doesn’t, because it means Gojo-sensei did.
The absence of confirmation, the words Gojo-sensei does not say, claw at Yuta’s throat until it’s raw.
I wanted you to live, Okkotsu. He shudders and nods. Gojo guides him and the other students to the infirmary, abandoned at the moment since most everyone is in Shinjuku.
“Shoko-kun will be here soon,” Gojo tells them. “For now, just get some rest.”
Gojo-sensei moves to leave. But Yuta watches as he hovers in the doorframe, a tremble in his hands, something dark and unnatural clinging to him though he fights against it. Yuta is still not sure how all curses work, but it seems like Gojo-sensei is guarding himself against an intangible agony. Yuta senses it, knows if Gojo-sensei gives into the shadow lingering at his side, he will create something far more menacing than Rika became in death, when Yuta’s love kept her here.
Yuta does not fear that Gojo-sensei will lose whatever battle it is that he’s fighting. He does fear, late into the night, that his teacher will have lost something not unlike love when he wins.
All it takes is one good night’s rest and his friend’s encouraging spirits, all restored in good health, for Yuta to decide he will not harbor ill-will toward a dead man. Yuta doesn’t like the memory of what he’d felt in that fight.
Though it was less than twenty-four hours ago really, the late afternoon sun flickering into the infirmary, he feels nauseous at the thought of the hatred that had run through his veins then. It was only because his friends were in danger, he reminds himself. It was only because Geto threatened him, that such an awful emotion had taken root in his soul and twisted around it so tightly.
The roots fall off and die over the following days, bit by wilting bit. Yuta eats breakfast with the other first years, and Panda makes them laugh when Yaga helps him heal his arm. The principal pats him on the back and thanks him privately for his help, and Yuta shyly accepts his gratitude. Gojo reassures him the attack wasn’t his fault and hands him the student ID he’s been missing for months.
He takes the ID with shivering fingers as snow falls over them. “My ID! You picked it up!”
“No, not me,” Gojo-sensei corrects, and Yuta watches his lips quiver from something other than the chilly winter air. “My best friend did. My one and only.”
And the last root of hatred crumbles into dust.
*
Spring ‘18
Warmer weather brings longer sparring sessions, and ice cream breaks, and bouquets of blue flowers held snug in Gojo-sensei’s fist. Yuta knows himself as a fly on the wall. A quiet observer of the people around him. It’s how he tries to understand them.
It’s why he watches Gojo-sensei and knows who those flowers are for, when the other students bicker and jest in blissful ignorance.
Gojo-sensei had once told Yuta his personal theory: love is the most twisted curse. Yuta understands now, or at least he imagines he does, as he turns his ID between his fingers and Gojo-sensei’s words echo in Yuta’s head.
My best friend. My one and only.
It’s an anxious tick he developed over the last months of first year, and every time he does it he’s cursed to remember Geto’s greeting to Gojo-sensei all those months ago, when he called out “Satoru! It’s been so long!” with genuine joy evident in his voice.
He can’t imagine it. Having to kill Panda, or Toge, or Maki. In a decade or longer, even. No matter what terrors they might’ve committed.
He wonders, distantly, if Gojo-sensei meant the same thing to Geto, or if his teacher’s heartfelt sentiment is misplaced.
“Yuta-kun!” The aforementioned man interrupts his thoughts. “Meet Miguel-kun, here.”
Miguel steps forward, after voicing some displeasure at Gojo’s use of honorifics, and Yuta hurries to offer him a polite greeting. This is the man he’ll be traveling with for training, Gojo-sensei informed him, for the foreseeable future. He wants to make a good impression.
“Miguel was a member of Geto’s family, but he’s kindly decided to help us now. Isn’t that great!?”
Miguel’s expression spoils into a scowl. “Decided is a strong word.”
Yuta laughs at Gojo’s feigned look of offense, almost forgetting what his teacher just said completely.
He remembers much later, in a far away continent, when Miguel says Geto’s name in passing conversation, and Yuta feels a familiar tug of curiosity.
“Why did you join Geto?” He asks, though the question itself brings an uncomfortable tension over the duo.
Miguel pauses, thoughtful. “I saw in Geto-sama what one would see in any great sorcerer. Charm, power, vision. Someone worth following.” He eyes Yuta then. “I’m sorry, I’m sure that sounds strange to you.”
Yuta shakes his head quickly. “No! No. It doesn’t sound strange. That’s what I see in Gojo-sensei, too.”
“Ah,” Miguel smiles. “They are quite alike.”
“Did he ever talk about Gojo-sensei?” Yuta asks, before he can think better of it. He holds back, Like Gojo-sensei talks about him?
“I didn’t know it back then,” Miguel strokes the brim of his hat and even behind the sunglasses, Yuta senses he is looking into some imaginary distance. “But yes. I think he did.”
*
Summer ‘18
Miguel doesn’t bring up Geto again after that. Yuta isn’t sure if it’s on purpose, out of some consideration that Geto tried to kill Okkotsu on his last night alive, or if Miguel himself wants to avoid memories that come with loss. He would understand either, really.
Alas, Miguel can still be a mystery to him at times.
So Yuta ruminates alone, on rare occasions, remembering what hung in the air between Geto and Gojo-sensei from the first day they met, the ways they were alike. He wonders what mannerisms Gojo-sensei picked up from his best friend and never let go of, what parts of Geto live on by their teacher. On scarce evenings, when he misses his friends more than anything in the world, he imagines what Gojo-sensei must’ve felt when Geto fell and curses the man all over again.
So he too, avoids the topic of Geto with set intention.
It’s not until Yuta manages to manifest Rika for the first time since breaking her curse, pouring his own cursed energy into a vision of her, separate from the girl herself, that Miguel alludes to Geto Suguru.
“You really are just like them,” Miguel laughs, once Yuta hangs up on Gojo-sensei. He’d just been excited to tell his teacher about his success, and perhaps they’d gone on a little too long, sure, but it’s not like they had to pay extra for overseas phone calls these days.
“Like who?” Yuta asks, confused, and he watches as Miguel stumbles over how to respond.
“Geto-sama would train the twins the same way,” he settles on, that same distant look appearing across his expression. “Push them beyond their limits, then spoil them for any successes.”
That does sound like Gojo-sensei’s methods, Yuta won’t argue that. He tries to picture it. Geto, and the two girls he’s seen only once. They’d spoken to Geto like daughters, he remembers, every detail about that declaration still clear in his memory.
It’s hard for him to imagine Geto as anyone but his cruel, ruthless opponent. Only there is something that’s been troubling Yuta recently, a realization long after that fateful day of the night parade. A question he’ll never receive an answer to.
Geto could’ve killed all of them. Panda, Toge, Maki. But he didn’t.
Why? Why did he let them live? It must’ve been on purpose. It must’ve been a part of his ideal, what he spoke about as their weapons met, to keep young sorcerers alive. But Yuta doesn’t fully understand it. He doesn’t think he ever will.
All he knows, after the events are renewed in his memory, is that Gojo-sensei must’ve known that Geto wouldn’t kill them all. Gojo-sensei must’ve trusted him.
And Geto, for once, did not betray him.
*
Autumn ‘18
It’s been over a year since Yuta met Geto Suguru, when Gojo-sensei appears in Kenya.
For all the months that have passed, his teacher seems about the same. Same sunglasses, same goofiness, same vague non-answers. It’s refreshing, after so much change lately. Until he warns Yuta, in hushed tones, that he’s gotten a bad feeling recently. A poor omen for the future. “If anything happens to me, I need you to take care of the current first and second-year students, Yuta.”
A chill steals its way into Yuta’s limbs despite the sun. Yuta cannot imagine anything ever happening to Gojo-sensei, but for once, his teacher seems genuinely serious. He tries to lighten the mood with a joking, “If anything happens? Like you getting a girlfriend?”
“You’re a comedian now, huh?” Gojo-sensei responds in kind, but Yuta notices how his face falls after, how his lips take the shape of a pout, how loneliness clings to him like it once did to Yuta before Gojo brought him to the school. The shadow has long since passed, but its shade still eclipses the strongest sorcerer some days.
For the first time, Yuta finds a new meaning in sensei’s words on that snowy day. Geto Suguru was his one and only best friend. But perhaps, Yuta thinks, he was a bit more than that.
He doesn’t get the chance to ask, before Gojo-sensei is off again. Yuta doesn’t think he would ask given the chance, however. It would only make his teacher’s bad feelings worse.
Instead, Yuta turns his focus to his training and tries to forget. Forget Geto’s words to him during their fight. Forget Gojo’s lonely silhouette in the days that followed. Forget the fear that grows new roots in Yuta’s chest despite his renewed strength. Fear that ends up being rather justified in its growth.
The jujutsu world is rather small, it turns out. The news reaches him in less than a day.
Gojo Satoru has been sealed. Geto Suguru has survived and is responsible, and so Gojo Satoru, who claims to have executed him, must also be guilty in inciting what is now known as the Shibuya Incident. Gojo Satoru is thus permanently exiled from the jujutsu world. Removing his seal is a criminal act. Punishable by death is an implication not written on the page.
It’s almost too much to comprehend at once. There are so many thoughts, so many things Yuta does not know in the moment that he hears these facts relayed to him and Miguel, in a cold, monotone voice, by some jujutsu official.
What Yuta does know, instantly, is that it’s not him. It can’t be Geto Suguru. The monstrous, rotten creature that did this to Gojo-sensei can only be someone else entirely.
Geto Suguru wouldn’t hurt Gojo-sensei like that. He wouldn’t. Yuta’s not sure how he knows that, or why he trusts his gut as it tells him this impenetrable truth, but he does.
*
Winter ‘18
It’s not even a choice, really. Not for Okkotsu.
This Kenjaku that is possessing Geto’s corpse must be slain. And Okkotsu is the only one currently qualified to kill him. After all, he’s nearly killed this body before, with a fraction of the power and talent he currently wields. Plus, he’s the only special grade sorcerer free to do so.
Besides, adds the voice in his gut that has been uncomfortably loud of late, he cannot let Gojo-sensei kill his best friend twice.
He follows Kenjaku’s trail as the culling game continues around him, confident in his comrade’s abilities to deal with the fallout. He follows, and fights, and follows, until a wave of cursed energy thick with Geto’s residuals hits him like a bullet to the chest.
This is the first sign that something has gone wrong.
He keeps trailing residuals to the site, a temple still smoking and burning when he arrives.
When he enters the former temple, the walls have all but collapsed around where the center of the building used to rest. Columns and statues lay broken, like the ruins of a great battle that has only just ended. Spare curses wander the scene, surprised by Yuta’s presence, the air too thick with Geto’s energy to sense him there.
It occurs to him, suddenly, that the date is December 24th. A second sign then.
Yuta grips tight to his katana and walks forward. This might be his only chance to kill Kenjaku. He has to take it, trap or not.
But the body bleeding in the rumble is not the monster he’s been searching for.
Geto Suguru lifts his head, his hair spilling over his shoulders in a tangled mess of blood and dust, and when his frenzied eyes meet Yuta’s, he laughs. The sound cuts Yuta to the bone, keeps him frozen, staring down into the crater.
The universe, it seems, has a very comedic sense of timing.
“Of course it’s you,” Geto hisses, when he’s managed to stop laughing. And if Yuta looks closely enough, he can actually see the threads across his forehead hanging loose, the skin knotting itself together without any use for string.
“Which one are you?” Yuta asks, but he already knows.
Geto drops his head then curls into himself on the ground. His robes are torn, and he’s bleeding from more places than just his forehead, though those cuts seem to steadily stop leaking blood as well. He looks tired, Yuta decides. Like a dead man resurrected when he least wanted to be.
“That thing escaped,” Geto growls, a bit of anger leaking out that Yuta recognizes. “I tried to kill us, but...” He makes a vague gesture and ends the sentence there. Us. A pang of something not unlike empathy snags inside him, an accompanying memory of I tried to kill us spent watching Rika twist a knife like it were made out of grass and not metal.
Yuta pushes the memory aside in favor of choosing his next steps. He could try to track Kenjaku down, try to anticipate his next move, his next body, and kill him while he’s weakened. Or, Yuta thinks, he could do what Geto asked the first time they met.
He could help.
His body makes the choice before his mind does, skating down the edge of the crater until he’s close enough to touch him. Geto is healing well enough on his own, though Yuta’s not sure if it’s by intention or instinct.
“What are you doing?” Geto asks, out of breath, as Yuta loosens his grip on his katana and places a gentle hand at Geto’s side.
“You’re important to people who are important to me,” Yuta says, pulling a confused Geto up to his feet, the same words he offered Itadori some weeks ago.
Gojo-sensei will be relieved to see him. Well. Likely a lot more than just relieved.
Geto blinks. A rush of ice cold wind sweeps his hair from his face and tosses it in the air. He doesn’t look scary anymore, Yuta thinks. Now, he just looks like a person. A person who, Yuta is sure, cares more about Gojo Satoru than anyone else in the world.
“So I’m going to help you.” Yuta continues before Geto can slur the why? off his lips. “You might be the only person in the world who can unseal Gojo-sensei right now,” Yuta tells him, believing. “The only one who can save him.”
It’s a stretch of the truth, sure. But the words have their intended effect.
“Where?” Geto wheezes, his expression open, distress and rage flickering off and on.
“I don’t know yet,” Yuta says, honest. “But I’ll take you there if you promise to help him.”
For a split second, Yuta sees in Geto the shadow that lingered behind Gojo-sensei for days after his death. And once again, he starts to understand.
“I promise,” Geto answers, his eyes bright, his cursed energy a flame burning beyond even Yuta’s comprehension. “There is nothing in the world I would not do to save Satoru.”
Despite all the reasons not to, Yuta trusts him. After all, Gojo-sensei does too.
*
Spring ‘19
Spring this year brings rain and flowers and second chances.
A great deal of going’s-on that Yuta is not privy to occur while he and Geto track down the prison realm. For the most part, Yuta ignores the game, figuring the other students have a decent enough handle on what’s happening there. Not to mention, it would be a little difficult to explain his current company.
Geto, for his part, isn’t terrible. Whatever possessed him during the last months of his life, the time when Yuta first got to know him, has long since been killed off, even if Geto hasn’t.
Geto reveals himself in glimpses as they travel. Stringing his mannerisms together with Gojo-sensei’s, Yuta finds there is in fact more to Geto than just what he witnessed in their fight. He learns Geto cares about his family when Geto asks after Miguel and the others. He learns once Geto has decided to do something he commits to it with unyielding loyalty. He learns one such commitment of Geto’s is protecting sorcerers, and surprisingly, nowadays that seems to include Yuta.
Most of all, he learns that Geto loves Gojo-sensei just as much as Gojo-sensei loves him. But he sort of already knew that.
“You can call me Suguru,” Geto huffs one night, as they make camp. Yuta gets the amusing sense that Geto is being cautious of him. Yuta did nearly kill him that night, he figures. So, fair.
“Alright,” Yuta agrees, though he hesitates to use the name for long after.
Though by the time they come upon the prison realm’s location, a hiding spot tucked in the Kamo clan’s territory, Yuta can see why his teacher and Geto were friends. They do have, essentially, the same personality. Both a little aloof, both with a habit of hiding emotions behind humor, both exceptionally ambitious when they set their minds to anything.
“Suguru,” Yuta calls, before they make their move. Geto’s head jerks at Yuta’s use of his first name, eyeing him with interest. “You love him, don’t you?”
It’s not really a question by now. Not after witnessing a familiar loneliness clinging to Geto. Not after recognizing the longing in his face whenever they spoke of Gojo-sensei.
Geto abruptly covers his shock with an expression of disgusted embarrassment. “It’s that obvious?” He guffaws, and Yuta laughs.
“Go get him then,” Yuta says. “I’ll cover you.”
Yuta isn’t there when they are reunited. He’s rather pleased by this fact. He has enough of an understanding by now, what Gojo-sensei meant when he said best friend. Not in the way that Yuta is best friends with Panda, or Maki, or Toge. Not yet, at least.
They deserve a moment of privacy. A moment of peace, just for them.
But he is there after. It’s a shock at first, to see Gojo-sensei in such vulnerability. His clothes torn, a stale red that can only be blood coagulating over his skin. He is limp in Geto’s arms, cradled against Geto’s chest with his arms crossed over him, his head tucked into Geto’s neck so that Yuta cannot see his eyes, only the absence of the blindfold and his crisp, silver hair.
Geto is whispering to him, words that don’t reach Yuta’s ears, though he can guess among them are “It’s okay,” and “I got you,” and “I’m right here.”
Gojo-sensei shifts, a small verification of life, one of his hands reaching around Geto’s neck and sinking into his silk black hair. Geto kisses the top of Gojo-sensei’s head in return, and Yuta looks away, embarrassed by the intimate gestures of affection.
“He’s gonna be alright,” Geto tells Yuta, once they’ve stepped closer and settled against the wall at Yuta’s side.
“What happened?” Yuta asks, a whisper, wanting to allow his teacher some rest.
“I don’t fully understand it,” Geto answers, matching Yuta’s volume while he strokes Gojo’s hair. “But freedom comes at a price, I would know. We’ll have to keep this quiet, until he’s able to heal.”
Yuta doesn’t ask what he needs to heal. He can tell by the way Geto’s holding him, by the way he sweeps silver strands soaked red away from his face, by Gojo’s half-asleep muttering into Geto’s collarbone.
Yuta can’t see his eyes. But he knows the price of breaking a thousand year seal must be six eyes steep.
“I’ll take care of you,” says Geto, when Gojo starts to shuffle his legs closer to Geto. Yuta’s never heard his voice sound so kind, so gentle. “I promise.”
He doesn’t add it, but Yuta can hear the I won’t leave you again in the silence between the words, in the way his voice waivers.
Yuta stands guard while the duo sleeps off the unsealing, snuggled into one bedroll. He waits nervously for Gojo-sensei to wake, to see the damage for himself, to hear what his teacher thinks they should do next. Most of all, to hear if he’s done the right thing, if he’s done a decent job as the leader of all of this.
As is to be expected by now, Gojo and Geto ease none of these concerns when they wake up in the early morning light. Gojo says his eyes are “not that bad,” despite covering them with a blindfold immediately and later admitting to actually being fully blind at the moment, when he can’t feel around for his breakfast without Geto feeding it to him.
Yuta would prefer not to have to witness these obvious domestic moments between them, but seeing as Geto is miraculously back to life and Gojo is miraculously out of a thousand-year sentence in a dark void of nothingness, he’ll allow it.
“So,” Gojo asks, once he’s sufficiently awake, “What’s the plan?”
“The plan is to stay together,” Geto says, though his confidence waivers as he looks at Gojo.
Yuta knows better. He holds back a chuckle. Gojo smiles, somehow knowing instinctively Geto’s place in space next to him. “That’s a good plan. I like that plan.”
Yuta likes it, too. He’d like it even more if he didn’t have to be involved. Though that’s looking unlikely any time soon.
“Oh!” Gojo-sensei exclaims, as if suddenly remembering the history between the three of them. “If that’s okay with you, Yuta-kun.”
Geto huffs, still clinging stubbornly at sensei’s side. His ghastly glare doesn’t move Yuta’s mind whatsoever. Yuta’s grown more than used to it in their recent interactions.
“It’s always a good plan,” Yuta nods, meeting Geto’s eyes, “to stick beside someone who loves you.”
Gojo lets out a little half-gasp, and Geto rolls his eyes before kissing him gently on the lips. Gojo-sensei leans in, looking at home in Geto’s arms, surrounded by his touch in a way even the infinite won’t envelop him. “Of course he’s going to stay with me,” Geto pouts, a little possessive, and Gojo nods along.
“So that’s how it’s gonna be, womanizer?” Yuta says, once they’ve had their moment. He can’t resist the chance to throw Geto’s words back at him. It’s too good of an opportunity not to.
Gojo-sensei, for once, looks stunned by the apparent inside joke between the two of them. Geto’s arm wraps around Gojo-sensei’s waist a little bit tighter. “How rude. This is pure love.”
Yuta laughs. Because it is. Because it’s them. Because he understands.
Geto finds him later, when night has descended upon them once again. The spring air, even as it cools without the sunlight cast over them, feels the opposite of their first fall meeting. Around them, plants and animals and people are growing instead of decaying. There are green leaves and flowers springing from every possible crevice. Yuta finds the hopeful springtide invigorating.
“Thank you,” Geto tells Yuta, under the stars, while Gojo-sensei sleeps. “For helping us.”
Against all odds, they share a small smile. A quiet understanding of an infinity completed in this moment.
“Anytime,” Yuta answers. And he thinks maybe, just maybe, enduring the two of them together won’t be quite as tortuous as enduring them apart.