Chapter Text
Gojo Satoru always knew that he was different.
He was a weird child. No one ever told him, but he could see it in their eyes, their hushed whispers, his father’s frown and his mother’s strained smile.
As a child, he never cried. Not when he was hungry, not when he was tired. He just stared at his parents with his unsettling sky-blue eyes.
He didn’t laugh either. No matter how much people talked to him, he didn’t laugh. No toy could bring joy out of him, no gift or kind gesture.
Gojo Satoru was a strange child.
When Satoru closed his eyes for the final time, he never expected to wake up. His death was the only thing he was sure of in this strange new world.
He closed his eyes, the great Gojo Satoru, the god amongst mortals, the strongest, and his heart stopped beating.
He was dead. That was it.
So why was he still here? Why could he hear his beating heart, his breath, could feel the world around him? Why could he still see?
Satoru never believed in rebirth. If you died, that was it. No second chance. No reawakening.
When he opened his eyes again, he was quiet. So quiet that his parents believed him to be stillborn.
Satoru didn’t laugh, or cry, or do anything really except to stare at everyone with his unsettling bright eyes.
And the first thing Satoru noticed, after being reborn, after waking up again against all odds, was-
He couldn’t see.
The endless vision of his six eyes had simply… vanished.
Where he could see every blink, every heartbeat, every swirl of cursed energy, every minuscule movement, now there was a glaring emptiness.
The colors seemed muted. The shapes blurry and unfocused. Satoru always asked himself what it would be like to see like a normal human would. Without seeing everything, at every time. Without covering his eyes and still see, see so much.
When he closed his eyes now, there was nothing. Emptiness. A black void where infinity had been.
What was Gojo Satoru without his eyes? Without his six eyes? What was a god without all his might?
Gojo Satoru had died. And with him, his power.
Gojo Chieko had thought herself to have the perfect life. She was born into a numerous, but average Clan, not powerful enough to draw attention but also not unsignificant enough to be overlooked. She had an average, eye-based quirk that was not too flashy to stand out too much and not too weak to be scoffed over.
Her parents were caring, not overbearing and not indifferent. Her school grades were average, but still good enough to earn praise. Her friends were average as well, barely more than acquaintances and enough not to draw attention.
Even her looks- long black hair and brown eyes, nothing extraordinary in a world of quirks.
Chieko had an average desk job at a local minor hero agency where she met her equally average husband. After a few years, they got married and after another year they decided to have a child. They were just another normal family with a perfect normal life.
When she became pregnant, Chieko was overjoyed. Who wouldn’t be?
At the time of her child’s birth, everything was prepared, the name picked carefully and the date of birth calculated perfectly.
But.
Everything did not go perfectly.
Her son, Satoru, was born two months too early on a cold winter night. The birth was painful, and when her son did not cry, she feared the worst might have happened.
But her son was alive, and sane, despite his early birth.
He looked healthy, but there was something… different about him. His hair and eyelashes were unnaturally white, and his eyes.
His unsettling blue eyes.
The first time Chieko looked into her child’s (too all-knowing, too wise) eyes she felt scared.
A child’s eyes should not look like that. So old. So knowing.
Chieko felt like a prey before a predator.
(She never looked into his eyes again.)
From there on, Chieko’s perfect life spiraled downwards.
Satoru was an (unnatural) unusual child. He never cried or laughed (he just looked at her with those eyes) but Chieko was sure he would be just fine.
After all, the perfect, normal Chieko would never give birth to such an unnatural child.
Satoru knew his mother didn’t like him. (How similar to his past life.)
She wanted him to be the perfect child. To not fall out of line. To live up to her expectations.
And in his first life, that’s what he did. He played the act of the perfect son. Of the child gifted with the six eyes. Of the god in the making. And gods did not make mistakes.
And now, looking into those same eyes, filed with stress, telling him to just do what you’re supposed to do you wouldn’t want to disappoint the clan wouldn’t you now, you wouldn’t want to disappoint me-
Satoru- couldn’t. Not again. Not without his eyes. (Not when all it brought him was pain.)
He didn’t have the energy to fake a laugh, or cry, not when the world seemed so dull.
He knew he must seem weird. He must seem unnatural.
Except in this world, His eyes were seen as weird, as an abomination, while in the jujutsu world every Gojo knew exactly what those eyes meant. How powerful they were.
(A gift from the gods.)
How ironic, that the same eyes his old mother praised and fussed over were the ones that his new mother couldn’t even look into.
His father’s name was Tadashi. That’s what he found out a year after being born.
He had never seen him much. And if he came, he always looked at Satoru with… disgust.
As if he couldn’t believe that his son was something so different.
When he came over, his mother’s smile looked more strained than usual. She desperately tried to start a conversation, without success. Tadashi was cold, and distant.
His visits became lesser and lesser over the months. Some time, Satoru didn’t see him for half a year. Then, it seemed like he stopped coming at all.
Satoru heard his mother sobbing on the phone sometimes, saying how it was all Satoru’s fault, that his weirdness made Tadashi go away, that he is unnatural, unnormal, unwanted.
Satoru’s first word was not ‘mom’ or ‘dad’ like most of the other kids.
No, his first word was ‘fly’.
He was in the park, with (his mother) Chieko. It was one of the rare days where she treated him more human and less like a thing.
Satoru was held on her hip, facing the sky, while Chieko showed him the flying birds.
That is a bird. And birds fly.
“fly!”, Satoru had said. And again, and again, until he could pronounce it correctly. Chieko had laughed.
That was one of the fondest memories Satoru had with her.
Satoru’s Quirk came in when he was four.
After four years, six months and fourteen days in this new world the boy had grasped this world’s system pretty easily. It seemed a lot like his old world- but without the underlying part of the jujutsu world.
Satoru had not seen a single curse since coming here.
(he ignored the voice that told him that it was because he just couldn’t see them anymore.)
Instead, there was a concept called ‘Quirks’.
They were, in a way, something like a very own cursed technique. Although, it could come in every form imaginable. Chieko had a simple ocular quirk that made her able to have a heat vision, and Tadashi had a minor telekinesis quirk.
Satoru had asked Chieko about those who didn’t have a quirk, and she pressed her lips together and averted her gaze, something she always did when looking into Satoru’s eyes.
Disgust.
Satoru didn’t ask again.
(But he remembered, a young woman without cursed energy and lack of talent, that somehow still pushed her way to the very top.)
(he also remembered a man, more like a demon, the one who had accomplished the unthinkable.
“Gojo Satoru? I killed him”)
So when Satoru was four, one late evening, his eyes burned. And then he could see everything.
Regaining the six eyes was like jumping into the sea. You know it’s cold, and initially it’s uncomfortable, but your body adapts quickly, and soon you can enjoy it like many times before, like embracing an old friend.
When Satoru’s eyes activated the first time after four years, it hurt. The influx of senses, information and infinity hit him all at once, his brain overloading.
But, for the first time in this life, he laughed.
Gojo Satoru had died. The six eyes had died with him.
Gojo Satoru was reborn. The six eyes were reborn with him.
After gaining his ‘quirk’, Chieko looked at him differently.
It wasn’t hard to notice. After all, Satoru could see everything.
Chieko looked at him like a rabbit would look at a wolf.
As if every move could be your last.
Satoru couldn’t say that he didn’t care. He had expected it, in fact.
But that didn’t mean that it hurt less.
Children, Satoru thought, are special.
They too, looked at him differently. They too could sense that something wasn’t quite right with him. But children, especially such young ones, didn’t separate between right and wrong. Black and white. For a child, Satoru was different. But that didn’t mean he was wrong, or unnatural. That was just the way Satoru was, and the kids accepted it.
It was a nice change from the cold atmosphere at home.
Even if he was a lot older and more intelligent that the toddlers at his kindergarden, he played along, if only for his own interest. He showed off his flashy eyes and his infinity and the children ooh-ed and aah-ed, and Satoru would be lying if it didn’t inflate his ego just a little bit.
The adults however weren’t so accepting, just like he expected.
Some were jealous, some were scared, some were uncomfortable. They all hid it behind tight smiles and sweet words. Satoru brushed it off. He didn’t need their acknowledgement.
School was different. The children here were also special, in a way, but they were also dumb. Most of them imitated each other, not yet grasping the concept that words and actions had consequences. When you hit your classmate, it hurt and they cried but you don’t understand you have to stop because it doesn’t hurt you.
Satoru didn’t make many friends. He never talked to anyone, and if someone tried to talk to him he’d just stare at them until they went away.
He didn’t need friends.
(he missed the ones long gone.)
Elementary school passed like a blur. Then came middle school.
By the time Satoru was eleven he had already regained most of his techniques. His physical state was maybe lagging a bit behind but that was nothing intensive training couldn’t fix. This was also the time when Chieko started to come home less. Apparently, she was talking to Tadashi again, and spending more and more time with him at his home.
Sometimes she didn’t come home in weeks.
Satoru had to cook, clean, and generally care for himself all by himself by the time he was thirteen. He enjoyed his newfound freedom far more than he should, but why should he be sad over someone that he didn’t care in the first place?
(that didn’t want him in the first place.)
It was good how it was now. Satoru was free from scared stares and brown eyes that would never quite look at him. Free from a trembling voice and a hand that was careful not to ever touch him.
It was better this way. For both of them.
When he was fourteen, he met Hiashi. Hiashi moved to Satoru’s neighborhood and came into his class. At first, Satoru didn’t care about him. He didn’t care about anyone. But there was something different about Hiashi.
Maybe it was his narrow, falcon like eyes that reminded him of someone. Maybe it was the long black hair that fell just the right way. Maybe it was the way he would look at him, with his dark eyes, as if they were equals.
They became friends, somewhat. They laughed and joked together.
Then Satoru slipped up.
Goodbye, Suguru, he said one day.
Suguru Hiashi cocked his head to the side, confused. Who’s Suguru?, he asked.
They stopped talking after that.
When Satoru was fourteen, in his last year of middle school, it was time to decide what career Satoru would choose.
Of course, most of his classmates wanted to be heroes.
The concept of heroes had both fascinated and confused Satoru when he first heard of them. People hired and paid to save people? That was… something that went against everything Satoru knew.
A hero was someone who put the lives and the wellbeing of others above his own. A hero was someone who didn’t hesitate to act, if only it meant that someone could live on just a little bit longer.
(Someone like Yuuji.)
Whatever the heroes in this world were, they certainly didn’t live up to the name. They acted as some sort of… secondary police force, that fought against ‘villains’ and protected the people. Apparently, they were being paid by the government to do so, and their popularity was also a big factor. There were even schools to make someone a professional hero. Being a hero in this world was a respectable and often chosen career choice.
This was… confusing.
The title of hero was not something you could simply learn like that. It was given to you by others, and it certainly wasn’t something you could pursue as a career choice. You could learn how to be a jujutsu sorcerer, but certainly not every sorcerer was considered a hero.
(Satoru wasn’t.)
And yet, they were everywhere. On the news, on billboards, advertisement, they even had their own merchandise! There were events like the popularity pools and the UA sports festival showcasing the heroes and plastering them all over the media. With their flashy costumes, hero names and catchphrases it seemed like something coming from a kid’s cartoon. Satoru wondered if the same heroes would still save people and fight against villains so readily if they didn’t receive money for it, or even if they weren’t ranked by strength and popularity like video game characters.
Heroes were very weird, Satoru concluded.
That’s why the hero career didn’t appeal to Satoru the way it did to the other students.
It wouldn’t be right to call himself a hero.
(not after all the things he did.)
But after fourteen years of living as a civilian, Satoru was bored. He admits it- this world was so... boring. And Satoru was itching for a good fight, to feel the thrill and the adrenaline rush and the ultimate win over his opponent, to feel a curse disintegrate under his fists- but that's not possible anymore, is it? There are no curses here.
(Suguru would be happy. In a way, this is the perfect world he envisioned, wasn't it? No civilians, only sorcerers that controlled their cursed energy and didn't produce curses. Only, Suguru isn't here, and Satoru is the only one to see this perfect world in the end.)
Too bad he’d have to hold back with his technique. Humans were different than curses after all- he couldn’t go around killing humans. So that was a big no-no for most of his more destructive techniques.
So, maybe the concept of the hero career wasn’t that repulsing for him anymore.
That changed completely when Satoru found out he couldn’t legally use his quirk in public without a hero license.
“Mother”, Satoru said when Chieko was home for once. “I’m going to be a hero.”
While there were a lot of hero schools in Japan, really, a lot, Satoru knew exactly which one he would choose.
Satoru didn’t try to delude himself. He didn’t want to be hero for selfless reasons like saving people, or the general greater good of the population. He wanted to pursue the hero career because it was the only way to get a hero license and use his quirk freely in public, and, most importantly, because he missed fighting and standing in the center of attention he couldn’t really imagine leading a simple civilian life. After years and years in the jujutsu world such a life seemed so… boring.
Hero work didn’t seem that different from his work as a jujutsu sorcerer anyways.
Oh, who was he kidding, he just wanted to beat something up without repercussion.
(He wondered if Yaga-sensei was proud of him. He could have a relaxing, trouble-free life and still chose to ‘help people’ etc etc. Look, Yaga-sensei. He’s responsible now.)
But, if Satoru was going to be a hero, then he’ll be the damn best hero to ever exist. The god amongst humans. The strongest.
That’s why he was now standing in front of the gates of UA high school, dressed in gym clothes and his black blindfold secured onto his eyes. But didn’t mean he couldn’t see
the gigantic building in front of him, a big mass of glass and concrete, over towering him and every student entering. Satoru grins. This was going to be interesting.