lawly

by footfungus

lawly

44. Chapter 44

Okay! So. This AU diverges from canon after the Shibuya Arc. Essentially, Gojo somehow (we don't know how yet) breaks out of the Prison Realm shortly after the Incident and drops off the map along with Yuji; the Culling Games Arc never begins, because events take a different turn after everyone learns that Gojo is out of the Sorcerer Jail Box. (Shut up.) Hence, Mai never dies, which feels important somehow. The only thing past the Shibuya Arc that I included was Okkotsu's "execution attempt," solely because I love him and I wanted him to be in this story.

And away we go!

Chapter 1: Confidence Summary:

Gojo is charged with murder; Utahime is skeptical; Yuta, after learning that his execution ruse has been uncovered, has to flee.

Notes:

The Council of Elders isn't canon but I wanted to give JJK's shadowy higher-ups a name to use, so I made up something generic. Also, I highly doubt that this makes any sense at all, but this story idea won a Twitter poll about the idea I should write next, so here we are. Wheeee!

(Yutamaki brainrot strong.)

Chapter Text

Present

First they send Fushiguro.

He's the natural choice for a mission like this. Skilled, and with enough personal connections to both targets to be of additional use – there's no one better.

He disappears. They say that it must have been Gojo's doing - that his mentor and guardian had sensed Fushiguro on his trail and killed him. It is an excuse almost no one accepts but still, none protest.

(The Elders have been waiting for an excuse like this for a very long time. It would do no good.)

Then they send Inumaki: a good backup and well-suited and just expendable enough to spare.

He, too, disappears.

Panda is next. His trail goes cold.

Nitta isn't anyone's first choice, but she is dispatched for lack of better options; she makes it to Moscow before she drops off the map.

It's getting too dangerous, sending students and faculty members one after another until all that remain in Tokyo are a frantic Ijichi, Kusakabe, and a handful of injured students. And Ieri tries to tell them so but the elders are hardly inclined to listen. "Send me," she insists.

They say that they cannot spare her. She goes anyway, and she returns – she is the first of them to make it back. But she is empty-handed.

They cannot send Maki, and Maki would not go even if they did; soon it is only she, Shoko, and a gravely-injured Kugisaki who remain in Tokyo, and there is no choice but to tap the Kyoto campus.

Todo is a terrible choice for a mission like this – no one is shocked when he, too, goes missing.

Miwa offers her assistance, but even in desperation no one wants to send her.

Hakari won't go; neither will Mei Mei, if she's not paid enough. (And she's not – privately, everyone knows that no one in the world is rich enough to pay her what it would take to make her accept this mission.)

And it is with not a single sorcerer or student to spare that, with utmost reluctance, the elders agree to see Iori Utahime.

"I'll find him," she says, eyes like cold steel. "I've known him for years. I know where he'd run. Let me bring him in."

She is not the champion they would have chosen, but with no further option, the council grants her petition. Iori Utahime will find one fugitive and lead them back to the others; she will put an end to the threat that a rouge Okkotsu poses, see to it that Itadori's execution is carried out.

She will bring Gojo Satoru to justice.

It is easy to believe, the way she walks with coiled, tense muscles as if she is always about to pounce, that she is really going to do it.

But first, a beginning – that seems a better place to start.

Two Months Earlier

"Missing. Isn't that something." Zenin Maki has no patience left and what little goodwill she still possesses is not to be wasted on the Council of Elders. "They know exactly where he is."

"That's what they're saying." Yuta flops back against the mattress, and Maki wants to tell him to make less noise but can't bring herself to. "He's a fugitive now."

Maki follows Yuta's clue, lying back, legs dangling over the edge of the bed. She turns her head to face Yuta, even though he's looking at the ceiling and he can't see her. "Think it's true?"

"Dunno. Could be." Yuta's a terrible liar. "Maybe he did get out. Maybe he didn't. How would I know?"

Maki doesn't have much goodwill left to waste on her best friend's pointless lies, either. "You know something."

"Don't."

"You're fidgeting. You fidget when you lie." Maki is so, so tired – tired of lies, too tired to keep her eyes open, tired of everything – and she can barely think straight but she couldn't possibly miss that. "You know exactly where Gojo is."

Yuta screws up his face like he's tasted something unpleasant and, for some reason, won't exhale. Then he does.

"Novgorod," he says when he lets out his breath. "He should be in Novgorod."

"The hell's Novgorod?"

"It's in western Russia."

"You liar."

"No, it actually is-"

"Not about that. You knew exactly where he was this whole time." Maki isn't surprised and she can hardly even bring herself to be mad, but she's hurt. "Why didn't you lead with that?"

"You never know who's listening," he says, which they both know is an excuse.

"Yuta," she says again, "why did you lie to me?"

"Everyone who knows is in danger. No reason to give you information that could get you killed."

That, they both know, is the truth, at least.

"Someone needs to know."

"Three people already do, though."

That hurts even more. "Who?"

"Me, Gojo, Itadori."

"Oh. Right." Never mind. "Wait, why Itadori?" She'd known that Yuji wasn't really dead – Yuta had told her as much – but that was the extent of her knowledge.

"They know."

"Who? And what?"

"They know Yuji's alive." Yuta swallows hard. "And they know I didn't kill him."

"Wait, what?" Maki sits bolt upright even though it makes her wince. "Then why are you still here?! You should be running while you still have the chance!"

"They haven't connected those particular dots yet-"

"Oh, yes, they have. I guarantee you they have." Maki crosses her arms. "Why Gojo, then? Who broke him out? Is he with Itadori? Does he even know? Why Russia? What are you going to do? Surely you're not planning on staying here."

Yuta doesn't miss a beat. "Not sure, yes, also yes, because it's big and easy to lose a tail in, not sure, and no, but I need to have an actual plan before I head out. That answer all of your questions?"

"No. Why aren't you freaking out?"

Yuta shrugs. "What would be the point?"

Maki turns from him. He reaches out to touch her shoulder but she tenses; he draws back his hand. "Maki," he starts, gently, but he doesn't remember what he meant to say next.

"They're going to kill you." Maki's shoulders slump. "They're going to realize you didn't kill Itadori, and they're going to kill you."

"Only if I don't run."

"Which you're not doing." Maki's voice is shaky, and he can't help but wonder if she's going to cry. It would be so unlike her, but she sounds so cut-up that he can't help but wonder. "Why?"

"I don't think that running off without a plan is going to do me any good, Maki."

"Then make one!"

"That's…not exactly easy-"

"Yuta."

"I'm not Gojo, Maki," he protests weakly. "I can't just teleport to Novgorod. I…I need a place to hide. Transportation. Ways to make sure that no one finds me. That stuff takes more than five seconds. You think I'm not freaking out? I am. But what am I gonna do? It won't help."

"You didn't have to lie to me, you know."

Maki's back is still turned, probably so Yuta won't see on her face that, of all of this, that hurts most of all.

"I'm sorry. It's not like I wanted to."

"But you did." Pull yourself together, she tells herself, but it doesn't help. "And you weren't planning on telling me the truth until I forced it out of you."

"Maki, I-"

"At least you could stick to your guns if you're going to keep me in the dark about everything."

They both know he can't do that. "Sorry, I guess."

They're silent for a few moments after that before Maki leans against the pillows, still facing away from Yuta, and says, "haven't you always wanted to go to Thailand?"

"I did say that." Maki can't even remember why she knows that, but it's the kind of mundane, lighthearted detail she never wants to forget. They know so few of those about each other. "This isn't exactly a vacation."

"It's safer than following Gojo and you could keep yourself hidden there."

"How would I even get there?" Yuta laughs without mirth. "I can't buy plane tickets without being traced."

"Stow away on a cargo ship?" It's only a half-serious suggestion, but Maki doesn't have anything better to offer.

"Sure, until they find me and I'm stranded in the middle of the ocean with no way to run."

"Get some random civilian with a boat to drop you off in the closest international port?"

"Who's going to do that, though?"

"Pay Mei Mei to get you transportation."

"…do you really think I have that kind of money?"

"Steal a car?"

"We live on an island, Maki."

"Well, then, fleeing the country's not going to work. Find an underground bunker to hide out in?"

"Oh, yeah, because metropolitan Tokyo is just overrun with secret underground bunkers."

"I'm trying to help you, Yuta."

"And I appreciate that! But the best thing you could do for me would be to let me figure this out on my own so I don't put you in any more danger-"

"Little late for that." Maki picks at her cuticles. "You'll need a contact who's in-the-know here to stay ahead of the Council. Someone's got to stay behind and feed you information."

"I…really don't."

"Yuta, you're already fifteen steps behind, so yeah, you do." She looks up at him and shrugs. "Could be exciting, working as a double agent."

"Maki-"

"We've all lost enough already." It's hard to reconcile her flat, matter-of-fact inflection with the heaviness of her words, and Yuta doesn't even try. "I'm not losing the three of you."

She pauses and averts her face again.

"Especially not you."

Seven Weeks Earlier

"Fushiguro is…just…gone?"

"That's what the Council is reporting." Gakuganji sighs. "Can't say that I'm really surprised. That Gojo always was a loose cannon."

"Maybe, but not the kind who'd murder his own student." Utahime knows what the council is trying to imply and she's determined to have none of it. "Is it possible that-"

"Iori, don't."

She glances up at Gakuganji with narrowed eyes. "Don't what?"

"I know that the two of you have a history, but this isn't the time to be making excuses for him."

"I'm not. All I'm saying is that I doubt he killed Fushiguro."

"I understand that, but you cannot afford to assume that he wouldn't-"

"Gakuganji-san," Utahime says coolly, "I understand your reservations, but I know Gojo." She takes a steadying breath that doesn't really steady her at all. "I know his methods are questionable, but he's not…he wouldn't."

"Well," Gakuganji mutters under his breath, "they do say that love is blind."

"Excuse me?"

Gakuganji lifts an eyebrow. "Did you honestly think your infatuation with Gojo Satoru had gone unnoticed, Iori?"

"I am not," she says archly, trying to pretend the accusation doesn't sting, "infatuated with Gojo."

"Explain yourself, then. Why are you trying to defend him? It's plain as daylight that he killed his student." Gakuganji scoffs. "And that after he practically raised the boy."

Breathe, Utahime.

Bre-e-e-e-eathe.

"I have no reason to want to come to his defense unless I'm absolutely sure that he's being falsely accused," she says, and she knows Gakuganji can hear her voice shaking but barely cares. "Like you said. He practically raised Fushiguro. Gojo Satoru is a thorn in all of our sides, no less mine than anyone else's, but he's not the kind of man who'd kill his own ward in cold blood." And she believes her own words, improbably – he loves his students, so much as Gojo Satoru is capable of loving anyone. "My personal opinion of him has absolutely nothing to do with my belief that the council is wrong about this."

Gakuganji stares at her for a long, fraught moment before he speaks again.

"You had better not be thinking of trying to clear his name, Iori."

Utahime shrugs. "I'm only saying what I think."

"That's a dangerous notion at times like these."

It's dim in the boardroom, and though Utahime stands under the lightbulb where it's easy to see and be seen, Gakuganji's face is half-shrouded in shadow. She feels as if she's speaking to a phantom and the sensation makes her skin crawl. "Maybe, but a false accusation of murder isn't something I'm going to take lightly."

"You don't know that it's false, Utahime."

"But you don't know that you're right, either," she protests. "Maybe Gojo is the one who's dead. Maybe whatever got him got Fushiguro, too. Who knows? There are a thousand other things that could've happened." It's hard to keep her eyes up. "I don't believe for a second that he'd lay a finger on Fushiguro."

Gakuganji lets out another world-weary sigh. "I'd advise you not to go and underestimate how dangerous Gojo can be just because he took a liking to you."

"He didn't."

"He trusts you," Gakuganji counters. "You're one of the very few people of whom I can confidently say as much."

"Okay, but that's only because he thinks I'm too weak to betray him."

"But you're not?"

Of course I am, Utahime thought, though perhaps it was less a matter of weakness and more one of unfounded loyalty. "If it were warranted, I would…turn on him." Maybe she would but she's positive that there won't ever be a need to – Gojo is a pain, but he's not evil. God only knows he'd already have brought the world to its knees if he was.

"Oh?" Gakuganji seems much too pleased to hear that. "So if I were to recommend to the council that you be on the list of people willing and able to search for him, you'd go?"

"Of course I would."

"To clear his name, I'm sure. How noble of you." He shakes his head. "How naïve."

"Founded faith in my colleague isn't naïve." Gojo has let her down and made her wonder why she bothers in a million different ways, but in this one respect she trusts him wholeheartedly. He is selfish, childish, and incredibly irritating, but he has only ever wanted to be a protector.

Gojo Satoru might be Utahime's least favorite person alive, but that does not make him a murderer.

"Well, I'll be the first to admit that I hope the accusations are unfounded." Gakuganji's face begins to close off again. "I hate the man, but I'd hate it even more to learn that we all put our trust in the kind of person who'd do something like this."

"So if I were to try to clear his name-"

"I'd advise against it, and frankly, I think you're biased beyond credibility, but I wouldn't try to stop you."

Utahime's breath catches in her throat. "And you wouldn't tell the Council-"

"I'm more interested in the truth than their agenda, so no, I would not." He smiles knowingly at her shocked expression. "Shocking, I know. I do have a subversive streak deep down."

Careful, Utahime warns herself. "Pardon me for being reluctant to believe you when you tried to make my students kill Itadori during the Goodwill Event, but I'm not sure that I buy that."

"Oh, I'd ask you to kill the boy on sight if you ran across him." Gakuganji waves his hand dismissively. "But as to Gojo…well. I'd like him dead, but the Council is acting outside of its jurisdiction."

"Could you explain?"

"Firstly, it's making and acting upon accusations for which it has absolutely no concrete proof. That's not protocol."

"Well, I should hope not," Utahime mutters.

"Secondly, there's a chance that Fushiguro is still alive. And in that case, his safety has to be prioritized."

"Which means focusing the investigation on Fushiguro's recovery instead of finding Gojo," Utahime finishes.

"Precisely. I never agreed with their choice to send him in the first place, but now that he's disappeared, we have to consider the possibility that they'll try to send other students on the same mission that Fushiguro couldn't complete."

"Or professionals," Utahime points out.

"Which would be equally bad, for different reasons. Sending students isn't ethical." Gakuganji turns his eyes up to the ceiling as if in prayer, though he's probably just annoyed. "Sending professional sorcerers when our ranks are already so depleted would be worse."

"Your point?"

"No matter what they decide, the Council is going to do more harm than good."

"Because-"

"They're wasting lives and time on a fool's errand based on unfounded charges, and as much as I hate to disagree when I don't have to, I cannot sit back and watch." A look passes between them that might be understanding – how novel that seems.

"You don't think Gojo can be found," Utahime realizes.

"No, I'm certain he can. He's probably in no state to run forever, and the people the Council is going to send know him well." Gakuganji taps his foot impatiently. "I don't think he can be brought back in, though."

"But you said he's in no shape to run," Utahime points out.

"He's not, but the fact is that those who don't know him won't find him and those who know him won't hand him over." Gakuganji's eyes were almost sad. "His students would never willingly believe that their teacher would kill one of their classmates, and his friends…well, has he even got any? Ieri, maybe, but they won't send her. You, if you'd even consider yourself to be his friend. Maybe."

"I don't know if I would."

"Perhaps not, but that might be an advantage."

"Oh?"

"You know him well and respect him very little, so you might well be the person best-suited to the task."

"I thought I was 'biased beyond credibility.'"

"You are, but not biased beyond reason. If it became evident that Gojo had killed Fushiguro, your personal fondness for him – oh, don't give me that look, I know you have some – wouldn't stop you from bringing him in. And it could help you, you know. You're not going to go in assuming that an accusation full of reasonable doubt is true."

"Are you saying that you want them to send me?"

"I'm saying that I'm not going to stop you if you want to be sent."

Six Weeks Earlier

"It's not safe for you to be here."

Itadori answers the door in Gojo's stead, and his eyes are tired; his face, body, spirit are tired and Toge doesn't know what to say except, sotto voce, "okaka."

"No, really." Itadori tries to close the door, but Toge kicks the stopper underneath before he can. "It's…it's better for everyone if you just go back."

He can't say anything of substance, so he says nothing, but he wedges his shoulder between the doorframe and the door itself so Itadori won't be able to close it and uses it to shove his way through. Toge isn't really sure what he's doing, but he knows he can't leave without answers; this seems like the only way to get them.

He pulls out the notebook he carries in his pocket for emergencies when more substantial communication is necessary and writes out a message to pass to Itadori.

The Council is saying that Gojo killed Fushiguro because he didn't come back. They're sending people to bring him in. True?

"What?" Itadori's eyes widen. "We…we haven't…Fushiguro hasn't been anywhere near here."

So Gojo didn't kill him.

"Of course he didn't!"

I thought so.

Six Weeks Earlier

Yuta is used to loneliness, but it's never felt bigger than it does now. A transcontinental train trip through thousands of miles of nothingness might have been Maki's most workable escape plan, but it's crushingly isolating.

There's nothing for miles around – for miles, and miles, and miles. Nothing but snow-covered grassland and overcast sky, fierce winds whistling past the occasional isolated hamlet, and reminder after reminder of the fear that is his only companion. If he were cornered, this slow-moving train winding its way through some of the most remote territory in the world wouldn't offer him shelter. He has little to do, either – cell signal is a distant memory, and he'd brought a couple of books but they don't do much for his nerves. Usually, he finds himself thinking – nothing more than that.

He thinks too much, about everything – about Rika, about Gojo, about Itadori, about his classmates' worried faces when he'd told them that he had to run, about his regrets, about his fear that he shouldn't have told them at all. But mostly, he thinks about Maki, and her irrepressible spirit and her steely eyes and her scar-dappled skin beneath his fingers when she'd grabbed his collar and kissed him the night that he was set to leave. I've got your back, she'd said, and she probably didn't know that she had his heart, too. Maybe she wasn't trying to.

He replays the memory of that kiss what feels like every ten seconds and it's quite a nice distraction from the fact that he's probably going to die.

But, at least, he finds Fushiguro waiting in Novgorod long after Gojo and Itadori have gone. It's something. They're not really friends, but a familiar face after the endless empty miles of steppe he'd crossed to find him is balm he's sorely needed. "They're saying that Gojo killed you," Yuta says, and Fushiguro doesn't even look surprised.

"I'm sure they are."

"They know about Itadori now."

"That's unfortunate."

"Is he safe?"

"Enough."

"And Gojo?"

A shadow passes over Fushiguro's face. "A disaster."

That same shadow passes over Yuta. "How?"

"Guilt, mostly."

"Really?" It's hard to imagine Gojo feeling guilty.

"You kind of have to see him to believe it."

"Where is he now?"

"He didn't tell me."

"Good. Now we don't have any useful information."

Fushiguro gives him a dirty look for that. "Doesn't matter. We're not going to get caught."

"Of course not." Yuta barely believes that – the Council won't do anything itself, but it'll use every resource available to do its dirty work and it won't stop until it succeeds. Still, it wouldn't do to point that out.

They're silent for a moment, gusty winter winds whistling around the walls of the train station. Then Fushiguro shifts and asks, "how's Kugisaki?"

"Stable." Yuta swallows hard. "Unresponsive."

Fushiguro's expression doesn't change. "No change, then."

"Not much." Yuta shuffles his feet. "How's Itadori?"

"Tired," Fushiguro says. "Really upset. He's basically taking care of Gojo now."

"So it's bad bad."

"He's at rock bottom, Okkotsu."

"That's how it sounds."

"So where are you headed next?"

Yuta doesn't know, so he deflects. "Where are you headed next?"

"However far south or west the money I've got left will get me."

"So you're not going back."

"Can't. I know too much."

"You know almost nothing, though."

"If I go back, they'll find some other way to use me." Against my friends, he's too proud to add. "I'm not giving them that opening."

Five Weeks Earlier

"I guess this makes us fugitives."

"Shake."

"Fun times, fun times," Panda sighs. He watches his friend's longer, more agile legs trace whirlpools in the filmy water on the surface of the pool with something like envy. "Where to next, then?"

"Konbu."

"You dunno, either, then."

"Shake."

"Sometimes I really wish I could actually talk to you.

"Shake."

"This place is a dump," Panda sighs. He's talking to the air but it doesn't really seem to matter anymore. "Think we've been declared missing persons yet?"

Inumaki says nothing this time – he responds only with a wide-eyed, wary look.

"Probably, huh. Guess this was what happened to everyone else, right?"

"Shake."

"They can't just keep sending people like this. It's never going to work. Also, we're almost out of money-"

"Konbu."

"I wasn't done yet! We're almost out of money, and we can't keep staying in hotels, so either we go back and stay with Yuji and Gojo, or we sleep in an alley."

"Okaka," Inumaki says miserably, pulling his legs out of the water to rest them on the wall and set his chin against his knee.

"I know, bud. Trust me, I know."

Inumaki pulls out his notepad again – he's been doing that more lately – and scratches out, can we do that?

"I wish we could." It's exactly the kind of nonanswer Inumaki had expected.

So we have no idea where to go?

"Nope."

Inumaki drops the notebook to the deck with a miserable sigh.

Four Weeks Earlier

"I'll be back for you." Shoko touches the mottled skin at the edge of Nobara's eyepatch, neither expecting nor receiving a reply. "All right? Just a couple of weeks."

She's sure of that.

The list of charges against Gojo Satoru has grown steadily since the first, but Ieri Shoko knows that they are as false as they are numerous. She's confident enough to leave behind a patient in desperate need – Nobara is no longer the only person who requires her assistance, and though most days she'd gladly agree never to see Gojo again for the hefty price of a single shrimp puff, she knows now that something sinister is afoot. And if Gojo stands falsely accused at its center…

Well.

She gives an unconscious Nobara one last tiny wave before she turns to go.

Present

It's nearly time now, and Utahime is going to miss her flight to Croatia (Croatia?) if she doesn't get going. But she can't resist turning back for one last look at her comfortably messy living room before she leaves. She's still looking when she opens the door, but it hits something and she's met with a yelp of surprise.

"Sorry!" she exclaims without knowing what she's hit, then freezes. "Shoko?"

It's pouring, and Shoko clutches an umbrella like a lifeline even on her covered stoop. Utahime hadn't known she was in Kyoto, and she hadn't expected her to leave Tokyo again so soon after her return from her last mission – unsuccessful, apparently. She tilts her head, silently asking for an explanation.

"Uta," Shoko says, voice ragged, "you have to help him."

Chapter 2: Resolve Summary:

Utahime finds Gojo worse for the wear and makes a plan.

Notes:

And here we have the promised Gojohime.

I'm going to try to keep this story to the scope of a manga arc, which should mean it's a little shorter than the average longfic. Makes it more manageable for me as I start university.

Chapter Text

Two Weeks Earlier

"I guess you must be here to off him, too."

It's raining when Itadori finally opens the door, and at first Shoko has been staring at its peeled white paint for so long that she's forgotten how to look at anything else. But when her eyes come back to their usual focus, they can't help but widen. Itadori has always been a little like Gojo if Gojo were good and kind and sincere in a way that Gojo would not be Gojo if he were – fun-loving, generous, outgoing. But his face, peeking around the doorway in the early light, droops with resigned sadness now.

Shoko supposes it's natural – he's on the run, far from the life he loves, friendless except for a man who's never been much of friend, and he's still not sure if one of his dearest friends is even still alive. But it's a shock, seeing him this way. She wasn't prepared for it.

"I'm not here to kill anyone, Itadori." Fat raindrops spatter at random against Shoko's grey umbrella.

"Sure you're not." Itadori disappears around the doorframe and then shuts it behind him. "Just go, Ieri-san."

"Itadori," she calls after him. "I know he didn't kill Fushiguro."

Itadori's head reappears in the doorway. "You're probably just saying that to get me to let you in so you can kill him."

Shoko closes her umbrella. "Is this what you've said to everyone they've sent your way?"

"No." Itadori has a far-off look on his face now that she's never seen. "Not the people I trust."

"Oh. So I'm untrustworthy." She shakes the excess water off of the umbrella and then leans against it like a cane. "Fair enough."

"I know my friends. They wouldn't hurt Gojo." Itadori's eyes burn now – maybe with faith, maybe with loyalty, maybe with determination or none of those or all three. "But you…"

That feels like it should knock the wind out of Shoko's lungs, but she's too stunned to think about how stunned she should be. "I'm Gojo's oldest friend," she says feebly. "I don't know why you'd think-"

"They want him dead. I can't afford to believe that that means anything."

"Itadori, please," she says, and Shoko never begs, but something in his weary resolve makes her believe beyond reasonable doubt that she needs to see Gojo and she needs to do it now. "I volunteered for this. I left No" – that would upset him more, so she catches herself – "I left a patient to be here because I don't believe the accusations. Gojo's awful, but I…I care about him. I do. And I know you do, too, and there's obviously something wrong with him that you're hiding from me. So can you please just let me see him?"

Nothing past the first clause seems to register with Itadori as he stares at her, then his eyes go hard.

"You were going to say 'Nobara,'" he accuses. "You were going to say 'Nobara,' weren't you?"

"Well-"

His hands clench into fists. "You left Kugisaki?"

"She's…she's stable, Itadori," Shoko deflects, only now remembering that she should be very afraid of offending him. "She's going to make it. I wouldn't have left if she didn't. She just…needs time. And Gojo doesn't have any. It was a calculated call."

"But she's not awake." Itadori isn't so much angry as crestfallen. "She didn't wake up?"

"I think that she will," Shoko offers weakly.

"But…she hasn't." It's too dark to tell, but it looks as if tears are pooling in Itadori's eyes. "So why did you do it? Why did you leave her?"

"Because Gojo has the entire Council of Elders and half of the Jujutsu Community out for his head!" Shoko snaps. "And I'm sorry, but your friend will be fine on her own, and I can't say the same for him!"

"She's the only damn family I have left!"

They both stop short, staring at each other, eyes wide and unblinking and sad.

"She's all I've got, Shoko," he says, shaky, after a moment. "Her and Gojo and Fushiguro, and…and Fushiguro's missing, and Gojo isn't ever gonna be the same again even if he does get better and I need her to make it and if you are the reason that she doesn't-"

"Get better?" Shoko interrupts. "Get better how?"

Itadori's eyes narrow. "They have to have told you."

"No one told me anything, Itadori." She takes the doorknob in her hand, more determined than ever, and yanks the door open to let herself through. "What does that mean, 'get better'?"

"It's the Prison Realm."

"Well, yeah, I figured as much. What about it?"

"They really didn't say anything?"

"No, nothing. So spit it out already."

"You know it's why they're trying to kill him."

"What is?"

He turns to look at her and it doesn't seem as if he knows whether he's going to speak until he does. "Getting sealed saps your cursed energy."

"You look terrible."

"I feel worse."

Shoko sinks down onto the low-slung mattress beside Gojo, trying not to wonder why he's not more bothered by her presence when he's apparently been sent half a dozen would-be assassins since he disappeared. "Itadori told me about the…side affects."

"'Course he did."

"When was the last time you slept?"

"When was the last time you slept?"

"Not important. What happened to you?"

Gojo lifts an eyebrow. "Why are you asking me that?"

"Because you look like death warmed up but you don't sound as unstable as I thought you'd be and I'm really wondering what all is going on with you."

"What exactly were you expecting?" Gojo runs a hand through his hair – he's not wearing a blindfold (why would he need one now?), so it flops into his exposed eyes – and then falls back against the pillows. "Did you think I'd be on the floor, babbling like a baby?"

"I didn't know what to expect. But Itadori looks traumatized, so I kind of figured-"

Gojo shoots Shoko a cold look. "He is traumatized."

"Well, yes, but-"

"That has nothing to do with me."

"It kind of has to, Gojo. You're his mentor." She swallows hard. "He told me you and Kugisaki and Fushiguro are the only family he has left. And you…look at you."

"I'll be fine eventually. He knows that."

"He hopes that."

"Nah, he knows." That kind of arrogance is Gojo's signature, but it's so halfhearted that it almost feels jarring now. "I mean, don't I have to? I'm nothing if not The Strongest." He flashes her a smile that doesn't even begin to look real. "Really. I'll be fine. Go home and tell the Council you didn't find me."

"You just sit here all day, don't you? Staring at the walls, pretending everything is fine when you can't even get out of bed?" Shoko crosses her arms. "How did you even get here if you can't teleport?"

"I've got a little gas left in the tank." He tries, again, to smile. "My techniques aren't actually gone. What, like I would be rendered useless so easily? Pfft. Stupid Shoko."

That's an obvious lie given his lack of a blindfold, but maybe it only affected his Six Eyes – Itadori's not the most reliable reporter right now. "So you are teleporting."

"Well, duh."

"How, though?"

He tries to grin. "Trade secret," he says unconvincingly.

"That can't be making your…condition any better."

"Nah, it's fine. Teleporting's nothing."

"Oh. So you look like a disaster just because the look is in this season?"

Something fades in Gojo's eyes, then, and he doesn't say anything at all.

"Gojo," she says, poking his shoulder. "Gojo?"

Nothing, again.

"Gojo Satoru."

"…nothing," he mutters. "It's nothing."

She doesn't even know what unasked question he thought he was answering.

Present

Croatia

Somewhere in the Dinaric Alps

It's raining again tonight.

If Gojo's goal is to hide out until this all blows over or the old guard croaks or whatever it is he thinks is going to make it safe enough for him to return, he's picked a good place to do it. This tiny mountain town in Croatia – apparently he'd come there from Russia, or something – took hours to reach by hired car from the airport in Dubrovnik. It's remote and irrelevant and far from Japan as can be. In that, it's sort of the obvious choice, but there are a million obvious choices in the world, so one's not likely to be singled out.

Without Shoko's tip, Utahime doesn't know if she ever would've found this place. Skrovište is so tiny it barely shows up on a map, and if she'd had to choose a country to place her target in, it wouldn't have been Croatia. She wonders, on the bumpy drive through the mountains, which it would have been if she'd tried to guess. Mongolia, maybe, or Uzbekistan (she doesn't even really remember how she knows what that is), somewhere vast and featureless where no one would think to look because everything would stand out in the expansive nothingness of the steppe. It'd even have made sense for him to stay closer to home: hide out in Seoul or Shanghai, make his way to Manila or Mandalay and lose himself in a city crowd.

But he'd chosen Croatia.

She supposes the choice to put distance between himself and his pursuers back in Kyoto makes sense, but not the location. It's random and inaccessible, but – if his condition is truly as bad as Shoko had made it sound – that's not a benefit. Shoko thought that he was probably using the last of his drained reserves of cursed energy to teleport progressively further from Japan, and he must be saving the bulk of his strength for those massive international jumos. He must've had to use traditional modes of transportation for at least part of the trip, and that would make Skrovište's isolation unideal. And if he ever wants to get home to Japan, he's not going to be able to do it quickly or cheaply. He's desperate, Utahime has to conclude – there is no other explanation for the illogical decision to run and run and run when he's running on empty. And that in itself is one of the most sobering thoughts imaginable.

Gojo Satoru is nothing more than a helpless shell of himself and he's running scared.

Utahime doesn't like Gojo. She doesn't enjoy his company and she doesn't want to spend any more time in it than she absolutely must. But the image she's conjured up of his exile is still the saddest she can imagine, and she hates picturing him huddled beneath the meager shelter of a lean-to on a remote Croatian mountainside, unable to smile, to crack a joke, to reassure his sad-eyed student.

She hates the Council, now. Hates what they've done to an innocent student whose only sin was that of bad fortune. Hates how many more students are scattered across the globe now, remnants of a search that they'd all either given up or failed to return from alive. Hates that she'd had to pretend she would kill Itadori – kill Okkotsu, kill Gojo – without hesitation to convince them she was fit for the mission. Hates that haunted look in her best friend's eyes. Hates what she might have to do to keep them all safe. Hates that they sent her only as a last resort. Hates seeing the man she's always wanted to knock down a peg brought so low.

Gojo has never needed help and he certainly doesn't need saving. Utahime hasn't ever wanted to offer it and she's no one's savior. But this isn't just about his pitiable condition – right now what matters is proving his innocence and finding the students scattered to the winds in pursuit of their teacher and stopping the Council before it can do more damage than it already has.

"Thank you," she tells the cab driver when he stops in front of a small, shabby white house, even though she knows he doesn't understand Japanese. (She thinks her polite bow gets the point across.) He nods and the door shuts behind her; she stands in front of a house so unassuming that she almost has to respect its choice as a hiding place. Go on, now, she tells herself, then knocks.

"Tell him it's Utahime."

"Sorry, but no." Shoko had said Itadori would be upset, but he looks downright livid now. "Please just leave."

She blinks, taken-aback, because he of all people is the last she'd ever have expected to snap at her. "Ieri sent me."

"That's probably just your cover," Itadori counters stubbornly. "Just go."

"How would I have found this place if Ieri hadn't tipped me off?" Utahime fires back. "No one but us knows where the two of you are, you know. So please just let me see-" But she doesn't get to finish that sentence.

"Oh," Gojo says drily, stopping in the door. "Oh. Man. That Council, man. 's got such a mean streak. When'd they get so mean? Yeesh. They're making Utahime try'da kill me now?"

"Um. Hi." It's all Utahime can manage, to her embarrassment, because Gojo looks…normal, but off. His eyes are bare, his frame is gaunt, his shoulders are stooped – but that easy inflection, his flippant gestures, are exactly as she remembers them. He's not the nervous wreck Shoko had warned her to expect at all. She needs to learn more; that will require a little bit of prompting, though.

"Gojo," she says cautiously – kindly, she hopes. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"Right. Definitely." He gestures to her with a pair of finger guns. "Totally! Council's just sending you along to check on me. Sweet of them, really. Where's my care package?"

She crosses her arms. "You sound drunk."

"Yeah?" Gojo grins as if this is a compliment (it is not). "That so?"

"Shoko said you were a mess," Utahime tells him. "Guess I pictured the wrong kind of mess, though."

"Oh? So you pictured me?"

She ignores him. "What did you mean earlier when you said that the council had a mean streak?"

"Oh, just that you can't handle something like this. Obviously. You don't have the stomach for killing, y'know?"

"I don't," Utahime agrees, and that gets a surprised eyebrow-raise out of him.

"And yet you agreed to come?"

"To clear your name," Utahime says, surprised by how easily she admits it.

"No other reason. I want proof that you haven't done all the things they charged you with." And I wanted to help you, but apparently you don't even need it, she doesn't add. He's a little bit off-kilter, but he's hardly the mess that she'd thought she would find.

"Right," he scoffs. "You're just trying to get me to let you in so you can stab me."

"Stab you? Really? I'd never kill you with a knife. Way too messy." Utahime scrunches up her nose at the thought. "Way too close-range, too."

"Poison me?"

"…Gojo, I'm trying to help you."

"Don't need it."

Ah, there he is.

"Then tell me why you're hiding out in Croatia."

"Skrovište is lovely this time of year," he says lightly. "Isn't it? Charming little place, no?"

"I'm going to be waiting on the porch. Come out when you're ready to give me something useful."

The Council really is cruel.

It makes sense, really. The Council wants a weakened Gojo Satoru and it follows, logically, that they'd exploit a weakness to get him into a corner. Never mind that he is already pitifully, terrifyingly weak – they apparently want his spirit broken, too.

Ha.

As if the memory of the thousands who perished at Shibuya while he'd been helpless in a box wouldn't already have done that.

As if sitting by, glassy-eyed, while a student cared for him wouldn't have.

As if it was necessary to send Utahime calling.

Because he knows they know – it's hard not to know, knowing Gojo, that there is no one alive with quite as strong a hold on him as Iori Utahime. Geto, yes, but there's little that the Council can do with that, so Utahime it was, apparently. And now it's Utahime standing on his doorstep like a miracle in too-loose jeans.

Utahime, who he'd wanted to run to so badly that it had ached when she'd appeared.

And they had known he would – they always knew. That was the one thing one could always rely on the Council for, knowing exactly what one hoped they wouldn't. Secret attachment? Hidden weakness? One could be decently certain the Council had already typed it up and filed it in a folder labelled "Exploitable Information," one of thousands in a whole wall of neat filing cabinets filled with just those sorts of things. And Gojo's file, embarrassed as he'd be to admit it (not that he would), is almost definitely full of Iori Utahime.

It's not love, really. He's not sure he knows what that is and if he does, it's not something he knows how to do or intends to learn. It's more like an ache – a longing for something that is undefined save for its relation to her. Whatever it is, it's the sort of thing that has him staring at the backside of the door after she disappears and wondering what it is she really wants.

Maybe all he wants after all this time and all these feelings he won't admit to is to bury himself in those arms and cry.

"Utahime."

She turns at Gojo's voice and nods. "Good. You're ready to talk, I take it?"

He doesn't. Instead, he takes two steps forwards and reaches out his right hand to cup her chin.

"Gojo," Utahime says, voice catching.

With the fingers of his left hand, he brushes the smooth, waxy skin of her scar.

"Gojo."

"Yes," he murmurs, tracing its outline.

"Yes…what?"

"It's you." Something lights up his face – childlike wonderment, maybe. "It's you."

"…had we not already established that?"

"You're not gonna kill me."

"I'm…not going to kill you, no."

And she gets it, now – how he is when he loses control and he cannot pretend to be the Gojo Satoru she knows anymore. He is like a child, now, amazed at a favorite plaything, and he gathers her into his arms. Utahime stiffens, but she knows better than to pull away, somehow; instead she focuses on the way his embrace swallows her whole, how oddly gentle his hands are as they rub against her back. He drops his head to rest heavily on her right shoulder and a tiny murmur of contentment escapes his lips at the sensation of a soft place to land.

"Utahime," he murmurs, once more, sweet as he's ever known how to be. "You found me."

She averts her eyes. "I shouldn't have been able to."

"But you did." He pulls back and looks her dead in the eye, head tilted. "Are you gonna stay?"

Chapter 3: Tenuous Summary:

Yuji is down in the dumps, Yuta is down bad, and Gojo is down for some quality Utahime time.

Notes:

Writing Yuta's email-letter-thing here (purposely ineloquent because I wanted those teenage boy vibes) was...wow. It was so much fun. An experience. 10/10. Tonal whiplash, but I love it way too much to edit it, whoops.

Anyway.

I kept promising Ola cuddly!needy!Gojo so here ya go.

Chapter Text

Croatia

"I'm going to need you to tell me what happened to him."

Utahime's voice is gentle – she's always had the softest of spots for students in need and she's never seen one in greater need than Itadori is right now – but firm. She can't let Itadori think he's going to get rid of her without giving her the answer she needs.

"How do I know the Council didn't wire-tap you?"

Utahime allows herself a sigh. "Itadori. Come on."

"What? They've done worse." Itadori looks like he's trying not to fall apart. "They gave Fushiguro cyanide." With a huff, he adds, "like, 'yeah, just go bring your best friend and your mentor home, y'know? It's just an extraction! Oh, and here's some poison just in case.'"

"They gave Fushiguro what?"

"For me, supposedly." He shrugs. "But probably really for Gojo. I dunno. I guess they figured plain old poison was a better bet than jujutsu."

"He's sixteen," Utahime says under her breath, trying not to think too hard lest she storm out, head for the airport, and burn the Council building to the ground before she gets her answers.

"So am I," Itadori points out uselessly.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Itadori." Perhaps it's time for a change of plans. "Or Gojo. I know that probably doesn't mean very much coming from me, but I promise it's true."

"Don't you hate him or something?" Itadori isn't ready to let go of his suspicion, still.

"My personal feelings aren't grounds for murder, Itadori. And hurting a student is the last thing I'd ever want to do."

Itadori considers the idea for a moment before he says, "he talks about you a lot."

"I don't see how that's relevant," Utahime says before she can think too much about that.

"'Cause he trusts you. I mean…he's kinda got three moods now. The first one's, like, drunk but semi-normal. Like when you showed up. One's depressed, which I don't think you've seen yet. And the third one…I dunno. It's like he turns into a clingy little kid." Itadori looks down at the floor. "He only does that when he's really freaked out or really happy."

"That's…how he was last night."

"Yeah. I know." Itadori sighs. "I was kinda mad you came here, 'cause of that. He never shuts up about you, y'know? He was probably so happy once he stopped thinking you were gonna kill him. And if you do anything-"

"I won't."

"Right."

"You don't sound like you believe me."

"I don't."

"Why not?"

"Because the Council tries to turn another one of our friends on us, like, every week now." Itadori leans against the low kitchen counter for support. "At least when it's my classmate, I'm pretty sure they're not gonna turn on us. But I don't know you."

It's a fair point, but it's still sobering to see Itadori so mistrustful. "Gojo trusts me."

Itadori narrows his eyes. "Gojo isn't really in a position to tell me who I can trust right now."

"Itadori, please. I need to know what happened if I'm going to clear his name-"

"That'll never work." Now, Itadori stubs his toe against the peeling tile. "The Council knows he didn't kill anyone, but you think they care? Knowing for sure that he didn't isn't gonna do anything."

"So do you intend to keep hiding out in Croatia forever?"

Itadori's eyes look so hollow that she can't help but wonder what they've seen to prompt this ages-old sadness. "There's no place for us back there, Iori-sensei," he says, resigned.

"But don't you want to see your friends again?"

"Of course I do! But what do we do when there's no place back there for them, either?" Itadori raises his hands helplessly. "I'm supposed to be dead, all of my friends got themselves blacklisted by helping me, Gojo can't be Gojo-"

"What do you mean, 'Gojo can't be Gojo'?" Utahime asks, crossing her arms. That, even after this dire turn of events, seems a ridiculous prospect. "He seemed pretty Gojo to me just now."

"We don't know if his technique is ever going to recover." Itadori hops up to sit on the counter, which looks too flimsy to hold his weight – that obviously doesn't bother him. "And you saw him. If it doesn't, I don't think he's ever gonna be, uh…all the way normal again."

"But isn't this temporary?" This is getting closer to what Utahime needs to know now. "Shoko made it sound like his cursed energy would eventually get replenished."

"No one really knows how this works." Yuji doesn't seem to realize that Utahime has managed to talk him into divulging what he knows. "But he keeps using up whatever he has left to teleport us."

"So if he stopped moving, he probably would recover-"

"But if he stopped moving, the Council would eventually find us and it wouldn't even matter because it'd take years for him to be at full strength again and we'd just get killed." Yuji doesn't even sound all that bothered by this anymore, only tired. It's disturbing, this resignation of his. "So we lose either way."

"And what about all the people they sent here before me?" Utahime asks.

"Fushiguro found us, then left so he could meet up with the next person they sent and tell them what was going on. Dunno who it is, but I'd guess they're hiding together now. Then Panda showed up, but he had to go into hiding after that. And then Ieri came a few weeks ago, but she went back so they wouldn't catch on. She said there were more people out there who got sent to find us, but we never saw any of the others."

"Really?" Utahime hadn't been expecting that – of eight sent, only three found their targets before she did. "I guess Fushiguro has been running them off, then."

"Probably."

"There were eight."

" Eight?"

"Fushiguro, Panda, Inumaki," she lists. "Nitta, Kusakabe, Todo, then Shoko, and now me. Nine, if you count Okkotsu, but last I heard he was running for his life, so I don't think he counts."

"Not Maki?"

"She refused to go, apparently."

"Oh."

"So…you guys are just hiding now," Utahime continues after an awkward pause, "but…what are you going to do when you can't anymore?"

Itadori shrugs. "Keep moving, I guess."

"You're not going to go back?"

"I kinda like being alive." One wouldn't know it from the pallor in his complexion and the defeat in his eyes, but Utahime knows he's telling the truth. "So nah. No point."

"And what do you want me to do?"

"Go away before you make things worse." Itadori crosses his arms. "They just sent you 'cause Gojo cares about you and they want to break him. So don't."

"I couldn't if I tried."

Itadori looks almost disgusted. "You could without even trying."

Almaty, Kazakhstan

Maki-chan (do I get to call you that if you're never going to read this?),

A body in motion stays in motion.

I don't remember much from physics class what with all the curse stuff we were dealing with when we took it (that was a lot more pressing at the time, I would say) but I do remember that. Probably because it reminded me of you. Probably because we sparred the morning we learned about Newton's First Law and it made me think about you beating me to a pulp. I know that the law isn't talking about actual human bodies but that was what I always thought of after that when I heard 'a body in motion.'

I thought you were beautiful then. I don't think I ever thought that about you before, even though you were obviously pretty. But you, standing over me with one of your boots on my chest? That did stuff to me, Maki-chan. And you're never gonna read this, since you don't check your school email, but I still want to say it. I wish I didn't have to leave again. I missed you before and I miss you now and I think you're so beautiful that I have a picture of our class as my lock screen and sometimes I stare at my phone just because I love looking at you.

But it's not just that you're pretty. That would be dumb. I'm very stupid but not like that.

You're the kind of girl a person only meets once in a whole lifetime, Maki-chan. That's the kind of thing I think I'm smart about – I know when people are really amazing. And you're amazing, Maki-chan. You're so much stronger than I'm ever going to be in so many ways, and you don't like to show it, but you're so loyal and honest and good. You're not really nice, but you're kind. You're amazing at what you (we) do. You can give one hell of a goodbye kiss. This is so embarrassing to say that I would probably die if you checked your school email for once (DON'T) but man, did that do a number on me. I have dreams about it. It's very bad, Maki. Very very very bad. I'm with [redacted] and he's going to punch me into the sun if he knows that I'm using a burner email to send you ridiculous letters in hiding (although I think he'd punch anyone who wrote the kind of stuff I'm saying here into the sun, regardless of circumstances), but I'm bored and I miss you and I really do like you so much, Maki, I do. You're so special to me. Keep staying alive out there, okay? I wanna come back to you.

I know that giving someone a kiss doesn't mean you want flowery emails from them, and you'd probably never talk to me again if you actually read this, but why not, right? You only live once. Maybe half of once, if you're a sorcerer – a third of once? Haha. Trauma really does make you funnier.

Love doesn't make you funnier. Love just makes you unfocused and stupid but hey, it sure is nice.

Am I in love with you? Who knows, man. I've always been bad at not jumping the gun on things. And also at being in love. I mean, the last girl I loved…we don't talk about it. Oof. Yeah, maybe it's better for both of us if you see this and never talk to me again. But also please don't because then I'd die of shame and I don't wanna die, Maki. Not before I get to kiss you again.

[Redacted] is behind me. I'm gonna sign off before he

[Sent 15:29 PM]

"Stop sending Maki identifying information," Fushiguro says flatly.

The screen of this ancient desktop should be too dim to let Fushiguro read over Yuta's shoulder, but apparently it isn't. "I'm not. I called you 'redacted' whenever I mentioned you."

"But you mentioned that you were with someone." Fushiguro is exhausted after weeks of hiding out in an unfamiliar city with a lovesick companion who only seems interested in haunting the nearest internet café (who even uses those anymore?) to log onto untraceable burner accounts and deliver flowery declarations of love to the perpetually-unchecked inbox of his sweetheart at home. "You're not supposed to do that."

Exile is boring as is; it's downright unbearable with Okkotsu mooning over his cousin and threatening to reveal information that could lead the higher-ups back to them should they ever get into Maki's email. (They have better access to it than Maki, who hasn't tried to log into it in so long that she probably forgot the password.) Really, he wonders why he couldn't have gotten stuck with Inumaki (who doesn't talk) or Nitta (who has more than four working braincells) instead.

"I was careful," Yuta defends himself weakly.

"No, you weren't. This network isn't secure."

"But who's looking?"

"You have to be more careful." Fushiguro squints at the screen. "' A body in motion'? Seriously?"

Yuta turns in his swivel chair, which creaks with the effort, and glares. "It's romantic."

"It's gross. That's my cousin."

"I was talking about physics, you pervert."

Fushiguro pinches the bridge of his nose. Yuta might've been the only one of his classmates not sent on a murder mission, but that doesn't excuse this carelessness or foolhardy distraction. "Why is this what we're discussing when we could both get caught and killed at any time?"

"Because you tried to read over my shoulder."

He's not going to stop him, though. Not really. Okkotsu has yet to reveal any incriminating or identifying information, and if it keeps him from pacing a hole in the floor with anxiety, Fushiguro is too tired to try to cure him of his sappy streak.

They all have to get their hope somewhere these days.

Croatia

8:32 P.M.

"You're still here?"

Utahime startles, partly because she hadn't known that Gojo had come in and partly because he sounds so much like his old self that she barely registers the fact that it's him. "I'm still here, yes."

"Why?"

"What do you mean, why?" Utahime gives him a wary look. "I don't have the information I need yet."

"Oh, okay." He sits down beside her on the low musty couch, knees coming up almost all the way to his chest. Gojo's always been absurdly tall, but she'd forgotten how much bigger he's always seemed next to her. "What information?"

She stiffens. "No comment."

"But I could help-"

"I don't think that's a very good idea."

"But why?" he pouts his lower lip. "I know things, too!"

"I don't want to tax you any more than is absolutely necessary," she says drily.

"So you don't wanna talk?"

"Not particularly." She thinks she might be lying. "And I'm going to guess that this is your happy-drunk mood."

"My what?"

"Itadori said you had three moods. That was one."

"Oh?" he tilts his head. "What were the other two?"

"Depressed and clingy, I'm pretty sure."

"Oh." He slumps. "Yeah, ya know, he's…not really wrong."

Utahime's eyebrows lift. "And you're admitting that?"

"Playing the victim usually works."

Utahime doesn't know whether to be disgusted or relieved.

10:49 P.M.

"Hime."

Gojo hasn't spoken to Utahime in hours when he wanders into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, and tugs on her sleeve like a child wanting its mother's attention. She turns, hands wrapped around a mug of tea – not her usual style, but comforting somehow on a night like this. "Gojo," she says evenly.

(It feels good, saying his name after so many months of wondering if she'd ever get to use it to his face again. She'd never say as much, but it does.)

"Stay," he asks, again, and he means it no less than he did the last time he asks but this time she's not quite sure what he's referring to.

"Well, it's the middle of the night, so I don't know why you think I'd be leaving, but-"

" Stay."

"Gojo," she tries again. "I don't know what you're talking about."

He doesn't say anything, but she's forced to abandon her tea to trail after him when he begins walking and won't let go of her sleeve. The oversized shirt she'd brought for sleep, not expecting that anyone would see it when the Council had booked her a hotel room in the nearest town big enough to have one, begins to slip off her shoulder, so she speeds up. "Gojo, wait," she protests – nothing.

This must be that childlike dependency she'd seen earlier, back now that he's vulnerable in the later hours of the night.

"Stay with me," he says, once they've reached the door of what she assumes serves as Gojo's bedroom. He turns back to her; Utahime has never seen his eyes in the darkness, but now that they're uncovered, they're piercingly bright. "Tonight. Please."

"Um, Gojo…"

"Stay with me tonight," he finally manages to rasp.

Blood rushes to Utahime's cheeks and she doesn't know what to say. "I don't think-"

"I don't want anything, Hime."

That was a surprisingly lucid deduction, so Utahime pauses long enough to hear him out. "Then why?"

He says nothing, wide sapphire eyes blinking innocently as he peers down at her. "Can you?"

She tugs the shoulder of her shirt back up. "Why do you want to sleep with me, Gojo?"

He means nothing by that – for once – but still, she shudders. It's such a strange sentence and she hates its barbed implications almost as much as she hates how exposed it makes her feel. Gojo cups her chin, like he had earlier (maybe he likes to touch her face – she can't imagine why else he would), and his face softens at the sight of hers.

"I missed you, Hime," he says, barely more than babbling. "I thought about you all the time. Did you know that? I hoped you were okay. I missed you."

"…why?"

"'Cause you're Utahime," he says, and he sounds just like a child again.

"Um…thanks." Utahime's face feels so warm that she wishes he'd let go of her chin just to let her get some air. "I think I'm going to-"

" Stay."

11:23 P.M.

This feels so wrong.

Gojo nestles his face against her collarbone, even though he's so tall that his feet trail off the end of the bed when he does, and murmurs happily every couple of minutes as Utahime lies stiffly against the pillows and tries not to panic. It isn't that she doesn't find the warmth of a body in her arms comforting against the cold – she does, much as she'd like it if she didn't – but that Gojo, as she knows him, would never ask for such a thing. He'd flirt but never would he be so brazen or so vulnerable as to ask her to hold him until he fell asleep. He'd ask her into his bed a million times but never in any one of those would he mean this.

But he is so happy, lying here in her arms, all wrapped up in his would-be assassin. And that is what makes Utahime most uncomfortable of all.

He's probably not been happy in months, maybe more, and it's touching to think that her arrival might have been his first cause for joy in all of that time. But she has to wonder why she was his tipping point, the one he missed and waited for, the one in whose arms he wanted to fall asleep on a lonely, foreboding night. She can't say she knows.

But she cares less and less with each minute and by the time he's softly snoring against her skin, her hand combs through his unkempt hair and its partner lays flat against the back of his shirt and she hates the Council more than she ever has before.

Utahime shouldn't be here, with him, doing this, but only because he should not be here. He should not have been reduced to this state in which he asks for the things he wants because he's too broken to remember that he's too proud to admit that even the Strongest (and is he, anymore?) wants for comfort and affection and care.

"Satoru," Utahime murmurs, unsure if she's ever felt such a heady rush of fondness and pity at once in her life. "What did they do to you?"

Chapter 4: Tender Summary:

Maki double-agents, Yuta simps, Utahime is conflicted, and Gojo improves.

Notes:

I wore a hot guy's sweatshirt tonight. That may well be why there is so much unnecessary Love in this chapter.

Also, almost every comment on ch. 3 requested that Maki read Yuta's ridiculous "a body in motion" email. So. Who am I to disappoint my four readers?

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Kyoto

"And what exactly is Okkotsu doing in Istanbul?"

Nothing, actually. Maki would smirk if it weren't so critical that her poker face be flawless right now. "Regrouping," she tells them. "He mentioned that he's with Nitta." He's actually with Fushiguro, she's pretty sure, if he's been telling the truth in the brief calls on burner phones that they've been able to sneak past the relevant authorities. Still, the best lies have a hint of truth in them – best if they know he's not alone.

One of the elders frowns. "So Nitta managed to escape."

"Nitta never found Gojo." That, too, is true. She has to hide her colleagues' true motivations for disappearing from the Council, and she can't reveal that she knows where they are, but she's not willing to back up the Council's murder theory. "Okkotsu reached out to a few of the people who were supposed to be looking for Gojo for help, and she was the only one who responded. He couldn't find any of the others."

"So they're working together?"

Maki straightens her shoulders and nods curtly – once, twice, thrice for effect. "Seems like it."

"In Istanbul," the elder repeats. "How did he get there?"

"To Russia by boat, then overland by train." His journey to Kazakhstan is long over, so she's free to give the right explanation now. It's risky, since it's possible that even with the false route she's giving them as a decoy they might be able to trace him to Almaty going solely by train stops, but she'll hedge her bets in the interest of realism. "I don't know the specifics."

Of course she does – she'd planned his escape, just as she'd planned the careful cover-up that'll let him keep running for as long as he needs to. It's worked like a charm – she has all the relevant details planned out so that nothing contradicts, and the council isn't questioning her motives. For all they know, she's a weapon in their arsenal whose bonds with her classmates and ever-shifting loyalties make her useful.

It's comically easy to misdirect them and to wring useful, off-limits information out of their meetings.

"We really do think that it would be more efficient to send you to intercept Okkotsu," another elder cuts in, trying to sound gentle. Funny, that one's insistence on behaving as if Maki needs careful treatment or it'd ever convince her of anything. "He trusts you, and it's getting expensive-"

"You need me here." Maki sort of enjoys the unquestioned authority that being the Council's sole source of vital information gives her. "If anything changes, Okkotsu is going to suspect that I've turned on him and he'll probably cut off contact." She gives them a look honed by years of demanding respect that no one would give her. "And need I remind you that Okkotsu is the only one of your targets that you have a reliable source of intel on?"

The Council never likes those declarations of hers, but they don't make a fuss, either. If nothing else, they know when not to throw away an asset.

Kazakhstan

"You're in Istanbul right now."

Fushiguro is supposed to give Yuta space when he talks to Maki since it happens so infrequently, but he pokes his head through the door anyways when he hears Maki's voice on the speaker. "We are?"

"I'll email you the fake train route I mapped out for you if you want," Maki says.

"No, no, that's okay. I don't need it. I…I really appreciate all of your hard work and I can't thank you enough and you're amazing but you really don't need to, um. Do that. No emails." He clears his throat. "Might be. Um. Trackable."

"Oh…kay," Maki replies, probably more than a little bit confused. "So anyways. You and Nitta are supposed to be in Istanbul and I supposedly don't know where you're going next."

Yuta leans back in his chair, whose back dips backwards when he pushes on it, and breathes a little deeper than he needs to, as if he means to take in the sound of her voice by osmosis. "You're amazing," he says once more. "You know that?"

"And you're in Kazakhstan, right?"

Well, then.

"Yeah. Can't say where" – they'd agreed to keep identifying information to a minimum, so he won't give her locations more specific than the country he's in – "but we are."

"Right. Just don't go west."

"Because they'd be expecting me to be there, right." Yuta sits back up, the seatback righting itself. "South, maybe? To India?"

"That's far," Maki observes unhelpfully.

"We're on the border with Kyrgyzstan right now," Yuta tells her. "So-"

" Yuta."

"What?"

"What happened to not telling me specific locations?"

"…oh. Right." It's sometimes easy to forget himself with Maki. "Sorry. Pretend I didn't say that."

"Well, I know now, so you might as well go on."

"The most direct route would go through Tajikistan and a tiny bit of Afghanistan, then Pakistan, and into India from there. But crossing that many borders with a fake passport is kinda risky, y'know? I could get into China, maybe, but…I dunno, that'd take me back towards home, and I don't really like those odds."

"Well, call me again when you decide what you're going to do."

As if he'd ever, ever miss the chance to call her. "I will."

"And stay safe, okay?"

He could melt and those words weren't even romantic. "That's the goal." He feels like he should add something, so he does. "And you. Don't get caught before I get to see you again."

"Oh, shut up," she mutters. "Like that would happen."

"Which?"

"Me getting caught." She scoffs. "Don't read too far into it."

Too late for that.

"Oh, also." She clears her throat, a telltale sign of nervousness. "They're still trying to get me to go after you myself."

"Can you?"

"Have you forgotten that I'm the only reason you haven't gotten caught yet?"

"No, and I love you for it-"

"Uh. Little soon for that, but okay."

"Hm?"

Then he realizes what he's said.

It does, on second thought, sound extremely premature.

"Um, I meant that platonically," he tries to deflect. "Like. I like you. Obviously. But that particular thing, I meant in a general, like, 'you're a lifesaver' sense. 'Cause I do love you in, uh. That way. But also as a friend? And I also definitely might love you in the other sense someday. If I don't die. And…I'm gonna shut up now."

"You're an idiot, Okkotsu." She huffs out a laugh. "So. I'm going to keep trying not to let them send me out, but they might send someone else if they find anyone that they can. So…don't die out there, okay?"

"Yeah. You too."

Croatia

Utahime can't remember the last time she woke up feeling so warm. It's as if she's slept next to a space heater for all the warmth trapped between the sheets and the quilt, and Utahime stretches contentedly, letting the heat calm the residual soreness in her shoulders and back. The mattress is so saggy that she feels like she's drowning in it, which she'd usually hate, but she doesn't want to get up.

It's so comforting, this feeling of warmth and weight in her arms, that she forgets that there's something in her arms to begin with and why that should distress her.

Utahime shouldn't know that Gojo is like a human space heater at night, or that he sleeps in soft, worn t-shirts that feel nice against her arms. And she'd rather bolt than think too hard about the fact that she does now – that she let him sleep in her arms and that, when he'd been passed out on her chest, she'd stroked his hair and silently promised to make things right for him. Because she shouldn't know those things, and she shouldn't feel so angry on behalf of someone she doesn't even like. But she does and she is and when he blinks up at her, sleepily satisfied, her heart just about melts.

Great.

"Oh," he says, flushed – maybe because it's warm, maybe because this is embarrassing. She can't imagine how it would be. "Did I ask you to stay the night?"

"Yeah." She lets her hands fall to her sides so she won't keep touching him more than she has to. "You were really out of it."

"Must've been. You'd never have let me do this otherwise." He smiles, a little more subdued than she'd have expected. "What'd I even say?"

"You begged," she says flatly.

"Oh? So you like it when I do that?"

Utahime scoffs. "Hardly."

"Aww, don't lie-"

"I feel bad for you," she deflects. "I wasn't going to say no. You were a mess."

"You know, I can admit in this reduced state that I'll take pity cuddles over nothing."

"We're not cuddling."

(They are and she knows it.)

"Oh?" Gojo nestles his head in the crook of her shoulder to make the point, and Utahime would like to smash the thought of how comforting its weight is (it is not she who even needs comfort now) and scatter its fragments to the breeze. "Then what is this?"

"Co-sleeping." That's what her parents had called it when she'd been young and they'd let her little siblings – twins, and seven years younger – sleep in their bed. It seems like an appropriately nonromantic description of their proximity and the way Gojo is clinging to her waist.

Maybe not, she thinks when she can't resist the urge to wrap her arms around his in kind.

"Sounds like cuddling to me," he fires back. "What'd I say last night?"

"It was all very incoherent. A lot of 'stay' and 'please' and 'don't leave me.'"

"Mm. Maybe I shoulda tried that earlier-"

"Don't push your luck, Gojo."

"But you're so soft," he mumbles. "So nice and warm-"

"Tch. I only did it because I didn't want to leave you alone."

"Then why are you hugging me?"

"Pity."

"Wow. I should be pathetic more often."

"I'm only here to figure out how to make sure that you aren't, so please don't go getting any ideas." Utahime tries to push herself up against the pillows on her elbows, but any hope of that is swiftly dashed when Gojo flops down against her and won't let off. " Gojo-"

"I'm very sad, Hime," he tells her.

"I imagine so."

"And very lonely."

"You have Itadori." She's being harsh, but the last thing she wants is for him to get the idea that her momentary compassion is exploitable.

"But you came and found me," he counters.

"Because I didn't want you to die."

"I wasn't gonna."

"The council framed you for murder. It wasn't out of the question." She coughs to buy herself a second to come up with a proper continuation. "I came here under the guise of trying to bring you in so that I could get enough evidence that you didn't kill Fushiguro to clear your name. That's it."

"Wait, they think-"

"I know you wouldn't do that."

"I…" Gojo looks up at her with stunned, naked eyes (it's still odd seeing him without his blindfold) and stares. "…Fushi…guro…?"

"He's okay." She knows him well enough to know that he's probably stunned because he thinks this means Fushiguro has died. "He just never came back when they sent him to find you. But he didn't die, he defected."

" Oh."

"Did Itadori not tell you that?"

"Itadori doesn't tell me anything."

"Probably because you're clearly in no state to handle it."

" I say what I can handle," he protests, and he looks like he's about to say something else when the door unlatches and Yuji stands shellshocked in the entryway.

"I see how it is."

Reflexively, Utahime pushes Gojo off of her and ignores his yelp of protest. "He asked me to," she says, somewhat embarrassingly frantic to explain herself. "I promise we…he didn't-"

Yuji's eyes narrow. "Wow. I really thought you were better than that, Iori-san."

"Better than what?" Utahime rubs at a nonexistent lump on her forehead.

"Than taking advantage of Gojo-sensei when he's vulnerable!"

All three of them freeze, and Utahime turns redder than she'd ever want to admit.

"I did not-"

"Then what couldn't Gojo handle?"

"Information, Yuji." Now Gojo sits up, giving Utahime a sore look for her desertion. "And don't be like that. I asked her to stay with me last night. Apparently. I don't remember, but it definitely sounds like something I'd do, so I'm gonna assume I did. So. Nothing untoward. Not her fault. We're all good here-"

"He doesn't like being alone," Utahime cuts in, though she's really not sure why she does.

"Oh." Yuji blinks rapidly as if his eyelashes have to move so he can process what he's hearing. "So you slept here?"

"That's what I said, yes." Utahime wants this conversation to be over. "Gojo asked me to sleep with him" – she catches herself and almost claps a hand over her mouth in mortification – "sleep next to him. That's it. I didn't and wouldn't do anything unsavory. I don't even like him. This was solely a pity-based decision, 'kay? Got that? Nothing unsavory. Nothing."

"She hates me," Gojo adds. "Well. Kinda. But she also loves me. Anyway. So. That's all. What'd you want?"

"Oh, I was just doing my proof-of-life check," Yuji says. He still sounds a little bit mortified. "Sorry, Iori-san. I, uh…I guess I was wrong."

"Eh, it's fine." She's not in the mood to hold anything against him right now – he's too worn-out for that. Besides, he's so protective of Gojo that it's almost adorable. "Just, uh…give us a minute."

"Right." He points to the door. "I'm gonna…uhm. I'm going to make my way back into, uh, the kitchen. Area. Thing. That sound okay?"

"Sounds good." Go, Utahime wants to tell him. "It'll only be a few minutes."

Tokyo

Yuta really should have his fake train schedule.

The thought occurs to Maki during her now-daily Kugisaki Watch, which is precisely what it sounds like. She'll take her laptop to Kugisaki's bedside and map out whatever bit of Yuta's ever-expanding cover story she's researching (there's really little else to do with classes cancelled and her presence here all but mandated), watching for signs of wakefulness that never come. It's almost comforting to be able to worry about her two favorite people (maybe) in the same place.

As she sifts through a list of westward flights cheap enough for two broke sorcerers on the run to book, she recalls his odd behavior when she'd brought up the topic of his fake itinerary and decides it clearly means he should have it anyways. The best defense is a solid offense, and he needs to know his cover story top to bottom if he wants to be able to keep evading the council. Maybe he'd wanted to avoid thinking about the danger – that would be like him. Or maybe he'd just thought it unnecessary. Either way, it's a useful resource, and he should have it.

She should make a new email account just for this one, but she's too frazzled by the million details she has to keep straight to worry about it. So she pulls up her old school email – she hasn't touched it in years – and copies the dead-end address Yuta had given her into the address bar. She should be more careful and she shouldn't be sending this information through such an easily-accessible channel, but they don't have access to properly secure channels as students and there's no other way to be as thorough as she wants to be.

The last thing the Council of Elders is going to do is dig through her email, and even if they do, they won't know the information is fake. If anything, they'll figure out she's working with him and she'll have to run, too. She thinks she might like that better than this nerve-wracking double life she leads.

So she presses send.

There's an email dated three days earlier with the subject line Don't Mind Me at the top of her inbox when she closes out of the draft box, and the address is a vaguely familiar string of letters and numbers – one of Yuta's burners, maybe. She doesn't know what he'd be sending her, and it can't be important with a subject like that (he knows she doesn't check this email).

Kugisaki's heart monitor beeps out a now-familiar rhythm.

She clicks.

Croatia

"You're leaving already?" Itadori's face falls when he sees Utahime setting her bags by the door.

"I need to go back to Tokyo." Even after only a few days of this, Utahime is exhausted. "I need to figure out what to do next, and I can't really do that here."

"But Gojo's doing so much better," Itadori pleads. "This is the first time since this started that he's actually seemed to know what's going on." His eyes are wide – he really is like a puppy this way, sad-eyed and earnest. "And he's happy. I didn't think Gojo was ever gonna be happy again. And then you showed up and let him hug you a few times and…and…"

Itadori's eyes swim with tears, and perhaps it is the teaching experience or the maternal instinct in Utahime that makes her open her arms to him. He buries himself in her embrace even though he's too tall to hide in it, and it only takes a moment before he's sniffling and the front of her shirt is damp.

"Iori-san," he sniffles, "you gotta help us."

"This is getting to be too much for you," she murmurs. "Isn't it?"

She doesn't know what instinct tells her to rub circles against his shoulders, but something does.

"I can't." His hands fist in the fabric of her shirt. "I…I need help and no one stays and no one can do anything except for you and…and Sensei is so sad all the time and he barely gets out of bed and I try and try but it doesn't work and…and it's bad some days and no one ever helps him so please, please don't leave."

He's sobbing now, fully and wrenchingly, and Utahime thinks her heart might crack in two.

"Yuji," she says gently. It feels right to use his given name here, as if she is a mother comforting her child. "We need to come up with a way to get you guys home safely. That takes backup, and I can't get that here."

"Don't leave me alone with him!"

Utahime's eyes widen. "Yuji…?"

"He…he's not Gojo and it scares me-"

"I know it's scary." She does – she's terrified too. "But he's still Gojo, I promise."

"But-"

"He's a wreck, yes. But he's still your Sensei, who loves you." As much as he even knows how. "And it's not your job to make him better, okay?"

"But I have to."

"Yuji," she says. "No."

It hurts him, this weight he has to carry, and it's so unfair that Utahime could scream.

"I'm going to come back really soon," she decides to say next. It's probably true. "So you two just sit tight up here and I'll come back with a plan to get you home."

She hates speaking to him like a child – her students hate that and he must too – but he rests his chin on her shoulder as he cries and doesn't seem to mind at all.

And that hurts, too.

Tokyo

Everything feels fuzzy.

"How…long?"

"Couple of months. A lot's happened."

Shoko's voice seems far-off, even though she's inches away. "Wh…what?"

"I'll get you briefed once you're all the way awake again." Shoko pats Nobara's shoulder. "Welcome back to the land of the living, kid."

Notes:

Gojo really was doing better I-

Also.

"My idiot boyfriend has no survival instincts. That's why he has me." - Maki Zenin

Chapter 5: Fractures Summary:

Nobara gets reacquainted with the state of the world she's woken up to and Utahime makes a plan.

Notes:

We've got our main, tagged, endgame ships in this, and as for everything else...well, I just throw out ship crumbs like I'm feeding pigeons. Sometimes multiple for the same characters. Whoops.

Chapter Text

Tokyo

"Kugi…saki?"

Maki's face is flushed, and she's more winded than Nobara has ever seen her. It's obvious from the way she has to catch herself in the doorway to stop that she'd been running.

Oh.

Nobara might blush if she were a little more aware of her surroundings. Maki ran here. Fast enough to be winded when Maki is never winded.

So she just smiles.

"Hi," she says, her face a little fuzzy-feeling and her throat tight. "Maki-senpai."

Relief floods Maki's face and she probably thinks Nobara doesn't hear her sotto voce " thank God" or the tiny catch in her voice, but she does. Maki clears her throat. "Um. You woke up," she observes, probably trying to feign composure. "That's good."

"Mm, yup." Nobara rubs at an invisible lump on her forehead. "Where's everyone?"

"Out." There's definitely more to that than Maki wants to admit – Nobara can see that even through the haze of residual pain and the pull of drowsiness. "How do you feel?"

"Fuzzy."

"You're probably just still waking up." Maki actually knows no such thing, but it seems like the right thing to say. "Glad you're all right. You scared us."

"You were scared for me? Tch." Nobara feels floaty now as well as fuzzy and it's not really a great feeling but she'll go with it. "Thought I told you not to underestimate me."

"You got half of your face blown up, Kugisaki." It might never be said that bedside manner is Zenin Maki's strength. "We weren't sure for a while back there."

Nobara smiles again, a little dopey, a little out-of-it. "You ran here."

Maki straightens her shirt. "No I didn't."

"Liar," Nobara scoffs. "You're breathing hard."

Maki scowls. "Don't read too far into it."

(In her defense, she'd been in a meeting with the Council about Yuta and Fushiguro's made-up detour to Romania when she'd gotten the message. She'd already been late enough – she wasn't about to waste more time by walking.

Obviously.)

"'kay." Now Nobara rubs at her eyes, a little more conscious than she was before of the fact that no one is here. "Um, so…where's everyone else?"

"Ieri is talking to Iori and Ijichi upstairs," Maki starts, figuring she should offer the name of someone who is here first.

"Utahime?" Nobara squints like she's trying to see something better. "What's she doing here?"

"Um…"

"I missed a lot, didn't I."

"…yeah."

"Just hit me, then." Nobara looks tired again. "Rip off the Band-Aid all at once."

"Uh…Gojo got out, Itadori was supposed to get executed-"

"He what?"

"Long story. Anyway. Okkotsu came back and was supposed to kill him but he didn't, and the Council found out that Itadori wasn't dead so now they're both running. Gojo disappeared and a bunch of people got sent to find him and never came back, so the Council decided that he killed them all. He didn't. I'm still here because I have to feed them false information about Okkotsu's whereabouts so they don't catch him." At the mention of his name, she thinks of bodies in motion and she has to fight not to let her mortification show on her face. "Shoko and Utahime both went to find Gojo and came back. They're regrouping."

Maki pauses to catch her breath. Nobara pauses because her brain hasn't quite caught up to her ears yet.

"Where's Fushiguro?" she says, when she finally responds.

She sounds so hopeful and it's hard not to know why. Maki hadn't mentioned him; he's the only one of her inner circle who might still be here.

"I can't tell you that here," she replies, softer and more apologetic now. "I'm sorry."

"So he's gone, too." Nobara sags like the wind's left her sails. "I see."

"He's with Okkotsu." Maki shouldn't say that, but she isn't going to leave Nobara hanging when she's like this. "They're all right."

Nobara doesn't look reassured. "How's Yuji?"

Maki raises her eyebrows at that – she's never heard Nobara use her friend's given name before. "He's with Gojo."

"Where?"

"Kugisaki-"

"Maki…"

"Later," she promises. "I'll tell you everything."

"Are they going to be okay?"

Nobara reaches for Maki's hand and she doesn't have the heart to withdraw it. She'd left for a while to regroup and Nobara hadn't been any less deflated when she returned; the sudden physical contact is a little bit odd, but she isn't going to deny her.

"I think so." Maki can't help but notice how clammy Nobara's hand feels – like it hasn't quite registered yet that she's alive again. "Okkotsu's strong. So is Fushiguro."

"But Gojo can't use his techniques." Shoko must have filled her in on that. "And Yuji must be a mess, too-"

"They have a lot of backup." Not immediately available, but there's a reason so many are still out in the field. "They'll be fine."

"Maki," she says weakly, "I want them back."

She sounds almost childlike and it's as frightening as the way Shoko had described Gojo – needy, skittish, dispirited.

Maki doesn't know what to say, so she says nothing at all.

Sometimes she rereads the message when she needs to occupy her thoughts with something distracting. It had angered her to no end at first, but now that she's had time to cool off, it's just mortifying enough to do the trick.

A body in motion. Embarrassing, really. Yuta talks about her as if she's his wife of fifteen years after one kiss and she almost shudders to think of what he'll be like after a couple more. Never mind that – the way his poetics make her want to curl up into a ball and waste away ( no wonder she hadn't wanted him to read her email) is a good distraction. It's kind of hard to be upset when she rereads Yuta's mortifying declarations about how much he loves it when she manhandles him. And she sort of needs that sometimes, even if it does make her worry that they're wasting a special-grade in their hour of need if he's got time to be filling his head with ridiculous ideas.

If Nobara notices the embarrassing flush in Maki's cheeks when she wakes from her frequent naps to find her friend hunched over her phone, she says nothing of it.

Kyoto

"We were so worried, Sensei!"

"No we weren't." Mai shakes her head but it's obvious she doesn't mean it. "We're glad you're back, though."

Miwa pulls a face at her classmate, then turns back to Utahime. "Did you find Gojo- san?"

Utahime's face clouds. She can't stand to lie to her students but neither can she afford to endanger them with what she knows. Maybe this pit-stop to see her students had been a bad idea, forcing her to choose. "No," she says, praying they won't see through her. "I'm going back out soon to try again."

"Why?" Kamo's hands ball into fists. "Haven't they already sent enough people?"

They have, and her students have lost enough that they shouldn't be deprived of their beloved teacher, either. Not now, when they lost one of their own to Shibuya and another to a fruitless search for a fugitive and she cannot even tell them that Todo is almost surely alive and well. But she cannot neglect the work that she's swiftly realizing only she can do.

"I'm sorry," she says gently, and she wonders if they know that her heart is breaking.

Tokyo

"He has to be able to stop traveling."

"So he can stop depleting his cursed energy as soon as he regains it. Right." Utahime had figured out as much. "Can we afford to lose that much time, though?"

"Well, what choice do we have?" Shoko takes a drag on her cigarette and arches an eyebrow when Utahime doesn't even bother to wave the smoke away from her face. "He's dead if he comes back here like this, and so is Itadori. What we need is to keep him safe somewhere until he can recover so he won't keep teleporting."

"Well, I told the Council he wasn't in Croatia," Utahime offers.

"No, but it's only a matter of time."

"So what are you suggesting?"

Shoko shrugs. "Overland travel, maybe? Boat? Something generic. Let him keep moving without teleporting. Send a couple of the kids who are still out in the field to protect them if anyone catches on. Then we bring the whole group back together when Gojo's better, he swoops in and cleans up this mess, and everything's back to normal. Sounds good to me."

Utahime shifts uneasily. "But do we know that he ever will be?"

"No, but what've we got to work with if we assume that he won't?"

Maki-chan,

I feel helpless. That's not really that weird since half the time I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing anyway, but it feels worse now than it usually does. We're all fighting for our lives. We don't know much, but Fushiguro told me that much. And I'm a special-grade. I should be helping. But instead I'm sitting around uselessly in a train compartment again, writing you letters. Isn't that stupid? You'd probably smack me if you saw me right now. I'm just bent over my laptop (why do I even have my laptop? What did I think I was going to do with it? never mind, I'm glad I have it) in the dark, trying not to wake up Fushiguro with typing noises. I'm probably going to anyway. I should be with Gojo, or helping the others, but instead I'm just running and poor Fushiguro has to babysit me. Aren't I supposed to be stronger than this? All I do anymore is sleep and simp. I don't even work out anymore. You'd definitely deck me for that.

But Maki, I miss you.

Thinking about you is my favorite thing to do now, you know that? Way better than playing cards with Fushiguro, and not just because Fushiguro always wins. How, I don't know, but he's really good at cards. All kinds. It's weird. Anyways, you're much better to think about than game strategy. This whole thing is kind of like a game – a really complicated game with too many moving parts where people are going to die if someone moves one of the pawns wrong. And you might be amazing at playing it, Maki-chan, but I'm not. I hate being useless, but I'm selfishly glad that I don't have to do any of my own maneuvering, because I know I'd get it wrong. I'm still getting the hang of this strategy thing. But you're not. You're so smart about this – how did you get so smart about this? That's one of the things I love about you. You know how to get a step ahead of the Council when I never could.

So really, it's like physics again, except Newton's Third Law this time. I looked up the motion laws after I wrote the last email because I thought the First Law bit was poetic and I wanted to do it again, and the third one kinda fit. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction – I run (action), the council chases (equal reaction), and you keep ahead of them so I can keep running (opposite reaction). A bit of a stretch, but I think it's kind of a good analogy for what we're doing. So there's your physics blabber for the day. You'd think I was so stupid if you read this (and I had a close call when you wanted to email me the train schedule), but you won't, so I'm not going to make it less cringeworthy. Anyway. Thank you for being amazing so I can be useless and not get anyone killed.

Daily reminder that you're beautiful and also that I want my Maki back.

Sorry I told you I loved you. I shoulda known you wouldn't like that.

Love Signed,

Yours Truly

A Train Compartment

Somewhere in Central Asia

"You're writing her more emails?"

Yuta shoots Megumi a look meant to wound that really only succeeds in looking peevish and tired. "What else am I supposed to be doing?"

Megumi sighs and turns to the window, probably contemplating his immeasurable disappointment and ruined day or whatever emotion it is that Yuta's endless pining provokes. Honestly. He can't understand what Maki sees in him some days.

"Iori and Ieri decided that the best thing to do would be to escort Gojo and Itadori back to Tokyo with as many allies as possible and hedge our bets that we'll be able to stop the Council from killing them on the spot."

Maki never bothers with greetings anymore, but it doesn't really bother Yuta. She's pressed for time as it is. "Does that include me and Fushiguro?"

"Think so, yeah."

"All right." He adjusts the phone in his hand for a better grip. "And do they have a timeframe for this yet?"

"Not a firm one, no. But apparently the biggest thing is giving Gojo time to replenish his cursed energy, so not that soon."

"Meaning…"

"The explanation I got was that being in the Prison Realm sapped his cursed energy, and it gets replenished, but he keeps using up whatever his body makes to teleport because he can't stop moving. So they were going to have groups of us travel with the two of them for backup until he was in better shape, and then join up again so we could all be there to get them back to Japan."

"And how many of us is that going to be?"

"Uh…me, you, Ieri, Iori, Fushiguro, Nitta, Todo, Panda, Inumaki, Kusakabe, Kugisaki…I think," Maki replies, "but they might change that up. Dunno."

"Kugisaki?" Yuta raises his eyebrows. "Are they that confident that she'll wake up?"

"She did." Maki probably should've led with that. "Two days ago."

That'll make Fushiguro happy. "And you didn't call?"

"Best not to risk being caught with extra calls, so no."

"Well…that's good."

Fushiguro pokes his head through the door as if Kugisaki's name is a cue. "Nobara?" he asks. "News?"

Huh. He hadn't known those two were close enough to be on a first-name basis.

" Awake," Yuta mouths, just in case Maki hadn't wanted him to tell him that. Grateful as he is for Maki's help and as much as he admires her, he's not going to sit on the knowledge that his companion's best friend woke from a coma.

Fushiguro ruins that attempt at discretion within seconds.

" Awake?" his eyes widen. " Actually?"

"Is that Fushiguro?" Maki asks. "Tell him to keep his voice down."

"Yeah." Yuta throws a look over his shoulder at Fushiguro, who's still waiting in the doorway for answers. "Why?"

"You never know who's watching."

"Um, okay?"

"Anyways, they think Kugisaki is going to be-"

Yuta doesn't hear the end of her sentence – Fushiguro crosses the room in two strides and takes the burner phone from Yuta's hand before he can.

"Maki?" he asks. "Is it true?"

Silence, mostly, and muffled words on the other end of the line.

"And you didn't tell me?" Megumi's eyebrow twitches. More silence, and Maki's voice pitches upwards on the other end.

"Well, you should have!"

"It's too risky!" Yuta can just barely make out Maki's reply, so she's probably yelling into the phone. He winces. "I don't know why you thought I'd-"

"Fine, then. Put her on." A beat of silence. "Put her on the phone."

More silence.

"Maki," Fushiguro says again. His voice is starting to shake. "Put Kugisaki on the phone."

This is odd. Yuta hasn't known Fushiguro for very long, but he's only ever seen him stoic, and he hadn't expected even this news to make him snap. Apparently it's his anger at feeling that something has been kept from him that did it.

He chooses that moment to vacate the room.

At first, it's only crackly static on the line that Megumi can make out. Then there are faint voices as the phone changes hands, then a weak cough; he holds his breath.

He's not really sure that this is real after so many years believing worst would always come to worst. He hadn't wanted to believe that Nobara would pull through, as badly as he hoped she would, the way that Itadori had – that seemed like tempting fate. And now he's half-convinced that Maki's turned on them and is spouting whatever convenient lies the Council feeds her, because what she's saying is good and that's not really a concept with which he's familiar anymore.

But it's her, when the voice on the other end speaks, and he almost drops the phone.

"Hi, Fushiguro," Nobara greets him, her voice a little weak and kinder than it should be but hers, undeniably. She pauses, then adds, "Megumi."

He has no idea why she's using his first name now, of all times, but it just about knocks the air from his lungs, hearing that. "Kugisaki," he replies, and his voice sounds as wrecked as he feels. He's so good at this, at keeping it all in and measuring his emotions or at least repressing them, but now he neither can nor cares to because Kugisaki Nobara is alive and he cannot imagine better or more stunning news. He shouldn't and it feels wrong but Megumi adds, "N-No…Nobara."

He can't even say it without stuttering.

"You're alive," he finishes, and he could cry.

"I'm alive." It sounds like she might be sniffling on the other end. "Come home already, idiot."

"Kugisaki…"

"Where are you?" Nobara doesn't sound like Nobara, surefooted and aggressive in everything she does – she's scared and bare and unsure and Megumi, who unflinchingly regards all of those as things to be spurned, wants to recoil as badly as he wants her safe in his arms. He wishes he had words – wishes he'd been able to tell her that she was dear to him before he'd almost lost the chance – but even after this he still can't say it, so he says nothing at all.

"It's not safe to say," he says, even though it almost kills him.

He missed her. She is awake now; he can finally say that he missed her, powerfully and painfully, and he wants to change course for Croatia and find Itadori and drag him back to Tokyo by the scruff of his neck so they can be a whole of three again.

" Fushiguro," she pleads.

"I can't tell you, Nobara." He catches himself – he can't let that start to feel too natural. That kind of vulnerability isn't a choice he gets to make. "Kugisaki."

"You know I'll drag it out of someone else."

"Don't, Kugisaki." She had better not. Maki had better not crack – maybe he'll add that to Yuta's next stupid email. "Stay safe."

They both know, though, that she won't, and it'd do no good to end there, so he adds, "I'm glad you're okay."

Croatia

Yuji sits in the center cushion of the sofa – his favorite, because it's the most worn and he likes the way he sinks into it – with his head in his hands and Gojo knows the moment he walks in why.

A shadow crosses his face. "She left, didn't she."

Yuji raises his tired eyes, red as if they've been wrung out, and they probably have. "Yeah."

"Right." Gojo should've known. "Probably scared her off."

Yuji doesn't seem to be taking this in stride the way Gojo is trying to (if one ignores the telltale curve of his slumped shoulders) and he keeps on sniffling into his hand and it briefly occurs to Gojo that maybe – maybe – he should've thought about the fact that Yuji had needed Utahime, too. He looks like his weary bones might be ground down soon with the effort of holding up what's left of his world. And he needs help that Gojo hates not being able to give to him.

He settles onto the couch beside Yuji and puts an arm around his shoulders, half out of sympathy and half because sometimes the act of holding something makes his jackhammer heartbeat slow to a leisurely pat-pat-pat and he wants, more than anything, for it to stop. And Yuji buries his face in Gojo's side and wraps his arms around his waist like the frightened child Gojo is beginning to suspect he really is and he cries and cries and cries.

Yuji deserves better than this and if he doesn't get it, soon, he won't even be able to. Gojo knows that, and he hates himself for it, but he knows just as well that this lucidity won't last and soon he'll be babbling on like a child or staring at the wall in a depressed stupor or putting on an impression of his former self that only succeeds in making him seem drunk instead.

He's nothing Yuji needs right now and he can't figure out why he can't be, why his head won't move forwards even when his body does and he feels the cursed energy beginning to settle around him like a blanket.

Utahime could've been.

Utahime could've been what they all needed, but she was gone.

Graz, Austria

"He has to be in Austria," she'd said.

A lie, but it's one that gets Utahime close enough to Croatia to drive and it'll throw the council off her scent for at least a moment. So off she'd gone.

She thinks of sad eyes and shuffling, slippered feet and a warm bed and nudges the gas pedal just a fraction of an inch forwards.

Chapter 6: Consolation Summary:

Utahime returns to Croatia.

Notes:

Mamahime to the rescue! Please have some well-deserved comfort snuggles.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

It was foolish to have taken the spare key of a house no one is supposed to be able to find. Utahime knows that well, but she'd done it anyway, and she can't be prevailed-upon to regret it – after all, she hadn't been caught. And it allows her to let herself through the familiar white door with its peeling paint (she really ought to do that if she's going to be here indefinitely) without announcing herself. She does't particularly feel like announcing herself right now.

She doesn't need to, either. The door unlatches; she can hear footsteps in the hall, quickening after a moment, and Itadori lingers in the doorway between the kitchen and the hall only a moment. Then he's running again, and the force of his weight colliding with hers as he throws his arms around her waist and bends his head to hide his face in the crook of her neck nearly knocks her off her feet.

Utahime freezes for a beat to get her bearings, arms stilled in midair, but she lets loose when she feels Itadori go limp against her and puts her arms around his shoulders. He is tall enough to have to bend, and they're broad enough that she can barely reach, but he clings to her like she is his last lifeline, and she holds him as tightly as his viselike grip asks her to. His heart is beating fast enough to thump against her chest.

"You came back," he says, and his disbelief makes Utahime wish she'd never had to go at all.

"'Course I did." She can't say that, so she pats his shoulder, and the gesture seems to make him hold on tighter. "I wasn't going to leave you hanging."

" Everyone does." He wilts against her. "But not Iori-sensei."

She smiles – he's never called her that before – but it doesn't reach her eyes, because he's right and they should all be ashamed not to have proven him wrong. The elders insist that he has to be made to pay for his crimes, but he doesn't seem like Sukuna's Vessel right now, or anything but a boy running scared with too much on his shoulders; it's easy to forget what might happen if the curse that shares his body broke free. And maybe, Utahime thinks to herself, they should – because he is dangerous, yes, but he's a child, and there's nothing in the world that he can do about any of the misfortune that's befallen him. Sukuna's atrocities in Shibuya are probably never going to be forgotten by the higher-ups or by Itadori himself, but she can't bear the thought of the due punishment now.

All Itadori does is try – try to keep Sukuna at bay, try to protect those he cares for, try to keep Gojo from falling apart when he's falling apart himself – and he has to be exhausted. It's clearer every time she sees him that he can't take much more of this.

It's really a pragmatic decision, being here – that's what Utahime would tell anyone who questioned her. She is here to make sure they are cared for, because a broken Gojo cannot fix the mess they've all made, and an exhausted Itadori cannot hold off Sukuna forever. But it's not and she can't even kid herself into thinking that it might be.

Utahime is here because a teenager and the man she's orbited around for half of her life have spent months licking their wounds and trying to hang onto the scraps of sanity, in desperate need of a firm ally.

"We have a plan now," she tells Itadori, who still hasn't let go. "We're going to get you out of here."

"You do?"

"We do." She lets him go, placing her hands on his shoulders. "You've done a good job, but we'll take it from here."

"We…?"

"All of us from the school." She can fill him in on the details later. "Just rest, all right?"

She knows by watching his expression change that those are the words he's been waiting to hear.

"Hi, Utahime."

At Gojo's lopsided smile, it's impossible not to feel a little warmer – he's always had that effect on people in his rare moments of sincerity. "Gojo," Utahime says, her voice cracking raggedly as a mudflat under the pounding sun. "How are you?"

He ignores her question. "Yuji said you came back."

"I did." She clears her throat. "Come back, I mean." Once more, she offers him a cautious smile. "I'm going to stay this time."

Gojo doesn't really seem convinced; his smile falters. "Don't promise me that if you don't mean it."

"I do. This time we have a plan." It takes a moment's pause for Utahime to catch her breath, even though she's not winded. "I'm staying."

"You…are?"

He seems so hopeful and yet so reluctant – it's sweet, really. She's never seen this side of Gojo before. "That was what I said, yes."

And then his face breaks into a grin and he crosses the room in two strides, pulling her flush against his chest and holding her tightly as a child might cling to its favorite teddy bear.

"You came back for me," Gojo says before he nuzzles his cheek against her hair and laughs, almost giddy with excitement. "I can't believe you actually came back for me!"

"Um…" Utahime doesn't really know what he wants her to say to that. "Yes?"

"I always said that, y'know? That I could always count on Hime." He sets her down – her feet had barely been able to touch the floor before – and looks at her like her face holds every answer he might ever ask for. "'Cause Hime-senpai's nice like that. And you know what else?"

"I think the nickname kind of blunts the impact of you finally calling me 'senpai.'" She's smiling, though, because this is probably the moment in months at which Gojo has really been happy and she's touched that she was the reason for it. And the open adoration in his eyes is more endearing than she cares to admit. "What else?"

"Of all the people at school, I like her the best." He gives her another cockeyed smile. "The most best."

Ah. So this is drunk-Gojo and child-Gojo all in one. Lovely – his moods have started intermixing.

This is getting awkward.

"I'm…glad," she says flatly. "Though I'm not really sure how calling me weak was supposed to get that point across."

"Hm?" he tilts his head. "I did that?"

Oh. So this is bad- bad.

"Never mind," she tells him, then pats his arm for good measure. It's time for a change of subject before this gets weirder than it already is. "When was the last time the two of you ate?"

"Hm…I dunno. Yesterday?"

This, Utahime decides, is why men should never be left unsupervised.

"Gojo eats a lot of frozen pizza." Yuji pauses in front of a shelf of salad dressing and drops a bottle of something white with a name in a language neither of them can read into the cart. Never mind that they're not buying salad greens, as far as Utahime knows. "It's starting to make me worry, not gonna lie. Like, it's probably better than him gorging himself on candy, but like…he just sits there, staring at a wall and eating entire frozen pizzas by himself. It's…kinda scary."

"I wish I could say that surprised me." Utahime drops a loaf of bread into the cart without really knowing what she intends to use it for. "He probably hasn't eaten anything green since you got here."

"There's this weird fruit candy he likes here that comes in green," Yuji offers.

Great.

"Anything green that grows in nature," Utahime specifies.

"Oh, yeah, prob'ly not."

As expected. "And what have you been doing?"

"Well, I have to keep my energy up since Gojo can't defend us if we get found, so…mostly meat and rice and stuff. It's sorta expensive, though."

She's sort of impressed that he's been eating things with any nutritional value at all lately – she guarantees most of her students wouldn't do the same if they were in his shoes. "Well, that's better than frozen pizza, at least." Especially considering the trek it takes to reach the closest well-stocked grocery store, and that the two of them don't have a car. "How are you getting here, though?"

"Neighbors," Yuji explains. "They're kinda not supposed to know we're here, but we can't starve, so I just hitch a ride with them when they go."

"And what do they think you're doing here?" She can't imagine their presence has gone unquestioned in a town that probably receives a tourist every other decade. "Have they asked?"

"I'm a college student backpacking through Europe. That's the cover."

A surprisingly smart one for someone who hasn't ever seemed particularly clever. "Smart. They buy that?"

"The fact that I don't speak any Croatian probably helps sell the whole 'foreigner' thing."

"…I don't think you really needed help with that."

The looks they get from the cashier as he rings up two weeks' worth of food for them prove her right.

It's almost comfortable here after a while.

The house is cramped, and Utahime sleeps on the couch even though she'd practically had to tie Yuji down to keep him from giving her his bed; the weather can be temperamental, and Gojo can be even more so. Oftentimes he stares at the walls just as Yuji had said he would; others he follows her around like a lost puppy, trying to grab at her clothes because apparently nothing makes him happier than the chance to cling to her. Usually, she indulges him – twice, she lets him talk her into sleeping in his room. But she knows she can't baby him. He's already shown that he won't take care of himself, and the fact that Yuji's had to is further evidence of that. So as much as she knows he needs support, he needs a firm talking-to just as badly, and those are in no short supply.

(Besides, the crestfallen look on his face when he sees fresh produce in the fridge and his frozen pizzas gone is a little bit funny.)

"You're going to be malnourished if you don't eat real food," she'd told him. "If you're trying to regain your strength, you need something with more substance than frozen pizza."

He'd pouted. "But it's good" had been his only justification, but he'd apparently thought it was quite a compelling one, and had been rather upset when it hadn't worked.

But sometimes, he'd seem to grasp the enormity of the trouble he was in, and those moments shattered the easy domesticity they'd all grown used to in a few short days.

He's been unusually quiet all evening. "You shouldn't be here," he says; it's not surprising.

"Yes, I should," Utahime replies, just as stubbornly.

"All the kids are on the run, right? So who's holding down the fort at the school, Shoko and Ijichi?"

"All of my students except Todo. Maki," she offers, even though it's probably the last thing he wants to hear – that a student is one of the school's last lines of defense. "Kugisaki."

"Kugisaki, who's in a coma. So reassuring." He gives her a hard look. "Someone has to be there. Who knows what the higher-ups are gonna do if no one's around?"

"She's awake now." That hadn't seemed relevant to mention earlier. "That make you feel any better?"

"She…did?"

"Yeah." Utahime takes a bite of an apple and glances over at him out of the corner of her eye. "Shoko says she's doing better."

"And you didn't lead with that?" Now Gojo seems more dispirited than anything.

"Well, no, my first priority was making sure you two kept yourselves alive." Maybe she should've said something earlier, but it hadn't seemed smart to overload them with information when they're already so overwhelmed. "And you know as well as I do that if Itadori finds out, all he's going to be able to think about is getting back to her. The last thing he needs right now is the pain of knowing that he can't."

"But you didn't think I would?"

"Would what?" Utahime turns to face him. "Want to go back?"

"Yeah." Gojo runs a hand through his hair – loose almost all of the time now. It looks good like that, though she'd never say so. "Why didn't you think I would, too?"

"Because you're a disaster." There's really no point in sugarcoating. "Sure, you're fine now, but half the time you're either so depressed you can't even get up or you act like you're drunk or seven years old or both."

"Oh."

"I'm worried about you," she admits, even though she knows it'll probably only upset him.

"Yeah. Me, too."

"You're worried about me?"

"No, I'm worried about myself."

Utahime laughs hollowly. "Typical."

"You really think that little of me, huh?"

"If I didn't know how bad things were, I'd have your head for sitting around while a first-year tries to singlehandedly keep both of you alive."

"You would." He looks up at her. "I dunno why you haven't already."

"You're so…resigned," she comments. "I've never seen you like this."

"Duh."

Utahime sits beside him; they don't touch, though it's obvious he wants her to. "Do you think you could explain what's going on with you?"

He laughs hollowly. "Start with the fact that I'm not the strongest anything anymore."

"I know it isn't just that, Gojo."

"I can't do anything." He opens his hands and studies his palms, then flips them over to examine his knuckles, as if he'll know, looking at his hands, why they're not working like they should. "I can't do anything, Hime. Except run. Half the time, I don't even know what's going on, and who even knows what I'm doing then. All that stuff at Shibuya – I could've stopped it in minutes, but I didn't, and people died. And all because I was stupid. Yuji's the only reason I'm still around, and he's a disaster. And all of my students are running, too, and the Council is pushing them around like chess pieces, and I can't do anything for them, either, and…"

Utahime has never, in all of the years of their acquaintance, seen Gojo open up this way, and it's almost by reflex that she reaches for his hand, turning it over to trace each of the lines of his palm with her fingers. She knows, now, that it's touch he needs to anchor him when he's drifting. "And?" she prompts, voice gentle.

"I'm weak, Utahime."

Silence falls. It is perhaps the most complete silence that Utahime has ever heard – fitting. She's stunned to the bone for a moment. He is only saying what she already knows, but it is still shocking to see him brought low enough to admit it.

For so many years, he's begun that sentence with 'you're' instead of ' I'm' and Utahime was resigned to it, that that was as it should be: Utahime is weak where Gojo is strong and he may rub it in her face as he likes so long as he earns the honor. She's always hated it but never had a reason to be able to protest beyond personal indignation, because he is in a league of his own, and she is merely one of those in his distant orbit. But now the strength keeping the Strongest afloat is hers, and the carefully-stacked hierarchy of her world wants to inverse, and neither knows what to say.

"We have a plan," she says hoarsely. "To let you get your strength back."

"I shouldn't be the priority here," he says, his voice just as ragged.

"You have to be, Gojo. You're the only one who can fix this."

"I'm weak," he repeats. "I'm nothing."

"You're not nothing, and you're not going to be weak forever."

"What am I if I am, though?"

"Gojo…"

"'s okay. You don't have to find some stupid reason to pretend anyone would know I was alive if I wasn't useful to them anymore."

It's nearly true, and the thought rattles Utahime, but it's not, really. "Itadori," she points out. "That boy would follow you to the ends of the earth. He already has."

"And look what it got him."

"Your other students are worried sick about you," she tries.

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"Since when are you so altruistic?"

"I'm not. It's a momentary lapse in self-interested judgement."

"Shoko practically begged me to help you."

"Because everyone thinks I'm going to save the world or something. Yeah. Sure."

"What am I, then? Am I nobody?" Utahime's hand clamps viselike around his. "Why would I be trying to help you if you were nothing to me?"

"Utahime, I…I can't-"

"Can't what?"

"I…it's nothing." He sighs. "You're helping me because you need me."

"No, I'm helping you because you need me. And…and because I want to. "

"Same difference."

"If I were only here because I needed your help, why would I be holding your hand right now?" She challenges. "Why would I bother to listen to you, or try to comfort you, or sleep next to you?"

He looks over at her, and his eyes – so, so blue, uncovered like this – are hollow.

"Because you're Utahime," he says, and it sounds for all the world like he's trying to cover up the evidence of heartache. "Because you're good like that. And you care about people who've always been nasty to you even though you should've run them off a long time ago."

She can't look at him anymore. "I didn't run you off because I knew even then that you wouldn't be nasty and insufferable forever. No one can."

"A lot of people can." She'd slipped her hand out of his, but he retakes it. "You're too optimistic for your own good."

"Don't tell me what's good for me," she bristles. "Call it fool's hope, then. I had a feeling you'd get knocked down a peg. Wanted you to, even."

"Because you cared?"

"Because I couldn't have gotten away from you if I tried," she admits. "And that was never because you were the strongest."

"Then why?"

She shrugs. "You were Gojo Satoru," she says. "And I was Iori Utahime. That was all."

Yuji finds them asleep that way, hours later when he comes to the kitchen for water in the middle of the night. Utahime looks tiny beside Gojo, curled up under his arm. They're in their daytime clothes; Gojo's body curls around Utahime's as if it's an inborn instinct, and he tries to be careful but Utahime still stirs when she hears his footsteps.

Their eyes meet; she untangles herself from Gojo's arms and nudges him awake.

There's no question tonight of where they'll sleep; soon as she's changed out of her jeans, Utahime settles in beside Gojo, tucked into his side like she had been earlier. If ever there were a night for the comfort of another's warmth beside her, this was it. And it isn't long before Yuji appears in the doorway, carrying the pink blanket she now knows was a gift from Nobara months ago ('it matches your hair,' she'd said as a joke, but he'd taken it so seriously that it had been one of only a few possessions he'd taken when he fled), silently asking for the same.

Normally it would be strange, but the three of them are all they have now, and Utahime is their rock; it would be unthinkable for them not to seek her out in the early morning hours when the world was at its most frightening. All that would usually apply is irrelevant now, and Yuji rests his head on her shoulder just as Gojo has countless times now.

She kisses his forehead, smoothing a hand through his messy hair enough to see the spots where its natural brown has begun to show through at the roots after months without touch-ups, and he sleeps.

She does, too, in time, warmth caging her in on either side, but not before she wonders what they are all going to do if her grand plan to right the natural order of things falls apart.

Notes:

Shoutout to the boys in my dorm who set off their smoke alarm making frozen pizza. WA!Gojo would definitely do that.

Chapter 7: Promised Summary:

The group embarks on the next leg of its plan: Nobara heads to Kiev, Utahime and her charges head to Tuscany, and Maki holds down the fort at home.

Notes:

I'm kind of sad that I even got the chance to write this tonight, because that could only mean I spent another Friday night alone in my dorm, but that's okay, because I really like it. It sorta made me feel better after a downer of a day, so I hope you guys like it too.

Chapter Text

Tokyo

"This is going to be our trickiest cover-up yet." Shoko paces, turns, doubles back the way she came – she's been doing that for half an hour now. "It's pretty much unbelievable, and if you hadn't already proven you had the Council eating out of the palm of your hand, I wouldn't even be suggesting it-"

"Ieiri-sensei?" Maki interrupts her. "Get to the point."

"On the night of the fourth, Nobara is going to disappear." Shoko blows out a long breath like smoke from one of the cigarettes she hasn't been bothering to hide lately. "In the eyes of the Council, at least. In reality, she's going to be on a flight to Kiev."

"To meet up with Fushiguro and Okkotsu, I assume?" Maki crosses her arms. "How are we paying for that? The Council can probably trace credit card transactions."

"They wouldn't bother."

"Seems risky," Maki comments.

"It is, but what matters now is time. Okkotsu and Fushiguro are flying from Delhi to Kiev tonight. Nobara is supposed to join them in Kiev in two days, where Panda, Inumaki, and Todo, who, as far as we know, are all still in Russia, will meet up with them. Gojo, Utahime, and Itadori are leaving for Italy tomorrow, so from there the rest of the students will take the train to Tuscany to meet up with them." Shoko glances over at Maki to see if she's picking up the obvious implication. "Sorry to say that you're going to have to wait a little longer to rejoin them."

"No, I understand." Maki swallows a lump in her throat – she feels a little like a sacrificed pawn in a game of chess and she doesn't like it – but she understands Shoko's reasoning. "It would look too suspicious if we both went missing."

"And we need you to feed them a convincing lie," Shoko adds.

"Am I correct to assume that you already have one in mind?"

"Yeah. We think it'll be most believable if you pretend not to know that she's missing."

"How's that gonna work?"

"Well, Utahime's suggestion was to have you go to them as soon as you know that she's gone, but before the Council knows, so it looks like you didn't know, either. You'd say that Nobara told you last night that she wanted to defect and run off to find Gojo and Itadori on her own, and that you had told her not to go but couldn't stop her." Shoko shrugs. "Then you'd keep feeding them fake intel about Okkotsu to lead them away from the group. I honestly don't know if they'll buy it, but no one who knows her would doubt that she'd want to go after them, so we can only hope."

"It might work," Maki says, though it would be hard not to be skeptical about a plan so necessarily flimsy. "So you want me to stay back and hold them off."

"I won't be going, either, if it makes you feel any better."

"It doesn't. Having you leave the college when they're probably already half-convinced you've turned on them would be a massive strategic error." She shrugs. "What can I do, though? It'd look too weird if Kugisaki and I dropped off the map at the same time."

"True, but don't worry, you'll see them soon." Shoko pats her shoulder. "Thanks, Zenin."

"Don't call me that."

"Sorry. Maki." Shoko's conciliatory smile doesn't do much to smooth things over. "If anyone can pull this off, it's you."

En Route to Tuscany

"Whatcha readin'?"

Utahime barely looks up from the cheap paperback she's reading. "Nothing."

"Oh?" Gojo stands, trying not to hit his head on the upper bunk, and hops up on the bottom bunk where Utahime is leaning against the pillows. His weight makes the mattress jump beneath Utahime and she lets out an indignant yelp as he leans in, resting his chin on her shoulder so he can read along.

"Stop it, Gojo," she mutters, shoving at his arm, but he's undeterred.

" I froze, my heart racing so furiously I thought it might burst," he starts to read, his voice girlishly affected, and he doesn't stop even when Utahime elbows his ribs. "Yuri's hand traced a fiery trail along the curve of my neck 'til it reached my shoulder. A graceful digit slipped beneath the strap of my gown, peeling away the last vestiges of my modesty as he pulled it down to grace my shoulder with a searing kiss-"

"Who's kissin' wha'?" Yuji stirs in the opposite bunk, rubbing at his eyes.

"No one's kissing anything," Utahime snaps, turning to glare at Gojo. "Nice job, Gojo. You woke the baby."

"Oh, please. He's plenty old enough for this." Gojo turns back to his reading with one of the more insufferable smirks she's ever seen from him. " 'Hitomi,' he said huskily, 'I need to touch you-'"

"Sensei," Yuji whines, " what is this?"

"It's called-" he flips to the front cover – " Chain of Command. Ooh, sounds spicy. I had no idea you had such a dirty mind, Hime-senpai."

"Give that back!"

"Sorry, m'lady, no can do. 'Hideo,' I whimper, 'do what you please with me' - hey!"

"There are children present, Gojo," Utahime hisses, snapping the book closed and shoving it back into her bag. Her face burns for several reasons at once, and she's never been more grateful to have taken the night train. None of them are going to be able to sleep and they all know it, but it affords them a little privacy – always a must with someone as intent on embarrassing his company as Gojo. He's been markedly more lucid since she arrived, for which Utahime knows she should be grateful, but it also means he's just a little more prone to his old mischief.

She doesn't particularly appreciate that right now.

"Ugh, stop," Yuji mutters, falling back against his bunk. "D'ya have to flirt in front of me? 's gross."

"He's not flirting with me," Utahime grumbles, but it's only a beat before she laughs softly. "Just being a pest. You know how he is."

She hadn't been expecting to feel such aching fondness at the innocence of that response, so typical of a teenager disgusted at his parents' indiscretion. He seems his age, for once, neither childlike nor prematurely aged; that, she knows, is probably because he has someone to lean on now. She'd put an arm around him if he were sitting close enough – it really is amazing how attached she's grown so quickly.

"Whaddaya mean? I just wanted to enjoy this great work of liter- hey!"

"Shut it, Gojo," she snaps, digging her elbow into his ribs. It's more of a relief to be able to rib him like she used to than she'd ever thought it would be.

" Ew," Yuji moans, covering his face with his pillow. "You're so gross."

"Uno."

Utahime's eyes glint. She presses a Draw Four atop the stack in the middle of the table, eyes glinting in the darkened cabin. "Not anymore."

Yuji gives her a pitiful look. "You're so mean."

"You really have been spending too much time with Gojo," she laughs. He gives her another look and draws four cards from the upside-down pile next to the cards they've played; her face grows serious. "You holding up okay?"

He tilts his head – like teacher, like student. "Where'd that come from?"

"Just wanted to check in." She plays a red three. "You seem happier, but I wanted to make sure you were really doing all right."

"I'm really scared," he admits. "But I can't do anything about that. 've been scared pretty much nonstop since I ate Sukuna's finger last year, so it's just kinda something I have to live with."

"I'm sorry." Utahime's eyes drop.

"Nah, not your fault. You're probably the only reason I'm okay at all right now." Yuji puts down a yellow three. "And I'm really more scared for Sensei now than for myself."

Utahime can't say she's surprised, but it's still sad – Yuji's having an execution order hanging over his head isn't new. "Because he's weakened?"

"'Cause he wasn't even Gojo until a few days ago." Yuji raises his eyes as Utahime plays a yellow one. "It was…scary."

"You mean that he wasn't Gojo because he was weak?"

Something about that statement makes her stomach turn. For all that he seems to be empty inside, she can't stomach the idea that Gojo is nothing but his strength. Some tug on her heart insists he's more than that despite all evidence to the contrary – traitorous, but unshakeable. Her voice pitches upwards slightly and she doubts Yuji misses it.

"Not really, no." Yuji's shoulders slump, and he grips his cherry blossom blanket tighter around himself. "Gojo's Gojo because he's Gojo, not 'cause he's strong. But he just…wasn't acting like himself. He's so confident and…and cheerful and usually he acts like he's younger than us. He makes us laugh, and he has stupid ideas, and every other thing he said used to make Kugisaki wanna punch him, but he got all quiet. I don't know." Yuji seems for all the world like a deflated balloon, drifting on the wind. "For a while he was just so sad. And serious. I didn't even know he knew how to be serious, and I…I didn't know what to do."

"Yuji," she says, looking up as light from a passing light in the tunnel illuminates her face. It's gone in a flicker, and she's in darkness again. "That wasn't your burden to bear."

"It's not yours, either." He lays down a yellow four, continuing to play only as a formality. "You don't have to be doing this."

"Someone does," she tells him, and sets down a blue four. "And I happen to be qualified."

"Yeah, you are," he agrees. This time he chooses a blue three. "You make Sensei really happy. Almost normal."

That now-familiar fondness swells in her chest. "I think I just make him feel nostalgic, really. He was my kouhai."

"I know. He told me." Yuji shakes his head. "There was this one day when we were leaving Odessa 'cause someone on the council got too close and he spent a whole train ride talking about you."

Somehow, that is unsurprising. "I'd ask what he said, but he was probably so out-of-it that nothing he told you made any sense."

"He kinda just kept talking about how nice and pretty you were." Yuji shrugs. "I dunno, man. It was weird."

"He probably likes having someone weaker than him around to bolster his ego when he's not at his best." She plays her last blue card, a one, and hopes Yuji will change the color even though she barely cares about the game anymore. "Or he has mommy issues."

"Prob'ly," Yuji agrees. "I mean, I don't know what that has to do with you, but it sounds right."

"I've been told I'm very nurturing," Utahime explains. "I like taking care of people – comforting them, especially. I'm not especially reserved with my softer side. He's probably never had a woman treat him that way, so he sees it and he wants it."

"Wow." Yuji seems a little too impressed by that analysis. "You really get him, don't you?"

"Oh, not at all. I've just spent a lot of years watching him."

"You two are special to each other," Yuji discerns.

"Well, he's someone I can't seem to shake off, no matter what I do," she agrees. "If that makes him special to me, I suppose he is."

"Sensei?"

She still smiles when he calls her that. "Yeah?"

"Can I say something weird?"

"Of course." She's probably heard stranger lately than anything Yuji could say now. "Anything."

"Um, well…you take really good care of us," he says. "Me and Gojo-sensei. And…and I think that he really cares about you a lot."

"Because you didn't see how he used to be," she says. "Anyway, continue."

"He does," Yuji reiterates. "I know he does. So I wanna ask you for something."

"Okay," Utahime says, wary.

"Even if I do make it out of this, I'm…not going to live too much longer." Yuji puts down three cards in succession – a blue one, a blue four, and a blue three, for no reason, even though the game stopped long ago. "I still have a death sentence, 'member? But Gojo's gonna be around a while, I think. And he hasn't got much in the world that he really cares about."

Something about that admission cuts to the heart in a way Utahime can't even begin to sort out right now. "Yuji-"

"You're one of those things, Sensei."

Utahime lays down a yellow three, a yellow four, a yellow one. "Yuji, don't-"

"I try to take care of him, but I can't do much, and I'm gonna be gone soon." He seems so resigned, clutching a pink blanket that's two washes away from ratty around his rounded shoulders, that she wants to reach for him, but right now she needs to hear him out. "So…I'm gonna say this to Fushiguro and Kugisaki, too, but you're really special to Gojo-sensei, so…"

"Yuji…"

"Look out for him, okay?" Yuji's eyes alone are a desperate cry for help that Utahime wishes she could answer, but there's no reassurance she could give to soothe an ache like this. "Make sure he's not alone."

"Of course." She wishes she could give a different answer but cannot.

"Love him," Yuji says. "You…don't have to marry him or anything. I don't mean that. Just…love him. Some kinda way. 'Cause he thinks no one does."

Their eyes meet; neither can move.

Yuji's voice is hoarse with emotion now. "Do you promise?"

It's a funny thing, the way that Utahime doesn't even have to think about it. "Promise."

Tokyo

"You sure you're going to be okay back here?"

"Positive." Maki's sure of no such thing, but Nobara has something to do and Maki's doubts can't be getting in the way of that. "But you-"

"I got this, Maki." Nobara tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear and tries to smile. "Seriously. Someone's gotta save those idiots, right? Might as well be me."

"All right." Far be it from Maki to try to keep a sorcerer from her work, doubtful as she is that Nobara is ready for any such thing. "Stay safe, then."

Nobara turns back to look at her, her fingers wrapping around the straps of her backpack. She looks younger than her nearly-seventeen years in a magenta duffel coat with hands clutching the straps of a silver backpack, eyes wide with enthusiasm that's probably half-fake and half-at the thought of seeing Fushiguro again. "You, too, Maki-san," she says with false confidence. "Better not go dying before I get back!"

The seconds that elapse between Nobara's prompting and Maki's response are a fascinating thing to observe – her smile falters, her expression crumples, and the hands that clutch her backpack straps free themselves in milliseconds. She them before Maki even registers her intent, and though she's smaller than her friend by several inches, the momentum she gains as she throws herself into Maki's unprepared arms nearly knocks her off her feet.

" Please be careful, Maki-san," she murmurs, face pressed awkwardly against Maki's shirt, and Maki suspects, as she stiffly wraps her arms around Nobara in kind, that the exhortation was really meant for the both of them.

"Yeah," she says. "I'll try."

Kiev

"Kugisaki?"

An unfamiliar face greets Nobara at her gate almost as soon as she steps off the jetway, and if not for the fact that he is the only other person in this terminal who looks like he might be Japanese, she might not recognize her contact. "O…kkotsu?" she asks, hands gripping the straps of her backpack as they always do when she's nervous. "Is that you?"

He's not at all the way Nobara had imagined a special-grade would look, though she's probably a little bit biased since the only one she's ever met looks like a paintbrush. He's a little bit mopey, slumped-over with dark circles under eyes fringed by dark, stringy hair that looks like it needs to be washed. She wrinkles her nose – this is the guy Maki's so crazy about? – but chooses to reserve her judgement until she's heard him say more than three words.

"Yeah, that's me. Hi." He nods politely. "Glad to see you're okay. You gave your friends a scare back there, huh?"

"I'm fine," she says flatly. She doesn't need to be reminded of that. "And you're Maki's special-grade fugitive boyfriend?"

Yuuta's face goes beet-red. "She told you that?"

"No, but it was obvious. She never shuts up about you."

"Oh. That's…that's cool." He clears his throat. "Um…nice things or…not?"

"It's Maki. How nice is she ever going to get?"

"True." He laughs awkwardly, shoving his hands in his pockets. "True, true, true. Um. How…how are you feeling?"

"Jetlagged," Nobara says.

"In pain?"

"Jetlagged," she repeats.

"Oh. Good. Maki said I had permission to sedate you if you were obviously in pain and wouldn't rest."

"I don't think Maki meant for you to tell me that." Nobara's not even a little bit surprised that she'd said it, but – as Yuuta clearly doesn't know yet – giving her a warning is only going to make her more determined not to let it show if she needs a rest she doesn't want to take.

"She probably didn't."

"Seems to be a pattern with you two. Miscommunication."

"Huh?"

"Wait, you are the 'body in motion' guy, right?"

Yuuta nearly chokes.

Fushiguro taps his foot impatiently, waiting by the idling car (running so it'll warm up in the frigid Ukrainian winter) and glancing every few seconds at his phone for updates. Baggage claim had been Okkotsu's last text, twenty-three minutes ago, and he wonders what could possibly be taking them so long. Surely it wouldn't take twenty-three minutes to get Nobara's bags, no matter how many she'd brought along. (Too many, probably.)

He glances at the nearest exit door every few moments, but the people coming through aren't the ones he wants to see.

"Wait. Give me a minute."

"Sure," Yuuta agrees, too dazed to say anything more substantial. His brain, now that it's been given a kernel, is determined to remember every single line of those humiliating letters, and perhaps giving Nobara a moment to go through her luggage will give him time to collect himself.

It's not long, though. She pulls a rolled-up blanket from her suitcase and zips it up again within two minutes, then wraps it around her shoulders. It's white with a turquoise paisley pattern, something he imagines a normal girl might have in her university dormitory. "It's cold here," she explains, though he hadn't asked for one.

"You have a coat on, though," Yuuta points out, desperate for a distraction.

"Us first-years gave each other blankets last Christmas." She doesn't look particularly pleased to be telling him this. "I gave one to Itadori, he gave one to Fushiguro, and Fushiguro gave this one to me."

"Ah." Cute, really. "You want him to see it?"

Nobara's eyes narrow. "It's cold."

No point in pressing the issue. "It is."

It's nearly nightfall, but the lamps on either side of the snow-covered sidewalk outside the sliding doors to the parking lot provide enough light by which to identify a person coming through, and he knows her face the second he sees it.

She's still, small as he remembers her if not moreso, and the light of the lamps seems to pool in her melted-caramel hair, toying with the strands that the gusty winds push out of place. She's wearing her favorite coat – the magenta one he and Itadori have both carried for her countless times when she's hot because she often wears it for the way it looks when it's far too warm for a coat – over jeans that are baggier on her than they used to be, and a pair of fuzzy boots she probably never would've worn in public six months ago. Okkotsu carries her suitcase, and around the hump of her backpack, she clutches the ends of a paisley blanket.

He knows that blanket as well as he knows the girl who carries it, and in seconds his feet are moving faster than he wants to allow them to, kicking up snow as he runs. Her eyes widen and the corners of her lips turn up as she breaks into a run a little faster than Megumi's to meet him halfway.

She's like a freight train, the way she slams into him, and Megumi barely manages to get his footing.

"Kugisaki," he whispers, his arm around her backpack keeping the blanket from falling off her shoulders. She shrugs the bag off anyway, even though the blanket flutters to the snow-covered ground when she does, and she fits nicely in his arms that way, smaller than he remembers. "You're alive."

"Hi," she says, muffled by the wool of his coat. "Been a while, hasn't it?"

He feels like he could choke on the lump that rises in his throat as her thin arms grip his waist as tightly as they can. "Don't do that again."

He cannot muster the words he really wants to say, so those will have to do.

Chapter 8: Winter Summary:

The Kiev group takes advantage of a snow day; Utahime, Yuji, and Gojo settle into their temporary living arrangements in Tuscany.

Notes:

About seven people were going to come at me with pitchforks if I didn't give them fluff, so here you go. An unprecedented all-fluff chapter.

I think they all needed to decompress.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Tuscany

"Hime's probably going to have a heart attack when she realizes we're gone."

Yuji's eyebrows lift. "Shouldn't we tell her where we are, then?"

"And wake her? I wouldn't." Gojo's answering chuckle turns to smoke in the frosty morning air. It's a few degrees too warm for the recent dusting of snow to stick to the ground, but they still both clutch their coats tightly to their shoulder as the block-long line outside the bakery shuffles along. "She doesn't do too well with interruptions to her sleep."

"Neither do you," Yuji points out.

"I know." Gojo beams. "Aren't we perfect for each other?"

"I don't think Hime-sensei would agree." Yuji catches himself, and his cheeks flush, though that could be the cold as far as anyone else knows. "Sorry. Iori-sensei."

"'Hime-sensei.' Aww." Gojo pats Yuji's shouder. "'s'cute. You should use that sometime."

"Um…no," Yuji declines.

"Aw, but she'd love it! She likes you so much-"

"Iori-sensei likes everybody." Yuji tilts his head to look up at Gojo. "She even likes you."

"Hey!"

"What? I'm just saying."

"When did you get so mean?"

"Didn't. Just statin' facts."

Gojo lowers his glasses, which he's still wearing without a reason to, down his nose. "You really ought to respect your elders, though. Real important. Might lose ya the love of your life."

Yuji raises his eyebrows. "So she's the love of your life now?"

"Who said I was talking about Hime?"

"…you did, Sensei."

"Oh, did I?"

"Plus, you're the only person who calls her Hime."

Gojo rocks back and forth a few times on his heels, restless for the line to move. "Isn't it pretty?"

"Dunno." Yuji shoves his hands in his pockets and looks down at the sidewalk. "It's nice to see you feeling better, though."

"I do." Gojo gives him a sideways glance. "In no small part because of you."

"Is that actual gratitude?" Yuji's eyes widen. "From Gojo?"

"Well, damn. Is that what you think of me?"

"It's been really tough, okay? I just…thought you recognized that. I guess." He shrugs.

"Hey, no, no, I did." An unfamiliarly prickly sensation that Gojo doesn't even know to recognize as remorse grows in his gut. "I…I know it's been rough on you. And…I'm sorry I put you through that, kid. Really."

"Oh." Yuji seems stunned, almost. "Thanks. I guess."

"For what it's worth, it's a relief to see you doing better, too." He loops an arm around Yuji's shoulders. "With…Iori."

"Oh, so now she's Iori?"

"Seemed appropriate."

"I don't think she'd like it very much if you called her that," Yuji observes. "'Cause you never have. And stuff."

"You think so?"

"She really cares about you. So if you said something weird, she'd notice." Yuji looks back up at Gojo. "Like, if you started acting really different. She's always the first one to notice when your mood changes, y'know? So if you started calling her Iori when you always call her Utahime or Hime or something, she'd probably think you were mad at her. Or that you didn't like her anymore. And that's no good, right?"

"No, it's not."

"And you owe her a lot," Yuji continues. "We both do. So you gotta be nice to her."

"Why do I feel like you're giving me a shovel talk?"

"'Cause I kinda am. I'm not gonna let you do anything stupid and make her upset when she's the only reason we're even a little bit okay."

That's Utahime, all right – he's never met anyone who commands such effortless loyalty. Utahime of Kyoto, the face that launched a thousand ships, he thinks sometimes, and it's not an inaccurate hyperbole. At least, that is what Gojo has always seen in her, and he's not sure whether it's heartening or frightening that Yuji seems to see it, too.

Both, he decides by the time they reach the counter to select their bread.

"Gojo?"

The opposite side of the bed usually feels like a furnace, and the fact that it doesn't this morning is strange enough to wake Utahime. She reaches over to paw at the pillows on her left just to be sure he's really left, but he has. Weird – he never wakes up earlier than he has to.

"Oh. You're up." She hears the rustling of clothes with Gojo's voice as he turns from the window, and when she rubs at her eyes to clear them, he's smiling. There are circles around his eyes, and she's still not used to seeing him without his blindfold, but he doesn't look childishly oblivious or listlessly depressed anymore, and she smiles, too, without meaning to. "Miss me?"

Utahime shakes her head fondly. "Hardly. I thought I was going to overheat last night."

He shifts in the window seat across from the bed, holding a pillow to his chest, and smiles like his heart is fit to burst. "You could always sleep in the living room, you know."

"'Fraid not. Someone has to make sure you don't sleepwalk out a window." Utahime doesn't know where that came from, since he's not a sleepwalker as far as she knows, but it's really not that far out of the realm of possibility. "Why're you up already?"

"Already?" Gojo tilts his head. "It's almost noon."

" Noon?" Utahime glances around for a clock and grabs her phone when she doesn't find one – 11:43, it reads. "Why didn't someone wake me?"

"Did someone need to? Not like we have anywhere to be today."

"I hate sleeping in." Utahime tosses the remaining covers off of her lap and tries not to wince when her feet hit the floor. "Next time, wake me up."

"Next time?" Gojo looks tickled. "You mean this sleeping arrangement is permanent?"

"Don't read into it. Think of me as your babysitter." Utahime lobs a pillow in his direction for effect.

He catches the pillow effortlessly – apparently the Prison Realm did nothing to his reaction time – and hugs it to his chest. "Aw, Hime," he croons, "you like me!"

"I tolerate you." Her smile is too wide and too bright and it blunts the impact of her words. "What exactly have you been doing since you woke up?"

"We got bread," he tells her. "Me and Yuji. From that place down the street. 'Cause it smelled good."

"Oh, you did?" Good that it's not frozen pizza, at very least. "Surprising, honestly."

"It snowed a tiny bit," he continues. "Yuji was out…looking at it, I guess. Then when he came back he told me the bread smell was calling his name, so we went and got some."

"Oh?" It's such an unexpectedly pastoral image that Utahime can't help but smile. "And how was it?"

"Pretty good. Woulda ate it all, but Yuji told me I had to save you some." Gojo shrugs. "Apparently he thinks he's your dad now or something and he has to make sure I treat you right. It's kinda cute."

"Aw. That was sweet of him." She can't decide which part of that story is sweeter – that Yuji has taken it upon himself to make sure Gojo behaves himself around her, or that Gojo is actually listening to him. It's a far cry from the suspicion with which he'd received her when she first arrived. "Tell him 'thank you' for me."

"Can't you tell him yourself? It is noon, after all." Gojo gets what she's not saying and grins. "Or were you planning on staying in bed all day?"

Utahime hates the feeling of sleeping too late, and of idleness, but it's a tempting prospect. "Well, you did say we had nowhere to be…"

"We don't." He rejoins her at the edge of the bed. "And you gotta be exhausted."

"Ugh. I am."

"And I'd be more than happy to keep you company-"

She swats him with another pillow. "Don't push it, Gojo."

"'Kay." He still doesn't listen, though, and he pulls the covers she'd thrown aside up to his chin when he flops down. "But, y'know…could be nice, staying in."

"Well, yes, that was my point."

"Staying in together."

That suggestion holds so much more weight than it should.

"Gojo," Utahime says gently. "We're not…you realize that we're not a couple, right?"

"I do. Yeah." He licks his lips. "But I'd like to be."

Utahime shakes her head, surprised to find herself more regretful than annoyed. "You're not in any position to be thinking about that, Gojo."

"Yeah." She's not really sure if that means he gets it or not. "Still."

"Still what?"

"I still wish this" – he gestures to the space between them – "wasn't just a practical thing."

"Maybe someday." Utahime isn't really thinking when the words slip out of her mouth. "But not now, Gojo. You have to get better first." She reaches over to press her hand to his cheek. "And we have a whole world to fix."

Gojo's fingers wrap around her wrist and he turns his face to press a kiss to her palm that makes her cheeks burn. He says nothing; she doesn't draw her hand back.

"I'll stay with you, though," she says softly. "Until you're okay again. I'm still going to stay."

Kiev

The snow is thick this time of year, and with five teenagers cooped up in a single hotel suite – some on the floor, some on couches, two in the bed – it invites all manner of mischief.

"This is ridiculous," Nobara grumbles, pulling her foot out of knee-deep snow. "Why are we even outside?"

Inumaki gives her a look that she's supposed to be able to interpret but can't. " Ikura."

She figures he's probably referring to Panda, who's wandered off a ways to do who-even-knows-what. "What about 'im?"

" Tuna tuna."

"What?"

"He's telling you to look," Yuta tells her.

"Okay, at what?" Nobara asks, crossing her arms. "If I'm going to be out in this weather, it'd better be good."

She doesn't know why they're not all hunkered down in their hotel room right now, huddled under blankets with the heater turned up as high as it'll go. That was how she'd spent the night – snuggled up back-to-back next to Megumi in a tiny double bed, one end of her blanket in each of their right hands to hold it in place – and she'd still been cold; this, though, is on another level.

Yuuta looks like he's going to answer when his eyes go wide and he ducks, hands coming up to protect his face. A hastily-assembled-snowball hits his gloved hands, and Nobara gets the gist now.

"Oh," she says under her breath. " That's what this is about."

She doesn't want to be out here – didn't even bring proper gloves, only a pair of the knitted kind that won't do a thing against the snow when it melts in her hands – but a competition is a competition, and she grins, bending down to scoop up as much powder as she can. It falls apart in her hands; no matter – it always takes a little time to get to the kind of snow that'll stick together. And no one's expecting it when she finally gets the consistency right and sends one hurtling towards Inumaki's unprotected back.

He turns.

She grins.

His brow furrows like he needs to concentrate, and the game is on.

"You're soaked."

"Oh. Yeah." The heat of the stairwell is only making the sogginess of Yuta's clothes feel even more uncomfortable, and he gestures to his soaked jeans. "Snowball fight. Everyone ganged up on me."

Fushiguro looks at him blankly for a moment while he processes that, then his eyes widen in alarm. "Does 'everyone' include Kugisaki?"

"Uh, yeah," Yuta answers uneasily. "Why'd'ya ask?"

"She shouldn't be out in this," he mutters, already taking the steps down two at a time and leaving Yuta and the drip-drip-drip of the slowly-melting clumps of snow on his jacket alone in the stairwell.

"Oh, good! Fushiguro!" Nobara's eyes are bright and her arms are full of snowballs, but she frees one hand to beckon him over. "Come help me kill these losers!"

All he can manage in response to that is a glower, and he grabs her arm a little too roughly to pull her away from the car she's hiding behind in the parking lot and back towards the safety of the hotel. She cries out in protest as a few of the snowballs on top of her precarious stack fall to the ground, and he pauses to make sure she's unhurt. That gives her just enough time to twist free and enough momentum to throw a snowball in a perfect arc towards Panda, who yelps in indignation at the cold against his fur.

Nobara cackles, and she turns to Fushiguro as if she expects to find not an adversary but an ally.

"Kugisaki," he says wearily, "you're not strong enough to be out in this yet."

"Oh?" she turns on him, snowball at the ready, and hardly flinches when Inumaki uses her distraction to throw a snowball that hits the back of her beanie. "Wanna see about that?"

"Kugisaki, no-"

She lets out another wild cackle, landing the iciest snowball in her arsenal square in the middle of Megumi's chest. "Didn't Gojo ever tell you that calling people weak is no way to get a girl?"

"I'm trying to keep you alive!" he calls, but she isn't listening anymore, and it's becoming clear that he's going to need to indulge her before he gets his way. "And for the record, I'm not in favor of this!"

"But you are playing." Nobara's smile stretches the whole width of her face – one of the rarest kind she has, the one that tells its recipient that nothing in this world could make her happier than what she's seeing now. It's freezing, but Megumi feels curiously warm at the sight.

It's been so long.

"I'm not responsible for your self-inflicted injuries," he mutters, and pitches an awkwardly-shaped lump of powdery snow towards Nobara like a baseball. It comes apart in midair long before it makes contact.

Her bright laughter seems both cruel and entirely unnecessary, and he's never heard anything more heartening.

Tuscany

It almost feels like it could snow tonight, and though Utahime might be able to say that's why they wander aimlessly for miles after dinner, she knows that it's not. She could blame the cold for her indulgence in allowing Gojo to take her hand as they walk, but it's not any more responsible than is the inherent romance of a place neither of them know anything about. And she could blame the chill for the rosiness of her cheeks, but she knows it isn't its real cause.

"I'd come back here someday," Gojo tells her. "When we're not running for our lives."

" You're running for your life. I'm just your babysitter."

"Then why are you holding my hand?" He counters – oh, how Gojo Satoru loves throwing her words back in her face.

"Because you'll get hit by a car if I let you cross the street by yourself," she answers, refusing to miss a beat. "Why would you want to come back to a place you only ever saw because you were running from the Council?"

"It's beautiful up here." He tucks his free hand in his pocket. "I've always liked the mountains."

"Hm. I suppose." Learning those mundane facts about a man she's known for half a lifetime never really loses its charm. "You have?"

"I dunno. Seems nice." She doubts he notices that his thumb is working a back-and-forth motion across the side of her thumb. "You like it?"

"Not really. Maybe in different circumstances." Utahime's sigh goes white against the night's chill. "I haven't really been able to think about anything but staying safe for long enough to consider it, I guess."

He laughs mirthlessly. "No wonder you slept in all day."

She'd curled up against him without even wanting to, making for his comforting warmth as she drifted in and out of sleep, and he thinks – remembering how small she'd felt in his arms – that he wishes she'd admit to her exhaustion more often.

"Hardly," she says. Church bells begin to peal out the midnight warning; they stop, and with agreement that they don't have to verbalize, Gojo drops Utahime's hand to tuck her beneath his arm.

"Hey, Senpai?" he asks after a moment's pause.

"Wow. Look who's respecting his elders now."

"It pains me, but for you…" he trials off. "Anyway. I'm lucky it was you who found me."

Utahime considers his words carefully before she responds.

"I think," she tells him, "that that was how it was always going to end up."

Kiev

"You're not taking care of yourself."

"I'm taking fine care of myself." Nobara strips off her soaked gloves, then her hat, and starts to wrestle out of her coat until Megumi realizes that it's a bit of a struggle with so many layers underneath and helps her tug down the sleeves. He's not usually the type to fuss over anyone like this, but his best friends don't usually spend months comatose, either, so normal rules don't seem to apply. It's just like Nobara to exert herself too much and he has to make sure she doesn't.

Simple.

"No, you're not." Megumi drapes Nobara's parka over his arm and tries not to make a face when he realizes that it's soaked through. "There's almost no way you're fully recovered, and getting yourself soaked through out in the cold like that isn't going to help."

"You sound like a nanny," Nobara grouses, but her discomfort is just as evident when she's finally stripped to her innermost undershirt and leggings and peels off her wet socks. (Proper footwear: another need Nobara had neglected.) "Are you going to try to give me warm milk now?"

"No, but you do need to eat-"

"Y'know, this is kinda funny. You," her finger makes a circle in Megumi's direction, "mister 'I-only-save-people-who-deserve-it,' fussing over me."

"Did I ever say you were undeserving?"

"No, you're just not the type to fuss over anyone." Nobara doesn't put much stock in the implications of his question. "It's weird."

"I don't want you to die. How is that weird?"

Nobara doesn't really know why she smiles at that. "Better not let anyone know you're going soft, Fushiguro."

Tuscany

It's a little sobering to realize that, in all of their time together, Gojo has hardly seen Utahime sleep.

Maybe he's just been oblivious, or slept more than she has, but she's always been gone from the bed by the time he wakes, and she's never fallen asleep before he did. She's been working herself to the bone keeping them safe, and he hasn't done a thing to deserve her. How typical – he hasn't done a thing to deserve her in his life, and that started long before she'd stepped in when he'd lost all hope. She's more than he should ever be able to earn and yet, even in this hazy limbo between clarity and confusion, it's all he wants to do. And that feeling only grows now, watching her sleep, head lolled against the frosty windowpane.

A half-downed mug of hot cider rests by her side on the end table and her legs are tucked up beneath her. Her cheek is pressed to the window, and a small spot of condensation forms where she exhales. She seems so delicate like this, save for the scar across the bridge of her nose, but he knows better now than to let that thought linger. Utahime might be weak in the only sense that has ever mattered to him, but even Gojo is neither egotistical or stupid enough not to realize that he'd have crumpled long ago without her steely resolve and taken Yuji down with him.

And if he's honest, he is in awe.

So, though he knows he cannot break her, he's gentle as he drapes Yuji's blanket across her shoulders. It isn't often that Yuji lets go of his last reminder of Nobara, but he'd never deny Utahime; still, he watches, just to be sure Gojo is careful with both. And he is, tucking the edges in where he can without jostling her.

He feels a little more alive, these days, and it would be wrong not to balance the scales now that he can when she's spent so long caring for him.

"Night," he murmurs, too quietly to be heard, and brushes a lock of her hair back from her forehead so he can kiss it as she's kissed his on those blessed few occasions when she's deemed it appropriate.

She does not stir, and he knows, for the first time in his life, the feeling of unmitigated gratitude.

Kiev

Nobara feels something brush her shoulders before she realizes that anyone is there.

"You're shivering," Megumi says flatly, unceremoniously dropping a blue paisley blanket onto her back with stiff hands. "Don't get cold."

It's as Megumi a way of expressing concern as ever there was, and though she hadn't exactly been shivering, she smiles as she pulls it tight around her shoulders.

Notes:

It is the blanket tuck. the blanket tuck for meeee 3

Everybody thank Ola for the "first-years blanket exchange" headcanon. It has sown so, so many possibilities which I can only hope to have properly reaped 3

Chapter 9: Motion Summary:

Back in Japan, the Council begins to catch on.

Notes:

I wrote this baby in an hour and twenty minutes before my Japanese I midterm and OOH I am proud of myself-

Anyway. Please enjoy the obligatory boring "what was going on back home while everyone was snuggling and being cute elsewhere" chapter.

Chapter Text

Kyoto

"You must at least acknowledge how suspicious this is beginning to look."

Gakuganji has little patience left for the Council's endless tergiversation and little choice but to bear it, now that it's gotten this far. He can think of few worse combinations. "I'm aware," he grumbles, certain not to sound too compliant lest his higher-ups think he's cooperating with them.

He is not.

He will tell them what he needs to tell them to prevent their wholesale slaughter of the entire jujutsu community; that is as far as his cooperation goes. Perhaps in the past it wouldn't have been so, but he cares for stability more than he cares for hierarchy; if the one no longer sustains the other, his allegiance lies with the former.

"And I'm sure I don't have to tell you that one of your direct subordinates might well be at the root of all of this," another councilman says.

"At the root of all of what?" Another Council foible: he's never seen a group so in love with vagueness or so inclined to use unspecific pronouns to denote things he's supposed to be able to pick up on from context but never does. "And who're you talking about?"

"Iori Utahime, obviously. Though I'm positive you already knew that."

"Oh. Her." He raises his eyebrows. "Isn't the party line that she's dead?"

That has, at least, been what the Council has been saying: Iori Utahime is missing and presumed dead, another victim of Gojo Satoru's treachery. Even the profundity of Gakuganji's distaste for the man isn't nearly enough to make him buy it, but it's best if the Council believes that he has. He's quite certain she's missing on purpose, helping Gojo evade the authorities, but giving that answer would help no one.

"It is," says one councilwoman who doesn't even seem to believe her own words. "But we have to consider the possibility that the disappearance of so many sorcerers with personal connections to Gojo Satoru at the same time implies something else."

That it was idiotic of you to send his would-be lover and a handful of teenage students who adore him to bring Gojo in? Yes. Yes, it does imply that. Gakuganji can't voice that particular thought, of course, but he's rather tired of this conversation and of general Council stubbornness, and he thinks it. Vigorously.

"I don't think that Utahime has the backbone to betray the Council," he says instead. "It well may be that the students refused to carry out their mission, but I doubt that she would." He pauses. "And why is she the suspect, anyway? I would think it would be Fushiguro who took the brunt of the suspicion. Didn't Gojo raise him?"

"Utahime is higher-ranked and has access to resources and information that Fushiguro doesn't, as well as any information that might've been passed along by the students who left before she did," the first councilman who'd spoken explains. "And she also has far more personal loyalty to Gojo than most of his students do."

"I highly doubt that," Gakuganji counters. "And where would she have gotten information from if all of the students disappeared?"

"There has to be some kind of leak. They wouldn't all be able to stay hidden if they weren't in contact," the councilman says.

Gakuganji is beginning to pick up on something. "You never actually thought that Gojo killed anyone, did you?"

The man's expression falters for a split-second but he regains his composure so quickly that it's barely visible. "What would make you think that?"

"The fact that you're telling me that you think they're communicating," he says. "How could they be in contact with each other if they're all dead?"

It's such a painfully obvious point that Gakuganji rather wants to melt the Council into a collective puddle for forcing him to make it at all.

"Well, you see-"

"You didn't actually think they were," Gakuganji goes on. "You wanted an excuse to keep sending students after him, and you knew that only something drastic would justify doing it. No?"

"Well, that may have been a consideration," a councilwoman admits. "But it was a possibility-"

"And what do you think Utahime has to do with this?" Best to bring the conversation back around to its source before he loses his mind at the sheer stupidity of it all. How do these people even stay in power?

"If she is, in fact, alive, she's in the best position to give and receive information. And there's the matter of motivation."

"Motivation?" Gakuganji crosses his arms. "She can't stand Gojo."

"Perhaps she says that, but we're decently certain that they're lovers-"

"They aren't." Gakuganji almost laughs, the idea is so absurd – Utahime is far too stubborn to admit that she wishes they were.

"And Utahime has always been one of the more…principled teachers at the Colleges," she goes on. "She's…idealistic. And extremely dedicated to her students. Admirable qualities, until they prompt her to turn traitor."

"But none of this explains-"

"She's also a close friend of Ieiri Shoko's," the first councilman interrupts.

"And this is relevant…how?"

It's obvious: Ieiri was one of the few to return from her mission, and if anyone had information, it would be her – Gakuganji is decently certain that Utahime's leaving right after Shoko returned was intentional. Still, though, feigning ignorance is the best way forward.

"We believe that Ieiri may have been the source of information that allowed the group to coordinate its movements, and frankly, Gakuganji, it is surprising that you hadn't already come to the same conclusion."

"Well, I don't know anything about that." It's always best to lean into his cantankerous side when someone is being unpleasant – it usually gets people to leave him be. "And I dunno anything about Utahime, either. Far as I know, they're all rotting by the side of the road somewhere. Why would I know anything?"

"If you're sure, then." The councilwoman smiles tightly. "But I do have one more question."

"Yes?"

The woman holds up a neatly-typed itinerary. "Would you prefer that we asked Zenin Maki instead?"

Tokyo

"Ieiri."

"Gakuganji?" Shoko raises her eyebrows, leaning back against a filing cabinet as she pulls a cigarette from her lips to speak more clearly. "How did you even find my number?"

"You need to get out of Tokyo tonight," he says, ignoring her question. "And take the Zenin girl with you."

"So…they know." Maki's shoulders round; Shoko can't remember ever having seen her most determined student so dejected. "Figures."

"Why the long face? We can still get out." Shoko takes a long drag of her cigarette – Utahime would kill her if she knew how much she'd smoked since her students began to disappear, but if ever there were a time to let off steam however she had to, this is it. "And the council still doesn't know where the others are, so we can join up with them. We might have to drive a ways to find an airport with a flight out tonight, but the sooner we leave, the sooner we're safe. So…what are you so worried about?"

"I know we can get out." Far from dejected now, Maki's expression looks hard, hostile. "It's just frustrating."

"That we got caught?"

"That I did everything I was supposed to." She inhales sharply. "That I don't even know how they found out and I probably never will."

"Your train itinerary," Shoko tells her. "I think the document was saved to the school's cloud thing. I dunno. Gakuganji just said they found it on a school server."

Maki curses under her breath.

"It's all right. Really. We all know you're not great with technology," Shoko tries to reassure her, though it really isn't very reassuring. "You did the best you could."

"I shouldn't have made such a stupid mistake," she protests. "And if they have access to my files, they probably have access to my school email account, and Yuta's been sending me these ridiculous love letters with all the information they'd ever need to find him in them, and the last one went out while they were on the way to Delhi but they still might be able to track him to Kiev from that and it's my fault-"

"Didn't know you and Okkotsu were a thing." Shoko takes another drag. "And if his last email said he was in Delhi, what are they gonna do with that? He and Fushiguro flew to Kiev, so they can't trace his train trip like they could before. If anything, they might assume he's still there, which is good for us."

"But it's proof," she says, her voice uncharacteristically small.

"Maki?"

"Yeah?"

"I've never known you to panic before." Shoko reaches across the coffee shop's table and presses her hand. "And there's no need to start now."

"But...they know," she says. "That train itinerary might've fit with my cover story – maybe Yuta sent me the document, or I helped him plan it so I knew what to tell the council. But if they looked into the rest of my accounts for evidence, they…they would know. It's not that hard to find irrefutable proof that I was feeding them false information."

"Right, which is why we have to run. But honestly, you were always going to leave anyway," Shoko reasons. "Now we're just speeding things along."

"We weren't supposed to leave under threat of execution for treason or whatever it is they Council would charge me with."

"No, but all in good time. 'sides, don't you miss your friends?" Shoko tries to calm the shaking in her hands, cropping up now in spite of her cigarettes and feigned composure. She hasn't felt so shaky since the early days after Geto's disappearance, and it's not an entirely inaccurate comparison. "We'll be safer once we're back with everyone."

"Right." Maki looks thoroughly unconvinced, but she gives in. "So…Kiev."

"Tonight," Shoko confirms. "I'll look at flights now."

"Can I call Yuta?" Maki asks. "Let him know what happened?"

Shoko's expression softens. "You two really did get close, didn't you."

"Um…I guess." Maki is rarely so hesitant, but a combination of embarrassment at her gaffe and sentimentality born of fear for her life makes her shy. "But mostly for practical reasons. And…we don't have to use burner phones if I'm not going to be around to let the Council hack mine, I guess. So I can call his actual number. Which is…different."

Shoko smiles knowingly.

"Wait, they what?"

"The fake train schedule. I saved it to the cloud." Maki winces. "The school cloud. And they found it. Doesn't tell them much, but we have to assume it means they know everything. The calls." She pauses. "The emails."

"Wait, so are you okay?" Yuta sounds alarmed even across a distance of thousands of miles. "Have they said anything? Are you getting out?"

"We're fine for now. Gakuganji had a meeting with the Council and warned Shoko that they were onto us."

" Gakuganji?" Yuta asks. "Actually helped you?"

"I didn't believe her, either. At first." She clears her throat. "Also. That body in motion thing."

"You…weren't supposed to read that." She can practically hear Yuta's face turn red. "Are you safe?"

"We're driving to Sendai and getting on a red-eye to Kiev tonight." Maki pauses. "Um…what exactly were you thinking?"

"Look, I haven't had that much else to think about except you-"

"Staying alive," she says flatly. "Is that the only thing you remember from physics?"

"…no?"

"Name one other thing."

"Maki, is this really the time?"

"The Council might kill me if Shoko's awful driving doesn't first, so yes. Distract me, Okkotsu."

"…simple machines?" Yuta supplies. "Does that count as remembering something from physics?"

"Anything more specific than that?"

"That counted!"

"Right." Maki rolls her eyes fondly. "You're ridiculous."

"I'm aware."

"Did you seriously think I wouldn't see your emails, though?"

"Um…you don't check your email, so…no?"

"Is that why you didn't want the train schedule?"

"Uh, kinda?"

"You idiot."

"I am very ashamed," he agrees.

"You should be." She pauses. "I miss you."

"You…do?"

"Of course I do." She scoffs. "Idiot."

"Even though I'm stupid and should be ashamed?"

"I am also stupid and should be ashamed," she points out. "You're not the one who uploaded classified information to a school server."

"Honestly, you still did a really good job," Yuta tries to reassure her. "I mean, I'm still alive, right? And who'd'a thought they'd actually look at that stuff?"

"Thanks, but if they'd looked while you were still in Delhi, my indiscretion could've gotten you and Fushiguro both killed. At least all you did was write embarrassing love letters."

"You told Nobara," he says. "I thought you were mad."

"Mad?"

"I mean, you hate that kinda stuff. Why do you think I sent it where you'd never read it?"

"Because you have commitment issues and didn't want to stick your declarations of undying love where I might see them?" Maki guesses.

"No, because I thought you'd stab me, Maki. What about those emails said 'commitment issues' to you?"

"Good point."

"Mmhm."

"Maki?"

"Yeah?"

"Sorry I was stupid."

"Don't be. They were a nice distraction."

"Oh?"

"From the anxiety and despair? Yes. Surprisingly."

"Uh…I'm glad."

"How is everyone?"

"Um…all right, I guess? We had a snowball fight," Yuta offers. "In the parking lot. They all ganged up on me."

Maki tries not to laugh at the image, and Shoko glances back at her in the rearview and smirks. "You should've just turned around and wrecked them. Aren't you supposed to be special-grade?"

"They were so mean," Yuta whines, more for effect than because of any legitimate grievance.

"Oh, quit whining. It's Inumaki. Of course he did."

"Panda said it was because I have a 'bully-me' face," Yuta goes on.

"Not inaccurate."

"But you still like me, though, right?"

Now Maki really does laugh. "You're ridiculous, Okkotsu."

"I know." He clears his throat. "Anyway. Kugisaki is okay. Fushiguro is fussing over her a lot, which is weird, 'cause, like…it's Fushiguro. Otherwise, we're good."

"Mm. Good to hear." Maki leans back against her seat. "How's winter in Ukraine?"

"Well…"

Sendai

En Route to Kiev

"You doing okay?"

Maki buckles her seatbelt, then looks up, pushing her slipping glasses back up her nose. "Who, me?"

"No, the cursed spirit on your shoulder." Shoko gives her a come-on-now look. "Yes, you. How are you holding up?"

"Fine." Maki nods shakily in the affirmative. "We're kinda out of the woods now, I figure. Right?"

"Pretty much, for the time being." Shoko pats Maki's shoulder. "So at least until we touch down in Kiev, we made it."

"Oh. Good." Maki knew that, but it was still a relief to hear someone say it. "I'm…I'm glad."

"Excited to see everyone?"

"A little, but mostly just worried that we'll be sitting ducks once we're all together."

"Eh, they already are," Shoko reasons. "We're not really adding much to the danger by joining them."

"Still."

"Still." Shoko's been trying her best not to seem worried, even if the unnecessary speed at which she'd taken every turn on the way to Sendai spoke to nerves she didn't want Maki to see, but she is – terrified, almost, because there's truly no going back once she and Maki join the rest of their allies. Danger compounds like interest the longer they let the Council think things over and it is, necessarily, the highest that it's ever been right now. She decides to distract herself. "So. You and Okkotsu."

Maki side-eyes her. "Irrelevant."

"Hardly. I've never seen you look so soft." It's hard not to smile in earnest, and Shoko knows she chose the right topic of conversation. "It's cute."

"I'm not cute."

"Is he?"

"Very, but I fail to see why you need to know that right now."

"No reason. Just gotta let off some steam, since I can't smoke in here." She shrugs. "Pissing people off usually does the trick. Learned that from Gojo."

"Ew."

"Right? I wish it didn't work as well as it did." Shoko turns to the window, watching the beehive rush of the workers on the tarmac below – rushing around as they refuel, driving luggage carts, loading suitcases into the belly of the plane – to calm herself. "Never thought I'd say this, but I kinda miss him."

"Seriously?"

"It's been so quiet lately."

Maki leans back against her headrest. "It has."

"Hope he's doing okay."

"I doubt it," Maki says.

"Oh, me, too. But…maybe Hime's managed to work her magic. I dunno. No one gets to his head like she does."

"Really?" Maki sits up again. "From what I've seen, it looks like she hates him."

"Nah, she's got a soft spot for 'im deep down." Shoko never thought she'd say those words so fondly. "And he's got an even bigger one for her. Hope she's been able to help him."

"I never knew you cared that much."

"I like to think I don't." Shoko presses her forehead to the window. "But…he's just about all I've got left of my old life, y'know? I'd be hard-pressed not to care at all."

Kiev

It's so early in the morning that it's almost nighttime again, and this time Yuta waits alone in the parking lot, watching the falling snow drift to the ground in the light of the streetlamps. It's too cold to have been out here for as long as he has, but he's not going to miss this.

It's not quite dawn yet when the glass doors slide to the sides and two figures whose identities he knows before he sees them step through, bundled in coats and carrying suitcases, and his breath catches.

The figures freeze for a moment on the edge of the sidewalk; the taller one, face half-hidden behind a scarf, nudges the shorter one, bare-faced except for a pair of earmuffs, and they walk to him, neither willing to break the stillness by meeting the other halfway.

And they reach him, and for a moment, no one moves until he reaches out his hand – pointlessly, uselessly, and Maki finally looks up.

"Yuta," she says, her smile small and a little shy. "Hi."

Chapter 10: Calm Summary:

Maki and Yuuta reunite; Todo doesn't have a subtle bone in his body.

Notes:

The fskg scene that ends this chapter has been in my brain for eight thousand years, please enjoy.

Also, no, Yuta, you are NEVER living "a body in motion" down.

Chapter Text

Kiev

"I missed you."

Yuta's voice is impossibly soft, but it still bounces off the elevator's walls, and he's glad that Ieiri had chosen to take the next one to give the two a moment alone – he wouldn't want a witness to this reunion. He doesn't know how many of what would normally be boundaries that he's overstepping, but he doesn't think Maki is going to care if he reaches out to touch her face, and indeed she doesn't. She doesn't lean into his touch or close her eyes, but she lets him hold her cheek and smiles.

"I missed you so much," he repeats, and he lets his wayward thumb brush a gentle arc along the curve of her cheekbone.

"Glad you were thinking about important things while you were running for your life," she says, trying to sound more sarcastic than she has it in her to be right now.

He swallows hard and drops his hand. "Very important things."

Maki ducks her head to nod. "I'm…I'm glad you're all right."

"All thanks to you," he says.

"Well…Fushiguro helped." She smiles sheepishly. "I…I wasn't really that worried about you."

"Uh…thanks?"

"I was worried that I'd get caught and you'd be screwed, but as long as that didn't happen, I knew you'd be fine."

"Oh." That makes more sense. "Um…well, we're…okay now."

"Yeah. We're fine." She nods. "I always think I got used to not having you around a long time ago, but it was still kinda weird."

"Is that a Maki way of saying that you miss me?"

She punches his arm. "Of course it is, idiot."

He looks at her for a moment; she looks at him; they look at each other, hands awkwardly limp at their sides, until Maki clears her throat and drops her gaze to the floor. Yuta does the same, scratching at the back of his neck, and then looks up again. She follows; they repeat the pattern what feels like far too many times, and when their elevator stops at the floor they're staying on, they press the "up" button again by unspoken agreement.

Only after they change elevators do either of them speak again.

"So, this isn't the time," Maki starts, leaning against the elevator's right wall and picking at her cuticles, "but a kiss would be appropriate after everything we've all had to endure."

Yuta's ears redden, and he looks like he wants to shrink back into the left wall. "Um…do you… want me to kiss you?"

"That was what I was getting at, yes."

"It really isn't the time," Yuta stammers.

"So you don't want to kiss me."

"No! No. I do!"

"Then why haven't you?" She gestures at him impatiently. "What was your whole thing about bodies in motion? Get yours in motion already."

"Are you ever going to let me live that down?"

"Not a chance."

"You want to kiss me?"

"…yes, Yuta, I've said that."

He nodded, then took a few halting steps forwards and stood in front of her. They're almost at one another's eye level like this, but he can't look at her, can't reach for her without feeling like he's going to combust.

"Yuta," she says, more gently this time. "You okay?"

"Nervous."

"You don't have to kiss me-"

"No, no, I want to."

"Okay, so…"

"Yeah."

Maki laughed brusquely. "Could this be any more awkward?"

"…no," he says miserably. "Sorry."

"Don't be."

"Ah. There you are." Maki and Yuta break apart at the sound of Shoko's voice and she crosses her arms. "Looked everywhere for you."

Yuta's face is beet-red and his ears and neck are almost as bad. "Um…sorry?"

Shoko pushes the elevator closed. "Gross," she mutters.

Better they do this there than where someone less prepared for their antics might see them.

Megumi lifts the comforter as if he's defusing a bomb.

There are enough variables in play here to have kept him lying awake for almost an hour, trying to account for them all. A sliver of cold air through a gap in the covers might cause Nobara to stir; sudden movement might disturb the mattress and wake her up; she could be so sensitive to noise that she'd wake at the sound of rustling sheets. He'd never exactly slept next to her before, and for the few days that they have, he's been too exhausted not to stay in bed as long as she does – these are things he doesn't know yet. So he has to assume that anything might wake her up.

A sleep-deprived Kugisaki is something to be feared, and forty-one minutes have passed by the time he manages to talk himself into inching upwards on his elbows until he's sitting. He gingerly peels back the covers, relieved when the gentle rhythm of Nobara's breathing doesn't change, and he thinks he's out of the woods when his feet touch the floor.

He's not, of course. It wouldn't be Kugisaki that he was sleeping next to if an escape were that easy.

" No," she murmurs, still sleepy, and her arm snakes around his waist.

Dammit. Nice going, Megumi. "Kugi…saki…?"

" No," she repeats. " Cold."

"Sorry?" Megumi keeps his voice low so he won't wake Inumaki, sprawled out against Panda on the floor, or Yuta and Maki, wrapped up in a tangle of limbs on the pull-out couch bed. (Yuta snores. Megumi thinks Maki must have the patience of a saint to cling to him like she does when he carries on like that.)

"It's too early," she says groggily.

"I need to buy toothpaste," he tells her. "Sorry. Did I wake you up?"

"At six?"

"We're out and I'm going to have to use Inumaki's if I don't get some this morning and he uses that kids toothpaste that's supposed to taste like grapes." Megumi wants to gag just thinking about it. "It's been bothering me all night-"

Nobara props herself up on her elbow, palm pressing into her cheek at an unflattering angle. With her free hand, she pushes a strand of her hair, longer than she usually keeps it after two months in a coma, out of her eyes so she can look at him. "Seriously, Fushiguro?"

"Look, just go back to sleep-"

" No." Nobara flops flat on her stomach and uses the momentum to grab Megumi's waist and pull him back down. "Use mine. Stay here."

"What…flavor is it?"

"Mint. What kind of heathen do you think I am?"

"But-"

"No one's leaving this room until nine." He's already flat on his back, so Nobara plops her head down in the center of his chest to pin him. "'cause I said so."

"Because you said so?" Megumi isn't in the mood to argue. "Really?"

" Fushiguro," Nobara whines. "I'm still recovering."

He prepares to respond but then stops in his tracks, since he can't really argue against that.

"And I need lots of sleep," she goes on. "And you're disturbing it by trying to leave."

"Can't you just go back to sleep after I leave?"

(Nobara just smiles because he can protest all he wants, but he still wraps his arms around her waist when she settles against him like the fake he is.)

"I have to stay warm," she says sweetly. He knows very well it's all fake, but the innocence in her voice makes Megumi's ears redden. "You don't wanna leave me cold, do ya?"

A truth which few know about Kugisaki Nobara: she can put up all the fronts she wants, but she loves to be cuddled – loves to steal other people's warmth when she's always cold, loves to be held, loves to wrap her arms around people she trusts and rest. And she's been alone on a bed for far too long.

"You're ridiculous," Megumi sighs.

"Mmhm." Nobara hums happily and puts her arms around his neck, but not before she tucks the covers back up around her shoulders to trap in Megumi's heat. He's not really warm – not nearly as warm as Yuji is, which Nobara has outright said on a number of occasions – but she's naturally clammy, and she always feels a little warmer to the touch when they sleep together like this. It's one of the reasons he allows her to boss him around like this. "You love it."

"I…really don't."

"Please. Bold of you to assume the princess of this realm doesn't have you under her thumb."

Megumi rubs at his eyes. "How are you too tired to let me leave but awake enough to talk like that?"

"It's one of my many assets." He just knows Nobara is smirking. "And I didn't say I was tired, I said you were warm.

And he can't argue with that. Nobara has always been a little bit like a house on fire, and now she is cold when his hand brushes her arm, and that is not the way that things are supposed to be.

"And do you feel cold?" he asks, just to be safe.

"Mm, no," she murmurs. "No. Feels nice."

"Uh…thanks, I guess."

Count that at the top of the list of sentences Megumi Fushiguro has no idea how to respond to.

"I'll go with you later, 'kay?" she says when it's obvious that he isn't going to say anything. "To get toothpaste 'r whatever."

"But I'm using yours, right?"

"Yeah, but still."

He considers the prospect for a moment.

"We could use some snacks," he decides.

"Mmhm."

"I could use some 'not having to deal with Okkotsu and his stupid heart eyes for five seconds.'"

"Nine is good," she says.

"Nine?"

"Sleep, then snacks." She nudges her forehead against his shoulder and, when that fails, takes one of his hands and sets it against her hair. "Until nine."

"Why did you put my hand in your hair?"

"'cause you're supposed to pet it. Duh."

"I said I would keep you warm, not… cuddle."

"You should be honored that I'm letting you touch my hair, Fushiguro."

His cheeks burn, annoyingly, again, and he takes his hand away as if she'll feel the heat in his cheeks conducted through his hand. "Be glad I'm letting you sleep in," he mutters.

But she drifts off after a few more muttered protests, heavy in his arms even though she's small already and light as a feather after months of inactivity. And, though he'd rather die than admit it, he gingerly touches the crown of her head, then drags his fingers through the soft, fine hair at the front of her part when he realizes that even after sleeping, it's soft. He withdraws his hand after only a few passes, hot with embarrassment even though there's no one awake to see him, but it's…nice.

It feels nice.

He thinks it'd be for the best if he could forget just how much.

Kyoto

"What the hell are you doing in Kiev?"

"I just got here!"

"I got that, Todo. You don't have to shout." Mai holds the phone a few inches away from her ear so he won't deafen her. "And that isn't what I asked."

"I'm supposed to rendezvous with Fushiguro's group so that we can-"

"Wait, Fushiguro who's supposed to be dead?" Momo cuts in, pulling Mai's phone to her ear while it's still in her hand. "What happened to him? Are you with all the other kids who disappeared?"

Mai sighs and switches her phone into speaker mode.

"Kiev?" Kamo asks. "Why so far?"

"We're running for our lives!"

"You sound…really excited about that," Miwa observes. "Why are you so excited about that?"

"Because I'm going to be reunited with my brother!"

Mai pointedly ignores him. "And since when do you know what the word 'rendezvous' means?"

Todo pointedly ignores her. "In only four days, the eight of us are going to reunite with Itadori and his cohort in Italy-"

"' Cohort'?" Kamo says under his breath.

"Italy?" Miwa perks up. "What's in Italy? Is Gojo in Italy?"

"Wait, back up. Nine of you?"

It's Mai's interjection that Todo chooses to address. "Myself, Nitta, Fushiguro, Kugisaki, Okkotsu, Ieiri, Panda, Inumaki…and…" he pauses. "…your sister."

Mai's expression sours. "So they told Maki, but not me."

"No, Maki inserted herself into the situation because she's in love with Okkotsu," Todo informs them. "And then she got caught."

Mai scoffs. "Of course she did."

"And is Utahime-sensei with you?" Kamo asks. He probably hates what he knows Mai is getting at, but the weeks they've spent worrying for their teacher have bound them all: she looks to him, and knows that they're of one mind in at least this one respect.

It's funny, the difference losing Utahime has made.

"No, she's in Italy with Gojo and Itadori." Todo sounds like he thinks this should be obvious.

"So she knew?" Miwa's eyes widen. "That he didn't kill anyone? And…and where Gojo was? And…and is she helping him? 'Cause she got sent to kill him, right? But she wouldn't. Would she?"

"She hasn't said anything to me," Todo admits, and now he seems almost sad.

"But she's in Italy," Mai says.

"And is she okay?" Momo asks.

"Ieiri says she is."

" Where in Italy?" Mai follows up.

She meets Momo's eyes, and Momo meets Miwa's, and Miwa looks to Kamo.

"Tuscany," Todo tells them.

He has to know what that information is going to enable them to do, so they can only reach one conclusion when he gives it to them anyway.

"Do you know anything else? The name of the town they're staying in?" Kamo asks. "What exactly they're doing in Tuscany to begin with?"

"They're having us all meet up to escort Gojo back home," Todo tells them.

That same determined look spreads like a ripple on water around the cluster of students.

"And where are you going to meet?"

"I think the town's called Avrebbe."

Mai nods. "Nearest major airport?"

"No idea."

"Why didn't Utahime tell us anything?" Kamo mutters. "Surely we could've been of some help."

"Doesn't matter." Mai's expression doesn't change. "She'll be grateful when she realizes that she needs all the help she can get."

Nobara almost drops her bag of snacks.

"Yeah. I know," Megumi sighs.

It's obvious what's happening before the elevator doors even open, and Yuta skitters to the opposite wall of the elevator, bright-red. Reflexively, Megumi sticks his foot in the door to keep it open, and Yuta gawks for another moment before he grabs Maki's hand and takes off running.

She looks all too happy to remove herself from the situation.

"Ew," Nobara grouses, following Megumi into the elevator with a bag clutched to her chest.

"You think that's bad? I had to watch those 'body in motion' emails get written."

"Wait, seriously?" Nobara's eyes sparkle with mirth, which Megumi would know if he could bring himself to look at anything but the floor. "Like…did he show them to you?"

"No, but he might as well have." It's not a memory that Megumi particularly enjoys revisiting. "It was…like watching a car accident."

"No kidding." Nobara lets out a pitchy giggle that doesn't match any sound he's heard from her before, and it makes him want to look up just to see what the expression that accompanies it on her face looks like, but he forces himself not to. He doesn't need her to see how flustered he's been getting over absolutely nothing at all lately. "Maki showed me some of them when we were both still back at the school. They were…"

"Horrifying." Megumi shudders.

"I mean, not really. They were cringey, yeah, but you could tell he really meant it." Nobara snickers behind her hand. "Still, though. I don't think she's ever going to let him live that down."

" I'm never going to let him live that down," Megumi mutters.

"You realize that implies that you've developed enough of a sense of humor to be able to tease someone, right?"

It couldn't be clearer that there's something cold and desperate hiding behind Nobara's snarkiness, but he's not any more interested than she is in figuring out what it's called. He plays along; they have both been through far too much not to permit themselves indulgences like that on occasion.

"I personally don't see the utility of such a thing," he says. True enough – he looks up, because he knows Nobara is going to scoff at that and it's reassuring, seeing her act like she used to, even when he knows she's putting on a show as much as he is.

Funny – Nobara, effervescent, wants to let him see how dull and flat and lifeless she feels after so many weeks at death's door, and Megumi, always so stoic, wishes he could show her the warmth and relief and affection he feels every time he sees her laugh and knows that she is alive and well. But neither says anything to that effect.

They couldn't.

"Of course you don't." She shakes her head. "Of course you don't."

And then she begins to laugh, and he realizes – and it feels a little like his blood is carbonating itself like soda – that she means it. She really thinks whatever he's said is hilarious, and he's never been funny to anyone before. It's a feeling so strange that it reddens the tips of his ears and the back of his neck and Nobara only laughs harder, setting her bag of snacks down so she won't drop it, when she notices how red his cheeks have turned.

I…made her laugh?

"Some things never change," she cackles, leaning into Megumi for support without even realizing it because she's about to collapse with the hilarity of it all – of a statement he hadn't even meant to be funny. And when he finally brings himself to look up, he sees that hers is a smile that cannot help but spread.

He's missed her.

"I guess they don't." he admits, and holds eye contact for once, and smiles.

Chapter 11: Devotion Summary:

Utahime makes a confession; Yuji receives important news.

Notes:

I sometimes make 11:11 wishes when I see that time on a clock. Dumb, I know, but fun. Tonight's was "that this chapter I'm writing be the best one yet."

It may just be that food tastes better when you're starving and writing is easier when you've had to force yourself to abstain to study for a few days, but I honestly think that it might be. Many mwahs if you catch that callback at the end.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Tuscany

"And they're all settling in okay?"

Utahime is standing by the window when Gojo enters, holding her phone to her ear and facing the balcony. She hasn't yet changed out of her day clothes, even though it's well past eight, so the moonlight casts a subtle sheen across the sheer blue fabric of her skirt.

"That's good," she says, nodding at something the person on the other end of the line. Gojo gingerly settles onto the bed, trying not to disturb her, and he idly notices for no reason at all that there's something oddly satisfying about the crisp, straight line that the dark blue waistband of her skirt makes where her white shirt is tucked in. "How's Kugisaki?"

Gojo perks up, even though he doesn't mean to. It's been too long since he heard that name last; he thinks to ask Utahime to put her contact – he's assuming it has to be Shoko – on speaker so that he can hear her news, but he's distracted momentarily and decides against it. He'll ask her when she hangs up; now, he'd rather notice that her hair swishes elegantly against the back of her shirt, and that her hand cradles her phone to her ear like it would cup a lover's cheek.

"That was to be expected, wasn't it?"

A silence, now; Utahime turns to cross to the bed and looks a little bit flustered when she realizes that Gojo's managed to sneak up on her. Shoko, she mouths to him. "Mmhm, I figured," she goes on. "And no word on the Council?"

Gojo can't figure out quite where that sour taste on his tongue is coming from.

"Well, be careful. And keep an eye on my Todo." Her lips quirk into the kind of smile that Gojo rarely gets to see because they're never meant for him. "Bit of a loose cannon, that one."

She listens to whatever Shoko is saying on the other end, still smiling, and nods. "All right. Well…only a couple of days now, hm?"

She's staring at a wall, so Gojo can see her face only in profile – the elegant cut of her jawline, the too-smooth skin across the bridge of her nose where her scar has had years to fade, her hair mussed from the wind and one sudden movement from escaping a crisp blue ribbon whose bow is beginning to slip loose. It's beautiful, but he knew that; it's a relief now to see that it's not creased with worry, because that must mean that she's gotten no bad news from Shoko.

"I'll see you then." She smiles again. "Bye, Shoko."

"Any news?" Gojo doesn't wait a single second longer than he has to once Utahime hangs up. "I heard you ask about Kugisaki. How's she holdin' up?"

"Fine, seems like. Megumi's worried about her, but Shoko says that's just Megumi being Megumi. Whatever that means." Utahime tosses her phone to the bedspread and sighs. "Apparently he says she's always 'unnaturally cold.' Who the hell knows what he meant by that."

"Oh." Gojo would usually smirk and snark about his ward's obvious weakness for Kugisaki at that, but he feels too fond now to think of it. "Okkotsu doing okay?"

"Traumatizing Shoko with his hormones." Utahime smiles fondly. "She told me she caught him and Maki going at it in the elevator."

Gojo manages to smirk at that. "I taught that kid well, didn't I?"

"And Shoko's going to stab you for it." Utahime laughs, and without even thinking about it, she rolls to her side and pillows her head against Gojo's shoulder. Her arms curl around his bicep, and he can feel the press of her cheek against his collarbone; he freezes, unsure if this isn't a dream he'll cause to evaporate if he moves too suddenly. "You really are a menace."

"Mmhm. So menacing." He presses his smile to her wind-tossed hair. "Kiss me, hm?"

" Gojo."

"Worth a shot." He sets his hand against the small of her back. "You seem happy, so…thought I might give it a try."

"It's nice to be able to talk to Shoko. Get some news on the kids. Does me good, I think."

"You miss 'em, huh?"

"I know you do, too."

"Yeah." His hand shifts slightly, pressing her shoulder into his side instead. "I do."

"They were worried about you."

He doesn't know why Utahime is choosing to mention this now, but there must be a reason, so he plays along. "That supposed to make me feel better?"

"Sort of. Since you're always saying no one cares about you and all."

"…oh."

"I…went to visit them a few times." Without warning or explanation, Utahime pulls away from him, sitting up against the pillows. She tucks her knees to her chest as a cradle for her chin and hugs them close to her body. "At the school, when…when you were sealed and Yuji was on the run."

That doesn't surprise Gojo, but something about it still hurts to hear. "Why'd you do that?"

She shrugs. "I felt bad for them."

"And, uh…how were they?"

"A mess. I mean, I thought Okkotsu was going to catch on fire every time I saw him, he was so anxious. Took a few visits for the other second-years to let me anywhere near him."

Gojo sits up, too, now, and though she's looking forward, he turns to her. "They're good kids," he says softly. "Loyal. They protect their own."

"I know." A lump is starting to form in Utahime's throat and she wishes she could swallow it. "I…had to convince them they could trust me. But I…I did. I'm glad I did."

"What exactly is the point of this anecdote?" Gojo asks, not unkindly. "I don't need you to tell me that you're some kind of saint."

"That's…not why I'm telling you this. I'm just doing what any decent teacher would've." Nevertheless, her face flushes. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that things weren't right when you weren't around."

Gojo doesn't even know where to begin to tell her how deeply he knows that. "People died because of me, Hime. You don't have to tell me that, either."

"I don't mean it like that. Sorry. Just…don't listen to me right now. I don't know what I'm saying."

"No, tell me. What's that mean?"

"That…that they love you. That's all." Utahime clenches her fists in an effort not to let any more obvious display of her mood slip. "They look up to you, and…and they worried about you. They…they willingly volunteered for that recon mission after Fushiguro disappeared. All of them, knowing they'd have to scatter after they left, because they wanted to make sure no one who could find you was around to tell the Council where to find you." It's growing harder not to cry than Utahime would like. "Panda called it a 'search-and-rescue' mission, and…it was."

"Are you trying to make me feel guilty?" Gojo snaps because he'd rather not fracture. "Because I do. I know you probably think I don't care about anyone but myself, and…sure. I get it. Sure does look like that. But it's not like that, okay?"

"Quit snapping at me. And I never said that." Utahime leans back into the pillows. "Or thought it."

"They why're you telling me all of this?"

"Because I need you to understand something, okay?"

"Understand what?"

"They left for the same reason I came here, pretty much. You kept them safe. They'd have gone to the ends of the earth to return the favor."

Now he freezes, and he blinks down at her, utterly nonplussed.

"What did I ever do for you?"

"Oh, nothing. You were unbearable most of the time. But…I could rely on you." Utahime shrugs. "Not too many people we can rely on in this world. You're learning that firsthand."

"You could," he admits. "Kills me to say it, but I'd have come running if you ever bothered to call."

She gives him a sideways glance. "Because you were in love with me?"

"Because you were Utahime."

"Really." She tries to smile and tries not to and can't manage either.

Gojo's voice is more strained than she thinks she's ever heard it, and he ducks his face to hide whatever it wants to betray. "Really."

"My circle of allies got pretty small," she admits. "With Nanami gone, and one of my students dead, and…" she takes in a shuddery breath. "You, locked up in a stupid box the size of a Rubik's Cube." Utahime laughs with a harsher edge than her laugher usually has. "A Rubik's Cube. And you, the strongest sorcerer alive – it was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard of. And all these people mourning – I wished it were me in that box sometimes just to shut them all up. Just so they'd know that the only person who could do a damned thing for them was still out there. Safe, and…doing your strongest-sorcerer thing. But it was you there, and I was just the chump stuck poking around at a school as moral support for a bunch of devastated kids who'd all lost friends and now you. 'Cause what else was I good for? I'm a teacher and some kind of pseudo-mother by default and a sorcerer who couldn't do a thing in Shibuya and if I'm not helping people pick themselves back up, I'm…I'm nothing, Gojo. Maybe you were right, y'know?"

She has to stop to catch her breath, but the air in the room is so still that Gojo doesn't dare disturb it with words.

"Maybe I am weak. Maybe you make me weak. Because no one ever had to worry with Gojo Satoru around – not even me. I had a number in my phone I could call to solve any curse problem I ran into. I had someone who never changed, no matter how much I wished he would. I had…I had someone who told me the things I was too afraid to tell myself. I had someone I kept on coming back to, and maybe that was infatuation, or stupidity, or attraction, or desperation, but I just…kept finding you. I had all of that, and then one day you got shut up in a Rubik's Cube and I didn't." She's breathing hard and her face is red and she cannot even think of looking at him, but she isn't finished. Her breathing slows; her hands drop helplessly to her sides.

"I cried," she confesses, her voice softer than she knew it could be at a moment like this. "After I realized you weren't getting out of that thing anytime soon. I sat down at my damned kitchen table and put my head in my hands and cried."

" Utahime-"

"I cried, because if you weren't safe, and if I didn't have you rely on, who was, and who did I have left? Shoko? Some scared kids who'd lost too much already? Gakuganji in a good mood?"

Another unbearable silence spans the width of the room, sinking down over them like summer humidity, and Utahime musters one last wavery inhale.

"And because I wasn't ready to admit that I was afraid to lose you."

She finally looks up, and he looks small when she does – as small as she thinks he must've looked in the prison realm, slumped against a wall, knowing his strength was waning and losing his will to fight its loss. He's slouched against the pillows; his eyes are cast down, but even so, Utahime can see them glisten, and she's never seen that before but doesn't need to be told what it means.

"Satoru" – her voice is hoarse with weariness, strained with grief – "are you crying?"

He has no thought but to grasp for her, and to pull her as close as she will willingly come.

She is all he can think of at all – sweet Utahime, who smells like her sandalwood shampoo even with the faint scent of smoke from the fireplace earlier lingering in her clothes; who tells him secrets he'd take to the grave if they were his because he is a coward, he thinks, who loves unwounded pride more than tenderheartedness. Because it is she he trusts wholeheartedly, she whose steely strength has held them both up when his own is gone; who loves him with the same magnanimity with which she loves all those in her care, and with something that burns brighter now. His hands pull her close and her knees settle on either side of his legs – it is as good as an answer.

He couldn't muster up a single word to say to her now if he wanted to – he doubts he could even say her name – so he buries his face in her shoulder, and she sits on his thighs, and neither thinks of the things such a position would mean at any other moment. It's almost miraculous that no such thought crosses Gojo's mind, really, but he can't spare the space for it – not now.

She is so much stronger than he will ever be, steely and bright-burning with conviction he suspects he might have always envied. She is quietly indomitable; she is gentle when a moment calls for gentleness, unflinchingly firm when she's called upon to take a stand. She followed a man she hated and a boy she did not know across half the world and carried them as far as she could without complaint; she'd held them when they could not hold themselves upright, though the task was thankless. Gojo has always thought of love as what destroys but she loves with the kind of love that defends – nurturing some, vanquishing others. He recalls the smirk she'd always wear when she'd catch him trying to smuggle frozen pizzas into the house ("not on my watch," "not in my house," and it really was), and the times she's opened her arms to Yuji when he was too cowardly to do it, and he thinks she might have saved him; he thinks of her gentle hands around his waist at night, and presses his forehead to hers, and he knows she did.

And he knows now that he loves her with the wholehearted devotion of a man who knows that he is less worthy of nothing than of having that love returned and suspects it might be, anyways.

It truly is a wonder, he thinks, how blessed are the undeserving in this world.

Her steady breathing grows ragged to match his, and when a tear slips down her cheek, he nudges it dry and then slots his nose in beside hers. They stay that way for a moment; he pulls back after a beat to find Utahime's eyes swollen and her cheeks puffy.

"I didn't mean to make you cry," he murmurs.

There is nothing gentle in Satoru Gojo, nothing soft or nurturing, but for Iori Utahime, he might try.

Sometimes, it's Nanamin.

You take it from here – Yuji thinks those had been the words he'd really said, but the dreams always twist them. It's all on you now, he'd said once, and another time it'd been you're all we have left, and always, always, blood spatters the lens through which he relives the memory, and his feet are planted to the spot.

Other times it's Kugisaki, pretty face tilted up towards him, pasting on the bravest smile she knows how to give him, but it's not it wasn't so bad that she tells him but you'll be okay without me or good luck out there or I'm counting on you.

He hadn't seen Gojo's sealing, but his imagination has invented no shortage of means by which it may have occurred, and it likes to feed them to the projector that replays the things he doesn't want to remember every time he can't keep his eyes open anymore. And he tries – he tries so hard not to sleep when he knows he won't dream if he doesn't – but he can't, and the weariness always catches up to him. He sleeps; dreams come, friends die, friends tell him he is their last hope.

He'd tried to sleep with the others the first few times, but it had felt wrong – he isn't a child who might reasonably be allowed to sleep in his parents' room after a nightmare. That hadn't been enough to stop him, though; that had only happened when Utahime had started to appear beside him in his dreams – not dead, but distraught, so utterly grieved that he thought she might die. And then he had had to stop.

He owes Utahime too much to taint her sleep with the images his mind replays.

Tonight, though, it is Kugisaki again, but no longer is he rooted to the spot. He moves, but he's a beat too late, and he catches her as she collapses, which has to be worse; she's limp in his arms, and that smile won't give him a moment's peace as he shakes her and begs and whispers promises he can't keep and she never wakes – of course she doesn't. For all he knows when he wakes up shaking, she still hasn't and never will.

He's on the couch when Gojo finds him, clutching his blanket around his shoulders – it might be the last gift she ever gives him – and shaking so badly it almost looks as if it might be from the cold.

"It's two in the morning, Utahime. This had better be important."

"It is." Utahime peeks around the doorway and, as she'd expected, Yuji is still huddled up beneath his blanket on the couch, his face buried in Gojo's shirt. He might or might not still be shaking and she thinks that the sight might make her heart give out after the day she's had if Shoko doesn't cooperate. "Please just put Kugisaki on the phone."

"What for?"

"It's important, okay?"

"She's going to be pissed."

"It's Yuji."

That gets Shoko's attention. "What about him?"

"He's…been having nightmares," Utahime explains. "About Shibuya."

"I thought you weren't telling him that she woke up."

"We weren't, but half of those nightmares are about her and he thinks she's dead." Utahime hates how matter-of-factly she says those words. "So please just go get her and let him see that she's alive, okay?"

"Hey." Utahime's voice is like warm honey as she sits down beside Yuji on the couch, holding her phone. Her other hand rubs circles against the plush of the blanket over his back. "I think I have something to make you feel better."

Yuji wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand and blinks up at her with an expression so utterly mournful that it almost makes Utahime cry again. "W-what?"

"Here," she says, passing him the phone. "Somebody wants to talk to you."

"It's not safe-"

"We can make an exception just once." Utahime presses her phone into his hand. "Go on, all right? Talk to her."

"To…her?"

Utahime kisses his forehead – it's a reflex now, almost – and gets up to give him the room.

"There better be a good reason Shoko woke me up at two in the damn morning."

Yuji nearly drops the phone.

That voice – that voice is the same as he remembers it, the same as it is in his dreams, and the words it's saying are unmistakably hers, but it can't possibly be real. This is some kind hallucination his subconscious dredged up, a wish-fulfillment fantasy and a consolation prize for the terror it had inflicted earlier. This isn't Kugisaki, alive and well and calling from Ieiri-sensei's phone – it's not. Believing things like that is only going to break him.

"You're not real," he says, his voice trembling. "You're not."

"Wait, Itadori?"

"You're not!"

"Excuse me?"

"You're not real!" he insists, his fist clenching. "You're not my Nobara!"

"Nope, never been 'your' anything. What happened to you?"

"Just stop, okay?" he tries to bite back a lump in his throat. "Just go away and get out of my head already. You're not real-"

"Hang up this call and FaceTime me."

Nobara gets it now, and she couldn't care less what the reason is.

"What … ?"

She hangs up and a video call comes through only a few seconds later; against his better judgement, he clicks.

She looks exactly the way he remembered her, except with an eyepatch, and bags under her eyes, except that she doesn't look the way he remembered her at all.

"Itadori," she says. "What's going on with you?"

"Kugi…saki…?"

" Yuji."

"But…you died," he murmurs. "I saw."

"Not…technically?"

"But in the dreams-"

" Yuji." She sounds like her heart might be breaking, and he knows his is. "I'm okay, all right? I'm fine! Got this eyepatch, but it's kinda sexy, right? Real mysterious." The smile she plasters on is so strained that even Yuji can tell that it's fake, but she tries anyway. "Did they not tell you I wasn't dead?"

Kugisaki Nobara is many things but kind is rarely one of them, and that makes this Nobara in his screen feel even less real than the one who'd been a disembodied voice through the phone.

"That's my blanket," she says, after a moment. "You kept it?"

He stills.

She knows that blanket. His eyes sting with unshed tears. She knows that blanket because she went out and saw it and thought it matched my hair and paid for it and wrapped it up and gave it to me and it's hers.

"No…bara?"

She looks him up and down, scrutinizes the slump of his shoulders and the sunkenness in his eyes, and she shakes her head.

"They should've told you," she murmurs. " I should've told you."

Notes:

DIDJA GET IT? DIDJA GET THE "you cryin'?" CALLBACK? *bounces on toes*

Chapter 12: Succor Summary:

The gang arrives in Tuscany. Author indulges love of pointless fluff, comfort cuddles, and backstory.

Notes:

I promise the opening Utahime scene is there for a reason. It's groundwork. You'll see. And for all of you who have been begging me to let Yuji be happy and hugged since, like, chapter 3: be fed. Be fed by the, frankly, obscene amount of hugging in this chapter. Enjoy your comfort cudds.

Why will I literally write 5k word chapters before I'll study for an hour? *laughs nervously*

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Two Years Earlier

Kyoto

"I just realized something."

Utahime cracks an eye open, half-asleep against the car's window. "What was that, Momo?"

"You never told us what your technique was," Momo tells her. This is probably not going to be a brief exchange, so Utahime sits up. "Today was the first time any of us saw it, or even heard about it."

"Oh." Utahime rubs at her eyes, trying to chase away the sleep that threatens to close them again. It's been a while since she's had to expend so much cursed energy in a single mission, and the crash of adrenaline that always follows a battle is slamming into her like a wall now. "Was it?"

"It's cool," Momo says. "Your technique. Like hypnosis?"

Utahime blinks – she's never been paid that compliment before. "Not exactly hypnosis, but something like that."

"So?" Momo tilts her head, asking for more. "What is it?"

"Oh." No one ever asks that, either. "Its technical name is Trance-Singing, but…most people who've heard of it just call it Lullaby." Utahime grimaces. "That isn't a compliment."

"Trance-Singing? So those curses were in some kind of trance?"

"Pretty much. Ever seen one of those videos of someone touching a shark's nose and the shark going vertical in the water with its eyes rolled back?"

"Um…no?"

"Oh. Then think of a cat that's smelled catnip."

Momo nods at that. "So they're, like…catatonic when you sing to them."

"Yeah, basically. Certain frequencies of sound that I can produce when I sing disrupt their cursed energy, so they go into this trance sort of thing, and they're a lot easier to finish off." She fishes around for the tanto she keeps strapped to her forearm beneath the sleeve of her miko. "Which is what I have this for."

"A…dagger?"

"It's a cursed tool. Not super powerful, since my technique is usually a supporting one. It's pretty rare that I'd ever fight a curse that hadn't already been weakened by the time I got to it, so…this is usually enough to finish it off."

"But why not?" Momo asks. "It was really effective earlier."

"Still pretty weak." Utahime slumps back against the carseat with a sigh. "The curses I used it against today were just third-grades, maybe borderline second-grades – nothing all that dangerous. The higher you get, the harder it is for me to hold them under my trance for more than a few seconds, so…no point."

"Oh." Momo frowns, then looks up at Utahime again. "So you're backup?"

Utahime winces. "That's not an inaccurate description."

"That's so unfair."

"It's really not." Utahime would've said exactly the same when she was Momo's age, but she's been at this too long for anything but resignation. "If it's what I'm best at-"

"But you shouldn't be forced into a supporting role just because your technique-"

"Is weak? It is." She's had a lifetime's worth of reminders of that – from the other Trance-Singing users in her clan, from the higher-ups, from Gojo Satoru, from a thousand different sources. "The fact is that I can't hold a first-grade curse under a trance for long enough to kill it unless someone stronger already had at it. That's…not an unfair reason for me not to be sent on solo missions."

It's the story of her life: backing up students with more potential than she'd ever had on missions where they never need her help, finishing off lesser-grade curses for whatever first-grade sorcerer is taking on the ones that pack a bigger punch, being paired off with special-grades and told to stay where she won't be in the way as if she hasn't spent a lifetime training, too. Momo is young enough to see the point of complaining about it, but Utahime has long been divested of the notion that it's worthwhile to make a fuss.

"It's still not," Momo decides, and all Utahime can muster is a grateful half-smile. She'll go far, this one – she doesn't have much raw strength, but her technique is one she'll get a lot of mileage out of and that reckless idealism might just pay off. Perhaps she's biased – she has a fondness for students who burn with the conviction that Utahime had long ago been forced to abandon – but she thinks Momo's future is bright. Brighter than her own had been, at least.

Gojo had told her once not to feel too cut-up about it when the odds had been stacked against her from the beginning: born to a clan too small to be noticed with a technique the elders thought was useless, and a woman, at that. She'd been doomed, he'd said, patting her shoulder and telling her she'd done the best she could. She'd wanted to punch him for that – he'd turned off his infinity and let her, because apparently he pitied her or something equally loathsome – but none of it had been untrue.

Lullaby, they call it. Trance-Singing is an art, a weak technique in all but a lucky few inheritors, but one that sneaks up on opponents and nearly always works on curses of the right grade; it takes years to master, and a knowledge of music theory and the science of sound as in-depth as the user's combat expertise to use properly. Nearly all Trance-Singers have perfect pitch; she does not, and to compensate, she'd had enough voice lessons that she easily could've applied as an idol trainee before high school was out if she'd felt like it. Perhaps she should've – it wouldn't have been nearly so thankless as the job she'd chosen. But to most it is none of that.

To the elders, it is Lullaby: a weak technique, a woman's technique. It is deceptively gentle where most techniques are brashly violent, artistic where most are athletic – fit only for backup. Its utility can't be denied, but it's been minimized; the Iori clan, which boasts few other innate techniques, has never overcome that blight, never grown in prestige. Even the most skilled of its sorcerers struggle for promotions.

Hey, it's okay! No shame in being weak, Gojo Satoru had told her after their first mission together, with a smirk that had seared itself into her brain and hadn't faded yet. And few even afford her the attention that Gojo had. It had been easier to resign herself, become what they thought a disappointment like herself would be. They hated her technique because it was gentle; she was always the first ready with guidance or a word of encouragement for a student. They thought its artistry had no place in jujutsu sorcery and she'd pour out her heart in karaoke bars. The Iori clan – nearly all women, infamously – was shamefully feminine; Utahime was as prim and polished as sorcerers came wherever those in power might see her. After years of conditioning, she feels more mother than sorcerer most days, and she's good at it. And she loves the students in her care, loves to help them grow beyond the place that she had reached before she stagnated.

Resignation is easy once she learns to do it.

"It's okay," she tells Momo, trying to smile. "I like teaching better anyways."

Lies are easy, too, now. She loves her technique, its uniqueness and its artistry and the skill it takes to manipulate in spite of its lack of raw power; nevertheless, she would denounce it if it was asked of her and convince herself she meant it. She likes it when she can forget what is expected of a woman like herself and drop all pretenses; she'd claim that the teacher with her elegant miko and perfectly-tied bow was the only Utahime that existed if anyone asked. She wants to be in the field; she prefers teaching, when given the choice, because that is the answer her superiors want to hear. And they're easy lies to tell.

She wonders if she'll ever be able to stop.

Present

En Route to Tuscany

"That can't possibly be comfortable."

"No," Yuta agrees. "It sucks. Armrest's stabbing me."

Maki shakes her head; every other day she wonders why she had to choose this particular person and his singularly senseless way of moving through the world to love. "You do realize that it goes up, right?"

She sort of doubts that he does.

"…oh," he says, evidently realizing that he should've. He sits up straight again to check for a way to remove the offending armrest and shakes his head when he finds one. "Right."

"Now." Maki opens up her arm again – it wasn't only for Yuta's sake that she hadn't wanted him trying to lean on her over the armrest. "You were saying?"

"Nothing. I didn't say anything." Realization strikes. "Oh, wait."

"Yeah." She nudges him with her open arm. "Go on. Not like I bite or anything."

"You definitely bite," he counters, but his heart's not in it. Or in anything but sinking into Maki's side with a melting kind of sigh and burying his face in the crook of her neck and feeling her strong arm around his shoulders. "Thought you didn't like cuddling."

"I'm trying to help you get some rest. You didn't sleep at all last night." True, but an obvious excuse. So what if Maki wants something to hold right now? He should at least spare her the indignity of admitting it. "Since…you said once that planes help you sleep. That's…that's all."

"You remembered that?"

"Yeah. I guess."

He tucks his face into her shoulder, shy, so she won't see that he's blushing, but he knows she knows. She's Maki – she always does. Just like he always knows – that she likes squid, that she won't admit it but she feels safe when he puts his hand on her back as they walk, that she thinks he's stronger than she is even though he's the useless one now and she's the one who kept him alive. He knows she hasn't been held in a long time, and that she sleeps like a starfish with limbs draped haphazardly over his, and that she doesn't mind his snoring (that bodes well for his fifty-year plan) but did take some videos to show to Panda if she ever needs to blackmail him. (Fine. Let her. She deserves them.)

"Yuta," she says, probably as gentle as she knows how to be, "you've gotta stop acting shocked to learn that I like you."

"…no," he decides.

" Yuta." She clears her throat. "I, as a person, am very against PDA."

"Yeah, honestly, I'm surprised that you-"

"I suppose almost dying made me…less resistant." Now it's Maki's turn to be flustered. "But so did you."

"…oh?"

"Please tell me you get what I'm saying here."

"I…think so?"

"Yuta, I would never in a million years be letting you… snuggle me" – she says it like the dirtiest word she knows – "on an airplane with hundreds of spectators while we're getting ready to go risk our lives for the third time in however many months if I didn't really want to."

"Uh…thanks?"

Maki huffs. "Look, Yuta, I'm trying to be heartfelt here, so if you could please just acknowledge that-"

He unburies his face and props his chin on her shoulder. "I think I'm in love with you."

Maki's face goes so red it looks like she might need a paramedic. "Not like that!"

"But-"

"Why are your only settings 'monosyllables' and 'secondhand embarrassment'?!"

"Oh." Yuta's eyes drop to his lap. "I…um. Sorry. I didn't…I didn't really think that through."

"Um. It's okay." Maki's voice drops and her hand goes limp against his arm. "I, uh…sorry, that was rude."

"Nah, s'okay."

"Not…really."

"I just…blurted that out. Probably made you uncomfortable."

"Look, Yuta, I…I'm not good at this stuff, but…I'm not upset with you. I just…don't know what to say."

"You don't have to, then. Pretend I didn't-"

"If you think for a second that I'm forgetting that you told me you loved me, you have even less brain cells left than I thought you did."

"…why are all of your compliments insults?"

"Sorry. Force of habit." She looks down at the top of his head, resting on her shoulder, then at his cheek, then at his forehead, and she judges the cheek to be the most reachable of the three and leans down to kiss it.

He raises his head, she lowers hers, and when she pulls away it's not her target that she's hit.

Yuta presses his hand to the side of his neck and looks so utterly dumbstruck that Maki worries he's got vertigo or something.

"Maki," he says dazedly, "what was that?"

"A near-miss."

"Hm?"

"That was supposed to be your cheek."

"You…wanted to kiss my cheek?"

"Not like I haven't kissed you before. Honestly. You're just making it sound embarrassing."

"But that's so sweet," he blurts out, and his arms wrap tightly around her waist again before she even has a chance to reply. They're seatbelted, but Maki's shoulder still slams into the window with the weight of his impact. "You're so sweet!"

Ah, right.

It's easy to remember at times like these, and her common refrain of why him is all too easy to answer. He sees her strength where others see only lack; he thinks her smallest kindness is worth all he has; he's happier to see her when she's been gone than anyone ever has been. He has the kind of eyes that could melt the stoniest heart, and always smells like the French cologne Gojo had insisted he start wearing when he'd come to the school, and he's shy when he kisses her, as if he's afraid to get it wrong when it's so important. He's lanky, but something about him is soft and inviting when she holds him. He's cheerful without knowing it or forcing himself to be. He probably gives old people directions for no reason – he's nice, and to Maki, that's sort of novel. He tells her she is incredible when she can't believe it, he's kind when she'd be harsh, and she doesn't really fancy the idea of sleeping without him once they arrive in Tuscany now that she knows he kisses her forehead every night when he thinks that she's fallen asleep.

Even if he says the most mortifying things, has a head forever in the clouds, needs a little extra help, doesn't have a shred of sense even when she lends him hers – he is wonderful, and she is grateful even for the things she wishes she could forget he'd said just because he was the one who'd said them.

Of course it had been him.

"If you insist," she says, leaning back against the wall next to the window so Yuta can lean against her.

They probably won't get much more of this once they arrive, and it's neither the time nor the place, but they might as well indulge themselves while they can.

Pulkovo Airport

St. Petersburg

En Route to Tuscany

"You think they're okay back there?"

"Fine, I'm sure." Mai takes a tiny bite of a sandwich that had cost triple what any reasonable person would've charged for it and wrinkles her nose in disgust. Airport food. Should've known. "'Sides, it's only a few hours now until their flight, I think."

"Is it?" Miwa pulls out her phone to check. "It's…wait, 5:30 P.M.? Isn't it daytime?"

"11:30 in the morning," Mai corrects her, pointing at a monitor with the local time displayed in the top right corner. "Your phone's still on Kyoto time."

"Oh. Right." Miwa laughs nervously and swipes through a few screens to set her phone to shift time zones automatically. "Are we nuts for doing this?"

"Honestly, yes." Mai pauses to chew, holds a hand over her mouth, grimaces at the toothpaste taste of the lukewarm egg salad filling, and considers throwing away the remaining three-quarters of her sandwich, never mind that it was nearly as expensive as their airfare. "We have no plan, no source of information besides Todo, and no idea what we're getting into."

"You didn't say any of that when we were talking it over and decided to go," Miwa reminds her.

"Because it's Utahime-sensei." Mai's eyes soften. "No way are we leaving her behind."

Galileo Galilei Airport

Pisa, Italy

"Everybody got bags?"

Nods all around. Shoko's eyes travel around the cluster of students; each holds up or gestures to their luggage when she reaches them.

"Okay, good, because if you lose something, we're not coming back for it." Unless you complain loudly enough, she doesn't add. "'Kay?"

"Can we please just get the rental car and go?" Megumi asks, shoving his hands in the pockets of his sweats. He's still wearing his travel pillow around his neck, and the paisley blanket that Nobara is almost never without these days is slung over his arm. "I think we can be trusted to get the right suitcase off the bag thing."

"Baggage carousel," Panda points out.

" Okaka."

Megumi looks like he'd like to strangle both of them.

" Anyway." Shoko thinks she might be the only person here as tired as Megumi is. "Everyone clear on what we're doing once we get there?"

"We never actually went over that," Maki says, "so no, we're not."

Of course.

"Right. Uh…Utahime said that the important thing is not to freak Itadori out too much." That's about all she remembers. "Or…something."

"Freak him out?" Megumi crosses his arms. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"He's…very on-edge. Apparently. We just need to try not to overwhelm him."

"We're already taking two cars," Maki reminds her. "Won't that be enough?"

"Hopefully, but we have to be careful. That's what Utahime said, at least." Shoko doesn't have a clue what she's talking about, but she remembers what Utahime told her, and hopefully that'll be enough. "Especially because he reacted so badly when we had him talk to Nobara."

Megumi's eyes narrow. "He talked to Kugisaki? When?"

"Few nights ago." Nobara makes eye contact with Megumi to get him to look at her instead of glaring at Shoko and it – somehow – works. "I'll tell you later."

"Kugisaki-"

"Later, Fushiguro." Shoko is surprised that Nobara didn't tell him about her conversation with Itadori, but she doesn't think it would be helpful to mention it. "Anyways. I guess…just be aware that he might panic when he sees you."

"Great," Maki sighs.

" Okaka."

"Yes, thank you, Inumaki, very helpful." Shoko needs to go and grovel for a raise after this. "Questions?"

Eight blank stares meet Shoko's.

"Okay then," she mutters under her breath. "Then let's go."

"Someone's gotta go up and knock."

Maki says that like she's positive it shouldn't be her, and Todo has barely opened his mouth to volunteer before Panda claps a paw over it and mutters " absolutely not" under his breath, but the rest look at each other helplessly, unsure whether any of them should speak up. Even Shoko seems to be at a loss – this seems like the sort of thing they should have planned, as important as it might turn out to be. Choose the wrong person and Itadori might close off like Utahime said he had after they'd made the mistake of asking him to talk to Nobara.

"Me," Nobara finally says, after a pause that drags on too long. "I'll go."

Megumi looks down at her skeptically. "You sure?"

She nods. "I think it'll be better this time."

He doesn't look convinced. "You sure?"

Megumi knows what had happened now – she'd hidden it when she returned to their room that night, trying not to cry because he'd know instantly that there was a good reason if she had – and Nobara wishes he'd get it, because of that, but he doesn't seem to. Surely if it had been him, he'd have wanted to be the first to reach out, to knock and greet him and prove that he was real. But he doesn't seem to understand that.

"Yeah."

The others don't seem eager to jump in, but they all watch with breath they won't admit is bated as she approaches the front door. For a moment, once she reaches the stoop, she just stands there, fist raised; it's odd, Kugisaki Nobara hesitating to do anything, let alone something she feels so strongly about. But it doesn't last long, and she raps at the door – once, twice, thrice, four times before the silent group hears the latch turn and Utahime pokes her head through.

Tension – Todo looks like he wants to call out when Utahime looks up and gives him a tiny wave, her expression softening, but Inumaki gives him a warning look. After a few words to Nobara, she disappears back inside, and Nobara jogs over to rejoin the group.

"Blanket," she tells Megumi, and he hands it over, though he isn't sure why. Maybe it's something she wants to be a part of all of their reunions like it had been with him; it wouldn't be a bad idea. Those blankets (his is stowed in his suitcase) are a thread connecting their trio, and he thinks that picture, blanket fluttering in the wind and picking up errant snowflakes as she stood in the light of a streetlamp outside the airport in Kiev, might stay with him for the rest of his life. And he can't help but be a little bit out-of-breath at the same sight repeated elsewhere.

Nobara's blanket flutters behind her just as it had then, clutched around her shoulders, and Megumi can see when the door creaks open the exact moment that Itadori Yuji feels his first relief in months.

"Hey, stranger."

Nobara manages a faint smile, even though her heart sinks with relief and sadness all at once at the sight of Yuji's sunken face. He has to know it's her, and that she's real – the blanket ought to reassure him of that – but he still doesn't really look like he believes her, and for a moment he doesn't manage to say anything at all.

"Itadori," she says gently. "Say something?"

"No…ba…ra?"

"Yeah." She might cry. "Yeah. That's me."

"You're…real?"

"Yeah. See?" she holds out her hands; he takes them, and he turns them over in his own like he's never seen a pair before. He seems transfixed, tracing every ridge of her knuckles; his eyes narrow. "I'm right here."

"You're so cold," he murmurs, and when he looks up, his eyes are fearful. "Why are you so cold?"

"I'm fine, Yuji." She doesn't even know if that's true when everyone who's touched her lately was worried at her clamminess, but she's not letting anything break her resolve now. "So can you just…say something?"

His eyes are wet with tears, too, now. It's hard not to let her own out.

"I…I had a dream."

She doesn't think she's ever spoken so tenderly than she does when she replies, and she's never had a gentle bone in her body, but that doesn't matter when she wraps her blanket around Yuji's shoulders. "I know."

"I…I was talking to you."

Wait, he thought that was the dream?

"That…actually happened, though." Yuji's eyes widen, and he looks like he's about to reply when she cuts him off. Best not to make him spiral. "…never mind."

"It…what?"

All right, start over.

"Hi," she says. "Been a while."

He knows what she means to do without even saying it, and oh – she's missed that, their effortless ability to exchange intentions without words. He's barely coherent but that, he can do.

And he can pull her into his arms and hold on so tightly that she doesn't think she'd care if she broke in two.

"You're cold."

"I know, Yuji." Nobara hasn't used his family name all day and if he'd had any energy left with which to think about that, he'd have loved it. "I do live in this body, you know."

"You never used to be this cold." Now that he's convinced that she's real, the thought of her inconvenience seems to make him crabby. He all but shoves his blanket into her arms – hers, ratty and worse for the wear and so overused she barely wants to accept it. She can't very well say no, though. "Are you sick?"

"You sound like Fushiguro." Nobara nevertheless spreads the blanket out over her atop the bedspread. "What is it with you two and me getting cold? What am I, a Victorian child who's going to waste away if you don't smother me with blankets?"

He looks away. "We just don't want to take chances."

"I'm fine." He rises from the edge of the bed and she frowns. "Hey, come back. You're warm."

"Oh? I'm warm? So you do need-"

" Yuji," she whines, tugging at the sleeve of his sweatshirt. It's probably one of Gojo's, since it seems two sizes too big. " Warmth."

He can't very well say no to that, and for all his grumbling, he doesn't seem the least bit disgruntled when she flings her leg across one of his, splays out like an octopus, and hums happily. " Warm."

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"Mmhm." She takes in a deep breath of the scent of his sweatshirt – it's got Gojo's French cologne mixed with the deodorant brand Yuji's sworn by since middle school (it makes him smell four years younger and Nobara hasn't stopped mocking him for it since she found out), a little bit of fireplace smoke, and that neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant Yuji smell she hadn't realized she's missed. "You're warmer than Fushiguro."

"Am I?"

"You can tell him that." She pokes his arm. "He'll prob'ly get really pissed. 'd be funny."

"Why?"

"'Cause he's jealous. Duh." Nobara giggles – he doesn't think he's ever heard her giggle – and pokes his arm again in a spot a few inches up from the last. "He gets jealous a lot. Didja know that?"

"Of who?"

"Yuta put a blanket around me a few days ago and I think he almost killed 'im."

"Oh, yeah. Yuta. What's up with him?"

Yuji's pretty much forgotten that people besides Nobara exist since she arrived. He'll probably latch onto Megumi like a human backpack tomorrow to even the score, but he'd barely so much as greeted the others. He'd feel bad about it if he hadn't almost lost the person he cherishes most. (So she's tied with Megumi – does anyone have to know that? It really cheapens the hyperbole.) He'd rather be back in the warmest room of the house, getting rid of that awful clamminess in Nobara's hands. It doesn't go away even though she's in Megumi's sweatshirt and a cape of two blankets beneath the covers – like chills without the fever – and Yuji isn't really all that upset that he has no choice but to stay and provide human warmth.

Still.

"He just makes out with Maki a lot, mostly," Nobara tells him. "Wrote her a bunch of these awful love letters about physics that almost got her and Shoko caught."

"Yuta and Maki?"

That…is a thing Yuji had never thought would be a thing, but he'll go with it. He'll probably be a little more confused tomorrow when he inevitably wakes up with his arms full of Nobara and has two hours of lying awake to waste on idle thoughts before she wakes and another half0hour before she permits him to move. But now…

"You feel okay?"

"Little sick of being fussed over, but yeah."

"You love it. Don't even bother lying."

Nobara smirks. "I do. I really do."

"Especially when it's Fushiguro-"

"Nah, I don't really care who it is." An obvious lie. "Adoring sycophants are adoring sycophants."

"Sicko fans?" Yuji pulls a face. "You're so mean."

" Sy-co-phants," she repeats. "You sound like Gojo."

"Utahime-sensei keeps saying that, too."

"Huh. I wonder why." She reaches up and ruffles his hair. "Anyway. Any other burning questions?"

"Lots." He lifts his arm so she can shift into a more comfortable position, and though he wants to, he doesn't protest when she throws one of the blankets to the side. "But…for later."

"Mmkay."

Nobara hasn't come in for the night yet.

Maybe she means to sleep by herself now that there's enough space to spread out, but Megumi doesn't want to think that's the explanation for her scarcity. He's grown used to sleeping next to her, and maybe he hasn't broken down the way Yuji and Nobara have, but he'd rather not be alone with his thoughts.

He doesn't know this house, though, and he lives in fear of what he might see if the room he chooses to poke his head into is the one Maki isn't supposed to be sharing with Yuta (Utahime's request, because 'no one needs to be getting pregnant' – that had gone over as well as one might expect). So he presses his ear to the each door.

Rudimentary, but effective, and a small price to pay for avoiding one of Yuta and Maki's… moments.

Todo's sprawled out on the living room couch, and Panda and Inumaki take the floor where Megumi is supposed to sleep later since there hadn't been enough rooms – no Nobara there. Gojo is mumbling something behind the master bedroom door, and a softer voice replies – is he seriously using this as a chance to get with Utahime?, he wonders, disappointed but unsurprised. There's a cloud of smoke outside one door, which he thinks is probably the one Shoko is sharing with Nitta. The third murmurs Megumi doesn't want to make out in another – Maki's, no doubt.

She has to be in this one.

"Nobara?" he whispers, poking his head through a crack in the doorway and switching on his phone's flashlight. "You in here?"

"Hng?" Nobara's head pops up, half-buried under a mound of blankets – Yuji's doing, probably. She shields her eyes against his flashlight. "You trying to blind me or something? Turn that off!"

"'Bara?" he hears Yuji mumble sleepily, and it's a few seconds before his head pops up, too. His arm is slung across Nobara's waist, and-and-

Get it together, Fushiguro.

"Why are you sleeping together?" he asks coolly.

"Dude, she's cold. What was I gonna do, say 'no, I'm not gonna keep you warm'?"

Oh. Right. He tends to forget that Yuji is the kind of person who'd thought it was appropriate to kiss his forehead before he'd bluntly told him he wouldn't allow it.

"He's warmer than you," Nobara says crabbily, no doubt upset at the interruption to her sleep. But her expression relaxes when she realizes he still hasn't left. "Join?"

"Why would I-"

"Well, you came looking for me because you didn't wanna sleep alone, right?" Nobara holds out an arm. "C'mon."

"She could use the extra body heat," Yuji points out.

It is a very sound argument.

He lies down, careful not to disturb anything, on Nobara's left, facing her back. She wiggles a little closer (Yuji whines and then moves to be closer to her) and he takes the cue.

It's nice, knowing he's allowed to wrap his arms around her and bury his face in the crook of her neck – comforting. She's so little; he forgets that sometimes, big as her personality is, but it's impossible not to realize when she's lying in his arms, tucked up under his chin. And she's not quite so desperately cold anymore, for which he reluctantly admits he has to thank Yuji.

"Better, Princess?" Yuji teases, nudging her forehead with his own on the other side.

(Megumi doesn't wish he'd thought of that. He doesn't.)

"Mm. Nice to be appreciated properly."

They look like kids. It's all Gojo can think when he pokes his head through the door of the room that's supposed to be Nobara's an hour after dawn: that they look like the children they are, and that it's a relief.

Nobara is in the middle, as expected. Yuji's arm, draped across her waist, lightly grips Megumi's forearm; Megumi rests his head on Nobara's shoulder, and where they've kicked the blanket off, he can see that Nobara's right foot is tucked beneath Megumi's calf. Yuji has his nose next to her neck like he's trying to sniff her hair – that would be a very Yuji thing to do – and not one piece of their bedding is still all the way on.

He thinks it might be thanks to Utahime's influence that he drapes one of the fallen blankets back up over them before he goes.

Kyoto

Several Hours Earlier

"And you think it's likely that the other students will do the same?"

"Highly. And it figures that when they do, they'll lead us right back to Iori Utahime." The councilwoman smiles – there's not a lot of satisfaction to be had in this job, but this does the trick. "About damn time."

"Right, Ma'am." The courier nods in acknowledgement. "Shall I have them followed?"

She waves him off. "You already know that answer."

Notes:

Yk, I wanted that reunion to hit harder, but it's okay. Boy needs some cudds.

Also, this is getting extra chapters. There was no way I could wrap all of this up in three.

Chapter 13: Confessions Summary:

Nobara opens up to Yuji, Gojo opens up to Utahime, and Yuji has a fun but spectacularly terrible idea.

Notes:

More feels, then fluff: that seems to be this story's formula. Anyways. I don't usually curse beyond, like "what the hell"/"damn," but I felt that it was somewhat necessary here for...effect in one specific instance, and yes, Ola, you may feel free to roast me for this.

Anyways.

Babies. I care them.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

"I'm always cold nowadays."

Nobara doesn't wait for Yuji to ask her if she's all right when he steps out onto the balcony where she's curled up in a chair in the watery, dawning light. All she wears is a fluffy pink bathrobe and that statement seems entirely self-evident now that he feels the chill in the air through his thin t-shirt, but he knows that it means she wants to tell him why she's up at six when, usually, she never wakes before nine on days off.

"Are you cold now?" he starts, taking the chair beside hers.

"Well, yeah, but that's not the same." Nobara inhales and lets out a long, slow exhale just to feel her lungs fill and empty, and she doesn't look at Yuji. "Being cold because it's cold isn't… this."

"Are you sick, then?"

"No, but…it's creepy." Her hands curl into fists in her lap. "Like…nothing can get me as warm as I'm supposed to be. Not even all of those blankets and sweatshirts or sleeping with someone on either side of me."

It's then that Yuji realizes that Nobara isn't talking about the weather or a physiological quirk they all already knew she possessed. He's silent, waiting for her to say something again – he needs more evidence before he can reply.

"I think it was 'cause of Shibuya."

"How?"

"I dunno, but…I'm cold, Yuji. Feel." She reaches out her hand; he takes it. His hands have always been disproportionately big and his body has always given off too much heat and his hand seems burning-hot as it swallows her smaller one. He'd expect anyone's hands to be cold in this weather, but hers isn't like that – it's sluggishly cold, lifeless. "That's…that's not normal."

"Nobara," he says, softly, her name a gentle puff of condensation in front of his face. "You're okay now."

"I'm not," she murmurs, tucking her legs up to her chest on the chair and wrapping her arms around them. "I know I'm not."

"Just because your hands are a little cold?"

"That's not cold, Yuji. Cold is" – she reaches out a hand and thumbs at his nose, which is red in the cold – "your nose right now. See how it gets all red because the blood is pumping to it, trying to get it warm?"

"Well, yeah, but-"

"My hands aren't red." She holds them up in front of her face, almost colorless. "They're just…pale. My body isn't even trying to get warm."

" Nobara," Yuji says, sounding hurt. "You're just still recovering. That doesn't mean-"

"You don't want to say it, but I know you've thought it." She draws her hand back again. "I'm…cold like there's no life left in me. I feel like a corpse."

But that's not true – the proof is right beside him, alive and whole. "You're not, though," Yuji protests weakly. "You're alive, right? You came back."

"But why isn't my body even trying?" her limp hands ball into fists. "Why is it just…giving up? I don't heal, Yuji. I got a papercut a week ago and it hasn't even closed up yet. A papercut. My hands feel like they've lost their circulation, and…and I'm always so cold, and…and I'm…I can't stop feeling like all of that is because I'm not supposed to be here."

Yuji wants to comfort her, but he's as badly in need of consolation as she is, and all he can do is reach for her clenched fist, gently unfold her fingers, and press her hand flat between both of his. He can't tell her that he's pretty sure she's still here because he couldn't take one more loss, or that if her body won't heat itself, she'll have to keep him nearby forever to steal his warmth. But he can hold her hand between his until it's not so clammy anymore, and he can make sure she doesn't pull away.

"I just feel like I should've died that night," she confesses.

"Well, then," Yuji says, because there is nothing else to be said, "I'm glad you didn't."

"It's like being up against a deadline. Like…I cheated death once, but I'm…weaker, and if I'm not careful, it'll get me sooner than it's supposed to, y'know?"

"Well, you always cheat at Uno," he points out. "And you get away with that every time, so why not death?"

"I'm pouring out my heart here, Itadori!"

"I know! I know," he defends himself. "I'm literally just stating a fact! You're really, creepily good at cheating at Uno, so…death, no problem, right?"

"You're not very good at comforting people."

"I'm bad at words. You know that."

"Yeah, I guess."

"I'm better at cuddles."

She pats his shoulder with her free hand. "You are, yes."

"But this isn't the time."

"Not really." She turns up to look at him. "Thanks."

"For what?"

"For knowing that."

"Oh. Uh…yeah."

"And for bothering to come and find me before I gave myself frostbite."

"Why did you come out here, anyway?"

She shrugs. "I wanted to see if I could get my body to start warming itself if I made it even colder than usual."

"You know that could be really dangerous, right?"

Nobara laughs shortly. "I don't really have the best concept of self-preservation right now."

"I can see that, but you still can't just… do stuff. What if you'd made it worse?" Yuji crosses his arms. "We need you."

"Nah, I'm pretty useless right now." She stretches her arms above her head, finally dropping her feet to the deck, and winces when they hit the cold, painted wood. "Honestly, I'm kind of dead weight. I just came because you needed me."

Yuji pauses a moment just to look at her, and she stands, even though it doesn't bring her anywhere near his eye level. Rarely has she ever seen such a serious look on his face, and he reaches down to set his hands on her shoulders.

"I did," he tells her. "So I need you to take care of yourself, okay?"

"Yuji-"

He sees that she's wobbly on her feet – probably a consequence of the cold – and offers his arm. She leans heavily against him, but even so, she's so small that it barely feels like she's pushing on him. "Nobara," he replies. "Think about Mahito."

" What?"

"You're always saying that spite is motivational to you, right?"

"Well, yeah, but-"

"Every day that you're still alive and trying to get better is basically you hitting Mahito in the face with a brick."

They both pause to contemplate that image. It's very satisfying.

"I'm honestly not that worried about you being cold or whatever. I think you're gonna recover fine. But…you saying that you don't think you should be alive…" he looks down at her warily. "That scares me, Nobara."

"It's not like I want to die, but it seems like I should've." It's a weak defense and they both know it, but she has no other.

"I think…maybe this is bad advice, but you're you. Motivational speeches and whatever aren't gonna work. So I'm just gonna say you should think about how badly Mahito wanted you dead and stay alive and get better out of spite." Yuji's jaw sets. "Y'know. Kick his ass in your brain."

"You're so stupid, Itadori."

"Yeah. I am kind of an idiot." He helps her over the threshold and hates that he has to. "But I'm an idiot who loves you."

"You can't just say things like that!"

"Sure I can. You're my best friend."

"I…thanks. I guess."

Kick his ass in your brain. Weird advice, but perfectly-tailored to its audience – he loves her, she knows, fiercely and intentionally, and it is warming, even in the chill.

"Utahime."

"Mm?" Utahime lowers her mug of coffee to look across at Gojo, leaning against the other side of the kitchen counter. He sounds a little serious, but there are enough possible reasons for that not to worry her. "What's up?"

"Thank you."

"Um…what?"

"Thank you," he repeats. And – she doesn't understand how, but he does – he looks as if he means it.

"For…?"

"Getting the kids here." He looks down into his mug (hot chocolate, not coffee), almost shy. "And…taking care of me and Yuji."

"Oh." It's a long time coming, but it's more earnestness than Utahime had ever expected from Gojo, and she smiles. "You're welcome."

"Um. I…I wanted you to, um. Know something."

"Are you all right?" She can't help but ask – she's never seen him struggle for words so much.

"Yeah. Fine. Sorry. Um, I…I just wanted to say that I…I don't think you're weak."

Utahime takes in a breath – that's as good as a love confession from Gojo Satoru, and she hadn't been at all prepared for it.

"I…oh." She bends her head. "I appreciate that, I guess."

"Your technique is actually useful. Never would've asked for you to be sent as my backup if it wasn't." He shrugs. "I told them to promote you, but they wouldn't. So…fill in the blanks. I thought it'd be easier for you if you thought that it was your technique that needed fixing, not the stupid jujutsu system."

" You recommended me for a promotion?" Utahime doesn't think she believes that, but he has no reason to lie about it, either. " When?"

"Couple years back. And right after graduation."

" Twice?"

He shrugs again. "You deserved it."

Utahime sets down her mug lest she drop it. "I…don't know what to say, honestly."

"Surprising, right?"

"Why are you telling me this now?"

"You're really askin' me that?" Gojo laughs mirthlessly. "After you saved my life and probably my kids', too?"

"You don't exactly do gratitude."

"True, but you're different. This is different." He sets his mug down, too, mirroring her. "You…had a kind of strength that wasn't anything like mine. Think that freaked me out, y'know? But I never thought you were actually weak. I just…didn't want you to get frustrated."

"So you tried to convince me that I had a shot when I didn't?" Utahime crosses her arms. "What about giving me false hope was supposed to be helpful?"

"I…don't know, okay? I was twenty and angry and in love with you!"

Silence, stillness – neither moves, speaks, breathes.

"And I was scared, okay? I…I was just a kid. I didn't know how to keep a good thing. Last time I tried…" he trails off. "I…I…was just 'the strongest.' Nothing more. And I didn't know how to tell you that…that I wanted you because you were more than that, except…I didn't know that, either. Didn't know what that feeling was and didn't want to. And the only way I knew how to acknowledge you was by…by getting them to admit how…how strong you were, and I couldn't, so I panicked, and…and once I started on the 'you're weak' thing I couldn't stop, even though I never thought that – I mean, everyone's weak compared to me, but by normal standards, you know – and…and…then you hated me, but you saved me."

He steps close enough to hold her face in his hands, and the way that he looks at her tells even the most stubborn of her doubts that she is what he holds dearest in the world.

"Utahime," he murmurs, "you saved me."

She swallows hard and closes her eyes, amazed that she trusts him enough now to let them flutter shut when he's so close to her face. "I…"

"I was a mess," he goes on. "I didn't even want to get better."

"But you did." Her own voice is barely above a whisper now.

"I did," he agrees, "because of you."

"Why are you telling me this?" Utahime wants to cry, and she can't even name the emotion causing her distress. "You…you don't just…say things like this, Gojo. You…I've never heard you thank anyone-"

"Because they're not you!" he drops his hands to his sides. "Because they're not you, Utahime. Because everyone who thinks I owe them thanks is a coward hiding out at headquarters, pretending that they did their part – but…but you…"

"I…can't understand, Gojo."

"Can't understand what?"

"Why…why you tried so hard to get under my skin for so long."

"'Hime, I loved you. Don't you think that terrified me? The last person I cared about turned traitor, remember?"

"That's not an excuse-"

"No, it's not." Gojo's fists clench. "But I didn't know any better."

"I find that kind of hard to believe."

"I…kept pushing you away because…safe distance was good. I think."

"And what changed?"

He finally musters the courage to meet her eyes. "Just about everything did."

"And…and why is this relevant now?" Utahime's voice pitches, and her skin feels too tight for her body. "Do you…are you still in love with me?"

He shakes his head mournfully. "I wish I wasn't, but how could I not be?"

She presses a hand to her lips, and he says nothing at all.

"I'm pretty much a mess, so I don't expect you to respond or anything." He regains his composure surprisingly fast. "Just…thought you should know."

"That you love me."

"That I'm grateful."

"Thank you, then."

"And that…I owe you a debt."

"No, you don't."

"After all of this?"

Utahime shakes her head. "No. Really."

"But you know that I'd follow you anywhere-"

"Fine, then. Follow me." She doesn't want to admit that she wishes he would. "But…Satoru?"

He looks up. "Yes?"

"Just remember that love never charges interest."

"That's my mattress, you know."

"I do." Yuji flashes Megumi what he hopes is a winning smile. "Need it, though."

"No, you don't."

"We're cheering up Nobara," he explains.

Megumi arches an eyebrow warily. "How?"

"Stair-surfing!"

"Whatever," Megumi mutters, shaking his head. He's not going to say no if it'll make Nobara smile again, but he's not particularly fond of the idea. Never mind that he doesn't really know what it is. "Leave me out."

"Oh, don't worry, we'll get you, too!"

Megumi closes the door behind him before he can further implicate himself.

"All right, so you're just going to hang onto the sides-"

"Is the staircase even wide enough for this?" Panda asks. "Doesn't look like it."

"Intriguing," Todo comments.

"And slide!" Yuji finishes, soundly ignoring the both of them. "'Cept we can't break the mattress because it's Fushiguro's and he'd murder me, so…maybe be kinda careful?"

"This is a terrible idea," Nobara informs him.

"I know, right? That's what makes it fun."

"Eh, true." She shrugs, then approaches the landing, where the mattress is folded up like a taco to fit in the narrow stairwell. "So. How fast do you think we can get this thing to go?"

"Not very." Yuta pokes his head around the doorway to watch for a moment. "It's heavy, so unless the person on it is also really heavy, it probably won't get much speed. So Kugisaki-"

"Needs a partner, then." She smirks. "Panda?"

"Wow," comes Maki's voice from behind a door. "He does remember something from physics."

The group shares a questioning look – are we allowed to tease him about that to his face? – before it dissolves into hysterical laughter.

"Todo, would you mind telling me what you're doing on the floor?"

"Surfing," he says innocently, raising himself up on one arm. "I won."

"You…won," Utahime says skeptically. "Right."

"It's called stair-surfing," he explains. "Itadori invented it. He thought it would boost morale." Todo laughs, and Utahime can't help but smile – she hasn't seen him so carefree since well before Shibuya. "I won!"

Utahime crouches to Todo's eye level, since it's rather obvious that he's too dazed to get to his feet after the knock he's taken at the bottom of the stairs. As it stands, he's about five stairs downstream of the mattress that had been meant to protect him, and were it anyone but Todo who'd fallen down half a flight of stairs, she'd be rushing to a hospital. "Are you hurt?"

"Of course not! I feel-"

"Concussed?" Maki, merely a spectator (she'd been running the stopwatch) and thus the only one who hadn't fled, calls from the top of the stairs.

"Invigorated!"

"Because?"

"Because I won!"

It's hard not to indulge him when he seems so happy. "How exactly do you win this game?"

"By making it to the bottom of the stairs faster than anyone else," he tells her. "Maki-san is timing us."

"Well, I would imagine that falling down the stairs would cut down on your time, but…I'm really not convinced that you're actually okay." Utahime scratches her head. "You sure you're fine?"

"I told you, I feel invigorated!"

Utahime's teacher-sense wants her to put a stop to this, but she knows very well that she won't. They're not in any real danger with Shoko around, and besides, this is how they're supposed to be: carefree and rambunctious, teenagers set loose in a vacation home with their best friends and not the sorcerers who will soon be responsible for the reordering of the world. They should be playing games and making messes and getting themselves into scrapes, and they finally are. Yuji smiles, and Yuta and Maki have to be separated by force, and Nobara has friends to lift her spirits, and when everyone gathers around Panda in a nest of the first-years' blankets to watch bad horror anime, she could cry with relief – they're children, just as they should be.

"Be careful, all right?" she tells him, offering a hand to help him up.

"Of course, Sensei!"

She knows he won't be, but that's Todo. So she smiles.

It's easy to convince herself, today, that all is as it should be.

"Kick his ass," Yuji whispers.

Nobara frees one of her arms to punch his shoulder, wriggling in his grip to get free from their knot of limbs, but she's laughing, and there's more light and warmth in her face than he's seen since she got here. At the bottom of the staircase, sprawled out in a tangle atop Megumi's bent mattress, they take a moment to laugh, and Nobara's heart twinges.

She is cold and she still feels the remnants of wrongness where death had touched her soul, but she has so much left – an indomitable will and an endless supply of bad ideas, time to be young, Itadori Yuji and laughter and the joy of holding on. Mahito had touched her soul, maybe, but not that; maybe she'd cheated death, but she'd cheat it over and over for another day like this.

" Kick his ass," she whispers back, with feeling, and her nose scrunches happily as she buries her face in the crook of Yuji's neck and feels his chest shake with laughter beneath her and smiles.

Notes:

Chekov's cold hands: if it's mentioned that Nobara's hands are cold in the first act, there's gonna be a reason for that in the next.

Also, *sobs* loVE DOESN'T CHARGE INTEREST *sobbeth*.

Chapter 14: Faultlines Summary:

Shoko and Utahime's strategic discussion takes a turn into the past; Gojo and Yuji are concerned; Megumi is worried about Nobara's reckless behavior.

Notes:

My amazing, unparalleled, showstopping Twitter friend CC drew the Fushikugi/Yutamaki elevator scene ( /eggstoastnbacon/status/1442570285467648007?s=20) and an original WA-inspired moment that I ended up writing into this chapter ( /t0dorokidokie/status/1442578888241025027?s=20) and everyone needs to go and perceive them. I love it and I love her :)))

This was supposed to have a chaotic scene where the kids all raided the house's left-behind alcohol stash together, but - as scenes are wont to do - it turned angsty, and no one got wasted.

also, I'm going to start doing Juju Strolls in the endnotes for funsies. Might go back and add them to previous chapters + future chaps will definitely have them, so if you've got JJS ideas, please leave me a comment and you might see them written soon!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

"We need to talk about getting home."

"Yeah." Shoko leans back into a barstool, twirling a lit cigarette between her fingers and trying to ignore the look of distaste on Utahime's face when a tendril of smoke floats in her direction. "Since I'm pretty sure we still don't know what we're actually doing when we get back."

"I think our rough plan was to gather enough allies that we could defend ourselves reasonably well and just make a run for it." Utahime shrugs. "You got any better ideas?"

"No, but…isn't that risky? I mean, putting all of our eggs in one basket like that?"

"It is, especially with everyone pretty messed-up already." As it stands, their ragtag group has two missing arms, two missing eyes, one missing cursed technique, and enough sleep deprivation and psychological trauma to fell an eleohant between its members. "But do we really have a choice?"

"Guess not." Shoko takes a drag to calm her nerves. "Gojo making any progress?"

"Well, psychologically, he's doing better," Utahime tells her. "He doesn't act like a toddler or a drunk anymore-"

"I find that shockingly hard to believe."

Utahime can't help but chuckle at that, however briefly. "I suppose you have a point there. But you know what I mean."

"Yeah."

"He's definitely more serious than usual, and…probably still repressing a lot of things, but he's gotten a lot better. That's…that's good, I think."

"But what about his cursed energy? Is it replenishing like it's supposed to?" Shoko asks.

"Honestly, I wouldn't know," Utahime admits. "He's not exactly trying to use it, but…I mean, I guess it should be? That might be part of why he seems to be doing so much better."

"I'm pretty sure he's doing better because of you." Shoko raises an eyebrow as if asking for confirmation. "Having someone to lean on and all. Plus, he gets to sleep with you-"

"Sleep next to me," Utahime corrects. Her face doesn't redden, thank God, but it feels like it should.

"I know, Hime. Geez. No one suggested otherwise."

"Right. Sorry."

"Besides, even if I had, it's no secret that you like him-"

" Shoko."

"Sorry, sorry. 'S how I cope with stress."

Utahime huffs. "You sound like him."

"Yeah, I know. He's probably where I picked up that habit from." Shoko knows she's about to lose Utahime, so she steers the conversation back on track. "So, anyways. Cursed energy?"

"Dunno."

"Well, we need to. It's kind of vital to the success of this whole plan-"

"I know, Shoko. I just…if you'd seen him like he was-"

"I did see him like he was, Hime. What does that have to do with anything?"

"I don't want to push him too hard, and…even if he is okay technique-wise, he's probably going to take more time to get past the mental block."

"Okay, but we can't afford to baby him-"

"And I'm not." Utahime laughs humorlessly. "If I were doing that, I'd have let him kiss me when he asked just to get him to shut up."

Shoko's eyebrows lift. "So you two do have a thing going on?"

"No."

"Then why-"

"We have feelings for each other," she says archly, "which we both understand it isn't time to act on."

Shoko snickers. "Wow. Never thought I'd hear you say that about Gojo."

"Well, he's…changed."

"Uh-huh. I'm sure he has."

"He told me he recommended me for a promotion," she says softly, playing with a strand of her hair. " Twice."

"I knew that."

Utahime's eyes widen. "He told you?"

"He told everyone. Tried to get a whole anti-council together to lobby for your promotion."

"And did anyone-"

"Can't remember." She doesn't see the need to tell Utahime that it had only amounted to herself and a Kamo clan higher-up who'd been eyeing her hand in marriage and thought that it would get him in her good graces. "But he tried. All that 'weak' stuff was just…posturing, I guess."

"I never knew-"

"He purposely hid it from you. I wouldn't worry about it."

He had: he hid it from her because he hated the idea of her learning how few people believed in her, because he didn't want to admit that he'd grown so invested in her cause, because the last person he'd believed in so wholeheartedly had proven himself so unworthy of that belief. And Shoko hasn't outright heard him say it, but she knows Gojo had thought it would be easier this way.

Supposedly, he'd been sparing her. Supposedly it would be easier for her to get used to that lack of belief in a controlled environment, to take slaps on the wrist from safe hands because others would shoot to wound and not to tease. He couldn't change the way the world saw her, so he would change the way she saw herself until she had nothing to fear from even the harshest critics; Shoko thinks he was wrong in that, and profoundly unkind, but not exactly unloving. It was all he could do, and if it pushed her away before she could hurt him, all the better for Gojo.

"I never thought I would be grateful to Gojo, of all people, but" – Utahime looks up, and her eyes are so warm and so soft that Shoko wishes she could take on the Council single-handedly to keep them that way – "I just…no one had ever had faith in me like that."

"I did," Shoko says, a little bit bitterly. "I always did."

"And I know that-"

"I wish I could change things, okay?" Shoko feels short-fused today and can't really say why. "I wish I could make people appreciate you, but they don't, and frankly, I don't know why you don't just run off with Gojo and call it a day-"

"Because I have responsibilities here!" Utahime's voice comes out strained. "These kids-"

"All you ever think about is the kids, Hime. Think about yourself-"

"You don't really mean that."

Shoko deflates – she doesn't, not in the literal sense. She doesn't want to leave these students to their fates, nor does she want Utahime to leave them behind or think she'd be happier if she did. And she'd rather Utahime do just about anything than elope with Gojo Satoru.

For a moment, though, it seems a tempting prospect.

"I don't, but…it sucks."

"What does?"

"You, doing all this and getting no thanks for it."

"Gojo thanked me."

Shoko laughs shortly. " Gojo thanked you."

Utahime's cheeks heat up. "He did!"

"You're kidding."

"No, he actually thanked me."

"Wow." Shoko pops her lips on the final consonant for effect. "Must be down pretty bad, then."

" Don't, Shoko."

"Are…you okay?"

"Fine." Utahime doesn't even look up before she responds. "Thanks."

"You don't look fine." Yuji pulls up a barstool next to Utahime's, rests his elbows against the countertop, and shrinks down until he's at her eye level so he can look at her. "Did something happen?"

"Oh, ah…no, it's okay." Utahime attempts to smile without much success. She can't very well pretend not to be rattled when fights with Shoko and moments of unrestrained frustration are both rare enough to leave her shaken, but Yuji doesn't need to know what happened. "Thank you, though. For checking in. That was sweet of you."

"Are you worried about going back home?" Yuji puts a hand on her upper back – maybe a breach of normal boundaries, but he thinks she needs it. "I'm worried, too, if…if that makes you feel better."

"No, nothing like that. Don't worry." She smiles again, just as weakly. "Really, Yuji, I promise it's okay."

It's a thankless task, caring for others, when it seems as if so much of what she feels has to be shoved down so that the others won't have to hide like she does. It's a series of everyday sacrifices almost no one thinks to acknowledge – Shoko was right about that, loath as Utahime had been to admit it. She doesn't think of her students and the little family she's fallen into in the past months as a burden; she never could. But being their strength still takes more of her than she knew she possessed.

But Yuji knows.

Yuji always knows, because he's been where she stands now, and he puts his broad arm around her smaller shoulders because the feeling of thankless toil is an old acquaintance of his.

"It's okay to cry," he tells her.

"I don't want to." That, at least, is honest; she holds her body stiff because she hates the thought of accepting comfort from the people she's supposed to be comforting. "But thanks."

The weight of Yuji's arm falls away; he leans a few inches down to kiss her cheek, a grown son bidding his mother goodbye after a visit home, then says, "I'll be back in a second, 'kay?"

Utahime barely registers his words, but she nods blankly, staring dead-ahead. All she wants is to turn off her brain and quit thinking for the five minutes it'll take her to pretend not to be exhausted again; Yuji's attempts at comfort do little to change that.

Then she hears footsteps, and feels warmth against her back, and a pair of arms wrap around her and a weight settles atop her head.

"Yuji said you were upset," Gojo says. "Told me I had to go and hug you."

"He did?"

"Yup. This actually was his idea."

She has to admit that it was a good one, but she'll get a crick in her neck if she sits like this for much longer, so she kicks the stool back under the lip of the counter and stands. Once she turns, Gojo drops his head to rest on her shoulder; his arms are long enough to reach up from her waist where he holds her and brush his thumbs across her shoulders.

"Just tired?" he asks, and she wonders how he knew.

She wonders a lot of other things – when he'd become so gentle, why he's open with his affection now. She's always thought Gojo was a good man, but not a kind one, or particularly caring, so it comes as a surprise that he holds her so tenderly at the mere suggestion that she's upset. Nevertheless, it's a strange turn of events she's willing to accept.

"Yeah," she murmurs. Her hands wrap up around his shoulders like claws. "Just tired."

Tired of running, of danger, of pressure – he knows what she means by that. He sleeps beside her, after all; he knows she's no longer running on four hours most nights. So he doesn't push for details. And it's funny, the way he doesn't have to: Gojo has little experience comforting, and even less talent for it, but holding Utahime seems to him to be the most natural thing in the world.

He wonders if that was what she'd meant when she told him that love didn't charge interest. She could've been talking about exactly this – the fact that, when asked to comfort her, his first thought had not been of the inconvenience, but of concern, and his second thought of desire that it be him who held her, him who answered that call. She could've been talking about the absurdity of the idea that he'd ever ask anything in return for the way he's holding her now. And he sees, now, what she'd meant, more clearly than he thinks he ever has.

"Hime," he murmurs. "You can relax now."

She buries her face in his shoulder and his hand finds the back of her neck, gently combing through the baby hairs at her nape. It is as if all the tension has been leached from her spine, and she might collapse if he weren't holding her up – let her, he thinks. Let her fall apart for a little while. She'd been the one to say the same to him, after all.

"I…I'm better, Hime," he says. "Let me be strong for you, okay?"

They've barely moved by the time Yuji returns, and he approaches cautiously – best not disturb them. But even so, Utahime pulls away from Gojo (though not enough that his arm doesn't still hold her shoulders) at the sound.

"Oh. Yuji." She smiles, a little less watery this time, a little more genuine. "Do you need something?"

"N-no, just…just checking on you. I'm gonna-"

"Wait, Yuji…"

He freezes. "Uh…yeah?"

Utahime reaches out her hand, and he knows it means that she wants him to come closer. When he has, she reaches up to touch his cheek, and her soft smile is as real as any he's ever seen from her.

"Thank you," she murmurs.

"Hey, Fushiguro, come look at this."

"Hm?" Megumi looks up from the kitchen junk drawer he's sifting through to see what Nobara wants. She's a few feet over, peering into an upper cabinet – this house is full of bric-a-brac its renters hadn't bothered to clear out, so they've been poking around in it. Such a diversion wouldn't usually interest Megumi, but Nobara had been excited about it, so he'd played along, and there are some weird things in these drawers. "What is it?"

She looks down at him, both hands still gripping the knobs of the cabinet, and grins. "Liquor cabinet."

"Liquor cabinet?" Megumi squints. "Why would the leave that behind? Alcohol's expensive."

"Dunno, but look." She pulls down a bottle of something amber-colored whose label is written in a language neither can even identify, let alone read. "There's, like, seven bottles in here."

"Seven…" Megumi crosses his arms – he already knows what Nobara is thinking. "Leave it where it is, Kugisaki."

She smirks, because she'd known he would say that. "Where'd be the fun in that? It's gotta be here for a reason, right?"

"Because someone left it? Definitely not so a bunch of underage high school students on vacation could get drunk when they're supposed to be staying alert."

"Aw, c'mon, don't you think it'd be fun? We could die tomorrow."

He casts her a suspicious sidelong glance. "That's…very morbid."

"But true." She shrugs, a bottle in each hand. "Live while we're young 'cause we might not get old, right?"

"Yeah, that…worries me." He sits on the top step of the stepstool Nobara had used to access a top cabinet a few minutes ago, legs spread, elbow resting on the handle. "Is this about Shibuya?"

She raises her eyebrows. "You're worried about me?"

"You're not acting like yourself."

"Pfft, please." She waves him off with a bottle of what he's pretty sure is vodka in her right hand, the amber stuff still in her left. "I was always the one who suggested dumb stuff back then, right?"

"Not this stupid. Or this careless. Don't you realize that the council could find us any minute?" Megumi raises his face to look her in the eyes. "Or do you not even care?"

She steps back, setting down one of the bottles, and folds her free arm defensively across her middle. "Why would you say that?"

"Yuji told me about this morning. You on the balcony." Megumi keeps eye contact even though it almost kills him. "How you were trying to give yourself frostbite to make your body do what it was supposed to or whatever."

"I wasn't trying to give myself frostbite." Nobara sets down the amber bottle and folds her hands at her waist. "I…just…wanted to see if my circulation was working or whatever. It's…important to know that stuff."

"You were going to make yourself sick."

"Normal people don't get sick from being out in the cold a little bit." Nobara seems to think he should know what she means by that, but he doesn't. "So…you think there's something wrong with me, too, don't you."

"I don't know." Megumi raises his hands in surrender. "None of us do. But you can't just do that, Nobara."

That unexpected use of her given name feels like a slap to the face. Megumi never uses first names; no one ever uses first names for him, besides Gojo, who doesn't care if he can't get away with it. And the breach of that unspoken contract makes her freeze in place, gawkily wide-eyed.

"You can't keep trying to prove to yourself that you're alive," he says. "That's what this is, isn't it? Trying to prove you really came back?"

"I…it's not," she lies, wishing she could stomp her foot or storm off because it's maddening, this way both he and Yuji have of reading her without even really looking. She feels like the cover article in a doctor's office magazine, glanced over in distraction and still somehow understood, and there's no more uncomfortable feeling for a girl who prides herself on control. "I know I'm alive."

"Then why?"

She smiles weakly. She remembers this smile – she swears the same muscles had pulled her lips exactly the same way when she'd told Yuji to tell the others that death hadn't been as unbearable as it seemed – and it's chilling, but the last thing she wants is to tell Megumi that. He hadn't seen what had almost happened to her; all the better. "We might not be for long, right?"

"We can't afford to think that way!"

Nobara shrugs. "Just bein' practical, y'know? No point in pretending the Council can't just kill us all on sight."

"The point is to avoid that-"

"But what if we can't?" Nobara laughs harshly. "As is, I'm already on stolen time."

"No, Nobara, you're not."

"Wow, two first names in one conversation? To what do I owe that pleasure?"

"You've lost your mind if you think I'm just going to let you die!"

"Did I say that I wanted to?"

"Did I say that you had a choice?!"

"And who are you to make that call?" Nobara's eyes narrow. "I got lucky last time, but if I'm out of luck-"

"Screw luck." Megumi stands, slamming the stepstool closed so forcefully that Nobara flinches. "What did luck ever do for anyone? It's just chance. Chance doesn't…play favorites like that. You want luck? Make your own!"

"Fushiguro, I-"

"Or – here's an idea. Let me make it for you!"

Nobara takes a few steps back and her face is so pale that he almost regrets his words. But, short of breath and unsure what's come over him, regret is the furthest thing from Megumi's mind. It's just the truth, really – he'd been too far to come to her aid once and nearly lost her, and it's not something he ever means to allow again; he's never believed in luck, and like hell is he ever going to leave someone as precious as Nobara in hands that, if they're even real, are so unkind.

"Wh…what is that supposed to mean?" she asks, backed up against the countertop with her fingers gripping the edges.

"I…don't know." He does, and he doesn't, and he doesn't want to. "I'm…sorry. Sorry. I'll stop."

"It's fine." Nobara swallows hard and looks at the tiled floor, raising one foot to rest it flat against the lower cabinet. "Whatever that stuff is" – she gestures to the amber bottle – "would probably taste gross after this anyway."

"Okay."

"I'm…sorry."

"I'm not mad."

"You sure do seem to be."

"I'm not." Megumi shoves his hands in his pockets. "I just…want you to be okay." He clears his throat, pressing his fisted hand to his mouth to cover it. "I want you to want to be okay."

"I do, Megumi."

She says his name like it's a liquid and he hates the way it makes him shudder. "I just want you to…be alive right now. Not think about how you could die, or…try to prove that you haven't already. Just live, okay? It's…stupid to throw away the rest of your life thinking about how it could end." He clears his throat again to deflect, and he's sure she sees right through him. "Can you just…be here for now?"

She blinks up at him, doe-eyed with confusion and surprise and what might be tenderness, and if he were not frozen where he stands, he'd reach down to touch her cheek and brush his fingers along the ridge of her embroidered eyepatch. He wants to ask her how it feels to live with one side of her face in permanent darkness beneath its fabric, but he's tongue-tied, shocked he's even been able to say as much as he has. "Be…here."

"We're safe now," he says, even though it's a statement so foolishly shortsighted he's shocked he can stomach it. "So just live."

"Well-"

"Live," he tells her. "With all of us. They missed you."

"They did," she says, half-statement and half-question.

" I… I did." He has never felt quite so terrified, and he can't even say why – not on her behalf, but his own, and he can't for the life of him figure out what he's afraid of. "So…stay here. Live with us."

"I…I will."

"No more stunts."

"Um-"

"No drinking binges."

"Okay, mom."

"Just take care of yourself." He gathers the courage to meet her eyes again. "Or…let us."

She nods weakly. "I don't think I've ever heard you talk this much, Megumi."

"I…I guess I needed to say it."

" Why? Because it was practical?"

Megumi shrugs. "Look, I haven't met a lot of people who I'd really say that the world would be worse-off without."

"How sweet," Nobara says flatly. "That supposed to be romantic?"

"You're one of them, Kugisaki."

"…me?"

"Kugisaki Nobara." He wants to say her full name, for some reason, and his voice catches in a barely-audible laugh on the last vowel. "Yeah. You."

"I… what?"

"You know what? Screw it." He reaches behind her from the amber bottle, uncorks it in a single motion, and takes a swig, trying not to grimace – so be it, if he's letting his self-control go to hell. "Yeah, you. You make me crazy, you and Itadori. It's like you share a brain cell, and that's the only one you have." He winces again at the burn, then takes another swig. "So many stupid ideas. Can't ever get a second to relax. But dammit, Nobara-"

"What is this?" Nobara laughs shortly. "Don't tell me you're in love with me or something."

Disappointment that he misidentifies as anger flares up in his gut, alcohol set off by the flint in her words, and he snaps, "of course I'm not."

"Then why-"

"You're…you're not like all the people I hate, okay? And…and I want you to stay alive. Hell, stay alive longer than I do, just so you don't make me watch you die – I want you alive, Kugisaki. There's not that many people I can stand and…isn't that good enough? What is it that you want me to say?"

"Are you drunk already?"

Her voice now is not unkind, not unsympathetic, and he hates that – he wishes she were angry, cruel when he needs to be convinced not to want her as close as she can get. "What if I am?"

She closes her uncovered eye; he wishes he didn't know what that meant. But it isn't the rebuttal he expects that comes out of her mouth.

"I'll try," she says.

"So…about earlier." Utahime rests her chin between her knees, tucked up to her chest. "What you said."

Gojo stops mid-bite (she's pretty sure he's eating raw pasta – it's a little bit sad that that'd be no surprise) and looks up at her. "Which thing?"

"About…you being better. And…wanting to be strong for me."

"Pretty good line, no?" he licks something (pasta dust?) off his fingers. "Meant it, too."

"Are you…better in the cursed energy sense, too?"

"Oh." His face falls. "Uh…honestly, I…don't know."

"How will you?"

"When I try it?" Gojo shrugs.

"Then…I don't want you trying to be strong or whatever it is you said," she tells him. "Not until you're actually better."

"Yeah…no."

"Oh, good. So we're in agreement?"

"'Yeah, no' as in 'yeah, no, I'm not doing that.'"

" Gojo-"

"I'm not just going to lean on you and not give you anything, Utahime. That's…that's not how it works."

"Not how what works?"

"I dunno, being a person? Sharing things?" He runs a hand through his hair. "I want us to be partners, not…person who does everything and person who sits around and watches."

"How magnanimous of you."

"I want us to do this together." He reaches for his hand, and she doesn't want to, but she relaxes a little at the patterns he gently traces into her palm. "Can you promise me that?"

"That…what?"

"That we'll be a team?"

"Thought you only worked solo."

"With the right incentive-"

"I hate you so much."

"Nope. Told me ya loved me yesterday." He smirks. "Checkmate. And mate. And…check."

"…what does that even mean?"

"Dunno. Sounds funny, though. Right?"

It's a joke only Gojo would have the confidence to make, and it's the inducement she needs, because – well. It's funny how the smallest of things always seem to be the ones that tip the scales in those moments that remind her just how much she never wants to leave his side.

"Deal," she says. "But you had better-"

"Behave myself? 'Course. I am a model of-"

"-not overtax yourself and ruin everything."

"-propriety and tact." He leans over to peck at her cheek. "Thank you, darling."

She smiles unwillingly. "Don't call me that."

"Sorry, is 'princess' better?"

"Hardly. Try senpai for once."

"'kay, princess."

She smacks his arm and tries not to think too much about how much she wishes she could bottle up his indignant yelp of surprise and savor it for as long as it'd last.

The doorbell rings; Maki goes, but not without backup, and there's a line of sorcerers stretching down the hallway lest the Council be trying to slip past them ( why would they ring the doorbell, though?) by the time she unlatches it.

It is not the Council at the door.

"Maki," Mai says flatly. "Why am I not surprised?"

Notes:

JUJU STROLL!

[Question: what do you think of Yuta and Maki's relationship?]

[Cut to first-years. MEGUMI has his arms crossed.]

NOBARA: ew.

YUJI: uh...good for them? I'm...honestly still kinda confused, but...cool. I mean...who doesn't love love?

MEGUMI: [look of utter disgust] sick of it already. Someone needs to teach them self-control.

NOBARA: and public decency.

MEGUMI: disgusting.

NOBARA: I've seen things in one week that are going to be burned in my brain for years.

MEGUMI: how does that idiot get girls, anyway?

YUJI: okay, now you're just being mean!

NOBARA: says the guy who also doesn't get girls?

YUJI: hey!

MEGUMI: 'a body in motion'...tch.

NOBARA: *snort-laughs*

[Cut to second-years.]

INUMAKI: tuna tuna.

PANDA: he means it was about time. [Nods] it really was.

[Cut to the adults.]

UTAHIME: irresponsible.

GOJO: finally!

UTAHIME: completely improper.

GOJO: ah, young love~

UTAHIME: I'm going to have to lock their doors-

GOJO: hey, just because you missed your shot at a youthful romance-

UTAHIME: ...they're kind of cute. I guess.

SHOKO: it's funny. Maki blushes now. Didn't even think that was possible. And the emails-

UTAHIME and GOJO: wait, what emails?

*FINIS*

Chapter 15: Upheaval Summary:

Mai and Miwa's arrival throws the group into chaos; the others cope with the news that they're going on the run again.

Notes:

Shippy, dramatic, and delivered at 1 A.M.: here ya go.

Chapter Text

"You owe me a damn good explanation, you two."

Miwa looks a little bit green, and she can't look up as long as Utahime's face is fixed in a disappointed scowl. Mai, though, doesn't flinch – she'd know Utahime was going to be mad, unlike Miwa, who'd been optimistic enough to convince herself that she'd let it slide for the relief of seeing her students again. "Yeah. We weren't going to throw our sensei to the wolves," she says, crossing her arms, meeting Utahime's glare with a defiant look of her own. "And since you didn't tell us anything, we had to make our own arrangements."

"I'm..." Utahime massages her temples. "Do you have any idea how dangerous it is for you to be here?"

"But we can't just know that you need help and sit around!" Miwa cuts in, no doubt hoping her impassioned argument will change Utahime's mind about being upset with them. It won't, and Mai knows it from the moment Miwa opens her mouth, but Miwa's too afraid of truly upsetting people she cares about to get that. "I'm sorry, but we…we can handle it, okay? And…and when Todo told us-"

" Miwa," Mai snaps under her breath. She jabs an elbow into Miwa's ribs a second too late to stop her – there goes any hope of concealing their source.

"Todo. Of course." Utahime laughs brusquely. "I'm not even going to pretend to be surprised."

"We're aware of the risk, but he said you needed allies." Now Mai has to run interference again. "If you needed allies, I don't know why you wouldn't come to us-"

"Look, I'm going to keep this as brief as possible, but you need to understand that it's not you that you're endangering by being here." Mai and Miwa both freeze – that's not a possibility they'd considered. "Risking your own lives is bad enough. But the Council doesn't want you guys, it wants Gojo."

Mai's lip curls up into a sneer at the name and she notes with interest that Utahime looks displeased to see it. Miwa, next to her, is wide-eyed, probably horrified.

"They sent all these people to find Gojo," she repeats. "And Itadori and Okkotsu, yes, but mostly Gojo. And, arguably, me. And Ieiri and Maki, because they know that they were helping us-"

"So…everyone," Mai says flatly.

"But mostly Gojo," Utahime stresses. "Which I'm sure I don't have to explain is very bad."

"Didn't he kill someone?" Mai asks. She doesn't really believe he did, but she wants to figure out what it is Utahime is hiding – it's obvious that there's something – and that's a quick way to do it.

"He did not," Utahime says tiredly, rubbing at her temple again, "kill anyone, no."

"Oh. Huh. Then why-"

"Getting sealed messed with his cursed energy and he can't, as far as we know, use his techniques."

Well.

That would be the big secret, then.

"The Council doesn't know that, but hopefully it won't find out. He's supposed to recover if he has enough time, so we're hiding out here because he needs a safe place to lie low, which you might've just jeopardized." Utahime's expression hardens again. "You realize how suspicious your disappearance looks, right? The Council probably has people on your tail already. They're probably tracking Momo and Kamo, too-"

The girls exchange a look, and something falls into place. Utahime mutters something under her breath that neither can make out, and when she looks back up at them, it isn't frustration in her eyes, but horror.

"You staggered your escape times," she realizes, because she knows these students, loves them like her own, has watched them for too long not to know their tendencies and what strategies they'll choose. "Momo and Kamo are on their way, aren't they."

There's no use in lying about that and both Mai and Miwa nod.

"Mai," she says, voice cold with quiet fury, "Miwa. Do you realize what you just did?"

Miwa might not, but Mai does, and she crumples, because of course they'd been stupid. Of course they'd left a perfect opening – of course their good intentions had paved the way for disaster. Of course they had – when had good intentions ever done anything else?

"They could be followed," Mai answers, because the moment demands that someone must. "The…the Council could realize that they were probably going to leave after we did, and…and track them."

"Straight to Italy," Utahime says, "and to Gojo, who absolutely has to recover if we're going to have any chance of getting back home alive."

Mai's already moving forwards – guilt won't let her do anything else, even after only a few seconds. "Is leaving an option?"

"It's unideal."

"But is it an option?"

Utahime nods tightly. "I think it has to be."

"We're…leaving?"

"Apparently. Nishimiya and Kamo are on a plane to Florence right now and there's a pretty good chance the Council is following them."

Maki's shoulders round, and she turns her head to watch Yuta shove a sweatshirt she now knows is a little too worn-out to be comfortable and smells like too much convenience store coffee into his suitcase. "So we're running again," she says, slumping against the bed. "Great."

"Yeah. I know." Yuta zips his suitcase, drops it to the floor with an unceremonious thud, and sits down beside her. He thinks this is the kind of moment he needs to make the most of if he ever wants to repay Maki for the millions of things he owes her, and he hates not much more than seeing her in pain, so he wraps his arm around her and he's grateful when she leans into him. "But, um…well. We're running back home this time, right?"

"That's not comforting."

"Oh." Yuta's free hand scratches at the back of his head. "Sorry. I'm kinda bad at this."

"Never said I needed you to say anything."

"Oh."

"But you might as well say something decently productive if you're gonna talk at all."

He's about to reply with another 'oh' when he realizes that's exactly what she'd been trying to get him to stop doing and stills his tongue. "Do you...want anything, then?"

"I want a lot of things, but none of them are possible, so no, not really."

"So is there anything I can do?"

She considers his question for a moment.

"I'm going to kill you on the spot if I ever find out you told anyone I said this," she starts.

"Of course." She's probably only half-exaggerating. "What is it?"

"It's…" she shifts against his shoulder, then goes still. "It's stupid. Never mind."

"Maki, 'a body in motion' is stupid. You can't be any worse than I already have been."

Her chest rises and falls abruptly once, twice, in what might be the ghost of a laugh, and he smiles down at her – she's a wonder, Maki Zenin is. "You're not wrong."

"So ask me your stupid question before we both get fed to the council."

"You are so bad at comf-"

" Maki, I know."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay." She inhales shakily. "Are you…are you sure?"

"Sure."

"All right." A deeper breath. "This is really stupid, and nothing like me, and…I'm sorry."

"Can you just tell me what you want me to do, Maki?"

"I'm…it's not like that, Yuta. What, do you think I'm going to ask you to start stripping or something? Ugh. Men."

"Wait, what?" Yuta's ears redden at the tips and his face is probably a thousand times worse. That had not been what he'd meant. "I… no! Never thought that! Believe me, no, that is not-"

"It's just really embarrassing to have to ask for, okay?"

Maki's voice sounds so strained that he almost wonders if she's in pain; his grip relaxes, and she's about to loosen the arm he ahs around her waist when she snatches it back. "You…don't have to let me help you if you…if you don't want to."

"No, I do want it." Maki turns her face into his shoulder. "It just sounds so…I don't know. Weak."

"It's kinda natural, though. You were on your own for a long time back at home." He rubs at her upper arm, hoping the motion comes across as comforting instead of just awkward. "It'd be weirder if you didn't want someone to be there for you."

"Yuta, I…"

"Yeah?"

"I…I just want you to hold me." She turns her face into his shoulder again, as if she can't bear to show it in her shame. "I…I'm sorry-"

" Oh ," he murmurs, and it's only seconds after his other arm brings her closer before she's wrapped around him, legs crossed behind his back, both arms viselike around his shoulders. "Of…of course, Maki."

"I hate touching people," she admits, touching her forehead to his chest. "I hate it, and I…I hate that I like touching you, and…and it's embarrassing how much-"

"I don't think it is," he says uselessly.

"But it is."

"But it's not." Yuta has never hated his uselessness with words more. "Isn't that the whole reason you have me?"

"Don't just say stuff like that-"

"What? Isn't it true?"

"It's not like I own you," Maki snaps. "Idiot."

"I…wasn't implying that?" Not that he'd really even mind, but no matter. "I just meant, um…well. I think…I think I'm…the person in your life whose job it is to give you things like this when you need them."

She sniffles. "You don't have to do that."

"But I like it." He notices she's started to drift and he pulls her in a little closer. "And it's been a rough few months."

He doesn't even want to mention how much her sister's arrival must be throwing Maki off – that's the last thing she needs now. What he thinks she might need are his arms around her and his reassurances that she's not wrong to want them there, no matter how unwilling she is to admit that she does, and he can do that.

Once more, before they run, he can do that.

"You did a lot for me," he goes on, and it feels right to reach up and run his fingers through her hair, "okay? And…I wanna help you back. 'Cause this sucks."

"You're such an idiot," she whimpers, hands fisting in his shirt like claws.

"Um…thanks?"

She can be a little bit mean if she'd like, though he can't pretend it doesn't hurt a little bit.

"Thinking you have to…to repay what I did by choice." She shakes her head. " Idiot."

"…oh."

They're silent for a moment, Yuta's hands warm against Maki's back.

"I still want to do it," he tells her when he feels like breaking it. "I…I want to be the person you can ask for things you don't want to admit you need."

He doesn't know if she ever will, and if that's so, it's something he'll learn to deal with. If it is part and parcel of loving Maki – anything, he thinks, can be borne. But she needs to know that she can expose the soft parts of herself where knives cut deepest to him, and know that he only wants to rub salve into the cuts that others have left behind. She needs to know that nothing he sees will change the way she seems to be made of something more human and infinitely more precious than photons bouncing off solid form in his eyes, that he considers himself unworthy even of her scars – but perhaps she won't. Perhaps she's not willing to know.

No matter. He realizes, holding her, that if it comes to it in these next pivotal days, he'll move heaven and earth to give her the chance to try.

"Running again. Love that for us."

"Go away," Megumi says reflexively.

"Yeah, no." Yuji flops down lengthwise across Megumi's bedspread, his weight upsetting the suitcase sitting open in its center. That earns him an irritated snort from Megumi that he does his best to ignore. "We need to talk."

"No, we don't."

"About Nobara."

Megumi snaps to attention.

"Yeah. Figured." Yuji sighs. "Guess plain old Itadori's not good enough for you anymore."

"I'm relieved that you're in one piece," Megumi says flatly. "I'm also in the middle of something."

"Funny how none of that applied when I brought up Nobara." He smiles knowingly. "Who we still need to talk about."

He tosses clothes at random into his open suitcase, pausing only to jam them down so he can fit more on top of them. Usually Megumi would be a little bit more careful with his packing, but he's irritated at having to pack at all, so that goes by the wayside – moreso now that Yuji is here to prod at feelings he doesn't want to think about. "What about her?"

"Well, you told me about the whiskey thing." It had taken a good half-hour of googling to figure out what the amber liquid he'd ingested too much of last night had been after he'd stumbled back to his room, the contact of Nobara's arm against his palm as she held him up as searing as the burning in his throat. "Which we still haven't actually-"

"Nothing to discuss." Megumi throws a wadded-up shirt at Yuji and only regrets his choice when he realized that Nobara had borrowed it a few nights ago (without permission, but he hadn't known how to bring that up). "She's going to be fine."

Yuji's forehead creases. "You didn't think that yesterday."

"I did."

"You looked like you were gonna panic, Fushiguro." Yuji has no illusions about his intelligence, but he knows he can read people, and especially Megumi, who thinks he hides everything but, when it comes to his friends, never can. "Not to mention that it takes a lot to make you start chugging whiskey."

"It was stressful." He clears his throat. "At the time."

"Nah." Yuji grins. "You like her."

"She's tolerable."

"You like her." Yuji reaches up to poke Megumi's arm. "Think I didn't notice that you curl up around her when you sleep?"

"Why are you watching me sleep? That's so creepy." Megumi makes a disgusted face and then jams one last sweatshirt into his bag.

"You're not denying-"

"There's nothing to deny? I tolerate her."

"'Kay, keep telling yourself that." Yuji knows better than to buy it. "So, anyways-"

"Do you like her?"

Yuji smirks. "Jealous?"

"No, but why else would you ask-"

"Nah, don't worry. 's not like that with us."

"Oh, really." Megumi's eyes narrow. "You sure don't act like it's not like that."

"And you wouldn't be bringing that up if you didn't hope it would be like that with you." Yuji shouldn't be this excited at a time like this, but he can't help but smile at the thought of dragging a little bit of much-needed emotional honesty out of his friend. "Anyways. We're heading home."

"Yes." Megumi zips his suitcase but doesn't look up when he's done. "You kissed her yesterday."

"Her forehead?" Yuji rolls his eyes. "Dude. That doesn't count."

"Still kissing."

"I kissed Utahime's cheek earlier," he pointed out.

"That doesn't count. She's basically your mom." Megumi flops down at the edge of the bed. "You can't go around kissing people-"

"Remember when I tried to kiss your forehead?"

"Yeah, and it was weird-"

"And we're friends. So why would it be any different when I kissed Nobara's?"

"You still haven't told me what you think we need to talk about."

"Stop changing the subject." Yuji pokes Megumi's arm again. "It's different when it's Nobara because you want her."

"She's not a thing. I can't want her."

"You can want to be with her," Yuji says casually. "You can want to kiss her. You can want her to be safe. You can want to know what it'd feel like if she knew what you really thought of her-"

Megumi's mouth sets in a line and he flushes from the tips of his ears to the base of his neck, already a grievous loss of dignity. He can't afford to lose a single ounce more when he doesn't even know why he's turning so red at Yuji's ridiculous hypotheticals. "No amount of your romantic crap is going to make me agree with you, Itadori."

"All right. Fine, fine. What I wanted to talk about was what we're going to do when we get back."

"Um…let Gojo take care of the Council and back him up if he needs it?"

"With Nobara, specifically."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, she's obviously not really…herself."

"Obviously not."

"And she'll try to charge into battle anyway, probably."

"Obviously. It's Kugisaki."

"How are we going to make sure she doesn't get killed again?"

Megumi tries not to wince at Yuji's word choice. "She'd probably put a nail in your arm if she heard you asking me that."

"Oh, no, definitely. But she needs backup." Yuji looks up at Megumi pointedly. "That's us. We're backup."

"We're backup," Megumi agrees, without realizing he's even replied before he has.

"So…how are we going to do that?"

"What, no snide remark?" Mai leans against the kitchen counter, tipping up her chin with more confidence than she feels. "No accusation? No 'way to go, Mai, you ruined everything again'?"

Maki pauses in the doorway, raising tired eyes to meet her sister's, and she's not surprised when all she sees in them is hurt. Mai hasn't had enough of running yet for exhaustion, and it doesn't look like guilt, but hurt – that she'd known to expect. Hurt that her attempts at assistance had only made things worse, hurt at the censure of the person who'd been like a mother to her when her own had fallen so short, hurt at the failure of her best-laid plans – Maki knows all of those hurts well enough to read them in Mai's eyes.

She doesn't have the energy for pity, but she doesn't have the apathy for anger, either, nor the strength for confrontation or blame.

She pauses long enough for a lingering, sidelong glance at Mai that betrays nothing, then turns and walks away.

"Quit babying me."

"I'm not. Just" – Yuji adjusts the ends of his scarf so they fall evenly against Nobara's parka – "making sure you don't get cold again."

Neither has to say that they're beginning to suspect that her cold isn't curable when it's dispelled only by human heat, but it's a gesture she knows to be grateful for.

"Right," she says, tilting up her face to catch the warmth of his exhale.

It's nice, nowadays, tethering herself to what she knows can make her feel human again.

"Sharing body heat is more effective than putting on more layers."

Nobara smirks. "Are you admitting that you like to cuddle?"

"No, I'm stating a medical fact and offering to act accordingly." Megumi's been speaking more formally lately than he needs to. He opens his arm. "So do you want to get warm or not?"

"Mm," she murmurs, tucking her face into the down of his parka in the backseat of the van. "Yeah. Sounds nice."

Megumi wants to be mad at Yuji's thumbs-up from across the car and at how much he doesn't mind Nobara's little hands clawing their way into his parka, but he's not, and he thinks – maybe, if he survives this – he'll think about what that means.

"Hey. Hime."

Utahime looks up from her phone, dashes off a text to Momo to be sure she and Kamo are safe for the moment, and tucks it away. "Yeah?"

There's a little light in Gojo's eyes again, the kind he's always had beneath his blindfold that never looks quite natural in daylight. "We're going home."

He sounds happy about that. She doesn't know why he sounds happy about that. "You still haven't put your blindfold back on."

"Maybe I just think you're prettier when viewed with the naked-"

She smacks his arm.

"-eye. Geez. So violent."

"You'd wear your eyes out if you had Six Eyes working like it should and left your eyes uncovered like that."

"Maybe." He reaches for her hands – both of them, so that he has to angle himself toward her to fold them into his. "I don't need Six Eyes to wipe the floor with the Council."

Utahime shakes her head fondly, and she's not sure why, but she frees one of her hands and reaches up to pat his cheek. "Well, at least you sound like you again."

Gojo smiles as if he's been given a treat and presses his hand over hers to keep it on his cheek. "Dashingly self-assured and irresistibly confident?"

"…I was going for 'insufferable.'"

"Wow. Mean." He pulls a face at her. "I thought you liked me now."

"I…saw a version of you here that I hadn't before." Utahime drops her eyes down to rest on a blurry spot in the middle distance outside of the car's window. "That I liked."

"What, psychologically screwed-up and completely helpless?"

"No. Honest."

"Oh."

"I like you better that way," she says. "When you're Satoru and not Gojo."

"I'm both."

"Half of the time, Gojo is just a front. Don't think I don't know that." She looks back up at him; he looks curious, but a little bit pleased, a little bit touched. It's a vulnerable look, and she appreciates it – thinks it gives his face a handsome earnestness. "The…cheerfulness and the jokes and the devil-may-care act. I mean, you're an idiot sometimes, but…that's not who you are in the parts you hide."

"Someone's feeling poetic." He releases her palm from his cheek, but keeps his hand folded around hers.

"I think I needed to see you at your worst to know who you really were," she concludes.

He thinks for a moment, then replies.

"I think I needed to see you at your best to realize how much I still don't have."

Utahime looks up, her eyes a little wide with surprise. "How much you still don't have as in me ?"

"No, just…I dunno." He shrugs. "If you'd been the one to get sealed, you wouldn't have fallen apart."

"No," she agrees, because she couldn't have afforded to. She'd have had no one to catch her if she fell – that's always been the way things were. It's why she's so determined to catch those who walk too close to the edge and find themselves losing their footing, and why it'd been her hands to keep Gojo from plummeting when he'd been the one standing at the crumbling edge of a cliff weeks ago.

"I…wouldn't have been able to say that before."

"You've grown a lot," Utahime agrees.

He looks down at her as openly and imploringly as he knows how. "Into someone you could love?"

She smiles to herself, playing with the tassles of her scarf with the hand in her lap.

"I think you always were."

"Hime-"

"Just because I was Iori Utahime," she goes on, "and you were Gojo Satoru."

"And that was enough?"

"Maybe." Running for her life makes her feel a little maudlin – perhaps it does the same to him, and that's why they're saying such ridiculous things at a time like this. "But it took a lot more to make me see it."

Utahime curls up beneath Satoru's arm, knees tucked beneath her on the tiny plane seat, and it looks from a distance like she is his.

He thinks, watching her stir and adjust against him before her breathing slows again, that perhaps there's something to be said for one set of eyes if they could look at her and see with utter clarity all the lovable parts of her when six pairs never could.

Chapter 16: Questions Summary:

Megumi isn't satisfied with what he knows about Nobara's condition and seeks to find out more. Yuji has a question for Utahime, and Maki has an unwelcome piece of advice for her sister.

Notes:

...this is literally a 2.5k word Fushikugi scene and 700 words of other stuff.

Sorry.

Blame the "you need to be doing more to acknowledge the psychological effects of the Shibuya Incident, especially for Nobara" thought I had earlier.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

"We're getting food."

Nobara doesn't even look up from her bag of chips. "Hah?"

"I said that we're getting food." Megumi taps his foot impatiently. "As in-"

"Yeah, I got that." Nobara looks up and raises an eyebrow. "You do realize that that's not how you ask a girl out, right?"

"I'm not asking you out, Nobara. You need to eat and I need to talk to you."

"Right." Nobara folds over the top of her chip bag. "Because I'm totally not eating already."

"You need to eat real food."

"This is real food." She opens the bag again and pops a chip in her mouth for good measure. "So you are into me, huh?"

"I'm not…I have questions, okay? I want to talk to you!" Megumi's ears are bright-red and Nobara only keeps from laughing because it seems like it would be unnecessarily cruel. "And this is our last stop before we get back, so I don't know if I'm going to get another chance. So yes. We're getting food. And no, this is not a date, and I'm not" – he sounds choked – " into you. Honestly. You and your delusions-"

She stands, then smacks his chest with her bag of chips so he'll take them from her and smirks. "You're the only delusional one here."

He stares down at the bag, too dazed to speak.

"So?" Nobara prompts. "Where're we going?"

"Uh…" Megumi looks up, blinking to clear his vision. "Um. There was, uh…a…place a few blocks away? Do you care?"

"Well, I clearly don't have a choice-"

"You have plenty of choice!" Megumi's face heats now, not just his ears, and he wishes he could make it stop doing that when he needs it to stay composed. "You…you just…pick something. If you're gonna be weird about it."

" You're the one being weird about it." She taps her foot against the worn rug beneath the hotel lobby's sparse furniture. "What'dya need to ask me about so bad, anyway?"

"It's…" he doesn't want to scare her off before she's agreed to join him. "Um. Can't say where people might hear."

Nobara narrows her eyes. "Right," she huffs, crossing her arms over her magenta coat. "Sure. On one condition."

"Yeah?"

"Your gloves." She gestures to the snow gloves clipped to his belt loop. "You let me wear them."

"Your hands," he says, trying not to let his tone betray anything. "They're cold again."

"The mittens I brought with me are still wet from the snow." She shrugs. "Can I?"

"Oh. Uh…yeah." He unclips the gloves from his belt and hands them to her. "Here."

Never mind that it's below freezing.

"Help?" Nobara holds out her hands, wiggling her fingers to let him know she wants him to put them on.

"I'm not putting them on you." He shakes his head. "That would just feed your delusions."

Nobara sticks out her tongue at him as she pulls the too-big gloves over her hands and rubs them together for warmth. "So mean."

"You sure this isn't a date?" Nobara raises her eyebrows at the restaurant he's chosen – wood paneling, tea services, an atmosphere like the parlor of an old Russian mansion. "This is…actually nice. I feel underdressed."

He glances over at her magenta coat, open over a white sweater and skinny jeans, and shakes his head. "You're fine. And no."

"Do you know that, though?"

"Look, this is probably our last free night before we get back home, and I really need to talk to you, so can you please just lay off for five seconds?"

She shuts her mouth at that.

"Thanks," Megumi says tiredly.

"So…why no Yuji?"

"I wanted to talk to you in private." Megumi pokes at his chicken with an unwieldy fork that feels too heavy in his hands, still missing chopsticks even after weeks on the run. "You're different when Yuji's around."

"How so?" Nobara narrows her eyes and pushes her soup around in the bowl without eating it.

"There's stuff you won't say in front of Yuji, probably because he's as much of a mess as you are. I…just wanted you to be honest."

It's a fair answer, but it only leaves her with more questions. "Honest about what?"

"I need to know about Shibuya."

Nobara wants to flinch, but she forces herself not to. "What about it? You already know I got half of my face blown up and spent a few months in a coma, and now my hands are always cold. That's…basically all you need to know."

"You talk about it so easily." Megumi's brow furrows. "I'm sorry, but I don't buy it."

Her eyes widen and it takes all she has not to drop her spoon.

"For someone who claims she wasn't affected at all, you sure aren't acting like it it," he goes on. "I just…need to know how…what you're thinking."

"So you wanted to reopen old wounds to satisfy your curiousity?" Nobara's not nearly as mad as she wants to sound, but her dignity depends on the ability to pretend she is. "That's pretty low of you."

"There's nothing to reopen because none of those wounds are actually healed yet. That much is obvious." Megumi's tone grows testy and he doesn't so much cut his chicken as he saws at it. "What I need you to tell me is how bad."

"How bad…what?"

"How bad it still is. How…if you think about it. Whether it's affecting you, and how, and what's wrong with you that you aren't telling me about." He's been reluctant to make eye contact, but he looks her straight in the eyes now just to be sure she doesn't miss the point. "All of the things you're not telling anyone that might hurt you if things go wrong back home-"

"If I haven't told you something, there's a reason for that." Nobara's expression goes dark. "And it's not your job to keep tabs on me. I can take care of myself."

"But you don't."

"This again?"

"Yes, this again. Don't think I forgot-"

"You should, then. I don't want to talk about it." This stupid place has candles at every table – of course it does – and they cast eerie shadows across Nobara's face. He stills; she takes his gloves from her lap and pushes them across the immaculate white tablecloth to him even though they're nowhere near clean. "So don't ask."

"That was all you had to say, Nobara."

"Since when do you use my first name?"

"Sorry. Kugisaki."

She shoots him a dirty look. "Did I tell you to stop?"

"Sorry. Nobara."

"I've been trying not to think about it, honestly." Oh. Apparently she does want to talk about it. "It's…better that way."

"Can I ask something?"

"Go ahead. If we're gonna talk about it anyways."

"How does, um…being reminded of what happened affect you?"

She shrugs. "Dunno, throws me off?"

"How?"

She gives him a look. "It just does."

"And…how do you feel…physically?"

She smirks. "Like I'd probably make out with you if we were alone right now."

Megumi swears he almost chokes to death, and he's more than ashamed to admit that that isn't why his face is so red.

"You can't just," he sputters, " say things like that."

"But you'd be good at it." Her smirk doesn't falter. "Might take your mind off things."

"Is this another of your impulsive bad ideas?" That idea is more than a little bit reassuring – this outburst is probably nothing more than that. "Because it's really not funny."

"Well, yeah, but also no. I mean, I'd make out with most people here." She leans back. "'d totally make out with Maki if she didn't have a thing for Yuta. Inumaki's kinda cute. Yuji'd be a great kisser-"

"Yuji said you guys weren't like that!"

Nobara snort-laughs. "Aww, you asked him that? You're kidding-"

"It was important context to have, okay?"

"Oh yeah. So important." Nobara laughs behind her hand. "Because someone was jealous-"

"I was concerned, not jealous!"

"Mm. Okay." She smirks, then singsongs, " Meeegumi is jeal- lous!"

"I am not!"

" Meeegumi is jeal- lous," she teases. " Meeegumi is jeal- "

"Nobara. Can it."

Her face falls at the agitation in his voice and the redness in his cheeks. "Oh. Right."

"I'm…trying to help you, Nobara. Okay?" He presses his hands flat against the tabletop. "I want to keep you safe. That's all. There's no…there's no ulterior motive. I don't care how you feel about me or Yuji or…Maki or anyone and that's not why I asked. I just…I just don't get it."

"Don't get what?"

"What's going on with you. Whether you're actually okay or just faking it and letting it out when you have these insane ideas about…hypothermia and getting drunk and kissing me and making us all worry." He looks down at his plate. "I just want to know what's actually going through your head."

"That I'm not supposed to be here." That's not new and she doesn't feel like hiding it.

"Your hands are still cold."

Nobara shrugs. "That's not going away."

"Is anything wrong with your technique?"

"Not as far as I can tell, no."

"Do you…feel anything else suspicious?"

She looks up at him with an expression he can't read, then looks back down at her plate.

"Yeah," she mutters. "A lot of things."

"Like what? This is exactly what I'm trying to get you to tell me, Nobara-"

"Nothing, okay? Nothing important. I'm not gonna die on you just because you don't know every thought that goes through my head!"

"No, but you're obviously not yourself-"

"Of course I'm myself."

"You act like your life is worth nothing, Nobara."

"Since when?"

"You…you keep trying to do reckless things and…and you don't care about your health or give yourself enough time to rest and recover and you won't tell anyone what's wrong." He gives her a searching look. "Don't you get how that worries us?"

"I thought you didn't worry about people." Nobara's tone is a little bit mean but she can't bring herself to regret it.

"You're not people."

"Wow. Then what am I?"

"You're Kugisaki Nobara." He keeps his tone as deadpan as he can. "You're…valuable."

"To who?"

He shrugs. "You have something to contribute."

"To society, or to you?"

He dodges the question. "There are…people who need your strength."

"And are you one of them?"

"I…stand to benefit from your well-being."

"Wow. You have such a way with words." Nobara's face contorts with distaste. "You'd think that you could admit you love us after all the times we've told you how much we care about you."

"I…I do care about you." That's as much as he's going to break, but it's something. "And I don't know why you'd think I didn't."

"Oh, because your whole thing is that you don't care about anyone?"

"Why would I be here if I didn't care about you?" Megumi's eyes are colder than they were a second ago. "Eating with you, spending…who even knows how much money on this stupid steak-"

"You're charging it to the Zenin credit card, Megumi, try again-"

"-and trying everything I can to get you to let me help you?"

"You said it yourself. I have something to contribute." She crosses her arms. "I get that, Megumi. I do. But have you ever consider that…that I hate being reminded?"

"Reminded of Shibuya?"

"No. Reminded that I have to survive." She looks up at the ceiling so he won't see her pinched expression. "I…what if I can't?"

They're both quiet for a moment before Megumi comes up with something to say in response.

"None of us are going to let it get that bad," he says, his voice softer. "We'll do whatever we have to, okay?"

"But what if you can't?" Nobara swipes at a falling tear and Megumi starts – he hadn't known she was crying and wonders how he'd missed it. "Y'know. How many people were at Shibuya who couldn't do anything? I mean, I…I don't blame anyone. I don't, really. But…none of you could help me then." She seems so much smaller now, shrinking back into her seat, and Kugisaki Nobara never shrinks from anything; it's as frightening as her freezing hands. "Who's to say you're gonna be able to do anything if…if I'm sick 'cause of what happened, or…or there's something wrong with my body, or I take a hit I'm not strong enough to survive anymore?"

"Do you think there's something wrong with you?" At least that's something to focus on. "Can you tell me that much?"

She just nods, wordless.

"Give me your hands."

Nobara raises her eyebrows, but she stops on the street corner beneath the lamppost as he had asked. "Why?"

"C'mon. Just do it."

"Okay," she mutters, setting her hands in Megumi's much larger but ungloved ones.

"You say they can't get warm." He gingerly peels off her – his – gloves. "Is that still true?"

She nods, but she knows he knew that. She'd told him everything – about her cold hands and sluggishness and the sense of impending doom she hasn't been able to outrun even after thousands of miles. He has to.

"Maybe there is something wrong with your body," he concedes. "But you're not the Nobara I know if you aren't going to fight it."

She nods, lips upturning ever so slightly at what sounds suspiciously like praise. Megumi so rarely gives it that it's heartening to hear, and he wraps both of his hands around hers to warm them as if to promise she won't be fighting her own body without allies.

"But you have to realize that, 'kay?" He looks up at her – she's never heard him look or sound so gentle. "You have to know that instead of just…accepting that you don't have a lot of time and doing stupid stuff because you think it won't have consequences."

"You are in love with me," Nobara mutters, too dazed and too red-faced to say anything else.

"Will you drop that?"

"Defense mechanism, so…no, sorry. You were saying?"

"Quit trying to deflect with humor."

"Quit declaring your love and pretending you're not."

"Where did you even get that idea?"

"Oh, maybe from the fact that your ears are red? To name one thing?"

"Yeah, because it's, like, no degrees outside? Why does that mean I'm…I…I have…"

"You can't even say it. Sign number two."

"I'm trying to say something important, Nobara!"

"Well, I don't happen to like talking about things that are important all that much, so…" she pantomimes the motion of writing – "jot that down."

"Well, you have to-"

"Don't."

"Yes you-"

"I could kiss you and you'd shut up."

"Please don't do that."

Part of him wants to think that might be sort of nice. He shoves that part down so far that he'll be surprised if it ever sees the light of day. He thinks, bitterly, that Yuji would know what to say – Yuji has always understood Nobara better than he has – but he isn't Yuji, and he'd gone to great lengths to get her alone, so Megumi will have to do.

"Just stop being dumb," he says.

Eloquence is truly his forte.

"Need something?"

Shoko puts out her cigarette at Megumi's appearance in her doorway. Well – not hers, per se, but the hotel room she's sharing with Nitta and Utahime for the night (though everyone knows Utahime won't actually sleep there – never mind that).

"Yeah." Megumi looks…determined, if she had to put a word to it. "Kugisaki."

"You need Kugisaki." Shoko shakes her head. "Sorry, can't help ya there. Last guy I was in love with is a criminal now, sooo…not the person to ask."

He looks at Shoko the way he looks at Yuta and Maki when they seem ten seconds from jumping each other in public.

"There's something wrong with her," he says. "You know what it is, don't you."

Shoko stiffens. "What makes you say that?"

"Don't lie, Ieiri-san."

She regards him with shifty eyes, then sighs and sinks back into the pillows. "It's kinda complicated."

"And? I have time."

"I had a thought."

"Tell me the thought you had," Utahime replies automatically, patting the pillow beside hers. Yuji's face is serious, but he smiles a little when he flops down beside her on the bed, a little too far to reach but close enough for her to feel his warmth – he's like a space heater in the chill of the hotel room.

"So, it's prob'ly not just the Council we're gonna be up against," he says. "Mahito's still out there. That Kenjaku guy. They're all still around, and they're not gonna stop…doing curse stuff just 'cause we have a different enemy now."

"Probably not." Utahime had thought about that, but admittedly as little as possible – too much and she'd be overwhelmed to the point of paralysis by the million confounding factors complicating their return home. "But we really can't afford to worry about them. Council first, then, if they come for us…well. That's a problem we'll deal with when it arises."

"How do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Only worry about one thing at a time." Yuji's eyes are anxious and his forehead is creased; she reaches out an arm to let him know that he can come closer if it'll help him, and he does.

He's a cuddler, Yuji is. Perhaps under normal circumstances this would be inappropriate, but she isn't going to turn him down if he wants to be held at a time like this, and his whole body seems to go slack at the touch of her hands sometimes. "Lots of practice, really," she tells him. "Compartmentalization is just a skill. Harder when you're young, though."

"Yeah. It is." He wraps an arm around Utahime's shoulders to anchor himself and rests his head on her shoulder. "I just…I want to keep everyone safe, 'cause I couldn't in Shibuya and…and there's so many reasons I can't now, either. And I hate that."

She knew how that felt. Acutely.

"All you can do is the best you can, Yuji," she tells him – tired, cliché advice, but all she has to give. "Okay?"

"Hey. Mai."

Mai looks up from her phone and across the room to the bed Maki is sharing with Nobara. "What do you want?"

"You're here to work, right?"

Mai raises her eyebrows. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You came here because Utahime needed allies." Maki crosses her arms. "Which means that you actually have to be one."

"And you think I don't plan to?"

"What I think is that you need to ditch the pity-party act and do something." She looks pointedly at her sister. "We need every last ally we can get."

It's almost like acceptance, that insult, and Mai is too confused to reply.

"If you're gonna work with us, you had better work with us. Keep moving forwards." She casts a sidelong glance at Mai and then adds, under her breath, "bodies in motion or whatever."

Mai squints. "What's that got to do with this?"

"Nothing." Maki glares, hoping it'll make her forget to ask. "Just…don't let your guard down, or…stop trying. If you're going to be here."

"Uh…okay."

"Don't be useless."

"Don't plan on it."

"Good," Maki says coolly.

That, too, might be acceptance, but it might not be. Still, the mere possibility has Mai's head spinning. She can't help but wonder how far her sister's trademark pride must've fallen to make a statement like that possible – wonder what had happened to her.

She tells herself she doesn't care, but there's something about the thought that won't leave her alone.

Notes:

There was no reason for that Sugushoko reference except that I Wanted It. :)

Chapter 17: Shattered Summary:

On the eve of their return, horrible news throws the group off.

Notes:

Happy one-year Nobara-Maybe-Deathversary. Have pain.

ALSO, A NOTE: I think I've said this before, but "Worlds Apart" isn't a self-contained story. It's supposed to function like an arc of the manga - continuing the last part of the story (Shibuya), but also setting up the next. As such, not everything I introduce in Worlds Apart is going to be resolved by the last chapter. A lot of it - Nobara's condition, Maki and Mai's reconciliation, Gojohime's actual relationship, the Council confrontation - is setup, which won't be resolved within the scope of this story (but most of which has been resolved in the hypothetical sequel that only exists in my head, heh). I wanted to put that out there now so you guys wouldn't be shocked by all the loose ends left untied by the end.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Kugisaki Nobara is dying.

No one's said so, and there's no piece of paper with the diagnosis stamped across it – "six months to live," or however those overpolite death sentences are usually worded. But she knows in her bones that she's not long for this world.

It's not the cold hands, really – that's just what she uses to deflect. True, she's always freezing in all the wrong ways, but that alone wouldn't make her worry like this. It's the other things, ones she never talks about: the sluggish flow of her cursed energy, her weak heartbeat, the instinct to throw caution to the wind because she no longer knows how to believe she'll have to face the consequences of her recklessness. It's the fact that she can feel her body losing its will to live when her mind hasn't.

It's late at night and she is – finally – alone in the bed she was supposed to share with Maki, gone off to Yuta's room like she always does. It's an arrangement no one questions anymore in hotels: Maki goes to the boys' room, and Yuji and Megumi come to the girls' – but tonight they'd stayed where they were supposed to. And she's alone, no one to see her when she sits up in a cold sweat and her fingers grip the bedspread tight enough to make her knuckles white.

There's no one here but Mai and Miwa, curled up around each other for comfort in the opposite bed, and no one to see Nobara's ashen face or feel by proximity her pulse pounding at her ribcage like a jackhammer. She looks down at her hands – cold, pale – and touches her face to feel feverish heat in her cheeks that almost burns against her fingers even as her nose remains stubbornly cold. She feel like she's been slowed to half her normal speed, no action effortless, and she has no proof save for a gut feeling, but she knows –

Kugisaki Nobara is sixteen years old, and she is dying.

She doesn't want to seek out comfort or to tell anyone what she's afraid they all already know, and in that sense she's grateful for her solitude. She doesn't need Yuji to tell her that he can make her warm again when his warmth only reminds her that she's starting to lose hers; she doesn't need Gojo to laugh and tell her she's being ridiculous; she doesn't need Maki to tell her that all she has to do is fight harder and refuse to give in. She certainly doesn't need Megumi to grab her shoulders and give her a firm shaking and insist that she's going to live with so much of some unidentifiable emotion in his eyes that it hurts to look at him, knowing she'll be all the way cold before he knows to call it love. She doesn't need their help, their reminders; it'd be better to withdraw, so that at least by the time she can't fight it anymore they'll be used to her absence.

Kick his ass, she thinks, and almost laughs. It had seemed so simple back then – so much more possible than it does now, even though it's barely been two weeks. He'd really made her believe she'd win and now she knows with every sluggish beat of her failing heart that she can't.

At least I had a good run, she thinks, tucking her legs to her chest, and then I'm sorry, because she's gone and made people here love her, and that is the most dangerous mistake she could've made in her line of work.

Even she's not heartless enough to steal into people's hearts when she might die, because if she did it'd break them.

She sees their faces again – Yuji, Maki, Gojo, Megumi. Inumaki, Panda, Shoko, Megumi again. She sees Yuji's sleepy smile in the morning, Yuji with his arms full of her shopping bags, Yuji giving her bites of his crepe as they wandered around the festival grounds even though she'd had her own. She remembers Gojo's teasing, even though she'd hated it at the time, and his thoughtful, calculating look when he had advice to give, somehow never condescending. She sees Maki's small, proud smile when Nobara had told her she was going to Kiev, and her smirk across the sparring ring because she knew she'd be getting a good fight. She can almost feel Shoko's hand gripping hers as she tried to walk after months on a table. She recalls Panda insisting she take the most comfortable spot when the group had cuddled up around him after a late-night movie marathon. She sees the subtle smiles she'd shared with Inumaki when they'd teamed up to mess with their classmates. And she remembers Megumi's hands around hers in the dim light of a streetlamp on a corner in Bishkek, his badly-concealed jealousy when the others tried to show her affection, and all of the things he does for her that he hasn't yet realized have meaning. (He won't get the chance to.)

I'm sorry, she thinks, even though Nobara is rarely remorseful. I'm so sorry.

Maybe it'd have been better to close herself off, leave no trace – dying wouldn't hurt half so much that way.

"I…don't think I can explain it. All I can really say is that she's shutting down."

Megumi's eyes narrow. "Shutting down."

Shoko nods, and she doesn't want to meet Megumi's eyes – she's not stupid enough not to know that she's about to break his heart by his own request. "It's not something medical. I would probably know more than I do if it were."

"But-"

"What you're noticing is probably a physiological symptom of something that actually isn't physiological." It's chilling how easily Shoko finds herself explaining these things sometimes. "She's not sick. More like…marked."

Megumi seems tense enough to snap. "Marked for what?"

Shoko shrugs. "I fixed the physical damage. That's why she seems okay."

"You're not actually explaining anything." Megumi's eyes are ice-cold, but Shoko can't see them. "Are you going to tell me what you're actually getting at or not?"

"Mahito's technique doesn't kill the body directly." She taps the fingers of her right hand against her arm, hoping to calm herself when she knows she can't. "It kills the body by warping the soul."

" And?"

Shoko sighs helplessly. "My technique can't do anything about that."

"About what?"

"Mahito touched her soul, Fushiguro." She finally looks up – he's so distraught that she wishes she hadn't. "The only one who can fix that is him."

"What…what do you mean by that?"

"Her soul's still warped. Her body can't fight that forever."

"So she's…she's going to-"

"Die within a few months." Shoko swallows hard. "Probably."

Four blank faces meet Megumi's at his news and none of them seem to want to break the silence. It's like the hazy curtain of disbelief draped between speaker and listeners is the only thing letting them deny that what they've heard is true and nobody wants to be the one to rip it down.

Fair enough, but Megumi needs answers now – needs the luxury of having been the only one allowed to be shocked.

"Why didn't we know about this two months ago?"

Maki is the first to break it and she sounds like murder. She moves to stand but Inumaki's hand on her arm stills her. "We should have known about this as soon as Shoko did."

"That's not the point, Maki-"

Yuji's please fall on deaf ears. "How could she just… not tell us?"

"Because-"

"Give me one good reason-"

"Maki, we can't-"

"Nobara is dying, Itadori!"

No one wants to respond to that at all, let alone while Maki looks like she'd take an axe to anyone with the idiocy to cross her right now.

They're all silent, Maki fuming, Yuji so wide-eyed that his pupils are barely bigger than pinpricks, Megumi slumped against the cushions in the defeat that's followed his adrenaline high, and it's a good five minutes of that before Maki – of course – decides she has something to say again.

"What are we going to do about it?"

"'Bout what?"

The group freezes; Gojo's head pokes through the door uninvited. Maki starts to get up like she's going to stalk over to him and shake him down for answers, and Inumaki doesn't stop her this time, but Yuji does – he catches the stormy look in her eyes, though.

"Oh. So we're mad." He insinuates himself without asking, as is his custom. "What're we mad about?"

"Focus on yourself," Maki snaps.

"Uh…well, then." Gojo winces, but he doesn't try to leave. "This some kind of intervention?" Maki snarls. He still doesn't get the point. "Ooh. Lover's quarrel?"

"Kugisaki is dying," Megumi says flatly, and he thinks that if he had the choice right now he might punch Gojo in the teeth.

"Wow. You people sure are depressing."

Nobara doesn't ask to be let into the room, but she stills in the doorway when she sees them all freeze at her approach. Megumi and Yuji look like they've been shot, Maki looks like she'd shoot someone point-blank if she got the chance, Gojo is slumped so far over himself that he barely looks taller than she would sitting down, Inumaki's and Panda's eyes are fixed on the floor – something is wrong.

"Guys," she says, gripping the doorknob, "did something happen?"

Silence. Then Yuji moves, wrapping her in his arms before Nobara has a chance to figure out what to do with hers.

Panda's next, probably because he's the only one here who's not emotionally constipated or feeling murderous, and Megumi stands so he can beat him there and wedge himself in where he can bury his face in the crook of Nobara's neck; Maki takes the spot directly in front of her and holds on as if she wants to crush her.

Gojo doesn't move, staring shellshocked at the floor alongside Inumaki, who – as always – has nothing to say.

"I'm so sorry," Maki says, softer than Nobara thinks she should be able to sound when she's so obviously out for blood. She's the only one who manages to say anything at all.

"Why?"

Nobara doesn't know why she bothers to ask, because this display is making it plain as day that – somehow – they've all arrived at the same conclusion that she has. She doesn't know if that's better or worse than it was when she could keep them in the dark, but at least there's no need for secrecy anymore. Everyone knows.

Kugisaki Nobara is dying.

"You didn't say anything."

"You knew," Shoko says. Even the smoke curling from her cigarette looks guilty, if that's even possible. "I knew you already knew."

"Yeah, last night." Nobara laughs hollowly. "Pretty sick of you, letting me try to convince myself I was fine for a month and a half."

"Kugisaki, I-"

"Save it." Nobara turns her head. "If you couldn't even tell me that you knew I was going to die, I'm not waiting around to hear-"

"I'm not good at this!"

That gets Nobara's attention, even though she doesn't want it to. "You don't say."

"I…I wasn't about to tell a traumatized sixteen-year-old that she was about to die when she had all these grand plans to go off and save her friends and…damn it, Kugisaki, do I really have to explain?" Shoko's hands seem a little shaky if the wavering of the trail of smoke still leaving her cigarette means what Nobara thinks it does. "We…we lost our whole world that night. I know I have no excuse, but-"

"Yeah. Leave it at that, then." Nobara scoffs. "I don't care what you lost. If I had six months to live, I had a right to know that!"

"And I'm not saying that you didn't." Shoko is so, so tired – she still wishes she could keep running. "But from a psychological standpoint, it was an understandable stress response."

"You think I wanna hear about psychology right now?" Nobara laughs like she could kill someone. "When I just found out I'll never live to be seventeen? Do you actually think I'm selfless or stupid enough to care about your feelings?"

She's just a kid. Sometimes it's easy to forget that they're all just kids. They're self-interested and easily-provoked and often unkind and still learning how not to be that way, not knowing if they'll live long enough, and Shoko wants to snap, but she can't – someone has to be the adult here, and it's not going to be the child again.

"I'm sorry," she says numbly. "I'm sorry, Kugisaki. Really."

She looks down at her lap, miserable. "Is there really nothing we can do?"

"Unless you can get Mahito to reverse the damage he did…" Shoko doesn't want to finish that sentence.

"Yeah. Okay. Go with that." Nobara's lips curl into a snarl. "Go with the quitter option. Tell me with a straight face that I'm gonna die and I can't do a damn thing about it like it's going to stop me from tracking down that patch-faced asshole and making him fix me at gunpoint!"

Shoko looks up at Nobara out of the corner of her eye. She's got that fiery determination not to die that she doesn't realize she'll probably lose with whatever vestiges of her youth still remain, and she really seems to believe she has a chance. Shoko wishes she could tell her that she did.

"You know he'd probably just kill you on sight, right? You're not in any shape to fight."

"What, like that's supposed to make me want to sit back and do nothing, getting colder and colder, watching everyone around me turn grayer than I am because they can't help me until I just up and croak one day?"

Shoko takes a drag of her cigarette because she doesn't know how to tell Nobara that that is, in fact, exactly what she should do.

"She's not going to make it."

Those words and a tug at her sleeve make Utahime start and she turns, but she knows immediately what Gojo means by the gesture.

"Who?"

She circles behind him, her cheek against his back; she hems him into her arms like they're stitches taking in the waist of a dress and keeps him jealously close, totally silent. It's been so long since one of his despondent slumps – she'd thought they were through, but apparently not.

It's not clear who she is, but she knows from what little he'd said that it's someone he should have been able to save. Fushiguro's half-sister, maybe – she remembers hearing something about a coma. How awful to have gotten news like that at a time like this.

"I shoulda been there."

"You couldn't be," Utahime says gently. She grips his forearm lightly – she knows to do that now, makes him feel grounded.

"But I shoulda."

"You were on the run, Gojo."

" On the run? I was in a box, Utahime."

It dawns on Utahime that he isn't talking about Fushiguro Tsumiki.

"They can't save her unless they find Mahito." Gojo's shoulders slump enough to put him at Utahime's eye level. "They're all going to die if they do that now."

"There's nothing else?"

She faces him on the bed, legs crossed, but they aren't really looking at each other. Can't. It's too hard a slap in the face to learn that they're going to add to their list of losses.

"I should've been there." He keeps coming back to that. "I should have shown up and cut that guy in half. Could've. Easily, back then. She'd be fine right now if I'd done that." His eyes look too bright, like he's burning with fever, and it's easy to believe that he is. " She would be fine."

"Gojo, you aren't going to change anything by-"

"She would be fine!" Gojo's voice rises and his hands tighten around Utahime's like clamps. "She would be…would be hitting people and demanding they carry her bags and…and being a kid and she would be fine, and no one would be dying, and-"

"Gojo," she cuts him off, rubbing her hand up and down the length of his forearm. " Gojo."

"No," he says, small, feverish. "Utahime, no-"

"Gojo," she tries once more, gently as she can. "Shhh."

"Don't – don't shush me-"

"Shhh," she repeats, and moves in close enough to reach for him. " Shhh-"

"Stop it."

"Gojo, you need to-"

"People are dead because of me!"

"No, people are dead because of Kenjaku!"

Dead silence falls over the room. It's quiet enough to make Utahime forget to breathe.

"I know how hard this is for you," Utahime goes on once she's collected herself. She situates herself in his lap where she knows he likes her to be when he needs to feel solid again and takes his face in both of her hands. "I do, okay? I get it. But you can't change things by speculating about things that didn't happen and blaming yourself."

"Nobara's going to die because of me," he replies, glassy-eyed and missing the point entirely.

"Nobara's going to die because of Mahito."

" I could have stopped-"

"But you didn't!"

"Exactly." Gojo's arms wrap around Utahime's waist and then squeeze too tightly but she's afraid to tell him he has to let up. " Exactly."

"You're human, Gojo. You made a mistake. Was it a damn costly one? Yes! But you were going to make one eventually and it doesn't help anyone to think about what you should have-"

"I don't get to make mistakes!"

Utahime thinks he feels her stiffen in his arms, because he stiffens, too.

"Mistakes are for people who have the privilege of being weak enough to make them."

"That isn't true." She brushes his hair back from his eyes, cups his face – even glassy-eyed and frantic he's beautiful, and she tangles her hands in his hair. "Even the best of us-"

"A whole lot of people were counting on me." He laughs hollowly. "They believed in me. They died for it."

"No one expects you to save the world, Gojo."

His grip finally slackens. "I can't believe you're actually saying that when you yourself told me this plan of yours wasn't gonna go forwards until, and I quote, 'I was in fighting shape again.'"

"We need you. That doesn't give us any excuse to leave everything to you."

"But you have, haven't you? Not one of you people was ready to handle Shibuya without me." He looks at her like he's never hated himself more. "A sixteen-year-old girl is going to die because of that. Nanami died because of that. Thousands of random strangers on their way to Halloween parties or whatever died because of that. And you're telling me that it's not my fault that I wasn't there to stop it?"

"I'm telling you that it isn't your job to hold up the sky, Satoru!"

Like you would know, he wants to snarl. Weakling.

Some part of him feels sick at the thought because she has been his everything and she deserves his everything, and that is the part that seals his mouth shut. But he thinks it and he glares at her with hard eyes and can't believe that only a second ago all he'd wanted had been to hold her.

It'd be easy now to forget that he loves her.

"They forgive you," she says. "I'm sure they do."

There's a look in his eyes that shakes Utahime to the core, and she's struck with the feeling that some part of him is probably irrevocably altered.

"You have no right to say that," he says.

He wishes he'd never come to her. She is gentle, and he deserves harshness; she is good, and right now that goodness is sickening.

"Then ask them." She might cry. "They will."

She knows that. What she doesn't is if he'll ever forgive her for saying so.

"I don't want to look at you right now," he says.

"I know you don't." She's always been unflinching in the face of his anger. "So don't look. Just listen."

They will be in Japan again in only a few hours. It isn't the time for divisions or guilt or blame, but they've come anyways.

"Why should I?"

"Because if you think you have something to atone for, that's how you have to do it."

By accepting that he doesn't have a reason for penance, necessarily; by shifting blame – dirty tricks, those. Utahime's not half so guileless as she wants people to think she is. Insolent woman, trying to save him from himself – who exactly does she think she is?

He looks at her, shamefaced but still determined, and he has his answer: he was asked, but she is the one who's really going to save the world.

He hates her words enough to think he hates her now, but even he can see that.

Notes:

We got to see some unlikeable sides of characters here and...I think I like that? Maybe?

Chapter 18: Shoes Summary:

The other shoes begin to drop. Yuta has an idea; Miwa tries to talk to Megumi; Utahime and Gojo are upset with each other; Nobara does something inadvisable.

Notes:

*cries in mechamiwa*

One of my biggest complaints about the Culling Games arc is that it never gives its characters emotional outlets or, really, any moments in which they act on the trauma and sadness and anger that's been compounding since Shibuya. The final chapters of Worlds Apart are going to be my answers to that. These people are a mess, and they need to be a little bit unlikeable, I think - anyone would be in their shoes.

Hence, people in this chapter being mean and getting into petty arguments and doing things they shouldn't.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

"I…I heard about your friend."

Megumi doesn't look up, afraid of what Miwa will say if she sees him acknowledge her words. She still goes on, though.

He hadn't asked to be seated next to her. If he'd had his way, Nobara would be sound asleep on his shoulder now, but instead he's in the middle seat – Todo on one side, Miwa on the other. Not what he needs right now – maybe exactly what he doesn't.

"I'm really sorry, Fushiguro-kun," she says shyly, sadly.

"Thanks." He's not thankful. "I don't wanna talk about it."

"I know you don't." She gives his sleeve a tug for emphasis. "And I know you wanted to sit with her, too."

Megumi says nothing, again.

"It's so sad," Miwa goes on. "I really wish I could help-"

"You could help by shutting up."

Miwa withdraws her hand, but she doesn't look as crestfallen as Megumi would've liked. "No, I wouldn't. You're just saying that."

"You don't even know me."

"But I know what it's like when you lose someone that you care about." Those too-wide eyes blink up at Megumi and he wishes she'd look at anything else. "And I also know that people who say they want to be alone don't actually want to be alone."

"Well, I do."

"I learned that from Mai." Damn this girl and her persistence. "She always used to tell me she didn't want me around, but she did. She said that after."

"Good for you."

"Look, I…I get it, okay? You…I see how you look at her!"

That gets Megumi's attention.

"I see how you look at her," Miwa repeats. "Like…like…I don't even know. Like…like she's all you think about."

"Don't."

"I…I know that this must be killing you."

"I don't need your pity, okay?"

"No, but…I lost someone that…that…never mind."

He gives her the hardest look he can manage. "You can skip the sob story."

"Okay, I'm trying to cut you some slack because you're going through a lot, but now you're just being mean." Miwa's lip begins to wobble. "But…but I know what it's like not to realize how you feel about someone until it's too late, okay?"

"I don't…I don't feel anything for her."

"You do." Miwa tries to lay her hand on his arm again, but he bats it away. "It's okay. You don't have to-"

"You actually think I'm stupid enough to be thinking about that right now?" Megumi laughs shortly.

"'s not about stupid. Sometimes those kinda things just pick us." Miwa shrugs. "Someone…felt like that about me, and I didn't know, and…then it was too late, so…I don't know. I guess I just wanted to, um. Say that I'm sorry, and…tell you that you should…tell her that before it's too late." She bows her head. "At least then you'll get the chance to, right?"

He looks at her, wondering what she could possibly be talking about, and it hits him in a violent second that makes him want to hurl himself out the window of the plane.

" No," he says, voice straining in its effort to stay quiet.

"You'll regret it-"

" No!"

"Why won't everyone stop telling me that I love her?" his heartrate feels as ragged as his choppy breathing. "Why does that even matter? Who cares? She's going to die!"

"That's exactly why you should be honest with yourself!"

"I am honest-"

"You're gonna regret it if she dies and she doesn't know that you wanted more time with her!"

Passengers in the surrounding aisles are turning to stare, and Miwa probably looks worse for the wear after her outburst. But Megumi, for once, isn't thinking about the scene she's making.

"There's…nothing to be honest about," he says numbly.

But there is – he wishes people would stop reminding him of that before he's forced to admit that he knows that.

It's not time, and he won't get a right one. Best not to give it a name.

"I have a stupid idea."

"Yeah, no surprise." Maki hasn't really been in the mood to talk to Yuta since last night, now that the only thing on her mind is the one thing she's positive he wouldn't get. But they are sitting together for the last leg of the flight, and he is resting his head on her shoulder, so she can't very well ignore him. Maybe she could use the distraction. "Shoot."

"I think there might actually be one other way to help Kugisaki," he says.

Maki wants to lash out without thinking, but she forces herself to look down at Nobara, sleeping on her other side, and reminds herself to be quiet. She'd been slumped against Maki's shoulder when she'd fallen asleep, but her head's slipped and now she's practically lying in her lap; it's uncomfortably close, but Maki wasn't in the mood to move her at the time, and she still isn't.

"This better be good," she says, because if it isn't she might have to throttle him, boyfriend or not.

"No, I think it could actually work."

"You sure about that?"

"Well, no, but-"

"Why not?"

"Uh…because it's super risky and I won't know until I try it?"

Maki sets her hand against Nobara's back protectively. "But it has potential?"

Yuta shrugs. "I mean, some."

"Go for it, then."

"My technique," he explains. "We don't need Mahito-"

"Because you could copy his…soul-warping thing," Maki realizes. "And fix her?"

"Try to, at least."

"That would mean you had to fight him to a standstill."

"Yeah, but I wouldn't have to do that part by myself," Yuta replies.

"Right, but do you know if you could figure out how to use Mahito's technique fast enough to do that?"

"Well, no." There's really no way he could know that. "But…it's a better bet than trying to get him to do it."

Maki looks down at Nobara again – sleeping in her lap, arms vise-like around her waist because she's grown too afraid to let go lately – and she nods. "It is."

"Aren't you going to say something?"

He does not. For all that it had taken for Utahime to be willing to bow to pettiness just this once, it hadn't done anything.

"Gojo," she tries again. "We're going to be in Tokyo in seven hours."

"I know."

At least he's not ignoring her. "You realize that we need you to snap out of this, right?"

His eyes are colder than she'd like them to be. "There's nothing to 'snap out of,' Utahime."

She should stop there, because she's the one who has to be the adult in this situation – she always is when it comes to Gojo – but she's had enough of that, at least for today. Let him sulk, let him be the child he wishes he still was – Utahime isn't going to rise above this time.

Not when it's personal.

"Aren't you going to apologize to me?"

"Didn't do anything."

She crosses her arms, trying not to elbow Shoko in the seat on her other side. "You may think that, but I know exactly what you were thinking last night."

"I don't-"

"I'm not just going to let that slide."

"I didn't even say anything, Utahime!"

"And that's not every true. You told me you couldn't stand to look at me."

"I couldn't."

"Case in point."

"Because it felt wrong. Not…not because I was-"

"Felt wrong." She laughs hollowly. "I've spent three months doing everything in my power to help you get better and it felt wrong."

"It did!"

"Why?"

"Because I felt wrong!"

"About what, Gojo?"

He pauses, letting his breathing slow again, and he can't meet her eyes when he answers, "being around someone who didn't have a reason to hate herself."

"That is…" Utahime can't even put it into words at first. "…a lot to unpack."

"And…and someone I was s'posta be able to protect."

Utahime is too tired to believe that. "You really expect me to buy that chivalrous act right now?"

"Look, you were never supposed to have to spend three months of your life babysitting me, okay?" He looks up at her for a second just long enough to let her see his wide, guilty eyes. "You…you weren't supposed to uproot your life or lead a damn revolution because that's my job. I'm the one who does that stuff. I'm-"

Her eyes harden. " The Strongest."

"And it shouldn't have been your job to fix me."

"Believe me, Gojo, I didn't."

"Or protect me."

"Well, clearly, it was."

"But it shouldn't-"

"But it was!" Utahime's face reddens with the exertion of keeping her voice down. "And I did a damn good job of it, so I'm not sure what there is for you to be so upset about!"

"You did do a good job."

Utahime freezes at the rare praise until she remembers its context and her shoulders slump again.

"But it still felt wrong." Gojo stubs the toe of his shoe on the stubbly airplane carpet. "Not supposed to be that way. Y'know, the weak protecting the strong and all that."

Of course. Maybe it had been optimistic to wish that the change in Gojo would last past the starry-eyed delusions they'd let their minds spin while they were safe and far from home.

Some things are different now, though. Utahime's not who she was when she left, not the Council's 'example of womanhood,' not a mid-rate sorcerer with little to give, not the disappointing daughter of a disappointing clan, and certainly not Gojo Satoru's punching bag.

"I'm not weak," she says, straightening her spine, "and you never really thought that I was."

He doesn't look like he remembers how to speak.

"Don't go and try to rewrite history because you're mad at me." Utahime raises her chin almost as if to challenge him. "You recommended me for a promotion, remember? I know you don't think that. You're just retreating into an old coping mechanism because you're upset with me-"

"Why don't you get that I'm upset with me?"

Now it's Utahime's turn to freeze, and Gojo turns, bending to press his forehead to the window.

"You're…a lot of things I'm not," he reluctantly admits. "I was…at a low. Got carried away."

"Is that your idea of an apology?"

"Guess so."

"It'd be nice to hear you-"

"I'm sorry, damn it. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

"What I want to hear is that you're going to be able to put this behind you and focus when we get back, because we need you and I'm tired of babying you-"

"Since when have you been babying me?"

"All of the bed-sharing and cuddling and comfort? What did you think that was?"

"Well, you did say you loved me-"

"So did you!"

"In the heat of the moment-"

"That still counts!"

"Whether or not that was true-"

"It…wasn't?"

"Who even knows what we were thinking, Gojo? We were a mess." Utahime presses her palm to her forehead. "Am I attracted to you? Yes. Obviously. But did I let myself get carried away? It's-"

"Hime…"

"-possible."

Gojo's expression hardens. "So that was all pity?"

No, says the part of Utahime that wants to fold him into her arms right now and keep him there as long as he'll let her. But she can't get herself to say that – pride's all she has left, after all.

"I wouldn't go so far as to say that," she says coolly, "but we have other priorities right now."

"What if I wanted you to be my priority?"

She pulls her hand away when he reaches for it and wants to recoil at his sweetness, wondering if it was ever more than selfishness in disguise. She doesn't really, but she wants to – it seems proper to doubt him, even if it's not what she wants. "That can't happen, Gojo."

"But-"

"You know that."

He rests his head against her shoulder, and she wishes she had the backbone to push him off. She doesn't, though – she's grown used to his warm weight against her shoulder, loves it too much to tell him that it has to go. I do, she thinks, wondering why she can't say it. I do love you. What a tragedy, hiding like this because, knowing he is hurt enough to lash out again, she cannot admit to loving him in the wrong place and at the wrong time.

I love him, she thinks, and she knows faster than she should that this moment is an exception, not the rule – that she'd meant what she'd said and done, that she believes he did, too.

"I thought I didn't hold up the sky."

She touches his waist; he knows he is forgiven, even if she can't bring herself to say it. "We all have our corners to hold up, Gojo." She wants him to believe that – it's surprising how much. "So…no. But you're a part of the group of us that does." She likes that image, the thought of being not a lonely sufferer but one member of a company of the burdened; he is needed, but so are they all, almost in equal measure, even if only to hold up the ones who hold up the sky. "And we need you. You feel guilty – I get it. But…we all have a responsibility to ourselves. That's not on you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"We have to be able to take care of ourselves. Can't just live our lives wondering when Gojo is going to show up and solve all of our problems." She pats his back. "No offense, but you're really not all that. I mean, look at you. You're taking out your guilt on me like a little kid."

"You want an apology?"

"Wanting one and thinking I'll get one are two different things."

"You were lying about not meaning what you said," he accuses. "And about babying me."

"You were lying about thinking I was weak," she fires back.

It's pathetic, how terrible they are at pretending not to care.

"Okay, and?"

" And what?"

"What am I supposed to do about it?"

"Shut up about how I wasn't supposed to need to protect you or…whatever it is you're mad about now."

" And?"

She can't very well tell him to stop blaming himself with a snap of his fingers, but she has to say something to tell him that tomorrow has to matter more than yesterday.

"Remember what you have to do," she tells him instead.

Megumi knows his guard should be up now that they're home, knows they might be followed. But there's no way, tired and dazed with the effort of pushing down his boiling-over emotions as he is, that he could. So he doesn't react to the tug on his sleeve with the fight-or-flight abruptness that he should.

"'Gumi," Nobara says, her voice still thick with sleep. "I needa talk to you."

Perhaps he'd known it was someone safe – that's a more satisfying explanation of his slow reaction time than the alternative. "Hm?"

"Somewhere else," she says, ducking her head in the opposite direction.

"The bags," Megumi protests weakly, gesturing to the baggage claim.

"Yuji knows what they look like." She tugs at his arm again. "C'mon."

He's not one to deny her, so he follows.

Nobara doesn't know how long she has – three, four, five months. Long enough to get her time cut in a quarter by the Council, if Gojo can't wipe the floor with them tomorrow. Long enough to build up regrets but not long enough to make sure she won't have them. She's not grieving – she's known she wasn't long for this world since she woke up, even if she hadn't wanted to admit it to herself until recently – but she feels like every room she enters is spinning wildly, as if up is down. Everything but her momentary desires is hazy and confused, and she wants little: sleep, warmth, and filling meals when she feels like them; to be held, always to be touching somebody she trusts as a resting place for her cold, fragile body. She's clung to Yuji lately, slept in Maki's lap on the plane because she'd mercifully not resisted – she'd touch Megumi if he would let her but he usually doesn't.

He's distant.

That feels like the beginnings of a regret, and she's not clear-minded enough that she's supposed to be minimizing the strength of her attachments before she goes. She can't afford to sleep sprawled out on Yuji's chest or rest her head on Maki's shoulder or reach for Megumi's hands when she'll only hurt them more the day her time runs out. But she craves nothing but that – human warmth, human comfort. She can't find it in herself to resist.

She tugs Megumi's arm, because he doesn't realize how he looks at her, or that she likes it, and in her addled confusion, that saddens her.

"'Gumi," she repeats. "You comin'?"

"You seem out-of-it," he mutters, stumbling after her. They reach a sheltered corridor branching off from the bathrooms and she comes to a stop, clasping her hands as she stands in front of him. "What's wrong?"

"Nothin' 'cept I'm dying." She smiles morosely. "And ya only live once, right?"

He looks down at her, looking up at him expectantly, and his ears redden. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She doesn't answer for a moment, and when she does it's not with words. She's smiling, a little cockeyed, and he's never seen her this way – almost like she's drunk or sleep-deprived or euphoric. It's terrifying; she's intoxicating, sweet and soft as she never is when she has her wits about her, and he can't even bring himself to move, bracing himself against the wall behind him for support. She places her hand flat against his chest and then splays it out flat, smiling for some reason at the feeling.

"Kugisaki," he says, out-of-breath, when he hasn't used that name in days. "What are you doing?"

"Don't wanna regret anything," she says by way of an explanation, and her hand drifts from the center of his chest to the collar of his shirt. "'Specially not you."

She tugs, he bends his head as if he knows already what she means to ask, and she's still smiling when she kisses him.

He tastes like airplane snacks. She laughs, trying to fathom the feeling of his lips beneath hers when they're stiff until his body gets ahead of his mind and he's kissing her back, and not particularly gently. She's stuck on that – he tastes like airplane snacks, and he's not gentle, and he's so tall beside her that she has to make him bend just so she can reach.

He's not gentle, and there's nothing sensual in his clumsy efforts to deepen the kiss, and after a few seconds he tastes more like regret and anxiety than plane food (Nobara would know – she has those tastes forever in her mouth nowadays). But she doesn't care – it's a terrible first kiss but he's Megumi, and she's dying, and she thinks that she needed to know what this would feel like because for all her teasing, she'd never been able to admit that she'd been trying to goad him into doing something she hoped he would.

But then he goes stiff.

She's so small.

Megumi should curse himself for that thought – for thinking anything besides no or stop at a moment like that – but he doesn't. It's amazingly easy to get lost once she's shut off his brain and he marvels, silent as he focuses, at the way his palm spans half the width of her tiny waist when he sets it on her back. He marvels at the taste of mango lip balm still lingering on her lips hours after application, and if it hits him like a freight train that he wants nothing more than a girl he's about to lose, that only serves to push him. He thinks he's supposed to use his tongue and his teeth but he doesn't know how; he tries anyway. He doesn't know where to put his hands-

Megumi, says some voice he knows he shouldn't ignore. The last thing you should be worrying about right now is what to do with your hands.

"You're really bad at that."

Megumi pulls back and it takes Nobara a moment to realize that the look on his face isn't a pleasant one.

"Oh," she says. "I misread."

"Kugisaki" – that still stings – "do you realize how much danger we're in right now?"

"You kissed me back," she protests weakly.

" Do you?"

"I'm gonna die," she says simply. "What do I care?"

"Kugisaki-"

"Stop calling me that!"

" Kugisaki," he snaps, " why did you just do that?"

"Because I wanted to!"

She's a little too loud, and a cohort of ladies in line for the bathroom turns to stare. Nobara doesn't particularly care what they think.

"You can't just do things like that-"

"What, so you didn't like it?"

"Of course I didn't! The Council could literally jump out of any corner of this airport and kill us in broad daylight and you thought it was a good time to kiss me?"

"I thought-"

"Can you honestly tell me that you're in your right mind right now?"

"I'm dying!"

"That isn't an excuse!"

"You didn't have to kiss back, you know."

"It was a physiological reaction!"

"A physiological reaction." Nobara snorts. "Funny."

"It was. And I'll answer that for you – you're not." He looks as cold as he can force himself to when his face is still burning up. "And even if you were, grabbing me and kissing me like that was…was just not… not…" he flounders. "I didn't want that, Kugisaki. I never did. Never would. I'm not…I don't know what you thought there was going on, but… no. I didn't want to kiss you, okay? Don't want to kiss you again. Trust me, there's nothing to regret!"

She blinks up at him, and her one uncovered eye is wider and more vulnerable than he can ever remember seeing it.

"You don't like me," she says quietly.

"Of course not. I don't know why you'd think I did."

"Oh." Nobara would normally never take a rejection this passively, and he can only think that she must be in truly dire straits if she is. "Sure. Fine. Whatever."

"We need to focus on staying safe." It's easy to slip back into a deadpan, give orders – much easier than saying words he doesn't mean to save his skin. "And you need to snap out of this."

"I'm dying," she defends herself again, wrapping her arms around her waist to hug Yuji's sweatshirt tighter to her skin.

Megumi wishes she'd stop reminding him.

Notes:

*inserts 87 more Atlas references* yeah, I wish I'd thought to title this "holding up the sky."

Chapter 19: Lull Summary:

The group stays the night outside of Tokyo before they move on the Council.

Notes:

Another very Nobara-heavy chapter with not one Megumi appearance because he's a dum dum and doesn't deserve one after what he did last chapter. :p Also, this is kind of too soft, and this is the second week in a row that I've pounded out some sort of JJK fic obscenely fast before I had to leave for Bible study, so I think this is becoming a pattern...oops.

Chapter Text

Kugisaki doesn't really say much. None of them do, not even Gojo, but it comes as more of a surprise with her than it does with the others because, apparently, she isn't usually like this.

"Really short-fused," Maki had told him, describing the first-years he hadn't met back when they'd been in Kiev and had nothing better to discuss. "She'd cut you." She had thrown in a few more choice adjectives – "determined" on the positive end, "resilient," "tough," "convicted," but also "high-maintenance" and "loud" and "kinda puts me on a pedestal" (Yuuta thinks they ought to get along if that's an accurate description). Never 'quiet,' though, or 'resigned' or 'closed-off.' She'd mentioned that Kugisaki was touchy, and that one knew they'd won Nobara's trust when she showed and sought out tactile affection, but not that she took bad news so poorly.

So he isn't really expecting her to be so worn-out when he gets to her, curled up in her corner of the spare Gojo Clan property they're using until it's time to move on headquarters.

She's sitting by the juncture of two walls, knees tucked to her chest. Yuuta has to crouch when he wants to get her attention so as not to tower over her, but she doesn't look up when he does. Best to say something – he clears his throat. "Kugisaki?"

She looks up. "Oh," she says drily. "Okkotsu."

He thinks it might be a good idea to reach out and try to touch her since, apparently, she finds that comforting, but he's also not inclined to risk it. Best not to take risks with a hot-tempered girl who carries a hammer everywhere and probably won't live long enough to serve a jail term if she uses it on him. "I wanted to talk to you," she says. "Is this a good time?"

Her eyes narrow, but there's no fire in them. There always had been before and even Yuuta knows that it's odd to see her without it. "Why?"

"I, um…I have an idea."

He half-expects her to snap at him, but she doesn't. "About?"

"Well, um, I don't want to get your hopes up or anything, but there might, uh." He's almost not sure if he should tell her, it's so unlikely to work, but she's already expecting him to so he has little choice now. "There might be a way to fix, um…you know…" he scratches at the back of his neck. "Mahito?"

Kugisaki's eyes snap wide. They look a little bit brighter, beadier and more interested, and it's almost a night-and-day change – Yuuta feels awful, if he's honest, because he's half-convinced he's giving her false hope. "You mean there's some other way to fix me?"

Yuuta nods. "I…I'm not sure," he cautions her, "but there's something we could try."

She nods. "What is it?"

"Well, I have to warn you that I don't actually know if-"

"Spit it out already."

Ah. There she is.

That's the Kugisaki that he'd been warned about.

"I can copy cursed techniques." There's no point in drawing out the reveal. "And I don't know if I could copy Mahito's, but I could try, and obviously if it worked I'd be able to fix whatever he did to you-"

"So where is he?"

"Huh?"

"If all you have to do to fix me is find Mahito, where is he?" Kugisaki's voice is stronger but still flat. "That's kinda critical."

"Um…how would I know?" Yuuta shrugs. "Look, I know you wanna live, but I came up with this yesterday, and I'm honestly kind of stupid, so…I don't know anything-"

"But you can find him, right?"

"Um… someone probably can?" Yuuta feels vaguely threatened even though she hasn't made any threats. "I mean, I told you, I'm kind of stupid-"

"So do you have anything more than 'maybe'?"

Maki would probably tell Kugisaki not to talk to her boyfriend like that if she were here. Yuuta can't say that he doesn't wish she were.

He's concluded that Kugisaki is scary.

"…no?"

"So why did you tell me?"

He raises his hands in self-defense. "I'm…trying to make you feel better?"

"How is 'we've got nothing and I'm an idiot' supposed to make me feel better?!"

But it does make her feel better, a little bit. Just like being back in Japan does (she'd always wanted to see Europe until she'd found out she was supposed to die there) – just like Yuji taking one look at her and knowing something had happened. He'd wrapped his blanket around her shoulders as if he'd known she wouldn't want to look at the one that Megumi had given her, kissed her cheek, told her that there were snacks in the pantry (apparently Gojo kept a stash in this empty house to sustain himself when he wanted to dodge the clan elders) if she wanted them. He'd sat next to her on the couch for a while, saying nothing. He'd held her freezing hands until they almost felt warm again.

That had made her feel better. A little. (Even though it'd made her remember that Megumi wouldn't even look at her, because they'd always been a set, and that made her feel worse again.)

Or when Maki had awkwardly replaced Yuji's spot on the couch. She hadn't said anything, and she hadn't tried to reach out, but she hadn't stopped Nobara from gripping her hand like a vise, or from resting her head on her shoulder. It's comforting, leaning on Maki – probably a sort of function of Maki's resilience, the security she feels when she's close. Safety's one of the few things she still knows how to feel, so she likes it, being near Maki, feeling as if she'll keep her safe. (Nothing can. She can't afford to care.) So that had made her feel better, a little.

(Even though safety is an illusion now no matter who she leans on.)

Utahime had brought back extra egg-drop soup when she and Yuji went to get Chinese food for the group, because Yuji had reminded her that it was her favorite, and patted her shoulder and told her to 'hang in there.' That had made her feel better. A little. (Even though food lacks flavor now.)

Miwa gives her hugs whenever she can. Usually Nobara hates them from people she doesn't know well, but Miwa's too nice to make her uncomfortable, and she tells her that Fushiguro Megumi is a grade-A idiot, and that makes her feel much better, at least for a little bit.

(He is. He is an idiot. She won't cry over something as stupid as a mishandled kiss when she's about to die and they probably all are, but she can't stand to look at him, either. It's too embarrassing – knowing she did that, knowing she was stupid enough to do it to him. How out-of-it must she have been? Megumi? What about Megumi said 'boyfriend material'? Honestly-

He's an idiot.)

Yuji must've said something to Todo, because he comes by while she's slowly eating soup that should be delicious but tastes like nothing and tells her that she can't die because he fears her and that must mean she's invincible. She can't pretend to know what the hell he's trying to say with that, but nevertheless, she appreciates it. It makes her feel better, a little. (Even if she's not quite sure why denying the obvious is supposed to help.)

Yuta does his best, although Yuta's best is really not all that impressive and she concludes after Gojo makes a tone-deaf speech about "men in my family" being "bad at love, just give him a few days" that all Special Grades are just bad at feelings.

But then he tries again, and that is surprising.

"Hey, kid."

Gojo must really be trying to come off as approachable, because he's never called her that before. "Sensei," she says flatly. "Is this about-"

"No, no, I promise it's not this time!" Gojo raises his hands defensively. "I just wanted to check on you."

"You wanted to check on me." Nobara wouldn't ever claim she's entirely present right now, but even so, she's not delusional enough to think Gojo capable of such nonchalant selflessness. "Right."

"No, I'm serious." He slings an arm around her shoulders and she sort of hates how readily she accepts, even though this sort of comfort breaks every rule of student-teacher conduct and every single one of her personal sensibilities. To have to be comforted by Gojo Satoru, of all people – practically treason. "I really just want to know how you're doing. Won't even bring up you-know-who."

"You just did."

"Nuh-uh! I could be talking about anyone!"

Nobara huffs. "If you're just going to act like a kid, go away."

"Eesh, touchy, aren't we?"

"I'm dying, Gojo. I don't have time for this."

Something in his expression falters, and it's not long before his shoulders are slumped and his smile's gone. "Right," he says under his breath. "That."

"I don't know what you want to know, Gojo-sensei," Nobara says shakily, willing herself not to commit the grave indignity of crying in front of her teacher. "I'm obviously not fine, and I'm not going to tell you that I am. And you already know that I don't want to talk about Megu…I mean, Fushugiro. So why are you here?"

He sits there in silence for a moment, but she figures he must have an answer for her, because he doesn't make any move to leave, either.

"Guilt," he finally says.

"Guilt." Nobara laughs hollowly. "You're checking in on me out of guilt."

"I could've stopped all of this." His eyes go glassy. "But nope. Rubik's Cube."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Prison Realm. Hime calls it that." He sighs; she feels his clammy palm slip a few inches down her forearm with the rise and fall of his shoulders. "Sounds funny. Better than saying it like it is."

"Of course it was Utahime." She's the topic of every other one of his sentences nowadays. "Please tell me she didn't put you up to this."

"Um…no. She didn't."

"You hesitated."

"Because I was taken-aback? Geez. Not everything's that deep, y'know."

"Are you doing this to prove how selfless you are so she'll ride off into the sunset with you or something?" Nobara snorts. "Funny."

"I'm doing it because I feel bad, Kugisaki."

"Oh, wow. Pity. I'm honored."

"Kugisaki, look. I…I should've been able to protect you and I needed to come check on you because I get that now."

"Pity and emotional honesty? Wow. What a day."

"Okay, I know that you use humor as a coping mechanism, but ow, Kugisaki, hurtful."

"I really don't buy that you're telling me all of this just because, Gojo. You have to want something." She feels a sudden surge of vitriol and doesn't know exactly where it came from, nor does she care. "And if you say you don't, that probably means you're just trying to make yourself feel better-"

"Yeah. You got me." He laughs drily. "I'm going to go to the dying girl I could've saved for reassurance that I didn't do anything wrong."

Nobara is silent, then, and for the next few moments, unsure what she was ever meant to say to that.

"Gojo."

"Mmhm?"

They're still sitting against the wall, Gojo's arm around Nobara's shoulders even though his clammy hand is uncomfortable against her too-cool arm.

"I'm scared," she says, her voice small, and she wishes she hadn't as soon as she does.

"I would be, too." That's probably his version of empathy. "If that helps."

"Doesn't."

"Figured it wouldn't, but I'm no good at this comfort thing." He chuckles mirthlessly. "I really am sorry, kid."

"Not your fault. I mean, I don't know what you did to let yourself get put in that box, but…it's not like I'm mad at you."

"You're…not?"

"Nah. I'm mad at myself." For being so distracted, for not having been strong enough. "If I were going to be mad at anyone it'd be Yuji."

"Ah. You two are on a first-name basis now."

"He's my best friend." She shrugs. "I probably should be mad at him. He was standing right there, you know? But I can't. I mean…it's Yuji."

"That kid," Gojo sighs in agreement. "Do any of us really deserve him?"

Nobara turns and rests her head against Gojo's shoulder, her hair brushing his turtleneck as she shakes her head. "We don't."

"He and Hime are the only reasons I'm still alive, really."

"Wow. Someone really took a chisel to your ego."

"Yeah, that'd be Kenjaku." He tries to laugh but can't muster it up. "Then Hime."

"Good for her."

"Hime's mad at me," he goes on pointlessly.

"Boo-hoo. You deserved it."

"You don't even know what I did!"

"I can guess."

His shoulders slump. "She said I was being a baby."

"Because you probably were." Nobara's not really sure how she feels about Utahime yet – she's a little more uncomfortable than she should be with the closeness of her relationship with Yuji – but she's a kind woman and a much better teacher than Gojo and of the two of them, she's the one far more likely to be right. "She'd probably stop being mad at you if you apologized and started focusing on the mission and not her."

"How does everyone know that it's about-"

"Ew, how many of us have you talked about this with?" Nobara's nose scrunches. "Don't you have anything better to do than talk about your love life with teenagers?"

He looks down at her, now that she sounds more like herself and he's no longer afraid to, and his chest tightens with remorse but he forces himself to speak. "Teenagers have the best perspective on these things," he tells her. "Things I learned from teaching."

"Or you just never outgrew gossiping with high schoolers."

"I'm not gossiping, Kugisaki, I'm seeking the wise counsel of-"

"Your dying student who made out with your ward and got brutally rejected outside of an airport bathroom? Look somewhere else, you dumb paintbrush."

" Paintbrush?" Gojo's brow furrows in offense. "Now, is that any way to talk to your beloved-"

"'Beloved' my-"

"You wound me."

She sticks out her tongue at him. "If you're trying to cheer me up, you can let me roast you a little. 's good for morale."

No, Gojo swears to himself, reaching down to ruffle Nobara's hair, I'm not going to let her die.

"Okay," he says, gently, the way Utahime always does. "You do that, then."

"Gojo."

Gojo cracks an eye open at Utahime's half-whisper and grins when he sees her crouching in front of him, trying to poke him awake. His grin abruptly disappears, though, when the crick in his neck and the hard surface of the wall behind him become as impossible to ignore as the fact that he can't get up with Nobara asleep on his shoulder. He looks up at Utahime; she smiles.

"We all need to sleep well tonight," she says, keeping her voice low so she won't wake Nobara. "Get her somewhere more comfortable."

"My shoulder is very comfortable," he grumbles, but acquiesces, shifting as slowly as he can so as not to jostle her. He slips a hand behind her back once he's free, and another under her legs to balance her weight – however little that might be after months of unconsciousness – and lift her when he stands, cradled to his chest. He can't see Utahime's soft smile behind him at the sweetness of the gesture, but he has a pretty good idea (it's one of her weaknesses in a man, that gentleness with children, though that wasn't his intent).

In his arms, Nobara starts to stir with a tiny murmur of protest, but it's only a few seconds before she goes limp again.

"Over here," Yuji whispers from the couch. "She likes to be warm."

Gojo nods and changes course to set her down next to Yuji, though at the opposite end of the couch. She stirs again, this time not falling back into uninterrupted sleep as quickly as she had before, and when she opens her eyes, Yuji lifts his blanket in silent invitation.

"Hm?" she mutters, rubbing at her eyes before she can process this turn of events thoroughly enough to decide whether or not she wants to move. "Wha' happened?"

"Fell asleep," Yuji tells her – best to skip the details. He flaps the blanket a few times to indicate that she can still come over if she wants to. "Warm?"

She nods and crawls over to join him.

"I know you weren't just doing that to impress me, so don't even try."

Gojo starts at Utahime's voice. "Oh, um, Utahime," he stammers, turning, trying to keep his voice down. "Uh…hi?"

She smiles fondly up at him, then reaches up to pat his cheek. "You know, for such a baby, you really have your moments."

"So…tomorrow."

Maki inhales deeply, closing her eyes, then opens them again on the exhale. Yuta's nose instinctively scrunches at the hot air of her breath on his face. "Tomorrow."

"Do we even know what we're doing?"

"Nah." Maki shifts the pillow beneath her head and then lies back down on her mat, facing Yuta. "I think the plan goes about as far as 'Gojo roughs up the council and we get to go home.'"

"What a thought, huh."

"What a thought." Maki sighs. "Gonna be weird going back to normal after this."

"Our lives were never really normal, though." Yuta sets his hand out in the space between their mats, a sign she now knows to mean that he wants to touch her somehow even when sleeping intertwined on a mat big enough for one would be prohibitively uncomfortable. "Were they?"

"Guess you have a point there."

"But…should be good, anyway. I think. Not running."

Maki laughs softly, and her nose scrunches. "Time for us to be acted upon by an outside force, hm?"

He frees his hand from hers to tap his pointer finger against the tip of her nose. " Rude."

"Deserved. 's what you get for embarrassing me."

"I was being sincere, Maki!"

"I know, I know! But…still."

"Never thought you had enough of a sense of humor to turn that into a joke," Yuta huffs.

"I don't, but they did, and I like teasing you, so I stole it." She looks a little too smug. "Sorry."

It's fitting, she thinks – a moment to laugh before the sky caves in.

"Mm, I'm gonna miss this."

Satoru stiffens for a second when he feels Utahime's cheek press to his bare back, but he quickly relaxes when his brain registers that she isn't a threat and he hums in agreement. "Seeing me shirtless?"

"Idiot."

He probably deserves that. "You mean…nighttime?"

"Sharing," she murmurs, not specifying what it is they supposedly share. "A human space heater in my bed."

"Y'know, if you wanted me in your bed-"

" Gojo."

"Ah, fair." He chuckles. "'m gonna miss it, too."

"You're an idiot," she says. "And you have your moments when I want to throw my slipper at your head. Lots of those."

"And yet you love me?"

"And you're an absolute menace," she goes on, "but damn it, Gojo Satoru, I don't think I'd rather sleep next to anyone else."

He tucks her into his arms tonight, even though he usually likes it better the other way around; a pleasant buzz rings in his ears. It's easy to forget, hearing her words in his mind on repeat, that tomorrow might mean the difference between life and death for the both of them and everyone dear to them.

"Hime?"

"Trying to sleep, Gojo."

"Just wanted to say good luck out there."

"Oh." She shifts. "Uh…good luck back?"

He smiles and presses his cheek to the top of her head. "Thanks, Hime."

"Now go to sleep, you goof."

"But I haven't told you I love you yet," he whines.

"Thought you said you never said that."

"I was being an idiot, remember?"

" Gojo," she sighs, fondly weary. "You can tell me in the morning."

"'kay," he says. "Then I'm gonna."

"You do that."

"You're stalling, aren't you?"

"Why would I be doing that?"

"You don't wanna go to sleep."

"What makes you say that?"

"The follow-up questions you keep asking. Duh."

"Gojo…"

He presses a kiss to her hairline. "We're still okay for tonight, y'know that?"

"But tomorrow-"

"You don't need to worry about that." It's about time he made good on his promise to be strong for her. "'kay? You have my word."

"You can't promise me that, Gojo."

"Sure I can."

They both know he can't, but they're pretty words, and if they'll let them sleep, they don't really have to be true.

Chapter 20: Split Summary:

The group's plan changes: half of the team will go after Mahito while the other stays with the Council.

Notes:

Slow clap for Megumi and Nobara behaving again. Slower clap for Utahime being devastatingly romantic for no reason again. Slowest clap for Shoko being the unexpected MVP.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

"We have to split up."

Utahime rubs at her forehead with the heel of her hand. The other clutches a steaming mug of coffee with so much creamer in it that it looks more like chocolate milk. She looks like she can barely keep her eyes open. Shoko would feel bad for getting her up in the middle of the night when she's never been good at waking up quickly if it weren't too urgent to wait.

"Dunno what that means." Utahime takes a long swig of her coffee, which is probably still scalding. "Who does?"

"We can't all go after the Council at the same time." Shoko's been wondering about this for ages but only now is a better course of action coming into focus. "They're probably just going to try to have us all executed and it doesn't make sense to cluster up. Be more vulnerable than we have to."

"Ungh?" Utahime sets down her mug to rub at her eyes with both hands this time. "I thought the plan was-"

"It was. Wasn't good, though." She's been trying to take a backseat, letting Utahime coordinate, but she's not going to let them blunder into a catastrophic failure. Just the thought of the risks involved in Utahime's original plan – throwing all of their manpower into protecting Gojo from the Council and hoping he'll be able to do the rest – make her want a drink at five-forty in the morning. "We don't have enough people to risk that many."

Utahime blinks a few times, confused. "Why didn't you bring this up weeks ago?"

Shoko shrugs. "No one had any better ideas, did they?"

"No, but-"

"We do now." Shoko crosses her arms. "Okkotsu's idea about Mahito gave me one."

"Mahito?" Utahime drains the rest of her coffee in a single sip. "Didn't we agree that we weren't going to think about him until the Council stuff blew over?"

"No, but that'd be a way to spread our manpower." She shrugs. "I figure we've got as good of a chance of fixing Kugisaki as we do of overthrowing the higher-ups and she doesn't exactly have time."

Utahime looks exhausted but not particularly skeptical. "What I'm hearing is that you want some of us to take Okkotsu and Kugisaki to Mahito and the rest to stick to the original plan."

"Yeah." Shoko tries to read Utahime's expression but she's still too tired to articulate her emotions legibly on her face. "Half and half, sorta."

"Oh."

"You'd stay with Gojo and some of the kids to get through the Council," she elaborates. "I'd go with Kugisaki and Okkotsu to find Mahito."

"Okay, but what are the odds that you guys all get killed, too?"

"High, but at least if we succeed, we lose one less ally. And the Council still doesn't know we're back in Japan."

Utahime raises her eyebrows. "They're probably going to be able to guess."

"Nah, they're idiots. They'd've caught Okkotsu before he even got on an outbound train if they weren't." It's not really funny, but it makes Shoko chuckle – if only because she likes to make jokes at their expense. "It keeps us under the radar."

"Three people's not many," Utahime points out. It's not a no – that's promising.

"Itadori, then. I don't think he'd want to leave her." He'd be useful, too, but Utahime has never liked it when Shoko talks about students like video game characters whose stats she's comparing to pick an avatar. You sound like the higher-ups, she always says. So she doesn't bring that up. "Fushiguro."

"Not Fushiguro," Utahime says automatically. "Conflict of interest. Plus, we need him to refute the murder accusations."

"But those three know each other best," Shoko counters. "They're more effective-"

"I'm pretty sure Kugisaki and Fushiguro aren't talking to each other right now."

Shoko raises her eyebrows – she tries not to get herself involved in her students' affairs, but she's not sure how she failed to notice something as drastic as that. "They're not?"

"She kissed him and he flipped out," Utahime explains tiredly. "Please don't put them on a team together. They're just going to cause you problems."

So I missed a lot. Duly noted. "Inumaki, then?" He's strong, and no one ever has problems with people who don't speak.

"Inumaki's fine. If you want an even split…Todo, maybe?"

Interesting. She wasn't on board at first, but now she seems to be throwing most of her firepower at this. "You realize that you're giving us all of your strongest people, right?"

"The Council's only real power is political," Utahime explains. "They can execute us, but if it comes down to a fight, they're ancient. Won't take much to take them." She smirks. "And if it does, we can sic Gakuganji on them. That'll throw 'em off."

"Yeah, I…still can't wrap my head around that." She wouldn't believe it at all if she hadn't seen the proof herself. "Him being helpful."

"Well, he probably won't want to, but if he has to, he'll do it. I'm pretty sure of that." Utahime looks up at Shoko like there's something she's supposed to get. "Anyways. That leaves us with Gojo, Fushiguro, um…the twins, Miwa, Nitta, and Panda? Right?"

"Decent, but isn't Miwa kinda dead weight?"

Utahime's eyes grow cold. "She ran halfway across the world to help me."

"Yeah, but she's Grade 4."

"So is Maki."

"But Maki can hold her own in a fight. I mean, at the exchange event-"

"She might not even have to fight."

Gojo, back in the day, had nicknamed Utahime "mama bear" for this very reason; Shoko had forgotten about that. She wishes she hadn't.

For all that she's trying to keep an unprepared student out of a fight that could take her life, she's only got a few seconds before Utahime goes nuclear.

"I'm…not trying to insult her, Utahime. I just don't want her to get into a situation she can't handle." Haibara, neither of them has to say. "And it's not just her. I'd probably say the same of Mai. Nitta. It doesn't seem smart to make the teams so lopsided."

"We're fighting eighty-year-olds. You're fighting a special-grade curse." Utahime narrows her eyes. "And I'm not blind. I know they're not as strong as your team, but what, are we just supposed to shunt them out of the way, like, 'sorry, you're useless'?"

Shoko sighs. "I just think we need to be trying to spare their lives, not their feelings."

She knows Utahime knows that. What she's not sure of is why she's not acting like it.

"Splitting up." Maki nods thoughtfully. "Good call, probably."

"Your boyfriend's on the other team," Mai unhelpfully points out.

Maki shoots her a withering glare. "Good. Less to distract me."

That is…actually a respectable answer, and Mai bites back her answering retort. "Okay," she says flatly.

"'Okay' what?"

"'Okay' as in that was an okay answer? Something like that. Dunno."

"I know I'm different around him. Doesn't mean I've forgotten what's really important here." Maki slings one strap of a backpack that's probably full of things that wouldn't make it through airport security over her shoulder. "And I can't say I don't prefer this assignment. I'd rather not deal with Patchface again."

Mai had forgotten how pragmatic Maki can be when it's not petty spite that drives her. Maki's decisive and clearheaded – she's never only been strong in battle. And Mai wishes she didn't notice or admire that half as much as she did.

"Okay," she concedes.

"Ieiri-san?"

She turns; Yuji taps her shoulder to get her attention. He looks a little distraught. "Yeah?"

"Fushiguro should come with us," he tells her. "To find Mahito."

"Utahime said no."

He tilts his head, confused. "Why?"

"Apparently they're not speaking to each other. Seems like as good a reason as any." She pats Yuji's shoulder. "Sorry, kid."

"But…but he wants to go with us," he goes on. "He said so."

"Look, I don't know what to tell you, but this wasn't my call. Utahime said he had to be with the Council group. Go take it up with her."

"Iori-sensei, I need to go with them!"

Utahime raises her eyebrows. "You'd be a liability." She might be feeling a little defensive, but she doesn't pull punches when students are being boneheaded.

"I'm a what?"

"A liability," she repeats. "And why are you insisting that you have to go with Nobara when you quit talking to her two days ago?"

Megumi opens his mouth, then closes it.

"Like I thought," she huffs. "Look. I know she's your friend and you want to be with her right now, but if you were, you'd only put them in more danger."

"I was up for a grade-one promotion," he says under his breath.

"Which I'm sure is going to be helpful if we have to engage anyone." She mostly needs Megumi to make an appearance as proof that Gojo didn't kill him, but that's not a downside. "But if you can't keep a level head around Nobara, we can't risk it."

"Gojo can't keep a level head around you," he points out, managing to keep his tone surprisingly even.

It's an excellent point. "No, you're right. And I'll be the first to say that I'd send him with the Mahito group if we didn't need him." She glances up at Megumi to see how he's reacting – hard to say. He always looks a little bit annoyed. "But he has to be with us."

"So how are you going to get it through his head that you're not the point of this mission?"

Megumi's not trying to be disrespectful, but it feels like he is when he points out exactly the things she's afraid of so bluntly. "Can't. But I don't need to take that risk with more than one person."

"Wait, so she said you can't?"

"I'm a liability." Megumi crosses his arms. "Whatever that means."

"But…we were supposed to do it together." Yuji looks like a kicked puppy – Megumi's always hated it when he gets that look. Makes him want to pat his head or something equally stupid. Yuji has that effect on people. "We were supposed to be backup, remember?"

"Yeah, well, there's nothing I can do about that-"

"It was s'posta be so nice," he says mournfully. "You were gonna save the girl you love-"

He scoffs. "No, Okkotsu was."

"Well-" Yuji freezes. "Wait."

Yuji suddenly looks excited. That's never good.

"Eh?"

"You admitted it!"

"Admitted what?"

Yuji doesn't say anything. Megumi takes a few seconds to catch up.

He curses under his breath.

"I don't like this."

Utahime shrugs. "I don't, either. But it's better this way."

"Is it?" Gojo rubs his clammy palm against his thigh to dry it and stills when Utahime wraps it in both of hers. "Last time I left them-"

"I know." She swallows hard. "I hate the thought of leaving them, but…safer, I guess."

"Nobara probably doesn't have time," Gojo agrees.

"Yeah. That."

"Still."

Utahime thinks of Yuji's dejected expression when he'd learned that Megumi wouldn't be with their group, and remembers that she'll have to leave one of her students yet again, and thinks of Momo and Kamo who are still in hiding lest their return let the Council know that their comrades are back in Japan, and she sighs. "I feel like an empty-nester. Is that weird?"

"Nah. They're your babies." He ruffles her hair. "And, like…vengeful special-grade. That's also a thing."

"They're yours, too."

"Guess so." He leans, resting his head against hers. "I really hate this."

"I mean, I think we all do."

"I hate that you keep insisting on trying to talk them down." That's the first leg of their plan – the presentation of irrefutable proof that Gojo Satoru did not, in fact, go on a killing spree. There's almost no chance that it'll make a difference but a few Council members might be convinced that their charges are indefensible – they could use a few allies who know what they're doing already if they're going to make a regime change.

"Yeah. Well." She huffs. "That's your problem."

"It's an unnecessary risk-"

"Diplomacy isn't always entirely ineffective as a defense tactic-"

"But it's not safe."

"'Course it's not. Wasn't ever supposed to be."

"But-"

"This isn't about me." Utahime folds her hands around Gojo's, but they seem cooler than they were a moment ago. "Or you. Or anyone. There's no priority. No one we can afford to keep safe." She bites back bile – she hates the thought of those words proving true when it's her students on the line, when they've been the light of her life for so long – but she can't afford to let Gojo see that. "You have to let go of that, okay?"

"Let go of what, wanting you to be safe?" Gojo narrows his eyes. "Sorry, no."

"I'm not the point, Gojo!"

"But I…I'm not just going to let you get a death warrant slapped across your forehead for me!"

"I told Gakuganji when I left the school that I was going to clear your name, Gojo." She swallows hard. "I meant that."

"Oh. So this is supposed to be symbolic." He laughs drily. "You're risking your life for a symbol."

"It's not, Gojo. I…I need to try."

"Try what, getting yourself killed?"

"No. Fighting back." She looks down at her hands, folded in her lap now. Gojo looks like he regrets the loss of their warmth but doesn't reach for her. "Y'know. Seeing something wrong and saying something for once."

"Oh." Of course that's it – to her, this is an ideological battle more than it's ever been a physical one.

He realizes it's his plight that compels her to speak up when her own never did, and it's perhaps the most touching thing he's ever known.

"Let me try, Satoru," she says gently. "I can handle myself."

"I still don't like it."

"Well, you're going to have to learn to deal with that."

"Stupid." He stubs at the ground with the toe of his shoe. "Before the box I could do whatever I wanted."

She looks up at him, because she's found that she likes being able to read emotions in his eyes now that he keeps them uncovered. It's not something she should appreciate – he wouldn't be naked-eyed if things were as they should be – but she's selfish enough to like it when she can tell what he's feeling beneath the masks he wears. "That's not really true."

"Never woulda had to sit here and listen to you talk about putting yourself in danger and take it."

"I can handle myself. I said that." It's a little annoying, this hovering. "Honestly, you need me more than I need you right now."

"Right." She's not looking at Gojo and it's surprising how dejected he sounds. "Of course."

She regrets her words for a moment, even if they're true. It's not entirely his fault that he doesn't really know what to do with love.

"But we do still need you." She reaches for his hand again. "You just have to realize that this plan needs all of us to work. We can't just…hold back because you don't want anything to happen to us. That's not how this works." Maybe he'd thought it was when his strength alone could've neutralized any threat before it had a chance to touch the people he wanted to protect, but she might as well be honest enough to admit that that Gojo Satoru is gone.

"I…know that. It just doesn't feel like it's real."

"Well, yeah. You're not really used to running into things you can't do."

"No," he sighs. "Not used to wantin' to keep good allies out of a fight, either."

Something about that description warms Utahime more than any of the ridiculous confessions he's made since they became whatever they are now – a good ally. It's thrilling, somehow, being acknowledged, even though she'd never admit it. "Yeah, that kinda needs to go."

"Sorry. Can't help it." He flexes his hand, still wrapped up in hers. "I just…I just don't want anything to happen to you after…everything. I guess."

"You just have to trust me, Gojo." She leans forwards, resting her weight against the elbow of her free arm. "Have a little faith in me, okay? I know you don't really think I'm weak."

He looks down at her, heavy with something Utahime is afraid to name. "I know. Doesn't mean I'm willing to lose you when I just got you."

"You don't…have me, Gojo." Even though he always has, somehow. "And you're not going to lose me."

"I know I don't. It's a weird feeling." He exhales slowly, breath condensing in the cold morning air. "Wanting something I can't have."

"I mean…if we survive." She shrugs. "It's not like I don't want the same thing. Think of it as incentive, I guess."

"What, being with you?"

She smiles sadly. "It's not that hard, y'know? Forget about me for long enough to finish this fight and you can keep me as long as you want to."

"Nobara."

She turns, eyes narrowed. "Thought I was Kugisaki now."

"Nobara." Megumi repeats himself, staring at her – it's sort of creepy, his unblinking eyes and toneless inflection. "They wouldn't let me go with you."

She raises her eyebrows. "Why would you even want to?"

"I…just did." A truly commendable answer, he thinks. "I-"

"You don't have to rub it in my face, Megumi." She looks more hurt than defensive. "I get it. I messed up-"

" Idiot." He rubs at his eyes. " I'm the one who messed up."

She freezes.

"I…freaked out. As…one does."

"Understatement of the century," Nobara huffs.

"I didn't, um. Mean what I said."

"Which part of it?"

"All of them."

Nobara arches her eyebrows. "So you do like me?"

"I'm…figuring it out?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That I'm figuring it out."

"Wow. Thanks."

"I…I'm…I." He scratches at the back of his neck and wonders how two little words managed to get themselves stuck in his throat the way they have. "I…I wanted to come with you and Utahime said I was a liability because I…I couldn't control myself around you. I guess I can't."

So much for the apology.

"Because you hate me, because you fear me, or because you want to shove your tongue down my throat?"

Megumi's eyes bulge. "Do you have to say it like that?"

"Trying to deflect with humor. Sorry. Go on."

"You…make me have emotions." His cheeks heat up. "I…I don't like them. Feelings. Having them. Please don't ask me to explain that. Damn it, why am I still talking?"

But Nobara's not pinch-faced and stiff when he looks back at her – she seems like she's trying not to smile.

"You still haven't said you were sorry," she points out, averting her eyes so he won't see the mirth in them.

"Words are hard."

"Seems like a pretty basic place to start." Nobara lets a tiny giggle slip out and he thinks he might be drunk again. "Y'know. Easier than confessing."

"You're smiling," he observes flatly.

"Am not."

"Um…okay."

She is.

"I'm…sorry I implied that I found the idea of kissing you repulsive. I didn't." He coughs into his closed fist. "Find it repulsive."

"Stupid sea urchin," she mutters, and she wraps her arms around him before he even knows she's there. "You're such an idiot."

"Um." It takes him a good few seconds to remember to put his arms around her waist. "Thanks?"

"You're not really off the hook yet," she tells him, muffled against his shirt. "I just…wanted to do that before I left."

"Okay."

"Might be the last time."

"You can't say stuff like that-"

"Might as well be honest, if that's what we're doing."

He doesn't know what makes him cradle her head to his chest, but she doesn't seem to mind. "Is it?"

"Stupid sea urchin," she repeats. "Please don't die before me."

"Uh…I…don't plan on it?"

"Good."

She's small and cold and a little limp in his arms, but it's a start.

"Sorry I snapped at you the other day."

"Oh." Yuuta feels like there's a lot riding on his response to this. "Uh…no problem."

"You were just trying to help." Nobara picks at a stubborn piece of lint on the knee of her leggings and mutters under her breath when a pothole stalls her progress. "So…sorry."

"It's okay," Yuuta says, still a little worried he'll get stabbed if he answers badly. "Dying people get lots of passes, right?"

Nobara's eyes widen. Yuji glares at him from the other side of the backseat, one arm wrapped protectively around Nobara's shoulders.

"Sorry." This is exactly what's going to get him stabbed. "That…didn't come out right."

The boardroom of the Council is exactly as Utahime had remembered it, all lacquered hardwood and plush, blood-red Persian rugs. There's not a window in sight, and she feels every eye in the room fix on her when she enters, holding Megumi's arm so he won't have second thoughts and leave before he can present himself.

"Iori-san," one of the councilwomen says. "I take it you have information of interest."

She nods. "I'm fairly certain that my investigation turned up a few things you'll find relevant."

She's always like this with the Council – too formal, for safety reasons – but there's bite to her words now. Even so, they're silent; she takes that as her cue to go on.

"First of all, as you can see" – she gestures to Megumi, who looks bewildered at best – "Fushiguro Megumi is not, in fact, dead."

The Council is probably too preoccupied with Gojo's group to come after the others and that, at very least, means going home.

Shoko's apartment makes for a good base of operations, centrally-located and unassuming. And it's nice to be back, Shoko thinks, even with five teenagers sprawled out on the floor of her apartment's living room. Even if she has to feed an army. There's a reason she doesn't teach, but it's kind of satisfying, having them look to her. You're the adult in the room, she constantly reminds herself; it's the thought that takes her to the supermarket at eleven at night for the next day's supplies.

It's nice, even if it makes her want to stall in front of a display of sake she can't afford and think about shelling out. She shouldn't, but it's a tempting prospect and it lulls her out of focus until a finger taps her shoulder and she turns.

"Sake? You must be exhausted, running for your life. Must be why you made yourself so easy to find."

She nearly backs into the case – she knows that voice, but she doesn't. There's something in its inflection that doesn't fit her memories.

"Well?" the man raises his arms. "Do you not recognize me? After all the work it took to track you down?"

She grabs a bottle of sake, though it won't do much good, and holds it out like a sword. "No, I do," she says, trying to keep her tone even, not succeeding.

She couldn't fail to.

"But," she says, steadying her ragged breathing, "Geto Suguru is dead."

Kenjaku smiles. "Then why does this body seem to remember you so well?"

"What…exactly are you implying, Iori-san?"

"That you have an agenda." She tries not to flinch. "That your charges are baseless."

"Perhaps we should've listened when Gakuganji warned us that you'd be partial." A councilman frowns. "You're barely talking sense."

"You accused Gojo Satoru of murdering a student who's standing right in front of you!" Utahime fights to keep her voice from rising and quickly loses. "You cannot be telling me-"

"Perhaps he didn't kill Fushiguro, but the others-"

"Are alive and accounted for, and if they weren't, you can rest assured I would be tracking Gojo down, not…here, in a board meeting." She doesn't let herself drop her eyes, even though she wants to. "My being here, really, can only mean one thing."

They stare, silent and unblinking, and she feels small. But she can't afford that now. She raises her chin like she should've years ago when she hadn't bothered to challenge a decision she'd disagreed with.

"Gojo Satoru is innocent."

"We have a use for your skills."

Shoko drops a loaf of bread into her shopping cart and tries to feign disinterest. She can't let this man get to her head the way she had Gojo's – that means she can't look at him. "That so?"

"And besides, you ought to indulge yourself once in a while." She pushes the cart forwards. "I take it from the way this body responds to you that perhaps it belonged an old flame of yours?"

"Yeah. He's dead." She doesn't want pickled daikon, but she drops a jar into her cart anyway. He probably has information about Mahito, she realizes, then wonders why she's not panicking. Then again, it's never been in her nature to be bothered. An elevated heartrate is all she has to show for her wariness. "What do you want me for?"

"Well. There's always, ah, a risk of injury, you know-"

"That's really not convincing."

"True. I really just don't want you on Gojo Satoru's side." He sees her stiffen at the name and smiles knowingly. "Ah. You've been in contact with him, haven't you."

She says nothing. He takes that as an excuse to continue. "I must say that I admire your composure."

"You smell like Suguru's stupid spray deodorant," she observes aimlessly. "You should do something about that. Always hated the stuff."

"But you've missed it, haven't you?"

Of course she has. That doesn't change the fact that its wearer is dead. "You can't possibly be trying to seduce me."

"Well, my host would certainly appreciate it if I succeeded."

"In a supermarket at midnight? Eesh. Pick a better location, at least."

"You're certainly resilient, Ieiri." Kenjaku smiles. "I can see why he loved you."

She stiffens.

"Perhaps you'd consider a change of ideology if it meant that he would again?"

A patently ridiculous notion, but a plan's beginning to take shape. Shoko has always thought herself a decent tactician, though no one ever gives her a chance to show that she is – she thinks quickly. She pats herself on the back for that now. "And what if I were to agree with another condition?"

"Oh?" Kenjaku raises his eyebrows, then reaches for the handle of the cart to keep her from moving. "What would that be?"

He can't see her face – she dares to smirk.

"Tell me where Mahito is," she says sweetly. "Take me to him. And let me kill him."

She thinks Utahime would be proud of her for that idea, playing double agent. That it won't be she who deals the killing blow is hardly important.

"Oh, my. Ambitious, are you?"

"Perhaps."

"I admire that in a colleague," Kenjaku tells her. "Consider it done."

Notes:

What even is this story at this point?

Also, I love writing Shoko because she's just very done, and honestly, if Kenjaku thought he was going to get a Gojo-esque reaction out of her, he is vastly underestimating how done she is. Too done to be shocked-

An icon.

Chapter 21: Confrontation Summary:

Utahime and Megumi confront the Council while Shoko travels with Kenjaku, looking for Mahito.

Notes:

CW: very minor character death (offscreen, not any of the characters who have appeared in the story thus far)

Oof, this one gets super intense. Buckle up for all plot and very little romance.

Chapter Text

Two Days Earlier

"There are fifteen people on the Council." Utahime spreads the printed sheets of names and faces culled from the Kyoto campus archives – acquired with Gakuganji's help – out in front of her. "We're trying to win them over, but to start with, we're going to have to assume they're all hostiles."

"Yeah, of course." Megumi nods, leaning forwards to examine a document. "Do they all sit at every session?"

"Not always, but I assume they will if I tell them I have useful information."

"Okay, and?" Megumi looks up at her, asking for more. "Which ones should we be worried about?"

"All of them?" Utahime lifts an eyebrow. "People don't sit on the council without family connections, and your family connections don't mean anything if you don't inherit a solid technique. So we have to assume that all of these people could kill us if they felt like it."

They're mostly old – most of their photos in the documents Gakuganji sent are about twenty years old, no doubt an attempt on their part to seem younger – but Megumi nods. He knows as well as she does that age doesn't always diminish the danger someone poses as an adversary. "Walk me through it, then," he requests. "Who's who and if they're gonna kill us, how?"

Utahime nods, grateful to have inadvertently secured herself a sharper ally than some of the ones she's had in the past. "Kanohara Shinsuke," she says, pointing to the first picture. "He's seventy-two and he comes from a minor but influential clan up in Sapporo. Their technique lets them turn their blood into any substance they want, which – from what Gakuganji told me – they usually use to poison people. Probably won't be the most dangerous person we deal with, since it's not a super effective technique over distance." She pauses. "Unless they're throwing darts now or something. Dunno. We'll cross that bridge if we come to it."

"Poison's slow, too. Bad choice for close combat." Megumi points to the next picture. "That one?"

"Hanahara Shizuka. Sixty-five. Her technique lets her set any surface of the body that's covered in hair on fire."

"That's such a weirdly specific technique," Megumi mutters, apparently somewhat troubled by this revelation. She can't blame him – as far as techniques go, it's sort of a creepy one.

"Yeah, well, it would kind of suck if she hit us with that, so she's one to be on the lookout for." Utahime looks down at her decades-old photo and frowns. "Even if she doesn't look like that anymore."

"Yeah, that's gonna complicate things."

"This one's picture is current, though," she says, pointing to the next photo. "Yamashita Yuu. He's only forty, so he didn't bother to fake it. His family's got an insurance firm that specializes in sorcery incident cover-ups that the Council really needs to stay in favor with, so he's kinda the exception to the good-techniques rule. His is relatively weak. Don't even really know what is."

"Okay, and?"

"Matsuhara Matsuo. He's one of the older ones – eighty-six. She's got ties to just about every clan with a say in anything." Utahime taps the picture, then the neat writing underneath, and frowns. "His maternal grandmother was a Zenin, his father was a Kamo, he married a Kanohara, and his oldest son married a Gojo, so…yeah, that one's kind of a nightmare."

"And his technique?" Megumi asks. "Blood Manipulation?"

Utahime sighs. "Unfortunately."

"Okay, so that one's an issue."

"So is this one." Utahime skips ahead to the ninth photo, figuring she's probably starting to overload Megumi with enough irrelevant information that he won't remember what counts. "Ichikawa Tomoe. She's got this nasty paralysis technique."

"Sounds like a good time," Megumi says drily.

"Inoue Ryuuga," she says, pointing to another name. "He can distort space within a ten-meter radius. From what I've heard, he usually makes the room rearrange itself or turn to disorient his opponents. That would be hard to counter with our techniques."

"And what are we going to do about it?"

Utahime looks back up from the paper and meets Megumi's questioning look with steely eyes.

She's been waiting, biding her time, comforting and consoling while they wait for the moment to strike, and it's so close that it feels like only an invisible curtain separates her from its arrival. She can protect and she can nurture but she's more than eager to prove that, when called to, she can avenge. It's a thirst barely slaked by the buzz in her veins that's kept her fighting when no one let her forget that she'd never fight hard enough, flaring up now; she feels ready now, strong, confident she's up to the challenge before her. She doesn't even have to pull out her dossier to recite her plan step by step.

Call me weak again, she'll say. Call any of us weak. Try and tell us that you define strength when we've overthrown you.

Royal Yokohama Hotel

Present

"Wait, you're where?"

"I'll send my location, but don't use it." Shoko tries to keep her voice down even with the running shower and the music playing through her laptop's speakers to block out noise, but she has a sinking feeling that Yuta probably can't hear her. Great. Improvised espionage is hardly her strength. "I'm okay. If that changes, I'll try to let you know, but again, I don't want you coming after me until I have absolute confirmation of Mahito's location, okay?"

"But Kenjaku-"

"I can handle him, Okkotsu. He obviously doesn't want to kill me." He could, but he seems rather determined not to, which is strange. Perhaps it's whatever is left of Geto in him or perhaps he actually does think she'll be useful eventually – whatever it is, it doesn't make sense. If they switched places, Shoko thinks she would've killed him on sight. It'd certainly be the easiest way to prevent her from aiding Gojo. "So please just stay safe. Keep Kugisaki comfortable and don't try to find me, all right?"

"Ieiri-sensei-"

"Okkotsu. Please."

"I just don't have a good feeling about this," Yuta protests. "I mean, Kenjaku…he came and found you. Specifically you. There's no way he would've done that if he didn't have some kinda plan in mind, and, uh, I dunno, I just think you…you should stay safe and get away from him and let us find Mahito ourselves. That's all."

"It's entirely possible that if I do that, he'll make sure that we never find Mahito," Shoko tells him. She'd anticipated a response like this – she's not naïve enough to imagine that the students care for her, not really, but they're good kids. Kindhearted people, not the types to let someone they know fall into the hands of the man who's likely behind the smoking rubble that is all of their lives right now. She'd planned out a response accordingly. "Let me be the adult here, Okkotsu. Not you."

"It's not your job to do our jobs for us, Ieiri-sensei," Yuta protests weakly.

"Yeah, but this isn't your job." It was never supposed to be and, apathetic as she is about most things, she hates that they've grown to believe it is. It's ridiculous, the pressure that the higher-ups have stacked on the shoulders of their teenage trainees – she remembers what it felt like to be their age and tasked with something only she could do, and her stomach twists at the thought of the same being asked of them. She knows it already has, but where she can, she has to reduce their load.

For her own sake, if no one else's.

"Shoko, dear," Kenjaku says outside, rapping at the door, his dulcet voice soft beneath the music and the sound of running water. Hurriedly, she hangs up, steps under the faucet fully-clothed, leans back against the wall and pretends she doesn't hear.

"Shoko," he repeats, and oh – he sounds so much like Suguru that part of her wants to feel sixteen again. But he's always an inch off-center, just enough to remind her that something about this picture isn't the way she wants to believe it is. "Are you conspiring to waste all the hot water so I'll have to join you if I want any? How clever of you."

She curses under her breath and feels like she could vomit all at once. For all that he'd failed her epically in the end, Suguru had been the kind of old-fashioned suitor who'd have punched a man in the teeth for speaking to his Shoko that way. She can't decide whether it's his shameless proposition or the fact that he sounds so little like the man whose body she inhabits that makes her feel more nauseous.

"No," she snaps. "That was never part of the deal."

"Ah. Fine, then." She hears the door creak as Kenjaku presses closer to it. "Then I had better not find out you're trying anything, Miss Shoko."

Her eyes darken. Like hell he will.

Headquarters

Kyoto

Councilman Hayasaka's eyes narrow, then relax again, and though they're cloudy with age, their expression is easily readable as pity.

"Iori-san," he says, a little cloying, "surely you realize that you have nothing to gain by this, don't you?"

"I'm not trying to gain anything," she replies.

"Please. It's written all over your face." Now the pity in his eyes is something a little bit sharper. "Perhaps you think Gojo Satoru's allegiance might help you get ahead, but I know you can't be fool enough to think that's still true after the role he played in provoking the Shibuya Station catastrophe, hm?"

"Wait, what role?" Megumi cuts in. He steps in front of Utahime as if shielding her, her hand on his arm. "Do you actually think-"

"Ah, right, his ward," Inoue interrupts. "That tracks. Wasn't a smart move, sending the two most biased witnesses alive to argue for his innocence."

"Will you cut that out for five seconds and tell me what exactly you mean by 'provoking?" Megumi's shoulders begin to rise and fall with his quickening breaths. "Hm?"

"Why, it's obvious. That attack never would have occurred had someone not decided that they needed Gojo Satoru out of the picture." That one is Yamashita, the insurance man, speaking with authority Utahime is almost positive is totally unearned. "Hence, we can only conclude that his continued existence is a threat to the very foundations of Jujutsu society, and it is in the best interests of all involved parties that he be swiftly found and executed." Yamashita smiles serenely. "Which you were supposed to do, weren't you?"

"None of that proves that Gojo is guilty of anything," Utahime replies, ignoring his question. "What exactly is he being charged with, being too big of a threat to our adversaries? How on earth is that a criminal charge?"

"Hm. I know you're biased," Inoue cuts back in. "You've made it quite clear now that you're fond of him, but frankly, Iori-san, that fondness means nothing when you consider that for every attack like the one in Shibuya, solely targeted at Gojo, dozens of good sorcerers are going to be lost." Inoue's eyes are steely. "Surely you understand why we cannot allow that."

"And what is it with the whole 'you're biased' act? I'm telling you the objective truth!" Utahime is too tired for formality and she throws up her hands in frustration. "Nothing that I've told you has been at all informed by…by my personal feelings at all and it's not fair that-"

"Mm, and it's not fair for one man to be born with so much power that the threats he attracts leave carnage in his wake." Hayasaka looks like he wishes his eyes could drill holes through her skull. "It's clear to me that you knew that, given that you repeatedly tried to use his position to advance your career."

"I…didn't," Utahime says weakly. "I never thought-"

"It's obvious what happened, Iori-san. You have a history, and it's known that he's always been fond of you. You knew that and exploited it to get him to recommend you for those two promotions." Hayasaka huffs. "Neither of which succeeded, I might add, because it was so clear that a technique such as yours would never merit a promotion and no sorcerer of Gojo Satoru's caliber would think so unless he had a compelling personal reason to make the recommendation." He looks up at her. "A compelling personal reason like a desperate lover."

"I was not his lover!"

"You didn't know that, though, so you kept following him. It was sad, really. Seeing you turn into his little sycophant." Hayasaka sneers. "For all your posturing, you would've done anything he asked of you. I know he's the reason you turned down Matsuhara's son when he offered his hand in marriage in spite of the fact that you'd never make a better match and you knew it."

Utahime longs to protest, to insist that she'd turned down Matsuhara's son and countless other minor members of influential clans because they were all, without fail, unbelievable cads who'd treat a wife like a pack animal, but it wouldn't do any good, and she bites her tongue. They're giving her information – she has to hold back.

"And so he frees himself from the Prison Realm and flees, and you offered to go after him, and you had best believe that we knew what you were doing." Hayasaka's sneer shifts to a smirk. "We were banking on that, you know. Letting all of his allies gather in one place so they'd be sitting ducks when we got the chance to eliminate them. It was perfect – we knew he'd come out of the Prison Realm worse for the wear. He'd never be able to protect an entire cohort of his allies at once, and that was when we would eliminate the threat he posed for good."

Utahime feels like air is catching in her throat with every breath she tries to take, because if he's telling her this, it can only mean one thing.

"You're going to try to kill me," she realizes aloud. "You let me come here because you're going to kill me."

Hayasaka says nothing.

"You want to make an example of me," she goes on. Megumi's fingers tighten around her arm. "Or maybe draw Gojo out of hiding."

Now Yamashita speaks up. "Just in case the loss of his beloved Sensei doesn't break him, you know. Insurance. That's my business, no? Force that traitorous school-nurse friend of yours to bring him the bloodied corpses of his ward and his bedwarmer, and he'll let us do just about anything to him."

But it's not the threat to her own life that makes Utahime's blood run cold.

"The loss of his what?"

Royal Yokohama Hotel

"I'm beginning to regret telling Mahito to go into hiding."

Shoko takes the smallest possible sip of her tea and feigns interest. She hates the taste of the hotel's mid-quality green tea bags, but she needs to stay alert too badly to raid the incredibly tempting row of tiny vodka bottles lined up atop the counter. "Protecting your assets, I take it?" she asks. "Smart."

"Well, that was my thinking." Kenjaku sighs, rubbing at his temple from the armchair across the room she wishes they didn't share.

(He'd told the hotel they were on their honeymoon, wrapped an arm around her waist and tried to look like it was true. They'd smiled and congratulated them and Shoko had never wanted to rip out a brain more in her life.)

"Again, smart, but harder for me. The sooner I find him, the sooner I'm free of this little contract of ours." Shoko turns back to him and smiles, entirely fake and as menacing as she thinks a smile can be. She knows she's not going to be able to play the role of the willing participant well if she tries, so she makes no illusions about her personal dislike for her partner. It's not as if Kenjaku cares, even though he looks at her like he'd like to eat her for lunch and it makes her the most uncomfortable she's ever felt.

Never mind that. She hates it on every level down to the molecular, but if it means that they will win, just about anything can be borne.

"Mm, are you sure you want to be free of me so soon, Miss Shoko?"

"Don't call me that."

"Would you prefer something else, then?"

"I'd prefer you didn't address me at all, honestly." She spits into her tea just because she knows she'll dump it down the sink when she doesn't need it to feign normalcy anymore, and because he makes her feel like spitting sometimes. "Pervert."

"Oh, come now," he says, trying to sound charming, probably. "It isn't my fault that this body remembers how soft your skin used to feel."

Shoko shudders. The few memories she has of Geto's warm, broad palms against her arms and waist and thigh are already tainted enough without this man's interference. "I thought I'd made myself clear, Kenjaku."

"Don't worry, Miss Shoko, you have." He raises his hands in surrender. "I don't plan to do anything you don't permit. Only remember when you used to permit me."

"I never permitted you ," she spits. "And Geto Suguru is dead."

"You might be happier if you pretended a little, you know. Suspended disbelief?"

"No, I'd just be delusional."

"You ought to try calling me Suguru."

"I'd rip out your brain before I did that."

"And you might tell me what he used to call you. Perhaps that would suit you better than the name you've told me not to use."

"Which you keep on using anyway," she huffs.

He hadn't given her a name he could call her – she'd just been Shoko to him. They'd been fifteen and sixteen and they hadn't exactly had time to grow comfortable enough with their budding romance for pet names by the time he defected. But if Kenjaku wants to know that, he can figure it out himself.

"I'm not playing your game, Kenjaku," she goes on. "I'm here to kill Mahito and nothing else. My help is completely conditional. I'm not doing anything that doesn't advance my single reason for being here. Got that? I'm not living in the past and I'm certainly not letting you anywhere near me. I'm here for information." She turns and glares at him. "You better not forget it."

He smiles. "I must say that I love that fire of yours."

She scoffs. "Pervert."

Headquarters

Kyoto

"Oh, of course. I forgot he was your teacher, too." Inoue at least has the decency to look remorseful. "Sad to have to do it, but he needed to be taken out."

"Wait," Utahime says, and her skin feels too tight for her body. "Are you talking about Yaga-sensei?"

Inoue bows her head.

"He was too closely tied to Gojo Satoru," she says. "But you needn't worry. Your Gakuganji assured me he felt no more pain than he had to."

Chapter 22: Showdown Summary:

Utahime's confrontation with the Council heats up.

Notes:

I would like to take this moment to say that there is NO Major Character Death tag on this work. No one important dies, Ola, please don't stab me.

Anyways. Here. Another attempt at Plot. I hate writing fight scenes more than almost anything else in the universe because I simply have no idea how they should go and I feel like I always end up writing things that make no sense, but the plot demanded one, so...I tried? *sobs* I miss the feelings portion of this fic...

Nevertheless, please enjoy. I weirdly sort of like this one.

Chapter Text

"She said she didn't think it would take that long." Mai glances at her phone again – it's been an hour and four minutes now, and her brow creases. "I don't like this."

"Maybe they just had a lot to talk about," Miwa offers, optimistic as ever. "I mean, couldn't it just have taken a while to win them over?"

Maki, who's been trying to stay out of this conversation and any her sister is involved in since they were assigned to the same mission, shoots Miwa a look. Mai, if nothing else, knows exactly what higher-ups are like; Miwa doesn't realize that they're not the kind of people one could talk down. "No, she has a point," Maki tells her, even though it almost hurts to agree with Mai. "There's a good possibility something went wrong."

It's not as if she particularly cares for Megumi, but she cares enough not to like the thought of him backed into a corner. And if they lose Utahime, they lose their strategist and the only thing keeping Gojo tethered. They can't afford either loss.

"But she'll be okay, right?" Miwa cuts in. "I mean, Utahime-sensei can handle herself, and Fushiguro's really strong, too. They…they'll be fine." She looks to Mai – she always does – for answers. "They're going to be fine, right?"

Mai looks to Maki, who looks to Panda, who looks to Nitta, who looks out into the middle distance as if her mind is somewhere else.

"Well, there's a reason we're backup, aren't we?" Mai asks.

"Reinforcements." It hurts a little less to agree with Mai this time. "If there's even a chance that something's happening-"

Mai's already checking her gun holster, and Maki isn't much slower to check her weapons. "We'd better get in there and do our jobs."

A Week Earlier

Tokyo

"You asked to meet with me."

Gakuganji nods. He doesn't want to meet Yaga's eyes, so he keeps them on the road ahead. "It's…about Gojo."

Yaga raises his eyebrows. "Wait, is there news?"

"That's the issue." Trying not to look at Yaga when he speaks almost isn't working anymore and he finds a spot on the a little ways ahead to focus on, hoping it'll stop him from turning. "There was supposed to be."

"From the people that the Council sent after him," Yaga guesses.

"I'll be frank with you, Yaga. We all know that Gojo didn't kill those students, or Utahime."

"As I've been saying from the beginning," Yaga replies. "Have you also finally figured out that they're probably all in hiding because they don't want him to be found?"

He's never liked Yaga's insolence when it comes to his former students – never liked that they are where his first loyalty lies – but he has no choice but to tolerate it now. " I knew that. Who do you think warned Dr. Ieiri and the Zenin girl that the Council knew what they were doing?"

"Oh." Yaga sounds a little surprised. "I'm surprised."

"I have morals, you know," Gakuganji mutters. "I wasn't going to let them kill a child and the only Reverse Cursed Technique user of any skill that we know of."

"That was…good of you."

"It was strictly a pragmatic decision."

"Still."

"As I was saying," Gakuganji says, growing uncomfortable, "the Council hedged its bets on at least one of the people it sent having news to report, and none did. They're getting restless."

"But they still have no idea where the remaining students are?"

"Nor Iori or Ieiri."

"Do you?"

"No." That, at least, is the truth. "I've had brief contact with Utahime about some documents she needed. She didn't disclose her location."

"You can't be saying that you of all people are actively trying to help her overthrow the Council."

"I'm trying to help her not get herself killed," Gakuganji says coolly. "You ascribe far too much magnanimity to me."

"Why?"

He shrugs. "She's a loyal employee and a good woman. It would be a shame to see her die."

"And you'd overthrow the Council for Iori Utahime?"

Gakuganji finally looks up at Yaga.

"No," he says. "But Gojo Satoru would."

"And what does that have to do with you?"

"The Council has gone too far this time," he says. "There's not going to be any talking them down until they've killed every last sorcerer with even the most tangential of ties to Gojo Satoru. And if he has to implement a regime change to stop that, as much as I shudder to think of it, I'm not going to stop him."

"You don't sound anything like the Gakuganji I knew," Yaga mutters.

"See, I fear that the Council has been saying the same thing," he says. He is too old for the thought of what he has to do to make his heart pound – he's seen and done too much for that. It's really only a muted sadness that weighs on his shoulders when he thinks of his task. "They're starting to suspect that I'm aiding Gojo's faction and they've demanded a show of good faith."

"Which is what?"

Gakuganji doesn't see the point in sugarcoating. "Gojo has so few remaining allies in Japan itself that they want to make sure those few are gone by the time he returns."

Yaga's eyes darken. Perhaps he knows; it won't hurt, if that gives him any consolation. Gakuganji is a hard man but not a cruel one.

"In short, as I suppose you've guessed, they've asked me to kill you."

Yaga says nothing.

"I suppose you're waiting for me to tell you that I won't do it," he goes on. "Say that I'll hide you somewhere. But I can't risk it. Nor can Utahime. Our students. None of them can afford a fake."

Yaga looks too stunned to fight back and something in Gakuganji is almost moved to pity, though never completely.

"I'm afraid that if what's left of the Jujutsu community is going to survive to rebuild, I'm going to need to follow through."

Kyoto Metropolitan Curse Technical College

Dormitories

"Wait, is something actually wrong, or…?"

"No, nothing yet." Nitta shakes her head. "I just have a feeling that we're going to need your help and…I don't know, it's a gut feeling. And Dr. Ieiri is somewhere else right now so if anything happens, we're kind of in trouble, and…I just want to know we have backup." She feels like she's going to start sweating bullets any second and nothing's even happened yet, only the twins and Panda and Miwa making off for the boardroom.

She'd known she'd be of no use there. Better to go and find someone who could be and thank every deity she'd ever heard of that she'd been given a Reverse Cursed Technique user for a younger brother.

Arata nods. "Okay."

Headquarters

Kyoto

Utahime can't bring herself to move for a solid fifteen seconds, and she thinks she might be starting to see how Kenjaku managed to seal Gojo. Hit anyone with a shock that potent and they'll stop in their tracks.

"That's the good news. But the bad news, unfortunately," Councilman Yamashita continues, "it that now that you're back in Japan, we can no longer afford to kid ourselves and think that Gojo Satoru has no allies here."

That's right, she would say if she could. But he hardly needs her to defend him right now. She doubts that he's even going to let these people live once he realizes what they're planning to do – even their offhanded 'bedwarmer' comment would probably push him over the edge when he's been looking for an excuse to put them in the ground for years – let alone care what they think of him. "Well, that's very unfortunate for you," she says, icily prim.

"Hardly. What are you going to do to me?" Councilwoman Hanahara sniffs. "You're so irrelevant that you'd barely even have been able to get your teaching position if not for the fact that you'd slept your way into Gojo Satoru's favor, let alone any field assignments."

Test me one more time and you'll see, she aches to reply. A laughable accusation on all levels, and one that makes her blood boil. "I have no intention of doing anything to anyone," she says, mildly as she can muster. "Unless one of you actively makes an attempt on my life."

"Speak for yourself," Megumi mutters under his breath.

"Oh?" Hanahara's brows lift. "What was that, Zenin?"

"Fushiguro."

"Hm. What was that, Zenin?" She tilts her head.

"Nothing." He shoves his hands in his pockets. "You all really don't know when to shut up."

"Hm. I suppose I should've known better than to expect any loyalty from the Sorcerer Killer's only child." She taps her wrinkled fingers against the tabletop. "Honestly, for all that your teacher is a pathetic bedwarmer, your presence is even more intolerable."

"Are you just going to insult us until we attack you and you have an excuse to counter?" Megumi's eyes narrow. "No wonder Gojo hates you so much."

"Hm. It's an insult to the memory of your father's victims that you were ever allowed to set foot in this room."

"It's an insult to the basic principles of human decency that you people are still talking," Utahime cuts in.

"Oh, would you look at that." Yamashita smirks. "You even sound like him."

"Which 'him'?"

Yamashita raises his eyebrows suggestively.

Of course.

"If anything, he sounds like me." If she's going to implicate herself, she might as well do it all the way. "I'm half the reason he's still alive, you know? So call me pathetic, or his sycophant, or accuse me of sleeping my way to the top. Fine. That doesn't change the truth."

"You oughtn't to incriminate yourself, dear," Councilman Ichikawa tells her.

"You already want to kill me. What's the point? I might as well tell you. I'm the one who kept him safe all this time." She smiles, a little feral, and it's surprising how good it feels to let herself off her hinges. "I'm the one who kept him alive while we waited for the right time to strike. Bedwarmer, hm? I'm probably the only reason he's still alive."

Whispers around the room – she doesn't heed them.

"You keep on accusing me of using him to advance my career." She lets out a wild little laugh that feels like a weight off her shoulders. "Sleeping my way to the top. You know that for most of the time I've known him I would've stabbed him at the first opportunity, right? But I didn't."

Now the Council is dead-silent. Good.

"It's not like that anymore." She cracks her knuckles, then tilts her neck from side to side to loosen it as if gearing up to fight. "You're right. There's nothing he can do for me now. Nothing I have to gain by being here except a knife in the gut. But I'm still here. I bet you wanna know why." She licks her lips. "You wanna know why I'm here, even though it's just about the worst decision I could've ever made?"

She pauses. Stillness still blankets the room, even though she feels electric, crackling with kinetic energy, every hair standing on end, every muscle crying out to move.

"Three reasons." Once more, her tongue darts out to wet her lips. "One. The world needs him. The kids you're trying to kill need him. Not gonna let him die on me, hm?"

She still feels like an exploding star but her limbs start to feel heavy; still, she speaks. "Two. I'll admit it. I love him." She laughs as if this – love, confessed – is the weapon they fear most. "Not 'cause I want him, or because I think he can get me ahead. Nah. Bet you don't get that, do you? The kind of love that stays when there's no real reward…it's dangerous." Once more, she licks her lips. "Makes me wanna take you down."

The heaviness in her limbs makes her want to stagger to the wall and lean against it for support. She has to, after a moment, and her head feels fuzzy.

"And three," she says, leaning heavily against the wall. She notices Ichikawa's eyes trained on her. Paralysis technique, she remembers and wonders why it's not working. Still, it takes her a moment to compose herself.

"It's the right damn thing to do."

Elsewhere

Kyoto

Gojo hates this.

You can't be seen yet, Utahime had told him. We can't take any risks.

Stupid. Even at half his strength he's an adversary the entire council combined couldn't hope to defeat. He'd made every argument he could think up, but she'd been adamant. They needed information and assurance that they wouldn't be sending their champion into a trap before he could show his face.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. He kicks at the ground with the toe of his shoe.

It isn't really the reckless desire to put the elders he's always hated in their place this time. That would be one thing. But he's had to temper those urges – he doesn't have enough left in him for excess, for throwing weight around, for pushing agendas. He knows he's lost much of his power, though he doesn't know how much, and he has a feeling he has to ration what's left; he can't go looking for fights. But he's still strong enough that he's got no excuse not to protect the people in his care. And he could be doing that.

He could've gone into that boardroom with Megumi for all the times that he'd failed him growing up. He could've followed Utahime because the least he can do in thanks is keep her safe. He could've hopped over to Yokohama to help Shoko because she's all he has left of the days when he'd thought he might be happy, or he could've dropped by her apartment to check on his students. He could've waited with Miwa and Panda and the twins and let them know he knew the mountain in front of them was too high for them to climb on their own.

So many things he could be doing, so many people he could've helped. His student is dying; his friend is risking her life for information; the woman he loves is sticking out her neck to clear his name and won't even let him be with her when she does. He's weaker now, but surely he has enough strength left in him to do something. Even Utahime can't and won't pretend that every one of those people doesn't need backup.

But he can't act, for all that he wants to. He'd been told to stay hidden, and if Utahime is going to risk everything to try to talk the Council down, the least he can do is listen to her.

But the thought that he's honoring her wishes is hardly a comfort when he knows what the council does to people it's tired of listening to.

Headquarters

Kyoto

Ichikawa Tomoe's fighting days are over.

At eighty, she likes to think her age insulates her. No one expects her to leap into battle even though her cursed technique is as well-oiled as it ever has been, and she's perfectly fine with that. It wasn't combat prowess that earned her one of three seats held by women on the fifteen-seat council – it was her head for politics, her relentless drive, her relentless belief in the Council's mission. Certain standards have to be upheld and it is her great honor to uphold them. So when the room breaks into chaos, she is perfectly content not to participate.

It's really quite impressive how quickly the Zenin girl breaks through the door. That should hardly be possible, but Heavenly Restriction is strange like that, she supposes. Her twin charges into the room behind her, a girl with sky-blue hair who she vaguely recognizes, and Yaga's experiment in cursed corpse creation follows closely behind – the boy who insists he is called Fushiguro, summoning shikigami against a threat that hasn't yet materialized, looks relieved to see them. The members of the council more inclined to battle prepare themselves to counter what looks to be one of a thousand coup attempts they've all faced in their tenures here. But they are not her focus.

None of it is, except the woman leaning against the wall, trying and failing to hold herself up without its support.

These children, for all Ichikawa knows, probably had no idea what they were getting into when they agreed to fight alongside Iori. They're students, and for all that they should be old enough not to trust Gojo Satoru, they care for him. It's a flagrant but excusable offense, and it probably means that they are easily led. Ichikawa has no desire to harm them.

The same can't be said of Iori.

Only now, after a good five minutes, is Iori unable to move – that's the drawback of Ichikawa's age and this technique. It takes time for her to grasp and harness the flow of a victim's cursed energy and more of it for her to turn it inwards to trap her victim once she's chosen one. It had always taken a moment, but it's gotten longer over the years, and only now does she have the grasp she needs to jerk her spine straight with a snap of her fingers.

She quite likes the look of terror on Iori's face when she lifts it to look at her. It's been ages since trapping a victim felt so satisfying – usually, granted, they're curses, but this insolent sycophant with the gall to argue for Gojo Satoru's innocence is as good an opponent. Weaker, too. She notes with pride that Iori's technique is totally useless with her vocal chords paralyzed, and she looks to Yamashita.

He's largely useless unless one needs something covered up, but this attack is one in which she finds him most useful. Sometimes his technique – weak object manipulation, virtually pointless when the object in question has to weigh less than a hundred grams – isn't quite so useless as it seems.

And it's sort of funny how fast the children drop their weapons when they take notice of the knife at their teacher's throat.

Zenin Mai has never been grateful to be invisible before. Hardly – she's spent her whole life, it seems, wishing to be noticed, wishing to be acknowledged, wishing to be good enough to be conspicuous, but right now, the fact that she can't help but fade into the background seems like the greatest asset she could have.

The scuffle at the front of the room leaves Ichikawa Tomoe's back unguarded, and if Megumi's whispered explanation had been correct, she's the one holding Utahime captive. She'd moved without thinking, skirting the periphery of the room; her sister and cousin and Miwa and Panda had provided more than enough of a distraction to let her sneak through the chaos of overturned chairs to the spot in the corner where she has the clearest shot at Ichikawa.

But she cannot be seen, and even if she is not, she has only one shot – once the Council hears her gun fire, she won't get another chance. Even if she does hit her mark, she might not make it out. Someone will know it was her who fired and she doesn't have the strength to fend off anyone but that oily insurance man with a technique no more powerful than her own.

But Utahime, who for two years has been the only mother she's ever known, will.

She squints, angles, aims for the back of the head, fires – a perfect hit. Icihkawa slumps forwards in her chair, Utahime's spine goes slack now that it isn't being held taut, and the room rushes to Ichikawa's side.

All but one.

Yamashita Yuu doesn't even look at his fallen colleague, and it takes Mai one second too many to realize that Utahime still hasn't registered the fact that she can move now. He still holds a knife to her throat and she isn't budging. Do something, she tries to tell herself, shaking hands lifting the gun again even though this bullet won't be reinforced like the last one had been. They're distracted. Use that. Do something!

Mai aims, but before she can get her shot off, he turns. She shrinks back; the knife at Utahime's throat doesn't waver, but it's obvious that he's looking at her, crouched on the floor with a gun in her shaking hand, and not Utahime.

"Nice try," he mouths, and without even a backwards glance, he slashes.

Chapter 23: Fallout Summary:

The remainder of the Council group races to save Utahime and formulate a plan before it's too late.

Notes:

Lots going on in this. See how I dodged writing an actual fight scene there? :p love that for me.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Megumi moves without thinking.

He's never thought of himself as a particularly selfless person, and the sight of suffering doesn't crush him the way he knows it does others. It's not a moral compulsion that drives him forwards – not usually. But it surprises him, the clarity he can find in the moments that should cause him to hesitate the most.

Iori-sensei is feather-light in his arms when he dives to catch her. The pristine white of her kosode is already bloodstained, and it should be horrific but he's seen too much to be shocked. She chokes when she tries to breathe; the sound should repulse him, but all he can think about is where he needs to take her. She presses her hands to her bleeding throat with all the strength she has left; he wants to bandage the wound, at least, but he has neither the hands nor the time for that. She'll be dead in minutes, maybe less.

He barely knows her and aside from the practical need not to let Gojo go off the deep end yet again, there wasn't any real reason to catch her. But he can't let her die. He knows that well enough to remember an offhanded comment from Nitta and to shout a garbled request for cover to Panda and Maki as he runs for the door.

"Hold on," he murmurs under his breath, not really talking to Utahime, and he barely remembers not to jostle her as he runs.

Mai won't move.

There are about sixteen things in this destroyed boardroom that Maki should be focusing on instead of that. Iori-sensei, for one, and where exactly Megumi is taking her. The fight with an octogenarian that Miwa is losing badly. Panda's fervent efforts to throw Yamashita Yuu out a window. The splintered chairs she's going to trip over every time she moves if she doesn't watch her step. Where Nitta is when they need her. Any of those things should command her attention and yet it's none of them that has.

Mai stands exactly where she'd been when Utahime had fallen, totally frozen, gun raised as if she still intends to shoot. Her eyes are so wide and her pupils so dilated that she looks like she's fallen asleep standing up, even though the only sign that she's injured is a slash through the fabric of her sweatshirt that didn't reach her skin.

She notices, partly because the part of her that hasn't forgotten she's a twin above all else will always notice Mai first in a room full of people, and partly because it's sound strategy. The whole Council knows that Mai shot Ichikawa – it would be equal parts stupid and impossible to argue that she hadn't when she's frozen to the spot with a smoking gun in her shooting hand. As soon as they're reasonably certain that Ichikawa is dead, they're going to turn on Mai.

Maki would have to be a better liar than she is to convince anyone that she isn't terrified of what the Council of Elders is going to do to her sister if they get the chance, and she makes a split-second call she can only pray will pay off.

"Mai!" she calls across the room.

Mai's eyes snap to hers. So do those of the entire Council.

"Mai," she pants, wondering how much time she has before the heat shifts in her direction. " Go."

Mai is still frozen; Maki looks to Miwa and, though the whites of her eyes are still too big and she looks scared enough to think she might die, she nods. Miwa bolts for Mai, grabbing her hand, pulls her towards the door.

They should really all be running, but the Council is just going to give chase. Best to let targets escape and leave behind the ones who'll last longest in a fight.

"Go find Megumi!" Maki calls, and Miwa looks to her and nods, pulling Mai behind her with all of her strength as she trips over her feet, still stunned. The Council turns to Maki; she holds her staff aloft and braces herself.

Best to know that, at very least, Zenin Maki finally figured out how to save her sister.

"Where is she?"

It's all Mai can do to choke out even a single sentence and she's surprised she even manages that. Her feet don't feel like they've left the place where the heels of her boots had left a depression in the plush of the bloodstained Persian rug. But when Megumi doesn't answer, she has to force it out again: " where, Fushiguro?"

"With Nitta," he says after a pause. "She'll live."

Mai's shoulders don't wilt with relief like they should. She'd never really gotten it through her head that Utahime-sensei could die, and she's had too little time to process the fact that she nearly did.

"I need to see her."

"No," Megumi says tightly.

" I need to see her."

"Later."

"But-"

"Do you want her to die? Nitta needs to focus!"

Mai only shakes her head at that. Her skin feels too tight for her body, her mind suspended in the seconds that had elapsed between one shot and the next; she thinks she could be stabbed through the gut right now and feel nothing. She sees Nitta Arata every day; right now she barely remembers who he is.

Everywhere she looks, she sees bloodstains on a white hakama, and the only thoughts that get through are of her father's laugh and the elders' sneers and Naoya's ribbing and Maki's betrayal and the fact that maybe they were right to call her useless when she had held the weapon that could've saved the person she loved most in the world and had still let her throat be cut.

"I have to," she says weakly.

Miwa stands four steps behind, too shocked to cry, and Megumi in front, arms crossed, blocking the infirmary door. He could take her in minutes even after running all the way here with a grown woman in his arms but Mai feels like trying her luck if it means getting in.

"No," Megumi says again. "She'll be fine. You can see her later."

Mai's knees want to give out at that. It's one thing to fail spectacularly at the moment when she most needed to succeed; it's another entirely that she cannot even tell Utahime that she's sorry.

"So this is bad."

"This is very bad," Panda agrees, pressed against the back wall of a storage closet with significantly less ease than Maki.

"We need backup."

"We do need backup." Panda sighs. "And we have about five minutes to get it before the entire Council-"

"They're going to be split," Maki interrupts. "You have to guess they're going to send at least a few people after Iori-sensei and…" she swallows. "And my sister."

"Never heard you call her your sister before," Panda remarks aimlessly.

Tactical retreat is an excellent strategy when facing aging opponents who can do anything but move quickly. It had been the simplest possible plan: throw the room into chaos, cause a few injuries too major to ignore, bolt for the nearest door with a lock to hunker down. Great as a short-term evasive tactic to buy enough time to come up with a better idea, but not in the long run, and certainly not good for keeping one's mind occupied. Maki thinks she'd rather run back out and face the council without a plan than talk about her history with Mai right now.

"That's completely irrelevant. Who can we call for backup?"

"Uh, I'd ask Yaga, but he's in Tokyo."

"So…useless." Maki sighs. "We've got, like, three options."

"Uh-huh."

"Make the Nittas fight," she lists. "Probably just get us all killed."

"So that one's a no?"

" Obviously that one's a no. Second option's to go beg Gakuganji for his help, and I don't know how you feel about him, but I'd probably rather die than do that."

"Well, he would-"

"Or we could call Gojo."

Both go quiet. He'd probably arrive and wipe the floor with the council within a handful of seconds if they told him what had happened, and it's a tempting prospect. But there's more to consider than convenience.

"We could," he says.

"But we also have to consider the fact that he's going to kill the entire Council if he finds out what they did to Utahime."

"As opposed to what, negotiating? Aren't we trying to kill them?" Panda looks at Maki in the darkness like he's not quite sure if she's sane. " They're trying to kill us-"

"Mai already shot Ichikawa. That's going to make them mad enough." Maki gnaws at her lip. "Killing the Council is like picking a mushroom. Doesn't damage the roots at all, y'know? They're not powerful because of anything they've done. The thing with the Council is that it's powerful because if you kill one group of them, there are seven more groups exactly like them who kill you for it. It's a cycle." She crosses her arms. "Backup. They'll just make us fugitives for the rest of our lives. If Gojo kills the rest of this Council, this – running, hiding – it's never going to end."

"But if he doesn't, we're all going to die!"

"We're all going to die regardless, Panda. It's just a matter of whether that's now or in a couple of months when they find the…I dunno, bunker we're hiding in!"

"Well, aren't we going to die even faster if Gojo founds out something happened to his girlfriend and we didn't tell him?"

"How Gojo feels about the decision we make has nothing to do with anything!"

Panda, for once in his life, lets it drop. "So…Gakuganji."

"Well, there's always the chance that Gakuganji won't cooperate-"

"So Gojo?"

"But Gojo is a terrible choice unless we can keep him from finding out about-"

"Utahime? Sure. Gimme your phone."

"No," Maki says, turning so he won't be able to pluck it out of his hands as easily. She can't believe she's doing this – putting faith in Gojo to do the right thing when he doesn't have one ounce of motivation to – but she'd rather not be hunted down by a mob of octogenarians and meet a brutally untimely demise at the hand of seven different cursed techniques at once.

"Gojo-sensei?" she asks when her phone says he's picked up. "Backup. Now."

"Wait, why?"

" Gojo," she grits out. "We need backup."

"Utahime said-"

"Utahime told us to call you."

"She'd call me herself." Gojo's tone grows cold. "Where is she?"

"I dunno, she told us to hide," Maki lies, not particularly convincing. "She's with Megumi. She's going to be fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Sensei, we are literally going to die as soon as they find us! This is not the time for questions!"

Don't you dare show your face unless I tell you to, she'd said.

Gojo shoves his phone back in his pocket. His students need him and she might, too, if the fact that Maki was backed into a corner badly enough to feel compelled to call him is any indication, and he's done listening.

"Sorry, Utahime," he mutters under his breath, and in a blink, he's gone.

"Yamashita," Hanahara hisses. "You might want to start thinking about running."

Yamashita's eyebrows rise – Hanahara has always hated him, but the smirk stretching out her sagging skin now is nothing short of diabolic. If she had the tools to do it she'd probably be making popcorn to accompany her matinee viewing of his untimely demise right about now. He's really not cut out for this line of work. "W-what does that mean?"

"Feel that?" She takes a long, deep breath in and laughs. "That crackle in the air. I'd know the scent of that cursed energy anywhere."

"I…don't follow," Yamashita mutters.

"Oh, nothing of concern to little old me, but I can't help but think that Gojo Satoru is going to have a vested interesting in making you regret slitting Iori Utahime's throat."

Gojo knows that few of the Council members, no matter how old, could fail to recognize his cursed energy. They probably know that he's here.

No matter. They have no idea how much weaker he is than they were when he last met – no idea that without the use of his Six Eyes he could run out of cursed energy in only a few attacks. They're probably either foolishly smug, thinking they have him cornered, or running around like headless chickens, too terrified to think straight. He smirks – it's an image he rather enjoys. The part of him he tries to stifle lest it sweep away the last vestiges of his sanity had missed commanding that kind of effortless authority.

Then again, he has to be precise about this. Even with a pair of sunglasses on so he won't give away his reduced strength, the Council might see an opportunity to strike – the only thing they're certain of is that it's been a while since he's had a reason to fight. He's rusty and even they have to know that. He's not really afraid of a group of people who should probably be enjoying post-retirement cruises to Mexico and not leading the Jujutsu world, but he has to be careful – for once in his life – not to overexert himself.

It really is an awful feeling. He wonders how other sorcerers put up with it, that kind of knowledge of their limitations.

Hanahara Shizuka is truly good at few things but benefiting from the blatant nepotism that a favorite illegitimate child of the Kamo clan's last head receives as consolation for the fact that her father cannot acknowledge her existence, but shifting blame-

Well. That, she can do. And she's not really worried about Gojo Satoru just yet.

"Well," she says, cornering him when he approaches. "It looks as if none of our agents managed to off you after all.

The rest of what's left of the Council had chosen to hunker down in the boardroom like the cowardly fools they are – all the better for her. The moment Gojo lights onto them as targets, she's bolting. She's heard Thailand is nice this time of year.

"Yeah, no," Gojo tells her with a lopsided smile that probably means murder. "Now would you mind telling me why my students are frantically calling for backup?"

Hanahara, were she less of a lady, would let out a string of curses that could raze a forest at that. Of course it had been the Zenin girl. Good for nothing, those Zenins. "Perhaps they're just worried for their safety. After all, they did have to watch one of their own die."

Gojo's breath catches.

Perfect.

"You had better be lying." He laughs raggedly. "Trying to throw me off. I know how you people are. You people couldn't possibly kill one of mine. You kidding? You're way too weak. It's almost funny. You think that's going to work?"

It has, but it wouldn't do any good to point that out.

"It really was pitiful. She was so determined to prove your innocence, you know." Hanahara looks up at Gojo, waiting for something in his expression to shift from shock and confusion to inconsolable grief – if this news brings him even a fraction of the pain caused by the deaths he failed to prevent, she will have ample cause to pat herself on the back. "She even told us she loved you. It's really too bad she had to die."

Gojo stops dead.

"You couldn't," he says, so dangerously toneless that even Hanahara can't pretend to be unintimidated.

"It was strictly a pragmatic choice, you know. If…painful. She simply couldn't be reasoned with." She smiles up at him. "They do say that love is blind."

For what Hanahara imagines must be the first time in his life, Gojo Satoru says nothing at all.

Perfect. This is how she makes her escape.

"Yamashita Yuu," she tells them. "If you name of the man who killed Iori Utahime means anything to you."

"You shouldn't leave your neck exposed like that."

Utahime opens her eyes to Nitta's crossed arms and pinched expression and tries to muster words, surprised when they only come out a little bit garbled. "Sorry, wha'?"

"Sensei," he says, a little bit urgent, "you have to be more careful. If that cut had been an inch to the right…"

"'m not following." She tries to sit up, expecting the pain that usually comes with the bright white of the infirmary, but it doesn't come – it's only in a feeling like a papercut across her throat that she even senses pain. She touches the spot to find it bandaged and raises her eyebrows, leaning back against the pillows. She feels so out-of-it that she can't really recall how they got there, but she's dimly aware of a memory – searing pain at her throat, the choking sensation of struggling to breathe – and that only furrows her brow further. "What happened to me?"

Nitta says nothing. "You'll probably remember when the painkillers wear off," he tells her, looking guiltily at the floor. "Sorry."

"Pain…killers?"

That would explain quite a bit.

"Um, I know they're kinda strong, but I figured that it was better than nothing because I'm not that great at fixing things like this yet and I feel like you're probably in a lot of pain and…" he looks at his feet. "I'm so sorry, Sensei."

"Sorry?" Utahime raises her head to look at him even though it almost hurts to move it now that she's aware of the partially-healed slash at her throat. Throat-cutting. How creative, she thinks. How exactly it had happened is too foggy to remember now, probably because of all the painkillers.

"Nitta," she says, gently as she can muster, head too hazy to remember that there are a million things that ought to have her jumping up out of bed and into the fight again. "You saved my life. Why are you sorry?"

There's really not much of a question in anyone's mind what's happened when the boardroom door slams against the wall. Gojo Satoru stalks through the closing gap like a coiled snake; one hardly needs to see his covered eyes to know that he'd kill them all with a snap of his fingers if he wanted to.

He does, clearly. It's the fact that he hasn't that worries them all, and his voice is like frosted metal when he speaks.

"Which of you is Yamashita Yuu?"

Notes:

Hopes, dreams, thoughts, predictions? Please let me know! I'm excited about this min-arc and want to share that excitement with you guys :)

Chapter 24: Surrender Summary:

Gojo has business to attend to.

Notes:

OH MY GOSH, THIS CHAPTER HAS ME CHEESING LIKE AN ABSOLUTE IDIOT. I mean. Feral Gojo? Plot twist? Callback? BANDAGE SCENE? The single most romantic moment in this entire behemoth of a fanfic? I'm probably going to read this back in the morning and hate it, but for now, I am I hope you guys love the dramatic tension and abundant Gojohime 3

Chapter Text

Those eyes could cut a room in half.

Gojo can't remember who had said those words, but they're apt now, as he slips his glasses down the bridge of his nose. They scatter like a school of fish sensing the approach of a shark, clambering for whatever meager cover they can come by. Maybe what's left of the Council will be able to tell that he doesn't need the glasses anymore, but if they can, they're too occupied with the vain effort of trying to keep themselves alive to notice.

Fools. As if that would do anything to save them now.

"I'm gonna ask again," he says, his voice more terrifying in its tonelessness that it could ever be in the heat of anger. "Which one of you people is Yamashita Yuu?"

"Nitta!"

Megumi knocks and knocks, but no one inside the locked infirmary will open the door. It just figures that he can't get in when it's most urgent.

"Nitta!" He calls again, even though his voice feels shot; he knocks until his knuckles are tender and red and Nitta finally opens the door.

"Sensei is resting," he says reproachfully, stepping outside so as not to disturb her. "What do you want?"

Megumi keeps his voice down so as not to be heard inside. "Maki just called to tell me that Gojo is here."

The elder Nitta pokes her head through the door, the color draining from her face. "That wasn't the plan, was it?"

"No, it wasn't, and if he finds out what they did to Iori, he's going to trigger the damn apocalypse! So if you could please get her attention-"

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Nitta interrupts. "There has to be someone who can handle this who didn't just almost die."

"Iori is our mission coordinator," Megumi says, rubbing his temple with his thumb in a vain effort to relieve the building pressure behind his eyes. "She has to be the one to give the orders."

Nitta looks conflicted, but he disappears behind the door a second later and returns with a groggy Utahime in tow.

"Megumi?" she asks, rubbing at her eyes. "What is it?"

"Gojo's here."

Her unfocused eyes snap wide and for a moment she looks like she's been blinded by a camera flash. Then she swears under her breath.

This attack couldn't have taken a worse turn if she had willed it to.

"Look at you all, so quick to throw your colleague under the bus." Gojo smirks, ice-cold. "Thanks for that. Makes my life a whole lot easier."

The room really does look like it's been split in half now: thirteen Council members remain, and they've divided almost evenly in half in their rush for the cover of the furniture lining the walls. This room is as effective a trap as could be found – one way in and one way out, and no occupants eager to try for the windows – and they all know that. Self-preservation leaves them with only one option.

The man of the hour doesn't seem to realize until it's too late that what they're trying to do is leave him exposed, and when Yamashita tries to duck into a cluster of colleagues to hide, a hand too strong for its age shoves him hard enough to send him stumbling back out into the empty center of the room. And it's then that Gojo stops in his tracks, folds his glasses, and sizes up his victim.

Yamashita Yuu looks younger and older than his forty-two years at the same time. His hair is unnaturally slick with too much pomade, his once-crisp suit is rumpled, and there's not a drop of blood on his hands or his pristine white shirt. He doesn't look like the kind of man who could kill someone.

He doesn't look like the kind of man who needs to be punished the way Gojo intends to punish him.

"You must be Yamashita," Gojo says. "Huh. You don't look like the kinda guy who could kill my Utahime."

Yamashita doesn't say anything. Perhaps he does, after all, have some sense left.

"Which is why I'm gonna ask," he goes on, dangerously cool, "how you did it."

"I…I don't understand," Yamashita says, backing towards the wall, face pale. But for every step he takes, Gojo takes two, and it's not long before he has him backed up against the fireplace, a hand in his collar. "W-what-"

"You killed her," he whispers. "You're gonna tell me how you did it."

"I didn't-"

"It's no use." He gives Yamashita's collar a shake hard enough to pop off a button. "You know, I might go easy on you if you give me your word she didn't feel any pain."

"R-really?"

"Of course I won't."

"Then why-"

" How did you do it?"

"I…it…"

"Go on," he snaps. "Tell me."

"Why do you even want to know?"

"So I can decide how to kill you." Gojo's eyes glint. "Obviously."

"Wait, I didn't-"

One of the heavy wooden doors bangs against the doorframe, but Gojo doesn't turn. Whoever it is can be dealt with after Yamashita.

"It was a knife to the throat," says a voice at the door. "And she's not dead."

He doesn't know that voice, but the words it's saying are enough to turn Gojo's head. So does Zenin Mai's raised gun.

"Anyways. Appreciate the thought, but let me have this one, will you?"

Mai inches closer, arm raised and ready to fire, and her eyes blaze when they lock on Yamashita's. Maybe she should care that Gojo had been ten seconds from killing her target and he'll be outraged to have lost the chance, but she doesn't – not when his face goes pale at her steely gaze and ready weapon.

Gojo looks as shocked as his victim when he asks, "what do you mean 'she's not dead'?"

But she doesn't answer.

" Nice try ," she mouths, and Gojo barely has time to move before she fires.

The building shakes.

It would be easy to mistake the motion for an earthquake as the complex rocks on its foundations, but the sound of splintering wood and pitiful shrieks makes it clear that what they're feeling isn't half as tame or as natural as the slip of a fault.

"Gojo," Maki says, voice quiet even though there's no reason for it to be, huddled against the back wall of the closet.

Even Panda's voice is shaky. "Do you think this means Utahime-sensei is dead?"

"I hope not." Maki tucks her chin between her knees. "But I don't see why he'd be doing this if she wasn't."

Mai wants to collapse the moment the bullet leaves her gun, but she knows that she can't. Even Gojo's presence won't guarantee her safety from the council now that she's put bullets through the skulls of two of their colleagues.

She doesn't regret it, really – she doesn't feel the gravity of a life taken nearly as much as she had when she thought she'd watched Utahime die. But the act of killing still turns her legs to jelly, and when Gojo extends his arm, she assumes he means for it to hold her up.

But the wild whirl of light and color and form assaulting her eyes as if at a distance makes her wonder if it's for her protection. His domain, Mai realizes, and if she hadn't already wanted to collapse, that's enough to make it almost impossible to stand.

"Mai," he says after a moment, once the room has fallen eerily quiet. She barely has the foresight to notice what's happened to the indignant shrieks of the Council members, so loud a moment before. "Utahime is alive?"

"Is…is this your domain?"

"I asked you a question, Mai. Is Utahime alive?"

The chill in his voice makes her shudder. "Y-yes, Gojo-san," she stammers – it's deeply ingrained, the tendency of defaulting to terrified politeness when she doesn't know what else to do.

"I was told that she died."

"She…she didn't," Mai stammers. She's starting to regain enough awareness to be afraid, and she doesn't think that clutching Gojo's arm is going to help matters. "She's…she's okay. Resting. With Nitta."

"So the Council was lying about that."

"N-no, they…they slit her throat." Mai thinks she might be the least-intelligent person ever born for willingly revealing that information while Gojo's Infinite Void is active, but she's used up all her bravado in avenging Utahime, and now she's too afraid of being caught to lie. "B-but Nitta healed her.

"They slit her throat?"

"Um…Yamashita did?"

Mai can't pick up on changes in cursed energy as adeptly as some of her classmates but no one could miss the spike in Gojo's at her confirmation.

"I see," he says, his voice like ice.

Mai isn't in the mood for any more carnage than she's already caused today; she clutches Gojo's arm a little tighter and shuts her eyes.

"I didn't exactly get a body count, but I'm pretty sure the whole Council just dropped dead."

Those are the first words Mai manages to get out when she stumbles into the infirmary, and it's really only Miwa whose eyes widen in shock. It's not an ideal outcome, but they'd all known that this was probably coming as soon as they'd called Gojo, and none of them is sorry. Maki almost looks smug – naturally. The Council had been almost as complicit in her clan's oppression of the unideal as the Zenin Clan itself, what with its dedication to upholding the same status quo that had let her be cast aside. She knows perfectly well that it won't solve the problem, but she's probably relieved or at least vindicated that one batch of its sycophants is dead. Mai would probably feel a muted version of the same if her head weren't still buzzing with far more pressing concerns.

"Gojo?" Panda asks.

"Even after I told him Utahime-sensei was alive," Mai confirms. "He must've really wanted to off them."

"He did." Megumi picks at the hem of his jacket. "Always has."

"This was just an excuse," Maki agrees. "I'm surprised he managed to do it."

"My guess is that he's got most of his cursed energy back, just not Six Eyes," Megumi replies. "He doesn't need Six Eyes to kill people."

True, but sobering. The group lapses back into silence.

Utahime knows she shouldn't be wandering the compound in the state she's in, but she can't afford to care about what she should be doing right now. If she knows him at all, Gojo is probably about to assassinate the entire Council in one fell swoop, and – sure, she wouldn't exactly mind on a personal level, but the political implications…

Well. She doesn't even want to think about those. So she looks for him – up and down every labyrinthine hallway of this compound, too hopped-up on painkillers to sense his cursed energy like she'd normally be able to, and it's only when she walks into what feels like a wall that she realizes she's found anything of interest.

"Uta…hime…?"

She looks up – bleary-eyed and confused, with bandages around her neck, but alive.

"Utahime," he says again, though not exactly to get her attention. It's more than that now, more of a need to say her name and know that she will hear it.

"Oh." She shakes herself, matted hair brushing the back of the pale blue hospital gown she can't remember having changed into. It's hard to remember why she wanted to find Gojo so badly, now, but something that's been held taut in her chest all this time comes undone at the sound of his voice. Safe, instinct tells her, when reason fails. "Gojo. There y'are."

He stops a few steps in front of her, and the blind instinct that's steering Utahime through her daze doesn't like that. She steps closer, because she'd liked how warm and solid he'd felt when she'd bumped into him earlier; it's the same thing, but this time she does it on purpose. After all these months, she knows his warmth, his scent, his contours – they're ingrained enough that even now, foggy-headed as she is, she knows to seek them. Safe, whispers her instinct once more.

"Gojo," she murmurs, pressing her cheek to his chest. " There you are."

His arms wrap around her shoulders and she hums contentedly. "They told me you were dead," he says, whispering so his voice won't crack.

"'m not." She wants to remember the urgency with which she'd left to look for him, but her brain has other priorities. "'m fine. So…don't kill anyone."

Not exactly the buck-stops-here declaration she'd meant to make before her last round of painkillers had kicked in, but now that they have, she's too drowsy to give it any more punch than that. "Don't," she repeats. "'s gonna be really bad if you kill the Council."

He doesn't say anything to that, which she's too out-of-it to mind. She likes his warmth, and she likes how tightly his arms wrap around her tiny frame. It's balm to the dread lurking at the back of her mind, easy to ignore in this state.

"Are you all right?" he finally asks.

"Mmhm."

"You seem-"

"Tired," she interrupts. "Painkillers."

"You're in pain?"

She mutters something incomprehensible. "I'm fine."

"Hime-"

"Just" – she tugs at his sleeve – "don't kill anyone."

She hopes he gets the point.

"You killed them, didn't you."

It's an hour and a half before Utahime's drowsiness wears thin enough to be suspicious at the lack of people trying to finish her off, and Gojo, sitting at her bedside, says nothing.

"There's going to be hell to pay for that," she tells him curtly.

"They slit your throat, Utahime."

"I'm aware of that." She shoots him a glare. "That doesn't mean that this isn't going to be a massive mess to clean up."

"It was inevitable. At some point, either they were going to kill us or we were going to kill them." He looks up at her. "It was obvious that if I didn't, it would've been us."

It's a surprisingly sound argument where she'd been expecting him to have acted on some sort of vendetta, but it still leaves a sour taste in her mouth. "And would you have reached the same conclusion if it was Miwa or Panda who they'd tried to kill?"

"Yes," he says flatly.

"And this had nothing to do with them targeting me."

"Of course it had something to do with them targeting you!"

"And yet you still would've done it if it hadn't been me?"

"This was my plan from the start, Hime." He bows his head so he won't have to look at her. "But when that woman told me that you were dead-"

"What woman?"

"Doesn't matter." He still won't look at her. "I…I'm not really good at explaining feelings, but…hearing that felt like being dropped off a building."

"I'm sorry-"

"Don't." He scoffs. "You know what's funny? Hearing that, I kinda think I actually understood Geto for the first time."

"What's Geto have to do with this?"

"It was my tipping point." He laughs roughly. "I snapped. I…I know what it feels like to be so angry that you'd watch the world burn to teach someone a lesson."

"Because of me?"

"Because somebody" – he finally looks up, his voice cracking, and he touches the bandage at her throat so lightly that she barely feels his fingers brush the gauze – "somebody slit your throat, Utahime. I…I so easily could've lost you."

"But you didn't !"

"But I could've. And…and you know what I was doing while you were risking your life? I was just…sitting in some park in Kobe, watching pigeons. I…I could've stopped this, and I was watching pigeons."

"It isn't your fault, Gojo." Utahime reaches out to touch his shoulder. "I'm the one who told you to stay behind, remember?"

"But I should've known not to listen."

"But I'm fine, Gojo," she insists. "I…I mean, look at me. You wouldn't even know anything had happened if not for the fact that I'm kinda tired from the painkillers."

"No," he murmurs, his finger ducking beneath the gauze around her throat. "There's a spot of blood on your bandages."

"Okay, one tiny drop of blood-"

"Is too much." His eyes darken, and before she has time to realize what he's doing, he reaches around and unties the knot at the back of her neck. Gently, he loosens the bandage, dropping it in his lap when it's undone and brushing his fingers along the raised red line Yamashita's knife had slashed across her throat.

It's perfectly straight. The thought of his doing that without even looking – of the practice it had taken to master that skill – makes Utahime shudder.

"I let them do this to you," he says, his thumb ghosting the scar as lightly as it can. "I can't ever make that right."

"I knew the risks."

"But I should've been there!"

Neither says anything after that until Gojo pulls something from his pocket.

"Your blindfold," Utahime comments – she'd recognize that anywhere. "Are your eyes starting to hurt again?"

He shakes his head, and her body goes stiff when he reaches to the side table for a cotton pad and bottle of alcohol Nitta had been using to keep what remained of the wound clean. "This might sting," he says, uncapping the bottle and tipping it to transfer the alcohol to the cotton pad.

Oh.

She raises her chin. Perhaps it's not the finest form for a woman whose throat was cut hours ago, exposing her neck like this, but she trusts these hands. Even when she winces at the sting of alcohol against her skin, she knows that he'll murmur apologies and stop so she has a moment to get her bearings before he dabs the alcohol along the remaining length of her wound.

"Does Nitta put anything on this but alcohol?" Gojo asks when he's done.

"Antiseptic ointment," she tells him. "Just so it won't get infected."

He looks at her expectantly. Oh. So he'd meant that he wanted to put it on her.

"Counter to the right," she tells him. "The green tube."

He fetches the tube and this time, her throat doesn't sting when his fingers rub the ointment into her skin. "Does this hurt?" he asks.

"No. This one doesn't sting."

"Mm. Good." He finishes and caps the ointment, setting it aside. Then he takes the blindfold, laid in his lap, and only when he drapes one end over her shoulder to hold it in place does she realize what he's doing. "It's clean," he tells her. "Yuji washed it for me back when we got to Croatia."

"Oh," she murmurs, swallowing hard. He wraps the blindfold where her bandage had been, meticulously careful not to make it too tight.

"Remember Croatia?"

He's trying to distract her, probably. She indulges him. "Of course I do."

"You saved me," he tells her. "Back then."

"I didn't really do anything," she demurs.

"You took care of me." He ties the bandage in back, but his hand lingers at the nape of her neck. "I promised you I'd do the same, remember? But I almost let you die."

She's sick of rehashing that point when she knows that no amount of arguing will convince Gojo that he's innocent of complicity in her death. "What are we going to do about the Council?"

"Overthrow them," he says nonchalantly, then his expression grows serious again. "I…I can't really apologize. But I can…I don't know. I can do better."

"You didn't do anything wrong."

He, too, is sick of rehashing a point he knows she won't convince him of. "Is this too tight?"

"No, it feels fine." She sighs. "What are we going to do now?"

"Well, since I sent the Council into Infinite Void…" his hand drops a few vertebrae down to the middle of her back. "We're going to have to deal with all of their sycophants."

"The Clans."

"Gakuganji's not going to like this."

The mention makes Utahime's stomach twinge, remembering that Gojo doesn't know about the principal of his campus yet. This isn't the time to mention it. "He isn't."

"How are the kids?"

"Mai shot Yamashita."

" What?"

"Guess she wanted to avenge you."

"Wait, is she okay? Where is she now? Is the Council-"

"Council's dead, remember?"

"Would you stop being so flippant about that? You just killed thirteen people!"

"Twelve."

" Gojo!"

"Are you…do you think I made the wrong call?"

"Well, morally, no, since they were trying to kill us first, but politically…I don't know, and no matter who they were, taking lives isn't something you should ever take lightly!"

"I don't." Gojo's shoulders slump. "I just…I didn't see another way."

"Then acknowledge that. Don't act like this is some kind of joke to you."

"All right."

Utahime swallows hard. "Can I ask you something?"

"Mmhm."

"When you killed them…" she pauses to breathe. "When you killed them. What were you thinking?"

"That they took my Utahime from me." Mostly that. "And that they wanted to kill my students."

"They said they wanted Megumi, too." Utahime looks at the floor. "They were trying to break you."

"They could've."

"Really?"

"If I'd lost a student, yeah." His arm drifts even lower and now it rests at the small of her back, almost big enough to stretch across her waist if he spreads his fingers. "If I'd lost you."

"Do you really think you wouldn't have recovered?"

"I'm going to do something I never do right now and admit to having human emotions, but…" his hand moves from the small of her back to the curve of her waist so he can hold onto something instead of just resting it there. "I'm…still not over losing Geto. And that was twelve years ago."

"I knew that," she says softly.

"I know I keep bringing him up. Probably 'cause finding out he defected was the closest thing I've felt to what I felt when I thought I was going to lose you."

"You've never admitted that before." She wants to hold him – she doesn't know if she's ever felt that urge more acutely. "That you miss him."

"I do."

"And you think that…losing me-"

"I love you," he says plainly. "I think I would hate myself and carry your picture in my wallet for the rest of my life."

It only makes sense to stay the night in the dorms at the Kyoto campus. Perhaps it's not the safest place to be but the kind of chaos they've created won't let anyone think about them for a couple days, at least. It's not as if Gakuganji is going to kill them on behalf a Council that no longer exists.

Mai stays in her old room, and she doesn't leave after dinner, so she's easy to find when Utahime checks on her.

"Mai," she murmurs, poking her head into the darkened room, and a head pops up from the covers at the sound of her voice. "Are you up?"

Her feet hit the floor in seconds. Zenin Mai has never been one for affection, but she pulls Utahime through the door and into her arms before she even knows what to think.

"I was so scared," she says, voice about to crack, and presses her forehead to Utahime's shoulder. "I…I thought you were going to die and-"

"Mai," Utahime cuts her off, stroking up-down motions against her back. She can feel Mai's racing heartbeat begin to slow at the gesture and presses her a little closer. "You did so well."

"I…I couldn't stop Yamashita."

"You stayed calm," Utahime counters. "You were decisive. You knew exactly what to do."

"But I failed, Sensei!"

"You couldn't possibly have known what Yamashita was going to do," Utahime argues. "And…and you should never have to shoot someone. You're still a student."

"But I did, and you could've died because I wasn't fast enough!"

"Mai, I need you to listen to me." She pulls back enough to look Mai in the eyes, lifting her chin, and the thumb of her free hand brushes a stray tear from Mai's cheek. "Okay? Nothing that happened was your fault. You did the best you could and…I mean, you did well. I'm proud of you." Utahime smiles softly. "Nitta said I would've died if the cut had been just an inch to the right and I could only move enough to make the cut land where it did because you stopped Ichikawa."

"I…"

"You probably saved my life." Utahime shouldn't be smiling at any of this, but she can't help it. "Not Gojo, not…I don't know, Okkotsu or Todo or someone the higher-ups would expect to step in. No one like that. You." She cups Mai's cheeks now. " You did that. Just like I always believed you could."

"You're crying."

"A little." Utahime slips beneath the sheets and turns to face Gojo, though it's hard to see anything in the dark. "I'm okay."

"Where'd you go?"

"I wanted to check on Mai."

"Ah." He can't see her, but he still knows exactly where to find her cheek when he wants to dry her tears. "How is she?"

"A mess. We all are."

"Yeah." He sighs. "Afraid that won't get any better in the next few days with…you know. The whole taking-over-the-government thing."

"We're actually doing this, then?"

"Well, what other choice do we have?"

"True, I guess." Utahime turns to lie on her back, but the position takes her too far from Gojo, so she rolls back to her side.

"I mean, this is why I went into teaching, right? To change things. And…well, clearly, we have allies."

"Mmhm."

Utahime never thought that she'd be proud to count herself as one of them, and yet she does. Funny how that goes. She reaches out to touch his chest, and his hand closes around hers.

"I know I'm not too useful-"

"Stop that." Gojo turns to switch on the lamp by his side of the bed, then sits up. She necessarily has to follow, and when she does, he takes both of her hands. "We both know you're the only reason I'm still alive."

"Well, I almost just got myself killed," she says, trying for his brand of misplaced levity and missing the mark.

"Utahime, none of this would even be possible without you."

"Oh. Wow. What a change." She tries to laugh but can't. "You used to call me weak, remember?"

"Well, I've never really been good at feelings, have I?"

"No, you haven't."

"But what I do know is that we need you. If…if we're going to do this."

"That's what I was going to say," she admits, looking down at her lap. "That if you're going to do this, I want to be a part of it."

"Of course."

"I mean, I said you could keep me if we survived this fight, right?" Utahime ducks her head to hide a shy smile. "So…I guess I'm asking if you want to. I mean, keep me. For as long as we have to keep fighting."

"What about when we get to stop?"

She smiles up at him. "Then, too."

"Utahime, what are you asking me?"

"I'm asking you to be with me." She can't bear to look him in the eye, shy as she feels after harboring that wish for weeks without putting it into words. "I'm asking that…if you're going to change the world, you let me be a part of it." She squeezes his hands, resting in the space between their crossed legs. "By your side."

An incredulous laugh catches in her throat. "I can't believe I'm saying this," she giggles. "I gotta wonder if I'm still hopped up on painkillers." She looks up, finally – Gojo's face lights up and she laughs again, unsure what else to do, and pulls him down so she can press her forehead against his. "I mean, if you told me a year ago that I would've been telling you that I wanted to be with you, I'd have thrown something at you, and here I am, you know? Confessing. Like I'm in high school or something." She presses her hand to his chest again. "Maybe it's the near-death experience talking, but you make me do such stupid things."

"Of course," he replies, half-choked. "I…I wouldn't want to do any of this without you."

"Good," she laughs. "I love you. You're stuck with me."

"You love me." He doesn't sound like he believes it. " You love me."

"Yes," she manages to choke out, trying so hard not to laugh that she snorts. "I love you."

"Wow," he murmurs.

"Seriously? 'Wow'?"

"I'm at a loss for words, okay?!"

"You're an idiot, Satoru," she giggles. "How did you ever think you were gonna take over the world without me?"

"I didn't."

" Good." Utahime doesn't know why she can't stop laughing like a giddy schoolgirl, but she doesn't think she wants to. "I'm so glad I didn't die."

"Me, too." He touches the bandage – his old blindfold, unneeded now – at her throat.

She pulls back; he looks at her as if her face contains the answer to every question he's ever failed to answer. He untangles his fingers from hers to cup her cheek and she ducks her head in silent assent, because she knows exactly what he means to do.

"We made it," she murmurs. "Go ahead."

His lips against hers are just like his hand on her back, like his arm slung across her waist when they've drifted apart in their sleep – firm and gentle, a little too warm, reverent and overexcited, and she cannot help but smile into the kiss at the realization that, for all that he's honed his skills over the years, he kisses her like he's never kissed anyone else. He's not unskilled – nowhere close – but there's an overexcited thrum to the rhythm of his movements, a headfirst-dive enthusiasm to the way he touches her cheek, an artless sweetness to his disbelieving smile when he pulls away.

"Please," he murmurs, smiling, more delirious than she's been at any point today, "let me do that again."

And she does.

They might as well love each other before it all falls to pieces.

Chapter 25: Willpower Summary:

Shoko bides her time with Kenjaku in an effort to get the information she needs to save Nobara.

Notes:

Oh gosh. This one gets VERY intense with the Icky Kenjaku Vibes, so I feel like I need to warn y'all that he is just...exceedingly creepy here. If you think that sort of psychological stuff is going to be uncomfortable for you, this one is pretty skippable - that Shoko/Kenjaku conversation is most of the chapter, so just go to the (only) line break and read that last little section. It'll pretty much recap what you have to know going forwards.

That said, I love me some intrigue and cat-and-mouse and Shoko-centrism.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

"You know, I'm really beginning to suspect that you're double-crossing me."

Shoko doesn't move or even look up from the coffee machine. "Really," she says drily. "I wonder how you could possibly have arrived at that conclusion."

"Hm. I suppose you understand how hard-pressed I am to believe anything you say, then."

"I'm not stupid. I think I'd actually pass out if you told me you actually thought I was on your side."

"And yet you stay," Kenjaku says casually. "Despite knowing that your true allies are probably in mortal danger."

Well, at least she knows now that Kenjaku isn't senseless enough not to have picked up on the fact that she's never actually been in his corner. "I need Mahito dead more than I need to be with them," she says coolly.

"Oh?"

"Otherwise I'd be gone." She casts him a black look over her shoulder. "Do you really think I care if I die? Please. Not like I have anything to lose."

"Except, apparently, the chance to kill Mahito?" Kenjaku's eyebrow lifts. "That certainly seems like a goal of yours."

"That only became a possibility about three days ago, so forgive me for not exactly calling it my life's purpose." Shoko takes her mug from the coffeemaker and takes a long sip even though it scalds her tongue. She thinks, dully, that vodka would've been a more apt choice if this is the kind of morning she's going to be having. "You accosted me and I saw an opportunity to get what I wanted. That's not a goal, it's an above-average ability to leverage a bad situation to my advantage."

"Something I take it you've become good at, seeing as your job is entirely reliant on other people's misfortune?"

"You think I like doing what I do?"

"Can't say, really, but I imagine it would teach a person skills like those."

"Maybe." Shoko takes another scalding sip of her coffee.

"Why Mahito?"

"He killed my kouhai," Shoko says casually, as if the death of a man she hadn't spoken to in years before he died is enough reason to join forces with a murderer. "And maimed half of my students."

"Is that so," Kenjaku says thoughtfully. "Hm. I never took you for type whose personal loyalties ran so deep."

"They don't, but justice is justice." Ha. As if Ieiri Shoko has ever in her life been able to afford that kind of idealism.

"So this isn't about revenge?"

No, though perhaps for Nobara and Yuji it is. "No," she says. "I figure offing that guy saves…who even knows how many people he would've killed if they crossed his path in the future, right? It's pragmatic. He's a danger to society."

It's barely even a lie, really. She probably would kill Mahito if they didn't need him to save Nobara and she thought she had a chance against him. That should scare her. It doesn't.

"That he is," Kenjaku readily agrees. "As am I, and yet you don't try to kill me."

"Because you'd kill me first," she admits. "And our grudge isn't personal."

"Oh, really, now," he comments. "It's not."

Shoko gives him another hard look. "It's not."

"Then why does this body-"

"Can you please shut up about what 'this body' is doing?"

"I wish I could, Ieiri, I really do." He pauses. "Shoko? Calling you 'Ieiri' feels wrong somehow."

Probably because Geto had never called her anything but Shoko, but if there's enough of him left in Kenjaku to remember that, she's in much deeper trouble than she'd realized. "Not Shoko. Don't call me that."

"Ah, touchy?"

"I can't stand you. Don't be overfamiliar."

"Wow, someone's claws are out today. What, feeling nostalgic?"

"Do you want me to stab you?"

"You know, it'd be funny to watch you try." Kenjaku chuckles. "I might even let you see if you could, just for fun. Though of course you'd have to heal me afterwards, which…well, going by what you've said, that might just about kill you."

"I could throw you out that window," Shoko suggests.

"Ah. Defenestration. How creative."

Shoko doesn't even want to ask what that means. "Poison you."

"Where would you get the poison? And besides, I'm a brain. I could find a new body."

That makes her want to shudder but she can't afford to flinch. "But it'd set you back, wouldn't it?"

"Oh, of course. Not saying it wouldn't be terribly inconvenient, especially now that the morgue has been unstaffed for so long." Kenjaku taps his fingers impatiently against the armrest of his chair. "Worse now that the Council's out of the picture."

"Sorry, what?"

"Oh, you didn't hear? Hm. I would think that your friends would've told you that they'd offed the whole Council."

This is definitely a trap, some sort of bait being laid to throw her off so she'll admit she's been in contact with Gojo and Utahime when she hasn't for their own safety – she hasn't and she won't take it. "Come again?"

"I'm a little bit fuzzy on the details, but it sounds like something happened to that woman from the Kyoto College and Gojo Satoru raised hell over it." Kenjaku smirks. "And you know how it goes. If Gojo Satoru decides to raise hell, entire governments topple like dominoes."

"This is a trap," Shoko says flatly, though her heartrate is beginning to pick up speed. "You're trying to get me to say something incriminating."

"Oh, don't worry. From what I can tell, Iori-sensei is still very much alive, though no thanks to you." He smirks, though Shoko has her back turned to him and doesn't see. "They must've had that first-year with reverse cursed technique treat her, though probably not as well as you would've, admittedly. I'm sure they wished you'd been there."

"You're bluffing," Shoko says, but her voice is weaker this time.

"If I were bluffing, I already would've made up some gruesome injury to describe, but I openly admit that I have no idea what happened to her." Kenjaku shrugs. "Take that as you will, but whatever it was, Gojo Satoru thought it had to be punished."

As he should, Shoko can't help but think. She and Gojo are rarely of one mind unless it comes to the surpassing perfection and undeniable superiority of one Iori Utahime. "What exactly was the purpose of you telling me this?"

"What? Don't tell me you're in love with her, too."

"Asking pointless questions to throw me off," Shoko notes. "You must be panicking. Realized you shouldn't have told me that, hm?"

"Not necessarily, no. It's to my benefit to know if you're going to go running back to your old friends the moment you realize they're in as much danger as you are."

"They're fine," she says flatly, even though she'd quite like to shove Kenjaku out the window and call up Utahime for questioning. "What was that you said about killing the entire council?"

"Well, actually, one of the Zenins shot two of them, and one escaped, but the rest had the distinct misfortune of death by Infinite Void." Kenjaku tries not to smirk – both mind and body have cause to be distinctly pleased by the absence of the old Council. One more convenience he has Gojo to thank for. "Naturally, they've left a bit of a power vacuum in their wake. No telling what they're going to do about it."

"None at all," Shoko says blandly, even though she knows perfectly well what they're going to do. It's not as if Gojo hasn't been angling for a revolution since their student days.

"Spoken like a woman who clearly knows something."

She drains the last of her coffee and turns back to him, leaning against the counter. "If you really had any of Geto Suguru left in you, you would know the answer to that question."

"Defensive, are we?"

"What is there to defend? He made a damn good case against himself."

Kenjaku raises his eyebrows, amused as ever. "Do you know what's funny about you, Ieiri?" She doesn't answer, and he takes that as a cue to continue. "The fact that I've lived for centuries and nothing I've seen has taught me anything I can put to use in reading you."

"You're definitely exaggerating. Let's not pretend you don't know how much I hate every part of this arrangement."

"I don't even know where to begin with you," he tells her, undeterred. "It doesn't add up."

"What, my stunning good looks and the fact that I'm shacked up with the five-hundred-year-old brain that took over my high school sweetheart's body? No kidding, it doesn't add up." She gives him a look that, unlike the stormy ones she'd given him earlier, conveys only the most base disgust she's capable of expressing.

"Ah, well. You certainly are lovely." Kenjaku smirks in just such a way as to let her know that he didn't mean that as a compliment. "But what makes you so hard to get a grasp on is the fact that you almost never act in accordance with your principles or express any sort of sentiment that reflects your actions."

"Wow, you love to hear yourself talk, don't you?"

"And you love your witty retorts-"

"Calling me witty isn't gonna make me hate you any less."

"I'm sure it won't, but I'm inclined to give credit where it's due. You're a rather odd woman, Ieiri, but you're not entirely without your merits."

It's a little bit sad that that's probably the most sincere compliment she's received in years. "Gee, thanks."

"Judging by your actions at the grocery store the night we made contact, I can only conclude that you're either not at all afraid of me or had some remarkably compelling reason to pretend that you weren't. And yet you've largely toed the line," he observes. "I haven't heard you contacting your old allies since that night you thought the shower covered up your phone call."

Shoko wishes she were still turned so he couldn't see her eyes widen in shock.

"Oh, don't look at me like that," Kenjaku says lightly. "You played music in the bathroom when you never do that, you had to raise your voice to be heard over the shower whether you knew you were doing it or not, and you hid your wet clothes in a bathroom cabinet. It was easy to piece together. You wanted to call someone, couldn't leave the room without arousing my suspicion, and got into the shower fully-clothed when I indicated to you that I'd overheard something. Obviously." He looks up at her with a challenge in his eyes. "Did you not think I suspected you of something like this from the start?"

Shoko swallows hard, speechless for once.

"But I obviously spooked you, because you haven't tried to call anyone since. Evidently you are afraid of me, though I initially thought you were so emotionally stunted that nothing I did would faze you. That would've been interesting to play with if it were true."

"I've already said that I don't care if you kill me," Shoko says, trying not to let her voice shake. "If I seem like I'm complying, it's only to protect them."

"You know, it's really not prudent of you to so openly tell me that you're still allied with the people I'm trying to get you to distance yourself from."

"Let's not kid ourselves, Kenjaku. Neither of us ever thought I'd actually side with you."

"It had been a hope of mine, if a fool's one." Why do you look so smug, then? Shoko wants to ask. "But no, I'm not surprised."

Shoko turns to set her empty mug in the sink. She has nothing more to say and hopes he won't, either.

But he does, of course. "But I'm pleased," he tells her.

"Why, because you think I'm hot?" She can't resist the petty urge to glare at him. "Or because you still haven't gotten it through your head that you're not Geto and I know that?"

"Everything always comes back to Geto with you. Why is that?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe because you're wearing his body ?"

"And what does that body mean to you?"

"How is it that you make everything sound so disgusting?"

"I asked you a question, Ieiri."

"And I have no reason to answer it."

"See? This is what I mean. You toe the line so habitually and then seem to forget that it's there-"

"You might wanna think about shutting your face before I shove you out the window," Shoko cuts him off.

"Do you want to know something, Ieiri?"

"No."

He's going to tell her anyway. That's never been a question. "This body has strong physical reactions to the presence of people Geto Suguru used to be close to."

"That's biologically impossible when all of that information is stored in the brain," Shoko says flatly, uninterested in revisiting this particular point.

"One would think, no? But evidently that isn't the case. There are memories in this skin." Kenjaku lifts his hand to examine it and smiles to himself. "How else would one explain the goosebumps it raised at the sound of Gojo Satoru's voice, or the fact that I can remember exactly how it felt to put this hand on your thigh?"

"Don't," Shoko says, voice dropping almost to silence. "Please don't."

"Oh, dear. You sound upset."

"Please." Shoko thinks she has about five seconds before she throws up if he goes on like this. "Just don't."

"Oh? Have I finally found your weakness?"

"I'm not in contact with them anymore," she blurts out, pressing a hand to her stomach without realizing she's doing it. "Why else would I not have known about the Council? I swear, I haven't talked to them! No one knows anything-"

"Ah, so I have found it. Hm." Kenjaku taps his pointer finger a few times against his cheek. "Good to know."

" Stop," she says hoarsely.

"Mm, but why should you get to remain unbothered when I have to spend every waking moment in a body that wants to claw its way free of me so it can touch yours?" his voice takes on an edge that it didn't before. "If whatever remains of Geto Suguru is determined to torment me with a barrage of memories that aren't mine, shouldn't they torment you, too? They are your memories, after all."

He's punishing her. He has to be – he's figured out the one thing she can't stomach and he's punishing her. Twisted man, making the few memories she has to hold onto so sickening.

"You used to be so small," Kenjaku says. "You're rather tall for a woman now, but you weren't then. He had to bend so far to kiss you that he still had a crick in his neck when he died. You must've kissed him almost constantly to have left him in that condition by the time you parted ways."

She doesn't bother begging for mercy anymore. Instead, she turns her back, pressing her forehead to the upper cabinet.

Ieiri Shoko is not easily shocked, nor does much offend her delicacy anymore. Her work demands an iron stomach and she's been thoroughly divested of the illusion that sentimentality leads to anything but disaster by now. But the way Kenjaku makes old memories sound so grimy and stomach-turning when they've already kept her up at night for years is more than she can stand.

"Enough," she mutters, barely more than whispering, a supplication she knows won't be heeded and not a command.

"I won't kill you for your disloyalty, but I have ways of keeping you in line," Kenjaku answers her. "Consider that the next time you feel like reminding me that you're using me for information."

She says nothing for a moment.

"Oh, and I almost forgot to mention," he adds. "Mahito is in Chiba. Do with that what you will."

The children are sleeping when Shoko returns.

It feels odd to think of them that way – they're not really children, when she thinks about it. Even in sleep, their faces are battleworn: the circles around Okkotsu's eyes have never been darker, and Kugisaki looks impossibly frail. Itadori twitches every couple of minutes like he's ready to jump up and fight at a moment's notice, and a few feet away, Inumaki's forehead creases in his sleep with what looks like worry. Only Todo seems unbothered, but he's Todo – Shoko is pretty sure he's constitutionally incapable of worrying. None of them except Kugisaki are still on their futons, and few blankets remain over their sleeping owners. Itadori hugs Nobara's blanket to his chest and she has a feeling she wouldn't be able to extract it from his arms even if she had the Jaws of Life on standby. It's a sad sight, this sleeping pile of children who age five years every night.

But it feels like a sigh of relief, too. She's succeeded, and whether she's playing into Kenjaku's hands by taking it or not, she has the information they need. No longer does she have to look over her shoulder or lie awake, spending night after night sleepless because she's afraid of what Kenjaku might do to her if she lets her guard down. She's not going to be tormented with tainted memories every time she looks in the wrong direction here, with only teenagers for companions.

In a way, this is worse. They're so young and so deserving of better than what she and her colleagues have been able to give them, and she's reminded of that whenever the weak sunlight filtering through the window in the earliest moments of dawn illuminates a stressline carved into one of their faces. But here, she's the one with the power; here, she can do something instead of just sitting and waiting.

Shoko knows that Kenjaku wouldn't have told her where Mahito was and let her run without stopping her if it didn't play into his hand somehow, but she's too tired and too battered to care. If it'll save Nobara, she'll take the consequences later.

For now, though, it is dawn, and she has a battle cry to raise.

Notes:

This was supposed to have a bit more focus on the kids before I realized that any kids scene would be emotionally-driven and not actiony or suspenseful at all and might feel anticlimactic after the last chapter. If you're interested, a deleted Yuuta & Nobara scene I wrote for this chapter can be found here: /t0dorokidokie/status/1461992320140668928?s=20

Chapter 26: Approach Summary:

Shoko's group prepares to take on Mahito while Gojo and Utahime make plans.

Notes:

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate! I'm feeling very ~thankful~ for all of you and for this story. This thing has been an absolute lifesaver through a very strange first in-person semester of college and I can't tell you how grateful I am for the chance to keep telling it or for the people it's connected me with. Feeling the love on this fine Thursday 3

Chapter Text

Kyoto

"I don't know if Infinite Void was the best idea."

"Your cursed energy." Utahime doesn't even need to be asked. "Running low again?"

Gojo sinks back into the pillows and briefly wishes they'd swallow him before he comes to his senses. He ought not to wish those things when he has a government to rebuild and Utahime a foot to his left. "I…just know that it doesn't feel normal."

"I was afraid that would happen." Utahime sets down her phone, rubbing at her eyes while they adjust to the room's dim lighting. "Is it something to do with Six Eyes? You can't use it as efficiently anymore?"

"Probably."

"Well," Utahime says, shrugging, "you shouldn't have to Hollow Purple anybody anytime soon, so we probably have time to let you recover again."

"Hilarious."

"I'm dead-serious, Gojo. Our problem now isn't people trying to kill us-"

"Our problem is always people trying to kill us, 'Hime."

She tries not to think about how much she likes it when he calls her that. It's not the time. "Not when we have to figure out how to rebuild the entire power structure of the Jujutsu community, it's not."

"Easy. Appoint our allies as clan heads, disband the council, and send people out to take care of the Council sympathizers who won't fall in line. You know, that's the hard part." Gojo sighs, tapping his fingers against his forearm. "I can't exactly strongarm people into doing what I want anymore."

"No one needs to know that," Utahime suggests. "You might as well pretend everything's business as usual. Just to be safe."

"You think I could keep it up?"

"I mean…it's not as if you're anywhere near weak." She's surprised to find that she doesn't even wish she could turn his own words back on him now. "You still have insane amounts of cursed energy. Even if you're not at full strength, that's a pretty good reason for people not to cross you."

"Well, damn, Hime, no need to inflate my ego." He looks over at her and cracks a smile. "You really think so?"

"It's not a compliment, Gojo. I'm stating a fact."

"But it's a very complimentary fact-"

"And quit flirting. We could get assassinated any minute now."

He deflates, flopping back against the pillows with a dramatic sigh, but doesn't press the issue. "Sure, but I'm vulnerable now. I've never been vulnerable before."

"You have me now," Utahime counters. "You've never had me before."

"Thought we weren't flirting."

"I'm still just stating a fact. Having someone to watch your back who sticks as close as I have is an asset no matter who that person is." Utahime crosses her arms. "I'm not you, but I'm competent."

He says nothing to that – no rebuttal, no 'you're more than that.' For a moment, she waits for a reply, but she realizes she won't get one when he reaches for her hand.

"It's pretty easy," he tells her. "The politics, I mean. Send the kids to Shoko now that she's back with the rest of them so they'll be out of the crossfire. Then get the twins or Megumi to head the Zenin clan, put your Kamo in charge of his…that kinda thing. Put people we know have brains in their heads in power."

"And then what? No one in the Zenin clan is going to let the twins take charge."

"Off 'em, then. It's not like Maki hasn't been plotting to do that since she got here."

"Can we try to avoid using murder as a backup plan?"

"It's not a backup plan if it is the plan."

"You get what I'm saying, Gojo."

"I do, but I don't think there's really any way around it at this point." Gojo turns to his other side so he faces Utahime, hugging a pillow to his chest. "We killed-"

" You killed-"

"The Council, and that one lady who got out is going to raise hell with the clans because, let's face it, they've been trying to get me killed this whole time and this is a more perfect excuse than they even could've asked for, right? If we don't move fast, they will murder us."

It's more than sobering to hear Gojo Satoru acknowledge his mortality, but Utahime isn't ready to unpack that, so she nods. "I get that, it's just…I don't know. I thought you went into education so you could do this without killing everyone."

"I did, but they forced my hand."

"You didn't have to kill them, you know. Could've locked them up somewhere."

"At the moment, I didn't see an alternative."

"Well, whatever your reason was, it means a lot more people have to be out of the picture for this to work." Utahime notices that Satoru isn't looking at her and lifts his chin so he'll have to. "So how is this going to work?"

Tokyo

Ieiri Shoko's Apartment

"I swear, I'm fine ." Nobara pushes a bowl of miso soup away and barely flinches when some of the broth sloshes onto her sweatshirt. "I just don't feel like eating."

"Yeah, but you need to," Yuji presses. Balancing the bowl between his knees, he takes both of Nobara's hands and sets them against the sides of the bowl and supports the bottom when he lifts it to her lips. "Just a little, okay?"

She leans back into his chest, head lolling weakly against his shoulder, and it's only the protective cradle of his legs that keeps her from going totally limp. Even the knowledge that she might upset a bowl of hot soup barely bothers her when pain seems like a distant memory.

"Not hungry," she protests weakly.

"But you have to eat." The arm that isn't supporting the bowl of soup presses her closer, holding her upright. "The only reason you're not hungry is because your body is trying to give up, and you have to not let it, right?"

Nobara can't even muster the energy to snap at him. "I'm going to be sick if I eat that."

"No, you aren't," Yuji says gently, touching the bowl to her lips. "C'mon. Have a little."

She takes a sip, even though she doesn't think it'll stay down, and notes that the broth needs salt. It's disconcerting to catch herself thinking that when she knows that Yuji's miso is always so salty it could be used to preserve mummies (not that she'd ever complain when he makes it like that because she and Megumi both love salty foods).

"Food doesn't have flavor anymore," she tells Yuji after a few sips. "I can't taste the salt."

"But you drank it anyway, right?" Yuji squeezes her arm. "It should help you feel less weak."

"Four sips?"

"Well, I mean, you need to keep drinking it, but…eventually?"

Nobara almost musters the energy to laugh. "Idiot."

"Yeah." He kisses the side of her head – he's liked doing that to people lately, and even Shoko has allows it in the name of comfort – and then presses the bowl to her lips again. "But I'm not an idiot about this."

He wishes he were. Then maybe he wouldn't be able to see Nobara grow paler and weaker and know she was losing her battle. Maybe, if he were stupid, he'd be positive that Yuta's crackpot plan would work, and maybe he'd believe that Kugisaki Nobara had never met a challenge she couldn't rise to. Perhaps the smiles he gave her wouldn't be fake, and he'd relish the feeling of sleeping with someone in his arms instead of worrying that her body, once a solid weight against his own, was growing frail.

Maybe he'd be sure that he wasn't going to lose her, if he were a fool. Maybe he wouldn't love her enough not to panic at the thought.

She drains the bowl and tugs his hand down to wrap around hers as soon as he sets it aside. He wishes he were ignorant enough not to hate doing that now that her hands are so cold, but he obliges.

Kyoto

"Are we sure we should be putting that kind of pressure on kids?"

"I mean, it's not ideal, no." Gojo undoes the knot in Utahime's bandage and begins to unravel it. "But what other choice do we have? Everyone older is probably going to want us dead after this."

"There have to be some sympathizers," Utahime counters. "And aren't we going to send the students to Shoko? That's going to complicate things."

"Yeah, and we'll find 'em, but for now, the kids and Shoko are the only reliable allies we have." Gojo unwraps the last of the bandage and sets it down, pleased to note that it isn't bloodstained this time. "I'd try to get in touch with Yaga, but who knows what the Council tried to get him to do while I was gone, y'know? There might be no point."

Utahime winces and hopes Gojo won't notice, but he does – of course he does. He always does. "Does something hurt?"

"No, it's…fine. Just something the Council said." She should tell Gojo about Yaga now; she knows that. But she cannot afford his rage when there are so many delicate plans to be made. It'll eat at her, but – just like she can't imagine what Gojo would have done had she actually died – she can't know what he'll do when he finds out what the Council did to the only one of his superiors he ever trusted. For now, his clearheadedness is too important. "Don't worry about it."

"That sounds like something I should be worried about, Hime." He circles around to sit in front of her and Utahime instinctively lifts her chin when he uncaps the bottle of alcohol to clean her rapidly-healing wound. "What'd they say?"

"I don't want to tell you right now." Honesty might be best in this situation, Utahime decides. "It'll just upset you."

"Well, now you have to tell me."

"Later, Gojo." She swallows hard and lets him think it's the alcohol against her throat making her wince. "That still kinda stings."

"I know." He frowns, momentarily distracted – thank God – and grabs the tube of ointment from the nightstand, fanning his hand in front of Utahime's throat to dry the last of the alcohol before he applies the waxy cream to her wound. It feels cool against her skin, but the sting of alcohol still lingers; Gojo seems to notice the tension in her shoulders and touches her arm as if to tell her she'll be all right. "Better?"

"Little." Her voice comes out raspy, and jumps in pitch when he rubs in a spot of the ointment over her pulse point with his thumb. "Sorry."

"Don't be."

He pauses for a moment, and Utahime's eyes stay closed. Perhaps she can't afford that kind of trust, but she'll give it to Gojo if he asks nicely enough. One hand cups the back of her neck and she fights the urge to stiffen at the touch; the other lifts her chin to expose her throat, and that should frighten Utahime, but it doesn't. She feels hot breath ghost skin still tingling with the residue of the alcohol and wonders why. "Don't be," he murmurs again, and again, breath ghosts her skin.

Then his lips brush her pulse point where it intersects with her scar, and she doesn't wonder anymore.

"Gojo," she chokes out, "what are you doing?"

His breath is too far away to feel in a second. "Do you want me to stop?"

"N-no, I…I just…wondered."

His fingers trace the scar once more before he touches his lips to its far-right end. "Apologizing," he murmurs, then kisses the spot a fraction of an inch to the left. "For letting this happen."

"Gojo," Utahime stammers, a little too stunned for coherent speech. "I…I don't need-"

"Do you want me to stop?" he asks again.

"N-no," she admits shakily, "but…you don't need to apologize."

For a moment, Gojo says nothing, and his lips map a trail to the center of her scar near the pulse point before he starts up again.

"I want to," he tells her. "Aren't you always telling me I suck at saying I'm sorry?"

"You do." Utahime lets out a watery laugh. "You are bad at apologizing."

"Mm." He lingers a bit longer at her pulse point than he had before just to feel Utahime's heartbeat pick up speed with each brush of his lips. "Then let me practice."

"Okay," she murmurs. "All right."

At least this way he's forgotten to ask about Yaga.

Tokyo

Shoko isn't used to people in her space anymore, and when they are, she always forgets for a moment that they're nothing to fear. Yet another thing Kenjaku ruined for her – a brush of fabric against her arm when someone has to squeeze past her in her cramped kitchen is all it takes to stiffen her spine against a nonexistent threat.

"Sorry," Okkotsu says when he notices he's startled her. "I was, um. Looking for the coffee pods."

"Second cabinet to the left at the top," Shoko says tonelessly. "It's fine."

But Yuuta doesn't continue on to find the cabinet she'd directed him to. Instead, he crosses his arms and looks at her like he doesn't believe a word she's saying.

Of course.

"I don't want to butt in or anything, but we're really worried about you," Okkotsu tells her. "Are you doing okay?"

"I'm fine. Nothing to worry about." The response is reflexive now, after years of giving it to anyone bored or curious enough to ask. "Why?"

"You flinch whenever anyone gets near you."

"Well, yeah, that happens when the guy who stole your high school boyfriend's body spends a week trying to get you into bed with him." Shoko doesn't even shudder at the words anymore. "Among other things."

"You don't have to pretend that doesn't bother you," Okkotsu says – of course he does, softhearted fool that he is.

"Whether it bothered me or not is entirely irrelevant." Shoko gives him a tight smile that only makes him feel more certain that he was right to worry. "I'm fine, Okkotsu. Focus on figuring out how you're going to beat Mahito."

"Um, I don't want to pry or anything, but…you risked your life to find out where he was for us," Okkotsu counters. "I'm not just going to butt out."

"Thanks, but I'm fine." She gives him a look that's supposed to warn him off but probably won't. "Let me be the adult here, 'kay?"

"But you're not fine," he presses. "I mean, just going off of personal experience here, if Maki died and someone stole her body and then tried to seduce me with it and, um, and everything, I…well, personally, I'd be kinda messed up after. And…I don't really know the whole story about you and, um, and Geto and all, but I gotta think it was probably really hard for you to have to go through that and I feel really bad that you felt like you had to do that and…I dunno. I just wanna help."

"Then help by using the information I found for you." Shoko takes a sip of her coffee and doesn't think that it's the caffeine making her hands shake. She hadn't expected to be so thrown-off by Okkotsu's spot-on assessment of her emotional state and doesn't really know what to make of the fact that she is. "Okay? Don't worry about me. That's not your job."

"Gojo told me when I came here that I had to make sure you were emotionally stable 'cause you wouldn't tell anyone if you weren't," he says. "And Utahime says you're a 'chronic self-isolator who needs supervision.'"

"Wow. Traitors." She downs the rest of her coffee in a single swig and only retroactively wishes she'd added at least one packet of sugar. "I'm fine, I promise."

"No, you're not." Okkotsu meets her eyes and she feels oddly exposed beneath his wide-eyed gaze. "I know you're not."

"And what do you want me to do about it?" Shoko is beginning to feel cornered, and she's never at her best when she is. "Do you think any of us have time to spare for worrying about how people feel? We've only got a few more miles before the train runs out of track." She crosses her arms. "In the middle of a bridge."

It's a surprisingly apt metaphor. Maybe Okkotsu, for all his bodies-in-motion, would appreciate it if he were a little less distracted.

"I can't ignore the fact that you're not doing well. Sorry." Okkotsu shrugs. "Even if there's nothing I can do. I…I have to try."

Shoko hates that that's the kind of attitude that's going to get him killed in this line of work. "You're a good kid," she says. "This just isn't the time."

"Right." He looks sheepish, a little ashamed. "Sorry."

Megumi doesn't think that sending the few remaining allies they had in Kyoto to stay with Shoko was Gojo and Utahime's most tactically-sound decision, but he's far from inclined to complain about it. He'd wanted that assignment all along, and from the looks of it, everyone is eager to rejoin their companions.

Well, maybe not Maki. Maki looks mad about something, which is fair. But Miwa talks a mile a minute, Panda's foot bounces against the floor in the seat in front of him, and Mai seems a little more relaxed than she usually does. Funny. There's no reason at all that anyone here should be relaxed when they're so close to a rematch with the opponent who nearly ended it all the first time around.

Yuji is the first one to the door – of course he is. He beats even Yuuta, who looks surprisingly ready to cut the line to make it to Maki; maybe he does only because Maki takes the initiative first, shoving past the rest of the group to find Yuuta. Still.

Something in Yuji's face softens at the sight of Megumi, and he doesn't know how to feel about it. Or about the crushing embrace he pulls him into without realizing that he isn't giving his friend any space to breathe.

He doesn't even say anything – that's not like Yuji. Maybe that's why some instinct Megumi didn't know he had tells him to return the favor, even if all he can manage is an awkward placement of stiff hands against Yuji's shoulders.

It strikes Megumi as strange that the gesture is comforting somehow.

"You look awful."

"You look worse." Nobara sticks out her tongue, then appraises Megumi where he stands in the doorway. Her nose wrinkles in distaste. "I'm disappointed. You come to visit me on my deathbed wearing that?"

"I'm just wearing normal clothes," Megumi mutters, looking down at his sweatshirt (there's a soup stain on the right sleeve's cuff) and joggers (they've seen better days). Better to reevaluate his wardrobe choices than to think too much about what Nobara had said. "How, um…how are you feeling?"

"Disgusted that you had the audacity to show up in pajamas."

"Seriously, Nobara?"

She smiles weakly. "I feel like death warmed up," she says, more resigned than fearful. "Gotta find things to think about instead."

"…oh." Megumi's head hangs. "I'm, um…I'm sorry."

"Not your fault, for once." Nobara pats her bedspread. "C'mere."

"Hm?"

"C'mere," she repeats. "I'm cold."

"Again?" Megumi clucks his tongue but, as requested, joins her at the edge of her bed. It's some instinct – again – that compels him to brush her limp hair behind her ear, and the weak pressure of Nobara's hand that keeps his own pressed to her sallow cheek after he's done. "Has Yuji-"

"Yeah. Don't worry." She smiles – it's disconcerting, because Nobara never smiles like this – and releases her hand from his. "He's been looking out for me."

"Good."

"How was the Council?"

"Dead."

That gets a smile that at least seems genuine out of Nobara. "Nice."

"They tried to kill Utahime," Megumi says matter-of-factly. "Gojo went nuts."

"Aww, avenging his girl," Nobara giggles. "Never woulda thought he had that in 'im."

"You'd be surprised."

"Didja miss me?"

Megumi is surprised to find himself nodding. "Yeah, actually."

Nobara giggles again, more open and more out-of-it than he's ever seen her. "Didja fear for my life?"

"You idiot. Of course I did."

"Of course you did," Nobara agrees, tugging at his sleeve. "Wanna know something?"

He gets it, now. She's too close to the end of her life to care what she says or does anymore; she wants nothing but comfort and affection when there's nothing anyone can do for her, and she asks for it. That's hardly a request he can deny.

"Sure," he says, opening his arms and trying not to be surprised at how feather-light Nobara feels against his chest.

"I missed you too."

They sleep together that night. There's never any question of that, nor of the fact that one boy will curl up on either side of Nobara and press in close until she's caged in by warmth.

"We've got you," Yuji murmurs as she's about to drift off, slinging an arm across her waist. "Okay?"

"Mmhm." Nobara pushes her forehead against Megumi's sternum like she's trying to fuse with him, too tired to realize he wasn't the one who'd spoken.

"Yeah," Megumi agrees, even though reassurance has never come as easily to him as it has to Yuji. "We do."

She's the first to drift off – naturally. It takes the other two hours to do the same when both are afraid that her shallow breaths will stop coming if they aren't watching her.

Kyoto

The last thing Utahime wants to do is break the silence. There's little time for comfort with the world threatening to cave in, and moments like this – her head against Gojo's chest, his hand at her waist, their breathing slowed by the nearness of sleep – are too rare to wish away. But she has to.

"Satoru," she starts, keeping her voice soft so she won't wake him if by some lucky chance he's already asleep.

He's not, though, and he stirs. "Mmhm?"

"I…have to tell you something."

"The thing from earlier," he realizes.

"Yeah."

"Okay."

She wraps her hand around the one that sits at her waist. "Can you promise me that you won't go off the rails again?"

"No," he admits, "but there's no Council left to kill, if that makes you feel better."

"It doesn't." She swallows hard. "I'm…I'm really sorry. In advance."

"Sorry for what?"

Her free hand fists in the comforter and she feels Gojo's shoulder tense beneath her cheek. He has to know now that something is seriously wrong and she's not sure how to break it to him that the only one of his superiors he ever cared for is gone when he's already lost so much.

"The Council," she starts shakily. "They, um…they wanted to, um, cut you off from your allies."

"You don't have to be so nervous," he cuts in, laying his free hand on her arm. "We've been through a lot already, right? I can take it."

"But…"

"C'mon," he murmurs. "You can tell me. I can take it."

"I don't want to hurt you."

"I'm pretty tough, Hime." He kisses the crown of her head so softly that she could cry, though she already wants to. "What did the Council do?"

"They…wanted Gakuganji to prove his loyalty," she manages to choke out. "Because they were starting to suspect that he was helping us."

Gojo's thumb strokes comforting circles against her upper arm. "And?"

"They, um. They realized you didn't have a lot of allies left at home and saw an opportunity." Utahime's throat feels tight. "To get rid of them."

His thumb stops and his hand stiffens against her arm. She'd known it would, but it still alarms her.

"Utahime," he says, voice dropping, "what does that mean?"

"You have to promise you're not going to kill him," Utahime says before she continues, just to be sure.

"What did he do?"

"Promise me, Satoru."

"I need to know what he did first." Great. So there aren't any promises that he won't foolishly waste what remains of his strength on revenge. "Can you tell me what he did?"

"They made him kill Yaga."

Tokyo Ueno Station

It's barely dawn, but the platform is already full of commuters – enough, at least, that a dozen or so teenagers in athletic clothes that bely their true purpose and don't mesh at all with the weapons they carry look strange.

They certainly are a motley lot. Onlookers without a clue of their true purpose look at them and see a pale-faced redhead slumped against a pink-haired boy whose forehead is creased with worry, held on her other side by a boy whose hair sticks up like the spines of a sea urchin, not three sixteen-year-olds who don't know if they'll still be a trio by the end of the day. They see a lanky beanpole of a boy whose eyes are too wide and whose face is too pale for someone who is ostensibly just going about his day beside a muscular girl whose face is blotched with scars, not a young couple facing the reality that lies outside of the fantasy they'd let themselves build while they were away. They see a platinum-blond boy in a surgical mask and see a cautious student trying not to catch whatever is going around at school, not a cursed speaker trying not to let it show that his newly-healed arm still feels limp and awkward. They see a panda and assume that its fur is a suit and its wearer a cosplayer; they see a muscle-bound martial arts type flanked by two pretty girls who look utterly ordinary in a crowd like this and don't think anything of them. The older woman who's with them has dark eyebags that could make her just about any professional in Tokyo, for all the passengers know.

They don't see an elite task force about to face an adversary none of them ever wanted to see again. They don't see a dying girl and the loyal cohort who'd do anything to save her life. And they certainly don't see the fear that they all so carefully conceal.

Too much rides on this mission to run the risk.

Chapter 27: Fatality Summary:

Kenjaku and Mahito bring the fight to the students.

Notes:

Remember: no MCD tag.

Also, I am never writing a fight scene again. Ever. How the FRICK does Gege do these? Help. This is a cry for help. This chapter fought me tooth and nail and this is absolutely a cry for help.

Chapter Text

4:33 A.M.

Kenjaku always stands out in crowds – he imagines his body's last user probably did even moreso. He certainly cuts a figure in his priest's robes, though onlookers probably think it's a costume; he is, unfortunately, still too handsome not to stand out in ordinary company. His companion probably wouldn't help his case if he were visible to the passengers leaving the Chiba station, either.

It's too early in the morning for many passengers, though, and that helps when he needs to find a private place to talk to Mahito where no one will see them. He thinks the car with only a teenager slumped against the window with earbuds in should do just fine.

"Mahito," he says, once he's made a show of settling into a seat and spreading his robes just so. There's no point in having a body, he figures, if he isn't going to be a little bit dramatic about it. "Do you understand what we're doing here?"

"Going after those Tech brats who won't die," he says, picking at invisible dirt beneath his fingernails with a pointer finger transfigured into a file.

Kenjaku sighs. Mahito has always been hard to work with – he's forever taking things too lightly. "No," he says, trying not to sound patient lest Mahito get the wrong idea. "We're capitalizing on an opportunity to use information to our advantage."

"So…we're going after those Tech brats who won't die."

"No, we are capitalizing-"

"I liked you better when you were Geto," Mahito says aimlessly, transfiguring his file back into a human finger and glancing out the window. "And I don't see how those two things are any different."

"Because this isn't some petty revenge mission, Mahito. I need you to understand that." He gives him a black look for emphasis. "This is not your grudge match."

"Right," he says, grinning. Clearly, he doesn't.

"This is not about that girl you couldn't kill."

"Of course it's not." Still, he grins – he can make it about whatever he wants. "All for the glorious purpose of the mission and whatnot-"

"I'm not naïve enough not to know that you'll try to use this mission to further your own ambition, though." Best to cut Mahito off before he gets going. "I'm allowing you to be here because it'd be of use to me if you managed to kill a few of their lackeys for me."

"See, you say things like that and I really don't understand how this isn't 'going after Tech brats who won't die.'" Mahito tilts his head, probably trying to rub it in how much he knows Kenjaku must hate this, but all he succeeds in doing is making himself look like a half-pint Gojo imitation and Kenjaku, for all his lacking in human emotions, wants to punch that smirk off his face. "Care to explain?"

"You're here to be of use to me," he says coolly instead.

"But of course," Mahito says, sweeping his arm out in an arc and smirking at Kenjaku's half-repressed look of annoyance when it hits him. "I am but a humble underling of your esteemed lordship, as ever-"

"I could absorb you," Kenjaku says mildly.

"Oh, but you wouldn't. You need me."

"I don't, actually." Mahito is so willfully delusional that it might be amusing if he weren't so ceaselessly foolish. "Bringing you was a tactical decision, but not because I needed you."

"Please explain how bringing me along could be helpful if you didn't need me, then."

"Everybody has a point of fatality, if you will." Kenjaku leans against the wall, stretching his legs out into Mahito's space out of the kind of petty spite he lets himself indulge in. "Some nerve that all but guarantees victory if you can hit it. I have cause to believe you're exactly the thing I need to hit a few of them."

"Oh?" Mahito looks pleased, even though Kenjaku's all but admitted to using him. "Is that not the same as needing me?"

"No, believe me, it isn't."

"But-"

"People often have more than one point of fatality. Itadori, for one. I'm fairly certain he has at least seven."

"All of them people?"

Finally, a moment of clarity – Kenjaku is surprised he had it in him. "Naturally. I'm sure you remember the way you nearly ended him when he thought you'd killed Kugisaki, no?"

"Oh, I do." It's a treasured memory, though distinctly sullied by the dual revelations that he hadn't managed to kill her and Kenjaku wouldn't let him follow her to Kiev to finish the job. They'd known, of course – Kenjaku has enough scouts that he rarely misses things like that – but 'the only reason to kill someone so insignificant would be to break Itadori, and we already did that,' he'd insisted. Mahito thinks Kenjaku must be allergic to a good time, but he's going to wring one out of this excursion if it kills him.

"Anyways. You serve as a reminder of the trauma they all underwent at Shibuya Station," Kenjaku goes on. "It's entirely possible that seeing you might do to them what seeing me in Geto Suguru's body did to Gojo. They don't have to freeze for long to give you an opening."

"Ah, I see." He's beginning to, at least.

"Kugisaki can't be in good health now, given that Ieiri was willing to risk her life to figure out where you were." Kenjaku looks up at Mahito and lifts his eyebrows when he finds him surprised. "What, you didn't know?"

"I have no idea who Ieiri is," Mahito says, widening his eyes innocently. "Might you enlighten me?"

Kenjaku mutters something unsavory under his breath.

"Really," Mahito tries again. "I don't know who you're talking about."

"Ieiri is the reason your last victim is still alive," Kenjaku says, barely managing the pretense of patience. "A doctor at Tokyo Jujutsu Technical College-"

" Oh, the lady doctor. Right." Mahito frowns. "What of her?"

"I thought I might be able to get her to change sides, seeing as she seems to have few ties to the larger Jujutsu community, and seeing that my host body belonged to her former lover." He retrieves a pen that Geto had always kept in his pocket to fidget with – no one had bothered to remove it – and begins to click the tip up and down. "She came willingly, though. That made me suspect that she might not really have changed sides."

"And what does that have to do with me?"

"Oh, I didn't mention that?" Kenjaku smiles. "She told me she'd only come with me if I told her where you were so she could kill you."

Mahito sputters for a moment, unable to speak.

"Anyways," Kenjaku goes on, "I figured she was still in contact with someone from the College, though it took a little reconnaissance to find out that she has several of the students camped out in her apartment. Which checks out."

"With what?"

"One of them was Okkotsu," he says. "Another was Kugisaki."

"Who's Okkotsu?"

"The bane of my past life's existence, it would seem. All you need to know is that he can copy cursed techniques, and Kugisaki is in terrible health."

Mahito smiles at that. So his efforts hadn't been in vain. "He's going to try to copy my technique and fix her? How cute."

"Pathetic," Kenjaku offers. "But useful. They'll come to us this way, after all."

"Mm, yes, I see. Bring the fight to us-"

"Be quiet." Kenjaku scoffs for effect. "Honestly. You chattering monkey."

"I was making a valid interjection!"

"Hardly. Anyway. This is an ideal opportunity to take out a few opponents, but if we can't, it might also be a useful place to dispose of dead weight."

Mahito doesn't even seem to realize what an obvious hint that was.

"And if we can use you for that…mm, yes, I think that ought to work."

Mahito grins. "You sure this isn't about your lady friend?"

"She's not my lady-friend, Mahito." Kenjaku hates how much he sounds like the mother of an unruly kindergartner. "And frankly, if you could eliminate her, the danger to our cause that you'd eliminate would almost make up for you using your horrid technique on a face like that."

"How cute," Mahito says, saccharin-sweet. "You've gone sweet on the enemy!"

"Hardly. I don't have to have stooped so low to acknowledge that a woman is rather nice to look at." He's growing tired of this conversation. "Anyways, do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?"

"Of course. You're wasting away for want of the touch of a woman."

"I could always absorb you," Kenjaku reminds him. "That's your point of fatality, you know. The fact that, at the end of the day, there's nothing you can do to save yourself if I decide I'm through with you."

"Right. Of course. Because that's likely to happen."

"It might." He clears his throat. "And do you know how we find the points where we never miss?"

"I still don't buy this one-weakness idea."

"Well, that's unfortunate, since I do, and I'm the one with the better hand to play here." Kenjaku has to take his wins where he can get them, he thinks. "Now. How do we find them?"

Mahito says nothing.

"By figuring out what that person has no control over," he goes on. "Love is often a fatal weakness – nothing to freeze someone faster than a lover in peril. For some, family is the same way. Others can't control their reactions to reminders of the past – that's how we sealed Gojo Satoru, remember. And for some, it's simply fear. Give them cause to think they're in imminent danger of death and they'll crack for long enough to make an opening." He turns the pen in his hand. "Finding the chinks in opponents' armor and all of that. No one has such mastery of their emotions that they don't sometimes cede control and let them take over. It's simply" – he clicks his pen, one-two, and then sets it down – "a matter of figuring out which emotions they haven't mastered."

Mahito is still silent, slumped in his seat.

"Some are easy," he says. "The altruistic, for one. The ones who can't stand to let an innocent bystander get hurt. They do stupid things when they think one will – you know," he goes on, "get themselves alone and whatnot. They make easy mistakes."

5:18 A.M.

"Okaka?"

"They probably followed me." Shoko is pale, leaning across the back of her seat to look back at Inumaki. "Do you think-"

" Shake."

There aren't many people on this train so early in the morning – a pair of college students, one slumped against the window and the other slumped against her shoulder; two salarymen, one reading a magazine and one staring at his phone; a young mother with a baby asleep in her arms. Still. Inumaki knows exactly what his role is meant to be in a crisis: evacuation and safekeeping.

"Thanks," Shoko says, swallowing hard. "Get them as many cars down as you can."

4:49 A.M.

"Others can't focus if they think someone they care for is in danger," Kenjaku goes on. "People give plenty of openings if they're distracted by the safety of a noncombatant."

5:22 A.M.

"I can't say I expected to find you here." Mahito leans against the open sliding door between cars like an actress posing for an ad campaign, smiling as if he's already won. "What are you doing here so early, anyways?"

Itadori says nothing, one arm held out protectively as if to shelter Kugisaki in the seat to the right of the spot in the aisle where he stands. "Scary," Mahito remarks. "I forgot how you were about her. Afraid it won't do you much more good this time than it did last time."

4:50 A.M.

"And I know that there are a few who overestimate their strength," he says. "Ones who'll go charging into fights thoughtlessly, unprepared, giving no thought to whether they'll win – those ones are easy, too. They'll usually break once they realize how hopelessly outgunned they are."

5:23 A.M.

Zenin Mai likes to think she's in tune with the flow of cursed energy around her most of the time – she's had to be. When she was younger, that had often been the only way of knowing someone she'd rather avoid was coming near, whether a malicious cousin or an uncle she'd always feared or her father or an opponent in battle. But she'd had the lack of foresight to fall asleep, slumped against the window, and it's Miwa's hand shaking her shoulder that wakes her, not the cursed energy that hits her like a wall almost as soon as she opens her eyes.

"Mai," Miwa says, her voice small, "that's not Gojo-sensei, is it?"

No, though its cursed energy feels almost as overpowering. Mai never really thinks of herself as a tactician, but it isn't hard to put the pieces together.

"That's…not Gojo-sensei."

"Do you think-"

"No point in speculating," Mai says, just to avoid answering Miwa's question as she stands. Instinctively, she checks the holster at her hip for a gun she keeps forgetting she's hidden in her boot because she can't travel with it openly – great. Nothing she can do about that. "I'm gonna go scout ahead."

"Mai…"

Mai gives Miwa a hard look. "Hang back. I can handle this."

"Mai-"

"I said I could handle this." It almost kills her to snap at Miwa – always has – but sometimes it's the only thing she'll understand, and there's no way Mai is going to endanger her if she can help it. She likes to think she can handle something as simple as a reconnaissance mission herself. That cursed energy she'd sensed feels closer; she swallows hard, pressing her back to the wall to the side of the door between cars, not even sure what she's trying to hide from. Careful, she warns herself, bending to fish her gun out of her boot, then straightening with it, steadying her hand to shoot if she has to. You don't know what's out there.

It takes all of five seconds to realize, when she doesn't even have time to react before a pale blue hand grips her wrist to dislodge the gun from her hand, that she hasn't been nearly careful enough.

"Standing guard," Mahito says, smirking as she scrambles for her gun, raises it with shaking hands that haven't yet realized she was marked the moment he touched her wrist. "How noble of you. Are you going to shoot at me?"

"Yes," she says curtly, but she's barely gotten a shot off when her fingers begin to swell, muscle and bone distorting beneath her skin, and she barely registers Miwa's terrified cry or the snik of Mahito's hand as he transfigures a finger into a blade and slices the handle of the gun free before her swelling thumb becomes stuck there. She couldn't when even the excruciating pain of rearranged bone can't quell her horror at the sight of Mahito's touch creeping up her arm.

"That was some hit," Mahito says mildly, coughing – his fist comes back bloody but he closes the exit wound effortlessly. "Perhaps if I were Yamashita Yuu it actually would've killed me."

Mai musters the resolve between choked breaths and restrained sobs to look up at him and spit.

No matter – he brushes past Mai like he hasn't even seen her.

4:51 A.M.

"Some can't recover from shocks." Again, Kenjaku reaches for his pen. "If seeing something horrible is enough to incapacitate someone, you hardly even need to target them. Letting them be in the vicinity of someone else's death is enough."

5:25 A.M.

" Mai ," Miwa calls out hoarsely, barely lucid enough to remember that Mahito could hear her, be reminded that she's still alive. " Mai-"

"Be glad that it wasn't you," Mahito says lightly, continuing to the other end of the car and pressing a button to open the next set of doors.

"Miwa," Mai says hoarsely, curled in on herself where she'd crumpled by the doors. "Don't look."

Miwa ignores her, rushing to her side, and Mai, who knows her, who knows her weaknesses too well to think that Miwa will be able to recover if she knows what Mai has to do next, reaches for her gun with all the strength she has left and aims. She doesn't think about what it looks like or how terrified Miwa must be, her best friend gravely injured and pointing a gun at her head, but she can think of no other way to underscore the critical importance of keeping Miwa from seeing what she has to do. She'd never recover - Mai can't allow that.

"Miwa," she repeats, starting to feel dizzy with the pain, trying not to let out a cry as her elbow reshapes itself beneath her skin. He'd taken out her shooting arm – she hates that it had been that easy, that she has to tie a tourniquet above her elbow with her teeth. "Look away."

She drops the gun, pulls a knife from her boot – surgical-grade, Maki's idea. "Guns have too many moving parts," she'd said. "Knives are easier." Not Mai's first choice, but neither was this, and neither was a run-in with Mahito, and neither is clenching her teeth so that Miwa, who's always been too kind for this work, won't hear her scream.

"Don't," Mai says through gritted teeth, one last time.

It nearly kills her to do it, but Miwa looks away.

4:52 A.M.

"And those are the things you need to know to win when you're outnumbered, see?"

"Right." Mahito hasn't really been listening. "What does this have to do with our being here?"

"It's all about efficiency," Kenjaku continues, ignoring his question entirely. He's gotten used to doing that. "When you're outnumbered, you only have so many moves to make before you're completely surrounded by a cohort of enemies you haven't even managed to cull to a manageable number yet."

"You use such fancy words for no reason," Mahito complains. "Why do you always have to do that?"

Again, his question is soundly ignored. "You need to make the most of those few moves to eliminate as many adversaries as you can before they have time to formulate a plan. That's the advantage you have to sieze – being the first to know how to win. It's not hard if you give it thought."

"Mmhm. Sure."

"I'm serious, Mahito. Winning a fight against five times your number is hardly difficult if you know where to hit." He adopts Mahito's habit of examining his fingernails just so he won't have to look at him. "Anyone could figure that those Kyoto students always seem to oversell their strength, and that Itaodori will lose control if he thinks his loved ones are in danger, and Ieiri Shoko goes weak-kneed at the sight of her former lover. Those aren't difficult things to grasp, hm?"

"Her name's Shoko, is it?"

Kenjaku brushes Geto's irritating stray bang out of his face like he's swatting a fly. "Why does that matter?"

"Oh, nothing." Mahito smirks. "Anyways, do go on. I find your philosophizing so incredibly-"

"The things that I could do to you if you don't shut up are beyond imagining, Mahito," Kenjaku says coolly.

"Of course, of course. My apologies." He raises his hands in surrender. "Now. Back to the matter at hand-"

"Oh, I think you've gotten quite enough," Kenjaku says. "I can't give you all of the answers, after all. You'll have to figure out some of their weaknesses yourself."

5:39 P.M.

The train slows to a stop, smooth but jarring enough to send Miwa stumbling for a pole to grasp onto for balance as passengers stream towards the doors at Inumaki's direction, and it's only once they're gone and the doors slide shut that he takes notice of her presence. It doesn't seem to take long to register, though – the terror in her eyes, the ragged pace of her breathing, and her white-knuckled grip on the pole she's grasping tell him enough.

"You were the first one I found," she pants, wild-eyed. "Mai-"

" Okaka?"

It's easy enough to interpret that question. "Alive," she says shakily. "Barely-"

This calls for more delicacy than onigiri ingredients can translate and Inumaki pulls up text-to-speech, holding up a finger to indicate he needs a second as he types out which car?

"Fourth," Miwa says, then, "Shoko."

It's not hard to grasp what she's getting at with her shaky half-answers. " Shake."

"Does that mean-"

He nods, once, twice, and grabs her hand as they take off running.

5:42 A.M.

Maki's phone feels like lead in her hands, and she reads Mai's message for the fourth time as if it'll be different: Mahito here, without context or the punctuation Mai usually never fails to use.

"Yuuta," she says, trying not to cloud her vision with unnecessary panic, "stay back and guard Nobara."

"Don't you think I should-"

"Can't risk it." Maki looks over at him in the seat beside her and hopes he understands how serious she is. "Stay with Nobara until we know she's safe. We'll bring him to you."

5:45 A.M.

"Just leave me," Mai insists, voice weak. "I was fine."

" Okaka," Inumaki murmurs unhelpfully.

"No way," Miwa says shakily. "We're gonna get you to Shoko and you're gonna-"

"Nah." Mai's remaining arm, already half-limp around Miwa's shoulders, seems to grasp her shirt even more weakly than it had. "I'd have been fine."

As if Miwa isn't fighting to stop herself from retching at the warm, blooming patch of red staining Mai's cream sweater and grey jacket. As if she hadn't severed half a limb to save what remained of her life, as if she isn't in pain that would've made anyone else black out – that's Mai. She never wants to admit that she's lost, that she's too weak to stay in the fight.

Miwa doesn't say anything, half-carrying Mai as Inumaki supports her other side, because she's already lost enough, and she knows for a fact that Mai is aware that she's unwilling to lose another.

5:49 A.M.

Occasionally, with the right prompting, Kenjaku might be prevailed upon to think that Mahito is worth the hassle of keeping him around. He never gets their group anywhere by needlessly provoking his victims, sure, but he's shockingly effective when he manages to do his job – he must've known that other Kyoto girl would be down for the count if she saw Mai so gravely injured, and that can only mean he'd actually been listening earlier. A marvel, really. But on other occasions, he's…

Unbearable would be a kind word for it. Incompetent would perhaps be a more accurate one.

He'd had one job after he'd taken out Mai and Miwa and that cursed-speaker who only seems to be useful in an evacuation. "Neutralizing Okkotsu," he'd said over and over and over – "neutralizing Okkotsu needs to be your goal." Whatever that had meant. Truthfully, Kenjaku himself isn't entirely sure how to do that with an opponent who'd given his body's last user such a beating, and his only easy strategy won't work unless Zenin Maki is stupid enough to let herself be used to bait him. Unfortunately, he's decently sure he's not.

For all that Okkotsu Yuuta has a million fatal weaknesses, it's damned annoying to fight someone who can so easily overpower just about anyone with the hand that is his girlfriend tied behind their backs. It would be easy, if only they could threaten Maki, but the odds that she'd fall for that are ridiculously slim. It isn't as if Kenjaku hadn't said that – over and over and over, as he has to say just about everything with Mahito – but clearly he's not thinking about that, tied up as he is in a fight even Kenjaku knows is a diversion.

Of course, he'd known that Maki was smart, and that Fushiguro would be a challenge – the two of them combined, after all, have had Mahito held up in the car that separates Mai's from the one where Yuuta waits with Itadori and Kugisaki for a solid ten minutes now. They must be wearing down, but so will Mahito by the time he gets to Yuuta's car; it's really a distraction he shouldn't have fallen for. He knows that Maki doesn't stand a chance of doing any lasting damage without the cursed tools she couldn't bring aboard, and Fushiguro's shikigami can only keep Mahito occupied for so long if they need him alive. Maybe, if they wanted to kill him, that bird shikigami Kenjaku vaguely recalls would've been of use, but they can't.

That's why Mahito is down in that car while Kenjaku waits before a monitor, eyes darting between security camera feeds with the officer who'd manned them slumped at his feet. None of these students are going to kill him when Okkotsu's technique requires him to see the technique he wants to copy in use; he'll blaze through the cars like a tank and they won't do anything more than they must to defend themselves. Which, in Fushiguro's case, is a barrage of shikigami that are obviously – and why can't this useless lackey, Kenjaku thinks, see something so damned obvious? – meant only to distract him, to keep him on edge and occupied until Okkotsu sees a window of opportunity. Even the Zenin girl isn't really aiming to kill, making him dodge pointless attacks.

"Wearing him down," Kenjaku mutters to himself. He'd smile if this weren't all so irritating. "It won't work, but it's as good of an idea as any, I suppose."

But their tactics seem to shift, however gradually. It's two or three more minutes before their blows aren't glancing anymore, before Mahito has to fend off Fushiguro's Divine Dog in the two-foot gap between rows of seats, before Maki – perhaps out of spite, perhaps because she knows about her sister – takes to battering him around like a football every time a second's distraction lets her land a blow. She learns her terrain quickly, aiming her blows to send him sprawling into the seats when she can so he'll take longer to pick himself up, using seatbacks to gain high-ground leverage with catlike agility. Even so, it'll take ages to wear him out enough this way. He should've known they'd try this – he could've blown through this fight if he'd taken the two seconds of thought necessary to realize that they can't kill him. He could've made it to the first car and finished off, if not Okkotsu, Kugisaki and Itadori; surely that would've made him lose his resolve.

But, because Kenjaku has long known that a job well-done is a job done by one's lonesome, he's entirely unsurprised that Mahito has once again failed to account for the motivations and tactical maneuvers that make fighting young sorcerers so difficult.

"I ought to go down there and kill him myself," he remarks, but he won't. He likes it up here, safe for the moment with the coffee that his unfortunate predecessor in the camera room hadn't even gotten to sip when he was disposed of.

Besides, he won't get the reaction out of the students that Mahito will. They'll actually be trying to kill him when he joins Mahito, hard as that's going to be, and he needs Mahito to break Okkotsu's spirit before he'll even think about joining the fight.

That'll happen soon enough.

6:01 A.M.

Megumi glances at the clock above the door to the next car over. It's a minute after six; he is bleeding, the sensation familiar and alien at once, as it always is. It isn't welcome, but it's expected, and he'll live – Maki is still caught up with Mahito, and she'll make sure of that. She'll get Yuuta, and he'll see Mahito transfigure – what, neither is sure, but they'll get him to do something – and learn to use his technique. He'll touch Nobara, and her hands will be warm again, and Megumi will smile even in his daze, then probably slump into a seat, holding his stomach where life seeps from a four-inch gash from the blade Mahito had made of his own hand. He'll do that, but only once Nobara is safe.

He thinks of her face when he summons a shikigami he knows won't last long with his head spinning like it is. It doesn't need to, though, only to hold up long enough to keep Mahito away from a killing blow while Maki dodges and counterattacks. They're kind of a good team, he's found. Maybe it's a cousin thing, or maybe the fact that they both have a vested interest in keeping Nobara alive.

Alive, he thinks. His body feels heavy and his head light, which he's just aware enough to know is a bad combination, but they're almost in the clear now. He looks to Maki – she seems to be surprised by something, though he doesn't know what, because everything Mahito has tried has been utterly as expected so far – and then to Mahito, who's come to a standstill for no reason he can ascertain.

He looks down at his shirt – black, still not enough to hide a fast-blooming stain that soaks the fabric through.

It doesn't hurt. Not really. Not like the slash across his collarbone that Mahito manages to land while he's too dazed to hear Maki's shouts to duck.

6:04 A.M.

Maki won't admit it and probably never will, but she loves Kugisaki Nobara.

She's never thought of herself as good at loving people, and, frankly, half the time she doesn't want to. She loved Mai, maybe still does deep down; she cares for Yuuta more than anyone, but she's too frightened of the word to call that love; she cherishes her classmates, however secretly. But she loves Kugisaki Nobara.

Maybe she can admit it because Nobara loved her first, and so wholeheartedly that she couldn't exactly claim to feel nothing in return. Nobara has always been affectionate with those she cares for, however few there are, and she's quick to praise but only with Maki; "I'm lucky I know you," she'd said once, and that sort of thing always managed to wedge itself stubbornly into Maki's mind for weeks and months and years to come. She thinks that she loves her stubborn, snarky, endlessly-admiring underclassman, probably the best friend she has besides Yuuta, and she's going to burn this train to ash before she lets her waste away.

Yuuta arrives on her signal, and she smiles – he can do what has to be done now, if only he has someone to show him. There is only one good way to ensure that he does, though, and that's Maki's plan, the thing she's been driving at with every blow she lands. It requires Mahito to be tired; it requires her to stay unflinchingly resolved; it requires Yuuta to keep his cool, which is a gamble, but she believes he'll make the right call.

He bursts through the doors, tensed and ready for a fight, but he won't need one.

Maki stands still, reaches out a hand – come get me, she seems to be saying. If Mahito has any idea what he's doing, he won't take the bait. But he hasn't, this whole time. Not one action he's taken seems to be driven at anything but self-defense, and he's done nothing to make her believe he's playing the long game. So she can act with the confidence she finds in the knowledge that he'll fall right into her trap, play right into her outstretched hands.

He must think she's taunting him, because it's not her outstretched hand that he touches – it's her right cheek, just below her eyepatch. Not what she'd have wanted, but no matter. Yuuta can undo the damage once he fixes Nobara. For now, all that matters is that he see something transfigured – it's the one requirement of his technique and the one thing she can do to save Nobara now that they've reached the end of their rope.

So she closes her eyes against the pain and the shock on Yuuta's face when the shape of her face begins to distort.

6:41 A.M.

It's hard to say what the change feels like when, really, she just feels normal. But it's been so many months since Nobara knew what normal felt like that the thought of warmth in her hands and color in her cheeks and adrenaline, raring to go, is unbelievable. She flexes her fingers; they don't feel icy anymore. She's dimly aware of Yuji in the seat to her left side, asking questions, likely trying to gauge whether or not she's well enough for him to go after Mahito, but she only has one thought in mind.

She'll never forget that, after he'd come back to their car, Yuuta had been so inconsolable even after he'd reversed Maki's transfiguration that he'd barely been able to heal her. She'll never forget the two-second glimpse she'd gotten of Maki's distorted face or the panic in Yuuta's eyes at the thought that he might not be able to save her, or the realization that Maki had let this happen.

She's all right now, far less shaken than Yuuta is, but Nobara will never forget that her favorite person in this world had risked death to give Yuuta a sliver of a chance at saving her life, and she's never been more sure of anything than she is of the fact that Mahito is going to die for what he did to her, and to Megumi, who's bleeding everywhere, and to everyone else who's had to sit back and watch their friends close to death because of him.

"We're going after him," she says hoarsely, reaching for Itadori's hand. "Right?"

6:45 A.M.

"Hey, bitch," Nobara says, cracking her knuckles, breezing through the sliding glass doors a few steps ahead of Yuji like it's she who holds the high ground here. "You the one who broke Maki's face?"

Kugisaki Nobara is obviously not in the state Kenjaku insisted he'd left her in, and Mahito doesn't really look like he knows what to make of this development.

6:45 A.M.

"You're too late, y'know."

Shoko doesn't even flinch when she strolls into the second car, meeting Kenjaku before he has a chance to meet her. She can't risk it with students in the makeshift medbay – Miwa, so shaken she can barely speak; Inumaki, pacing restlessly; Mai, no longer bleeding but down half an arm and dazed now that she has time to be. If it's her Kenjaku wants, she'll keep him distracted.

"Oh? I seem to be right on time." Kenjaku lifts an eyebrow. "You've got blood on your jacket."

"Yeah. One of the twins hacked off half of her arm to keep Mahito from transfiguring the rest of her body." Shoko tries to appear blank-faced even though that was near the top of the lengthy list of horrifying things she'd seen lately. "But she's fine now."

"Ah, of course. The Zenin girl. I had a feeling you'd be able to treat her without issue." He shrugs. "It's not as if she's threat enough to make me care whether she lives or dies."

"I see you're as unbearable as ever."

He looks Shoko up and down. "And you look radiant in bloodstains."

"Pervert."

"Must you always play so hard to get?"

"Only as long as you play so hard to want," she says sweetly. Her heartbeat begins to pick up speed, unwantedly – great. The last thing she needs now is to get nervous. "Now, are you going to tell me what you're doing here or not?"

Kenjaku tilts his head exactly like Suguru used to – he'd picked up the gesture from Gojo years ago. "Haven't you already figured it out? I'm making a preemptive strike."

6:46 A.M.

Mahito is tired. Nobara smiles to herself at that observation, because it means Maki had done her job, and he's not going to stand up long against Yuji and Nobara's combined efforts at full strength.

Full strength – oh, it is good to be able to say that again. Nobara cracks her knuckles again, even though there's no joints left to pop after the first time, and looks to Yuji, who always knows.

She'd been half-sure this wouldn't work, that she'd die before she had a chance to join the fight, so she's not armed. Even her usual pouch of nails is gone, left home so as not to trip the metal detector at the train station; all she has are the clothes on her back – leggings, Yuji's yellow hoodie – and her own two fists and Itadori Yuji, who's never needed ammunition to land a hit. She can only hope that'll be enough.

6:47 A.M.

"A preemptive strike, huh. Then tell me why you let Okkotsu heal Kugisaki."

"Because I entrusted the task of killing Okkotsu to a lackey who obviously proved himself to be unqualified." He shrugged. "We all have our moments of weakness."

"We do," Shoko agrees. Something in her face changes – he can't tell that it's practiced. She's been working at this, trying to find a way to make her words seem sincere when they make her want to spit, looking for segues. Stupid segues, always so damn hard to find when she needs them. If this doesn't look natural, she's got no hope. "I confess I've been thinking about you lately."

Kenjaku smiles indulgently. "About how to kill me?"

"No, about how much of an idiot I am for feeling hung-up on my old boyfriend whenever I see you."

Hardly.

"Oh, really," he says, lifting an eyebrow. "How interesting that is."

"Isn't it?" Shoko fakes a smile. "I bet you could do something about it."

She shoves her hands in her pockets, feigning shyness – as if she has any cause left to be shy. Really, it's her scalpel she wants to find in there, not her confidence.

"That so."

"Might as well kiss me," she says casually. "For old times' sake."

"You're lying."

"No, surprisingly."

"Really. Hm."

"I really do want to kiss you," Shoko presses.

"Well-"

She drags his face down to the level of hers, feints like she's going to go in for a kiss so, when the time is right, she can move her hand to the stitches on his forehead and dig her scalpel in while he's too distracted by the thought of her lips to move away.

She smiles, an inch from his lips, and feels his too-cool breath ghost her face. "Did you know that I've got a permit to handle thirty-six molar hydrochloric acid?"

"Ah, so you were lying."

"Maybe."

6:48 A.M.

Megumi forces his eyes open, bleary as they are, to watch through the door as Yuji and Nobara throw their combined weight against Mahito at once to knock him through the opening doors to his car and a waiting Okkotsu.

Oh, he thinks. Good.

Distantly, he realizes that she looks beautiful today – she's finally got fire in her eyes, color in her cheeks. It's hard not to stare, for all that he still can. He smiles as he lets his eyes flutter closed again, hand pressed to his wound, wondering if it'll come away bloodied again. The world feels so distant, now – he doubts he can stand. But they can.

They'll be done soon, get him to Shoko for better treatment than a shirt hastily wrapped around his bleeding abdomen like a bandage. He'll stay here, hoping he's still conscious when that happens, hoping they'll all still be alive, but what becomes of him now, he thinks, doesn't really matter. He's had a good enough run and he's seen Nobara well again, and maybe that's enough.

Maybe, if he blacks out as Nobara charges into the car after Mahito because she just can't bear to let anyone else land the killing blow, he'll be satisfied with that end.

6:49 A.M.

Shoko reaches into her back pocket for her phone before Kenjaku has a chance to move away. It only takes a few swipes, but he notices.

"So it is," he mutters.

Utahime knows what her signal means – they've set it up just in case she can't call and needs backup. It's not a tactic Shoko would use lightly, but she knows that, if they must be, she and Gojo will be here in seconds.

Shoko shouldn't feel so relieved at having endangered them, but she can't keep from smiling. "So it is."

5:01 A.M.

"There's only one real reason that we're bringing the fight to our adversaries this time, though," Kenjaku says, long after Mahito has stopped listening. "Guess."

"You still want that Rika curse?"

"No, why would I…" he trails off. "Never mind. We're here because this particular group of people happens to act collectively as a fatality point and we'll never get them in such an advantageous position again. Do you know why that matters?"

"This is going to be about-"

"If we're ever going to win, we're going to have to break Gojo Satoru," Kenjaku interrupts him. "And this is how we do it."

"His students?"

Kenjaku shakes his head. "Because Gojo Satoru's fatality point is a fallen ally he should've been strong enough to save."

Chapter 28: Half-Life Summary:

The group faces the end of their journey.

Notes:

Yk I don't love this chapter but that half-life idea was so much more plausible than I ever thought it would be? So high five on that point I guess? You'll see dhsoighsg anyways. Fight scenes are not my thing, but I've tried.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

"At least curse me a little at the very end."

- Geto Suguru

There's no reason for this to work any better than it did last time. They face the same adversary; their students are still in danger; Gojo doesn't have the limitless strength he had in Shibuya, when he'd only needed to raise a hand to dispatch any threat he faced. Their only advantage is that, maybe, the sight of Geto's face won't stop Gojo in his tracks again, though Utahime can't help but worry if it still might.

But Shoko knows that. She wouldn't have called them if she weren't in distress, and they stumble out of the air an inch above the moving floor of the train car, clutching each other for stability, knowing that they're here to do what they must.

Utahime is the first to turn her face towards Kenjaku's, and he smiles as if he has exactly what he wants.

"You know, I really thought that fighting a Special Grade was going to be harder than this."

Mahito stops, and for a moment, everyone in the car stills – Nobara and Yuji, fists raised; Yuta, hand on the hilt of the katana at his belt; Maki, a ways off, Playful Cloud at the ready; Miwa, who no one even noticed when she burst through the doors and nearly collapsed, panting, into one of the seats flanking the aisle. He smirks, as if that's what he'd meant to do. "I had," he says, looking to Yuta, "expected a challenge. Looks like your promotion was a little premature."

"He's trying not to blow up the train and kill us all," Maki snaps. "Dumbass."

"Right," Yuta says, swallowing hard. Maki almost rolls her eyes – all the power in the world and somehow he still has the confidence of a flip-flop in a verbal confrontation. "That…that's why. 'Cause you'd be dead." His grip on his hilt tightens. "If…if we weren't in a closed space and…stuff."

"How cute," Mahito says, smirking, then cracks his knuckles. "I'm not quite sure I believe you, but how about you try me on the platform at the next stop?"

"What a pleasant surprise," Kenjaku says coolly, pacing the patch of aisle he's claimed as his. "I never thought you'd be stupid enough to try to face me again, but I'm quite happy to find that you are."

"What, you mean him?" Utahime jerks a thumb in Gojo's direction. "Guy who could shank you in two seconds if he felt like it?"

His hands are shaking – Utahime knows that perfectly well, holding his arm. But he's not frozen and he's only speechless because there's nothing to say; evidently he's been steeling himself for a rematch since his first meeting with Kenjaku had ended so disastrously. She gives his arm a squeeze – doing good so far – and then turns back to Kenjaku.

"Guy who won't shank me in two seconds because he's put off the grieving process for twelve years and he can't stand to kill me twice, you mean?" Now Kenjaku's attention pivots to Utahime, where it had been on Gojo before. "You oversell his fortitude by a factor of several million."

"Hardly," she spits.

"And he can't risk damaging the train with all of your students inside," he adds, "nor will he be able to keep up with me without his full strength, which I happen to know he doesn't have, so the only one who stands to gain by your being here is myself."

"I could still stab you," Shoko offers.

"No, no, I have no interest in harming you," he says, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. "But Gojo… well. I wouldn't have let that distress call go through had I not seen an advantage in it."

"You do know I'm standing right here, don't you?"

"Ah, I do." Kenjaku turns back to Gojo, smiling knowingly. "But, honestly, what is it that you think you're going to do to me at a quarter of your strength in an enclosed space full of people you'd rather not lose?"

Gojo smirks.

I'm not going to be useless today.

Miwa repeats the words in her brain, soundless, until they lose all meaning, and when the group stumbles out of the car at its next stop, she's with them, trying to focus on the sound of her boots hitting the cold concrete and not the growing commute crowd milling about and the fact that she's punching so far above her weight that it isn't even funny. But she has to – she'd done nothing at the exchange event, nothing in Shibuya, and she can't recall a mission she's been sent on in the past year on which she's done anything to contribute more than moral support. She loves Utahime-sensei, but no matter what she says about hard work and potential, she knows that she's either lying or oblivious, because she really is a lousy excuse for a sorcerer.

But not today.

She doesn't get to be a lousy excuse for a sorcerer today, because if her colleagues can all risk their lives to land even a single hit, she can try to do something worth looking back on with pride. She hadn't been able to do anything but sit around and receive a too-late confession when she learned that Mechamaru had died – like hell is she going to sit around now. Mai had chosen to cut off her own arm rather than give up the fight – what excuse does Miwa have? If she needs a push, all she has to remember is the sickening sound of a surgical-grade knife slicing through bone. She'll find some opening, something even a third-grade sorcerer like herself can do to make things just a little bit right.

And she sees her opening: tearing through the door the second it opens, Okkotsu stumbles.

Miwa's been in enough fights to know by now that a mistake as small as that could be the end of him – anything could be at a time like this. It might mean not seeing an attack quickly enough to dodge it; it could mean lost seconds or a twisted ankle or any number of things he can't afford right now. And Mahito knows that, too, lunging in Okkotsu's direction before he even has a chance to turn.

If there's one thing Miwa Kasumi can do, it's unsheathe a sword in half a second, and it only takes a few steps to be close enough to slash her blade in a perfect arc down to the joint where Mahito's shoulder meets the arm he's reaching towards her ally.

He turns, shocked, the tailored flesh of his right arm disintegrating as it falls, and Miwa is invisible no longer. But her heart skips; she can see Okktosu get to his feet in Mahito's blind spot, and even if all that hit did was distract him, that was more than enough.

An arm for an arm, she thinks, and even though Mahito's quickly regrows, she can't help but smile when Yuuta's reinforced fist knocks him back into the wall hard enough to leave a dent.

He stops.

Yuta's confidence doesn't match his skill, but he has enough of it to know that he could kill Mahito with only a few more seconds of effort if he wanted to. There's no reason not to – Inumaki's gotten the place cleared out, and he's not entirely sure how these things go, but he guesses someone in the government will know what to say about the suspicious security camera footage of teenagers fighting an adversary who won't show up on camera. And even though he feels a little ragged, a little too tired to move with precision, he doesn't have to when he knows that raw power is enough. But he doesn't take aim for another countermeasure.

Mahito barely manages to peel himself up from the concrete, and in this state, he'd be easy to kill with even the last of Yuta's remaining strength, but he doesn't. He isn't the one who's nearly met his end at this adversary's hands, or one of the many who's watched him defeat their closest allies. Okkotsu Yuta isn't Mahito's real adversary – he just happens to be the only person who's been able to get anywhere near a victory against him.

That doesn't mean he has to be the one to land the final blow, though.

He drops his katana, and the moment they hear it clatter to the floor, Nobara and Yuuji know what to do.

Yuji's gotten lucky this time, and he knows it. The last time he'd faced Mahito survival had been a slim possibility, and this time it's his opponent who's barely managing to hang on – Yuta had made sure of that. But he's not patting himself on the back for having chosen his allies well now, nor thinking about luck.

He thinks about Nobara, first and foremost, even though she's charging beside him, unconcerned that she's unarmed with the tools of her technique. It's hard to picture this Nobara, ready to throw herself through a wall if she has to, lying in a pool of blood against the unforgiving concrete at Shibuya, half of her face unrecognizably marred, but he can't forget that image, either.

He thinks of Nanami, and how much he wishes he could tell him but never will.

But mostly, he thinks of Junpei, collapsing at his feet, begging for mercy Yuji couldn't give him and Mahito wouldn't.

He looks at Nobara for the cue, but it's only Junpei's face he sees when he raises his fist to strike.

Nobara would normally be angry at this turn of events – she can't actually call this guaranteed victory hers when it's Okkotsu who did all of the heavy lifting. But that's the last thing she's thinking about when she looks to Yuji for her cue, and when their twin fists flash with enough energy to throw him into the opposite wall.

They've timed it just so – Mahito thrown to the wall containing the tracks on the outside, the 7:10 train to Shinjuku arriving just after he's tried to get his footing but only succeeded in dizzily staggering to the edge of the platform and collapsing onto the tracks.

"Soubu Line now arriving," reads the automated voice over the loudspeakers. "Soubou Line now arriving. Soubou-"

"Yeah, yeah," Nobara mutters, stepping to the edge of the platform just in time to see the nose of the train push past Mahito's lifeless body. "Soubu Line, whatever. He dead yet or what?"

The strong hit when it matters. The weak wait for leverage.

Gakuganji always used to say that, and Utahime can't help but think of his words, watching the way Kenjaku leads Gojo like a fish on a hook. It's so obvious now that he'd wanted that distress call to go through – he'd known it was the easiest way to take him out, all of the people he most wanted to protect in a contained space where they'd be easy to pick off. He'd looked for leverage because he'd known that, even after the Prison Realm had weakened him, he wouldn't beat Gojo with the strength of his counterattacks alone.

Weak, she thinks, smirking, because perhaps her technique doesn't hold a candle to his in terms of brute force, but it's just about the most useful one she could have at a moment like this, when Gojo's going to run himself down faster than they can figure out a way to win at the rate he's going.

It's a two-way street, trance singing is: its trances are hard to break, but impact will do it, and all she'll be able to do if she can hold him is give Gojo enough time to land a few good hits. Still, it'd be of immeasurable help, and she doesn't need subterfuge.

She can feel the pull of Kenjaku's cursed energy resisting hers as she raises her voice, every pitch painstaking, like casting a net. But his eyes snap up, and he looks so surprised that it's hard to imagine his being able to hold out for very long – the element of surprise has always been a loyal ally. She doesn't even need to try to engage him in combat when her clear soprano carries across the car, bouncing off its metal ceiling to reach Kenjaku ( great acoustics, she notes even now), and though he resists, his guard was down. It's exactly the kind of opening Utahime likes best.

She can see the glassiness in Kenjaku's eyes and the pride in Shoko's as he starts to slip under her trance, and Gojo doesn't need to be told not to waste this shot.

They're back, somber but uninjured, and Megumi thinks the least he can do is stagger to his feet to greet them. But his head spins, and he barely registers the feeling of falling before he slumps against something warm and solid and his head is full of voices whose words he can't make out and a tiny hand wraps around his, squeezing insistently. None of it registers, even though the calluses on that hand are familiar and he swears he's felt them before; he barely remembers where he is right now, faint as he feels.

But it dawns on him, even as he loses his lucidity, that the little hand grasping his is warm again, and, though he doesn't quite know why, he smiles.

"There's something I doubt anyone ever bothered to tell you about the Prison Realm." Kenjaku plucks Utahime's cursed dagger from his thigh, seemingly unconcerned at its proximity to his femoral artery, and drops it carelessly to the floor, walking towards Gojo without much more than a slight limp. "Care to know?"

Gojo looks like he's about to strike again – at least to Utahime he does – but Kenjaku raises a hand to still him. "I wouldn't," he cautions. "I know you're not at full strength. That's one of the most weighty benefits of the Prison Realm – time passes outside, but not inside. And cursed energy held in stasis, or that can't be used" – he folds his arms across his middle – "it has a half-life. No one without a thorough knowledge of the Prison Realm would know that-"

"You and your damn philosophizing," Utahime mutters, bending to pick up her dagger and shoving it into the sheath at her belt. "Are you going to get a move on or not?"

"Oh, feisty, are we?" he lifts an eyebrow. "Looking for a fight?"

"No," Shoko says, waving a hand in dismissal. "Go on."

Utahime's brows rise in surprise, but she goes along with it. Surely Shoko has a good reason.

"Anyways. The decay of cursed energy is, to some extent, permanent."

"But he's recovered-"

"Partially, yes. But there's an issue with that." Kenjaku smirks, tapping his index finger against his arm. "Cursed energy's half-life is so short that normally a sorcerer trapped in the Prison Realm for three months wouldn't have any left, but Gojo here had so much that he still had some of his by the time he escaped. How did you escape, by the way?"

"No comment," he replies, surprisingly glib. Utahime's proud of that – he isn't losing his cool this time. "Now keep stalling. 's great for me."

"Mm. Well, I'll get it out of someone," he sighs. "Anyways. Cursed energy that's diminished by half-lives can only rebound by half-lives, so you were likely close to your full strength when you came here, but…"

"Six Eyes," Utahime mutters under her breath.

"Yes, exactly. Without them, you can't conserve cursed energy like you did, so you run your cursed energy stocks down when you come at me like you have been. And I'm sure you can follow."

No one says anything; Kenjaku continues.

"You were able to recover that cursed energy because you managed to hold onto some of what you originally had," he explains. "But if you were ever to exhaust your cursed energy supply completely, there would be nothing to grow back. Think about a car – its battery charges as it drives, but if the battery dies, there's nothing to drive on, and it can't be recharged. Are you understanding me, Satoru?"

"Don't call me that."

"You're saying that if he runs out, he'll never get it back?" Utahime asks, if only because someone has to.

"I can tell that at the rate you're using up cursed energy, even your most conservative strategy is going to run down what remains of your supply in a couple of minutes," Kenjaku goes on. "Your students will likely all be killed without your protection, any number of special-grades might proliferate without you to keep them in check, and a dozen more Shibuya Incidents might have to play out before I get what I want. All costly, all preventable." He smiles as if everything he means to say is finally clicking into place. "If you leave now – protect your students from Mahito or elope with your woman or whatever it is you want to do instead – you'll recover. You'll always have to be careful, but you'll still likely be the strongest sorcerer. But…"

He cracks his knuckles, leaves a silent pause for effect – he can't wipe the smile off his face.

"If you do the heroic thing," he says, "if you try to stay and fight, you'll be rendered powerless, your new generation of allies or whatever it is you call them will be wiped out before a single one of them reaches adulthood, and the rest of your allies will be dead or under my thumb within days, all because you weren't strong enough." Kenjaku glances off into the middle distance as if in a daydream. "But you…you'd live. I'd have to let you live with the consequences of your failure, wouldn't I?"

Utahime looks to Gojo, expecting some trace of apprehension on his face, but there isn't any – that comes as a shock.

"Or I could just kill you," he says, smiling, cocky as ever or faking it well.

"You couldn't. At this level of your strength you'd run out of cursed energy long before you even came close."

He smiles once more, but it's neither false nor cocky this time – he looks, rather, like he's found an odd sort of peace in knowing what he has to do. "Then I'll just have to kill you before that happens."

Kenjaku, in his way, is absolutely right.

He's right when he says that Gojo won't last long when he's throwing all of his remaining strength at his opponent; he's right when he says that there's no way that he'll be able to kill him before the last remnants of his fast-fading cursed energy are gone. But on other counts he's so wrong that it's almost blinding.

Gojo isn't the only one here who knows how to kill a man, and Utahime knows he was thinking of that when he threw himself back into the fight. For all his habitual idiocy, he's a tactician, and he wouldn't have made such a foolish sacrifice without a reason to believe it wouldn't pay off. It's a reason almost a year in the making, but she knows without asking what it is.

If they're being honest with themselves, Gojo Satoru hasn't been the strongest anything since his students freed him from the Prison Realm months ago, and it's only been the strength of those in his care holding him up. They've always been weak to him – Yuji, whose life he'd spared; Megumi, who he's watched over; Yuuta, who he'd offered sanctuary; Shoko, who's always been near; Utahime, whom he loves – but it's their strength that he's had to lean into. And what strength he has recovered is theirs. It is to be an instrument of their protection, nothing more. Perhaps a year ago the thought of doing what Gojo means to do now would've been unthinkable, but that was before he'd been weak, before he'd known what it was not to waltz into battle guaranteed the victory.

He's not about to abandon the people who've kept him together to the same fate. And perhaps Kenjaku thinks that is what he's doing when a failed teleportation sends him stumbling into a back wall and, somehow, Utahime knows it's over. But it's not, because for all that Gojo's strength belongs to her now, so too does hers belong to him.

He'd never meant to retreat and recover or to lose – he'd meant to do what he could to leave Kenjaku battered, and for Utahime to know that the fight was hers to finish. He'd meant for Shoko to know to take his brain and dispose of it before it found another body to inhabit. He'd meant for his allies to do what he could not.

He'd smiled when he made his ultimatum, she realizes, because he had known she possessed a strength he'd never hope to match. He'd known that he couldn't do what he had to without Utahime, her strongest when he had been his weakest, and he is beaten and bloodied when Gojo stumbles into a concrete pillar in the cavernous emptiness of the platform and she sings a trance over her adversary in his place.

Each drive of the dagger gets a name, a purpose: for Muta, for lost innocence, for Nanami, for months of hellish uncertainty, for Satoru. But she saves her last – the carotid artery, the killing blow –for the woman who'd taught her to aim there, who'd given them this victory without ever intending to, who's never been seen for the wonder that she is, whose heroics have always gone unsung, and whom Kenjaku looks at with just a little too much interest each time his eyes pass hers.

"For Shoko," she whispers, and lets out a cry that echoes through the empty concrete labyrinth of the station as Kenjaku staggers backwards and collapses.

The world is blurry through these eyes, even though they're the only ones he's ever had. But he can make out shapes, and an unmistakable silhouette.

"Sho…ko?"

She looks down at him, reaching for her from the ground, and moves away. He cannot see the disgust on her face when she does. "Don't even," she scoffs.

Yes – that's her voice.

"Shoko," he says again, trying to rub at his eyes even though his head is spinning from the loss of too much blood to let him see or think straight. He wishes he could see, now – wonders if she's in a lab coat. Wonders if it's bloodstained. He's missed her, and can't remember why.

Even so, Geto Suguru thinks of her silhouette as the world fades and smiles.

They're a somber group, gathered around a vat in the morgue because nowhere else had there been a suitable place for such a delicate operation. It makes for an odd tableau.

"Want me to hum the funeral march?" Gojo says drily, leaning heavily against the wall, watching from a safe distance as Shoko lowers Kenjaku's brain into the vat.

"No," she says, more exhausted than she is anything else. "We've already mourned him too many times."

He looks into the vat, eyes dull. "I wasn't talking about the brain."

Notes:

Much more to come! In ch. 29: the aftermath of Gojo's loss of his cursed energy, what the heck is going on with Megumi's injuries, Yuuta's requisite "MAKI WHY" freakout, Maki + Mai moments, and lots of politicking. Buckle up. :)

Chapter 29: Denouement, Pt. 1 Summary:

Nobara, Yuji, and Megumi reunite; Shoko finally asks for help; Yuta questions Maki's pivotal decision; Gojo feels adrift.

Notes:

This chapter was going to be way too long and packed if I didn't break it into two, so there's now going to be two more chapters instead of one - one resolving the other plot points after the Mahito fight, and the other an epilogue.

Also, get ready for Corny Sappy Romance. (Sorry. This is what happens when I write too many fights in a row.)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

"You had us worried back there, y'know."

Megumi is too groggy when he wakes to assign an owner to the voice that speaks to him, but something about it has him certain that it belongs to a friend. He rubs at his eyes, tries to get them to stay open, wonders why the voice sounds like it's speaking underwater when the speaker is right beside him, and when he's lucid again, he feels a hand around each of his.

"You lost a lot of blood," adds a second voice, equally familiar, and his head swims but not enough that it doesn't click into place that the voices and the hands holding his belong to Nobara and Yuji. Some instinct he can't name pulls at the corners of his mouth; the warm, broad hand holding his right gives a squeeze (it must be Yuji's), and a thumb strokes his left (Nobara's, he assumes). "Scared us pretty bad."

"Stupid sea urchin," Nobara agrees. His eyes finally focus; she's laying her head on the mattress beside him, and he raises his hand to stroke her hair without even knowing why he feels like he should. "Don't do that."

"'m fine." His voice comes out shaky, but he knows they both hear. "'m okay now."

A funny thing this is, Fushiguro Megumi reassuring his friends. Goes to show how different life looks once it's so nearly been lost.

"Yeah," Nobara says softly. "But still."

"But still," Yuji echoes.

A silence, then; Megumi watches with all the interest he can manage in his current state as Nobara stands from her chair and flops down on the bed beside him, stretching out, laying her head against his just-healed shoulder. Yuji joins her, though he, unlike Nobara, is heavy enough to jostle the mattress on the other side. He curls up around Megumi's right side, a warm, protective shell, and Nobara latches onto his left like a nervous koala, and there, again, is that strange twitch at the corners of his mouth – it almost distresses him, but not quite. Never quite.

"But it's over now," Yuji says, even though it never is. "And we're okay."

"We're okay," Nobara agrees.

And that does it, somehow: his left arm wraps around Nobara, pulling her in until she nuzzles her cheek against his chest; his right grabs Yuji's hand and pulls it to the center of his chest, where he wraps it up in his own.

He doesn't know what makes him do it, but he's glad that he has the instinct that tells him that he should.

"You can't just do things like that."

Maki flinches – she's been dreading this conversation since they returned from Chiba. "Had to," she says flatly. "Sorry I freaked you out."

" Maki." Yuta crosses his arms, even though he's behind her and she can't see. "That…we didn't even talk about that. About you doing that. No one ever signed off on you doing that and you knew you might die, right? So why did you do that?"

Maki shrugs. "I love Nobara," she says simply. "Couldn't just sit back and let her die."

"And I get that, Maki, I do" – Yuta's voice begins to break – "but…but you were doing enough just distracting him. I…I didn't need or want you to-"

"You had to see him transfigure somebody to be able to copy the technique, right?" Maki asks. "You didn't plan for that, but it still had to happen. And it was easiest if someone did it by choice."

"Your face," Yuta murmurs, his voice dropping a few decibels. "It…it looked like it was being pulled apart and…and I don't even want to think about-"

"I know," Maki interrupts, "and I am sorry you had to see that, but Yuta, if I'm the only person who can do something, I can't just…spare your feelings."

"But you weren't the only person!"

"Megumi was half-dead," she fires back, "and you had to be alive so you could heal Nobara, so yeah, actually, I was."

"You really don't get it, do you."

Yuta's tone now is chilly – she's never heard it like that before and can't help but wince. "What don't I get?"

"What it's like to watch the person you love most in the whole world let someone kill her."

Maki turns, eyes blown wide. She doesn't even think to refute his claim.

"I…I saw him touch you and I thought you were going to die and you were in so much pain and I…I couldn't," he trails off. "I just…I couldn't."

"But you did," she says, her voice low. He loves me, she thinks, head spinning and not with arguments – he loves me. "You fixed it. I wouldn't have let him transfigure me if I didn't know you could."

"But what if I hadn't?" Yuta presses. "What if I hadn't been there, or I'd frozen up? You just would've died and…and for what?"

"For Nobara," she says flatly. "She's as good a cause as any."

"But-"

"I'm sorry it was hard for you." Maki turns again. "I don't regret what I did."

"I get that." Yuta seems to deflate like a day-old mylar balloon at the realization that he can't argue his way out of this one. "But we didn't plan for that."

"Because you didn't want anyone to get hurt, so you just kept dodging the question." She crosses her arms. "That wasn't on me. And besides, it was probably always going to have to come down to someone letting Mahito touch them. I just happened to be the one who went for it."

"Fine," Yuta says weakly. "I get that. I just…I just wish it hadn't been you."

"And I know that." Maki's expression softens; she turns back to him. "And I…I appreciate that. You caring enough to be bothered, I mean. But you know you can't keep letting your personal feelings cloud your judgement like this, right?"

"In theory," Yuta sighs. "But with you…I don't know, it's hard to do that, Maki."

"Wouldn't it be hard to do that with, I don't know, Inumaki?" she challenges. "Would he be getting this talk if he'd done what I did?"

"Maybe." He shrugs weakly. "I don't know. What I do know is that I can't lose you."

"You didn't."

"But I thought I was going to."

"But you didn't. And even if you had, you're important, Yuta. You can't afford to slow down because someone you were fighting with didn't make it."

"I get that, but it seems so cruel," he says. "Having to pretend nothing happened when somebody you love might die…it's cold. And for me it's probably impossible." Again, Yuta lifts his shoulders helplessly. "I mean, when Geto almost killed you guys last year, I went nuts on him. No way I was going to be able to keep a clear head."

"So it's going to be hard for you. That's just how sorcery is." Maki knows she's being cold, but she's more frightened than she wants to admit by the thought of Yuta losing his composure at the wrong time on her behalf. It'll happen eventually, at this rate; it's not a possibility she likes to think about. "You need to work on that. Not letting yourself get carried away when things happen to me."

"Or maybe you're wrong."

Maki freezes at that. Not once has she ever heard Yuta hold his ground like that, nor openly oppose her; she's almost morbidly curious to hear what he has to say next.

"I already told you I love you," he says again, and again she makes no reply. "I don't think that's a weakness, or a problem that I have to fix. It's just how I am." He laughs shortly. "No changing it. If we're fighting together, I'm always going to think of you before anyone else. I don't want to be okay with you getting hurt, and if you think I need to, then maybe we have different priorities, but…I'm not going to buy that. I can't."

"You…" it hits Maki like a wall of icy water, all at once and a minute late. " Love me."

"Sure." He smiles sheepishly. "Sounds kinda premature, I know. But I do."

Maki chokes on her next words and hopes he won't notice the color in her cheeks that accompanies her hacking cough. Great. What a reaction. "That so."

"Maybe I don't," he concedes. "Maybe I don't actually know what love is, and being grateful to someone for changing the way you saw the world or admiring how they're everything you're not or thinking they're the most beautiful girl ever or wanting to be with them all the time isn't really it. But if it is…" he shrugs. "That's how I feel about you." Now he finally looks up, meeting her eyes even though he's blushing furiously. "And I can't replace you. There's not gonna be another Maki. So when things happen to you…"

Maki swallows, wondering when that lump in her throat showed up. "I…don't get it," she mumbles, fisting her fingers in the excess fabric of her sweatshirt.

"Don't get what?"

" Why?" she asks, eyes growing wild with what could be panic or just confusion. "Why…why do I mean so much to you that you say you'd never be able to replace me?"

"Dunno," he says. "You're just a really special person to me."

"But you have plenty of those," she deflects, half-frantic. "Inumaki. Your sister-"

"Yeah, but not like you." He smiles up at her. "Guess all I can really say to explain it is that I'm Okkotsu Yuta, and that means I love Zenin Maki."

It's a line so corny she'd normally feel nauseous, but now she just wants to cry. "You shouldn't."

"Why?"

She just looks at him, too incredulous to formulate a sensible reply. Because she's cold and closed-off and loath to show affection; because Okkotsu Yuta knows how to lavish his loved ones with affection, however excessive, and she does not; because she takes risks he'd rather she didn't; because no one else ever has. It's a laundry list a mile long, and how he's managed to miss that is unfathomable to Maki; she simply shakes her head.

"I'm not really a lovable kind of person," she deflects.

Yuta's eyes harden. "That's not your call to make."

"Sure it is. No one knows me better than me."

"But you don't," he protests. "Half of the things you think about yourself are lies that your family told you. That's not…that's not accurate." He taps his fingers against his forearm. "It's not objective. And it's sure as hell not true."

Yuta never curses, even mildly, so his choice of words surprises her. "There had to be some truth in it."

"I doubt I can trust the word of anyone who looks at you and doesn't see…you know. The kind of girl you only meet once your whole life." He gestures at nothing. "The strongest person they've ever met. Someone who's trying her best even though no one ever gave her much to work with and…and who's so loyal and protective and…and beautiful. You are. You don't know how much." He starts to smile, evidently against his will because he tries to press his lips back into a line – no dice. "You don't know that I couldn't stop thinking about it for weeks after you kissed me. Or how happy I was when I woke up and you were laying on me like a gravity blanket. I could go on. Do you want me to go on?" He takes both of her hands in his. "I will."

"I don't know how we got from arguing over whether or not I should've let Mahito touch me to help you save Nobara to this." Maki doesn't drop his hands, but she won't look up, either. "I'm…I'm kind of overwhelmed, honestly."

"Oh." Yuta's face falls. "Sorry."

"It's…not that I don't have feelings for you. Love's kind of a strong word, but…I do like you. But…"

"But?"

"I dunno. People start throwing the word 'love' around and I get nervous."

"I…I understand. I'm-"

"Especially when I don't deserve it."

"That's not-"

"I've…kind of just been pretending I didn't see it," she admits, swallowing hard. "Since the 'body in motion' emails. But…I know you're, um. Serious about me, and…and it freaks me out."

"Too much too soon?" he guesses.

"Yeah. Maybe that. But…not because it was you."

"Oh?"

"I just don't really know how to respond to stuff like that. I guess. I needed time to think and we didn't have any."

"That's fine," he says gently, giving her hands a squeeze. "I don't expect anything. Honestly. I didn't say that because I thought you'd say it back."

"Was it just a heat of the moment thing because you were upset?"

"No, no, everything I said was true. Promise." He doesn't know if touch is welcome, so he raises his hand to the level of her chin and places a finger beneath it to draw her face up when she nods her assent. "All of it. I just didn't expect you to feel the same way."

"I think I will someday," she says. "If that helps at all."

He smiles.

Ieiri Shoko can't remember the last time she asked for help. Maybe she'd gotten Nitta to help with autopsies a few times when he'd been in Tokyo to shadow her, but that doesn't count; nor does asking Megumi to take out her trash (not the biohazardous kind) or forcing Gojo to restock her liquor cabinet on the Gojo Clan's account because he'd been especially annoying that week. When it hurts, and when she truly needs to cry in someone's arms, Shoko never puts her pain into words.

Not until she thinks a little too long and hard about Kenjaku, bloodied and near-death, calling out her name in a cadence so utterly identical to Geto's that she'd almost been able to believe, for a moment, that his greeting hadn't just been Kenjaku's last attempt to trick her. Not until she's seen students lose limbs, lose so much blood they'd needed transfusions, fight for their lives in yet another battle that they shouldn't be leading. Not until she wakes from a nightmare in which Utahime lays lifeless on a persian rug in a bloodstained hakama, seeping from a slash at her throat. Not until the images that greet her in her mind's eye when she wakes are those of a brain disappearing into a vat of acid and of Gojo, hollow-eyed and stooped, lightless after the last of his power had gone.

It's late, but she knocks at Utahime's door, and – bless her – she knows without asking, and even without waking Gojo in the bed beside her, what Shoko needs.

It's wordless comfort she provides, which suits Shoko just fine. She's not in the mood to talk or to get things off her chest – all she wants is to be held, and to cry, and not to lie to herself and say she's not bothered by the things she's seen. Utahime, instead, wraps Shoko in her arms, tucks her chin into the crook of her neck, rubs her back like a mother would. And the tension in Shoko's shoulders starts to seep out beneath Utahime's steady hands as the knowledge that she is safe coaxes out the tears she refuses to cry.

"You did so good," Utahime murmurs, stroking her back, and it is the only thing she says.

"What does it feel like?"

"Losing a sense, I guess." Gojo doesn't even have to think – as if he could've failed to have noticed how he feels almost blind without the currents of cursed energy he'd been able to see just as easily as anything before his eyes only two days ago. "Like I can't really see."

Utahime sits on the bed beside him but doesn't touch him, unsure if she should. "Just different?"

He nods. "Don't really feel like the same person, honestly."

"Oh." She'd had a feeling, when his identity had never been tied to anything but his strength, but she'd hoped he wouldn't feel as unmoored as he clearly does. A fool's hope, she's seeing. He's looked nothing but lost the past two days.

"Like dead weight," he adds.

"You're not."

"You don't have to do that."

"I'm not. You still have influence, and-"

"Not really. The only reason I only had any was because I could blast anyone in my path into space. Because people were afraid of me." He laughs without mirth. "What do I have now, a good track record?"

"Skill," she offers. "Experience. Allies."

"And no cursed techniques," he counters. "Couldn't even defend myself if they decided to come after me. You know what'll happen if I try to influence anything like this? A knife to the back."

"I…get that," she concedes. "And I'm not saying that this isn't going to be hard, but…you did a good thing, Gojo."

"Yeah. I know." Again, he laughs. "And now I'm nothing, Utahime."

It's beyond startling to hear those words from a man whose ego has always been one of his most pronounced flaws, but it makes perfect sense, once Utahime takes a moment to think. His ego, his confidence, his identity had all been inextricable from his strength, his cursed techniques, his irreplaceable position in the jujutsu world; without it, he feels adrift, useless. Much as it hurts her to think of it, she knows it was inevitable.

"Geto asked me something back in the day that I never really figured out an answer to," he says. Apparently his loss has put him in a reflective mood. "'Are you the strongest because you're Gojo Satoru, or are you Gojo Satoru because you're the strongest?' Never could answer that. But I guess I kinda can now, y'know? It was the second one. 'Cause I don't feel like myself at all anymore." He shrugs. "Like…all I have in common with the kid who couldn't answer that question is a name. Just look at me. I'm…I'm useless." His shoulders slump. " Weak. I have nothing to contribute, no reason to be able to say that I'm worth anyone's time-"

"Gojo," Utahime cuts him off. "Shut up."

"Hime-"

"Shut up," she repeats. "Okay? You're not going to change anything by wallowing, and you're not useless!"

"I'm not-"

"Okay, listen." She presses her hand to her thigh hard enough to leave an imprint as a vent for a little corner of her frustration. "You spent years calling me weak, right? And I know you didn't mean it, but you were kinda right. For a long time I was. I just…let myself get walked all over. Didn't think I was worth much. And you know what changed my mind?"

He gapes at her, speechless.

"You did," she says, softer this time. "You being a mess, getting better because I could give you a kind of strength you didn't have – that made me realize things," she admits, wrapping her fingers around the cloth of her kosode. "That maybe I'm not brute-force strong, but that I had a kind of strength that mattered. And you believed that." She presses his hand. "You never would have used up all of your cursed energy if you didn't trust me to finish that fight, and you did. You shoved a knife into my hands and told me it was about time I realized that I was strong enough to use it." She raises her hand to cup his cheek now. "And that, to me – that's Gojo Satoru."

"What is, exactly?"

"Bringing out the strength in other people," she says. "It's why you were a good teacher even when you were unbearable – why you took a bunch of traumatized kids and turned them into allies. You know how to make people realize what they're capable of. You've done that under the Council's nose for as long as I've known you and that's…that's more you than any cursed technique."

They're both silent for a moment after that, fingers intertwined, breathing.

"The higher-ups have their own idea of strength," she tells him. "And you bought into that because it benefited you. So you have some kind of godlike technique – great. Here ya go, Council seal of approval, whatever. But you forgot something."

"Hm?"

"Anyone can be born with a powerful technique," she tells him. "You were different because you wanted to do something with it."

Emboldened, she goes on. "You wanted to change things, even though they benefited you," she says. "You wanted to bring out the best in people who you would've said were totally beneath you. You never quit trying to do that, at least not until Croatia. And no, you're no saint. But at the end of the day, you were willing to give up all of that power to keep that hope that things could change alive." She tries to meet his eyes, but he closes his eyes as if he can't bear to look at her. "That wasn't The Strongest who made that call. It was just you."

"That," she tells him, "was just Gojo Satoru."

"So you're saying I have it backwards." He rubs at his eyes. "You really don't have to do this."

"I'm not doing it as a favor, Gojo. It's just true." She shrugs. "Maybe the version of you that the rest of the world saw was Gojo Satoru because he was the strongest, but the person you claim to be and the person who gave that all up are worlds apart. And I'm not going to sit here and listen to you tell me the same things I told myself for fifteen years."

"Hime…"

"I know this is a huge loss," she says shakily. "I know it's hard to adjust to, and I know you must be scared, and I'm sorry. But I can't let you go on thinking that you have nothing left when the thing you lost was never even what was really special about you." She cups his face, and this time he pushes his cheek against her hand instead of pulling away. "And like hell am I gonna let you sit around moping when there's still so much that only you can do."

"That only I can do, huh?"

She shrugs. "You're the one with the grand plans. I'm your partner in this, but there's a lot that you're qualified to handle that I'm not. Clan politics, negotiations, reworking the government – what do I know about that? I'm not just going to let you give up on that. It's too important."

"I guess," he says hollowly.

"And there's no reason to," she says, a little gentler. "You still have everything you need – allies, skills, knowledge. And you're still you. That alone counts for a lot."

"I don't feel like myself," he says. "I…get what you're saying and all, but…it still feels like there's nothing left of me. Like I was Gojo Satoru because I was the strongest and I don't even know my own name anymore."

"Well, you're not," she says flatly. "You're Gojo Satoru because you're infuriating and charismatic and you never lose sight of your goals, not because you could teleport, or because of your cursed energy – you were you because you were bad enough at feelings to spend ten years teasing a girl you were madly in love with, and…and because you saved a random kid from execution and took him under your wing, and because you eat enough sugar to put a normal person into a diabetic coma, and…why can't you get that?"

"Those are all facts about me," he says listlessly. "They're not who I am."

"Isn't that all any of us are?" she protests. "Whatever's at our core, and then a list of random facts that don't mean anything on their own?"

"Not when you're me."

"Then maybe you're Gojo Satoru because I said you were!"

Utahime stops after that, her breaths coming in too short for the effort she's expended. It's the silliest argument imaginable if she's going for hard evidence, but to her, now, watching his dull, listless eyes shift around the room, it's the only one that makes sense: that they are inextricable, that the tie that binds them is what makes them both the people they are. She really believes that, she thinks; she wishes he would, too – that somehow she shapes him as much as any outside force. They have been and will be too much to each other not to.

"Maybe," she pants, "you're Gojo Satoru because I'm Iori Utahime, and I chose to love you."

Notes:

You know that trope where a character says the title of the thing in a line of dialogue? I love that trope. Spot it? :p

Chapter 30: Denouement, Pt. 2 Summary:

The group takes on politics; Utahime has a plan; Maki gets some well-deserved accolades; Fushiguro and Kugisaki receive a new assignment.

Notes:

How is this almost over? How is there only one chapter left? What am I going to do with myself when it's finished? *weeps* I AM IN CRISIS OKAY-

In all seriousness, I like this one and I hope you guys do too.

Chapter Text

"I suppose you're here to punish me."

"No." Utahime waits until the door latches behind her to say anything more. "I'm here to negotiate."

"Negotiate." Gakuganji lifts an eyebrow, leaning heavily against the back of his chair. "How's that?"

"I'm sure you heard about the Council," she says. Her hands, folded tightly in her lap, are the only outward sign of her shakiness.

"Can't say I'm surprised," he replies. "What's that have to do with me?"

"You're still in pretty good standing with whatever is left of the higher-ups, right?" she asks. "They don't know you were helping us, so I'd imagine-"

"Wouldn't call it 'good standing,'" he interrupts her.

"How's that?"

He shrugs. "I don't think I've been as outspoken in calling for your death as they would've liked."

"So they wanted you on the warpath and you told them you were staying neutral," she says, pursing her lips. "Hm. We can still use that."

"Use that?" Gakuganji raises his eyebrows again. "In what world are you in any position to use anything?"

She ignores him. "Gojo and I aren't exactly on the best terms with the establishment right now."

"All the more reason why – wait, you and Gojo?" Gakuganji's face falls. "You couldn't have at least tried to beat the lover allegations?"

"No need," she says tersely, then goes on, "this power vacuum…we can't leave it this way or it's going to implode. Problem is that we're one of two factions trying to take control and the other wants our heads on pikes."

"I'm not a miracle worker, Iori."

It's a little heartening to hear that – at least he gets what she's driving at. "No, but you're someone they trust," she tells him. "Someone they might listen to. Even if they hate our guts."

"I highly doubt-"

"There are ways to explain everything," she says. "Gojo went on a rampage against the Council because they were trying to kill our students. We want their cooperation because we value their insight and experience. You aren't sympathetic, you just don't want the old guard to execute an entire generation of students." She gives him a look whose meaning he's supposed to be able to interpret without words – it seems he can. "It's not as if there's nothing in it for you."

"You want me to be a go-between," he realizes.

"No, I want you to win them over for us," she says. "Whoever would've replaced the Council, whichever Zenins are going to be hardest to kill – that kind of thing."

" Hardest to kill?" Gakuganji laughs shortly. "Do you really plan on murdering everyone in your path?"

Utahime huffs impatiently. "If I did, why would I be asking you to get people on our side?"

"So why-"

"Clan elders are tricky because we're directly usurping them," she explains. "No one's going to let any of our allies lead the Zenin Clan."

"Don't tell me-"

"We're putting someone qualified in charge," she says, refusing to elaborate. "But not someone they'd ever accept, which is where you come in. And I'll need you to do a little subterfuge on the Kamo head, too."

"I'm sorry?"

"We need Noritoshi leading that clan," she says. "And we're trying to minimize the number of assassinations of high-profile elders, for obvious reasons-"

"Ah, so you do have a conscience."

"No, most of them are scum. It's just going to get a hell of a lot harder to get their allies to back us as our kill count goes up." She clears her throat. "Anyway. We're having Noritoshi convince his father that he needs to run for his life to get him out of the way, but if he can't, we might need you to back him up."

"You thought this out, didn't you."

Utahime is barely able to stop herself from smiling. "Megumi or one of the twins leading the Zenins, Noritoshi leading the Kamos, Okkotsu backing up Gojo so his clan won't be able to oust him, the would-be Council talked into submission? Yeah." Now she really does smile. "We need you for all of that, though. You're our best liaison with the higher-ups."

"And what if I say no?"

Utahime shrugs. "Well," she says sweetly, "we could always choose to remember what you did to Yaga."

They're both silent for a moment; Gakuganji swallows hard.

"Is that a threat?"

"You can help us and we'll expunge your record," she replies, "or we can let Panda decide what to do with you."

"Never thought I'd see the day," he mutters.

"Yeah, well, I never thought I'd end up a vigilante after Gojo Satoru sent the entire Council into Infinite Void for slitting my throat, so that makes two of us."

"Fine." Gakuganji raises his hands in surrender. "If you think it's the best way to stabilize the situation-"

"I do."

"-then I'll talk to the elders. But you better not be expecting it to work."

"We're cautiously optimistic."

"Unwarranted, I'm sure."

"Well, we can always go with the backup plan-"

"You mean the one that involves murder?"

Utahime's shoulders slump. Neither of them has to say anything.

"I know you well enough to see through this," he says. "The…bluster. The false confidence. You hate this, don't you."

"I don't hate it," she says weakly. "Negotiating, I mean. It's…things have needed to change around here for years. I…I don't not want to do that."

"No, but all of the killing and dying and being stabbed and having your throat slit," he says. "You're tired of it."

"I have a job to do," she deflects.

"But you wish you didn't." He looks up at her. "You wish Gojo Satoru could still strongarm the elders into doing what you want, don't you."

"I don't know what you're trying to do, Gakuganji."

"You don't want to carry this burden," he tells her. "Do you?"

"Who in their right mind would?"

"You don't want to put this burden on the shoulders of your students, do you?"

She looks up at him through narrowed eyes, as if afraid something in her will crack if she sees him clearly enough. "I don't. If there were another way-"

"The Council had appointed replacements before they died," he says. "Let them lead. I can make sure your sentence is light-"

"I thought you said you'd help us!"

"There's more than one way to help someone."

Utahime takes in a long, shaky breath, and she knows he can tell that her composure is cracking. But this isn't the time to be thinking of that. "I'm not going to change my mind. Either you help us build alliances or you're duly punished for what you did to Yaga."

"I could run to the Council," he says. "Tell them you threatened my life."

"And get me and every single one of our students killed? You wouldn't."

"Sacrifices have to be made," he says, gesturing vaguely. "I'm sure you understand that."

"Yes, but I also know you're not willing to make sacrifices like that." She crosses her arms. "You backed me up when I wanted to clear Gojo's name, you warned Shoko and Maki that the higher-ups knew what they were doing, you got us information when we needed it to stay ahead of them – all of that to hand us over to the replacement Council? Wouldn't even make sense."

He looks up at her, saying nothing. She has a feeling that means she's won.

"Mai? "

Mai almost doesn't recognize Todo's voice when he calls out behind her – she's never heard it at anything below a shout, anything remotely so subdued as it is now. But she turns. "Hm?"

He takes a seat beside her – she notices that he seems to be trying not to meet her eyes. "Your arm," he says.

"Yeah?"

He holds up his own, stumped at the wrist. "We match," he tells her.

For a few seconds, she can't think of anything to say to that. Todo has never been unkind, per se, but she doesn't think she's ever seen him try so hard to be nice, and it makes for an incredibly strange picture. She's so used to seeing him in battle or in the gym, pounding punching bags within an inch of their lives, that she doesn't even know if she remembers what he's like when he's just…normal. Doesn't even know if he has a normal, truthfully, or what it would look like if he did.

Maybe it's this: his shoulders slump a little, the volume of his voice is almost reasonable, and he holds up his hand as if he wants Mai to know that he's proud to have found a sister-in-arms, or at least in the lack of them.

"We do," she says dully. She raises the stump of her arm from the elbow up and bumps it against Todo's. "Match."

"Miwa says that you cut it off yourself."

"I did." She'd rather forget about that, in all honesty. "Mahito touched my hand, so it was that or dying."

Todo says nothing; with his remaining hand, he reaches over, but doesn't touch the stump of her arm until she nods her assent – she doesn't know why she lets him, really, but she knows for all his irritating bluster that he doesn't mean her any harm. It's why she tolerates him, mostly – she can't think of a rarer thing than a jujutsu sorcerer with no desire to hurt her.

"Hm," he murmurs, inspecting the grey tendrils of decay that fan out from her elbow like stretch marks. Mai stiffens, but she's too weary to pull back her arm. "Did it hurt?"

She gives him a silencing look.

He pats the stump of her arm, then lets it go. "So did mine."

"So…we sort of have a handle on things."

"Wouldn't call it that," Gojo replies, "but go on."

"Well, Gakuganji's talking to some of the replacement Council members, and Kamo's father seems like he'll probably take the bait…good enough, right?" Utahime shrugs. "We weren't ever going to fix this overnight."

Gojo looks up across the desk to get her attention, make sure she's meeting his eyes when she tells him what she's planning. "You've got some kinda plan, don't you."

"It's just a thought-"

"It's a plan." He hasn't been much for smiling lately, but he can't help but smile at that. "I know you, Hime. It's definitely a plan already."

"Itadori," she admits. "We can't kill him."

"You mean the pending execution?"

She nods. "We can't go through with it."

"Can't," Gojo says. "He hasn't eaten all of the fingers yet and finding the rest isn't going to be a priority for a long time."

"No, I know that. I mean we can't go through with it ever."

Gojo raises his eyebrows. "So what do you plan on doing about Sukuna, then?"

She tries not to smile – so he was right. This is a plan already. "Fushiguro and Kugisaki are both recovering from near-fatal injuries, and Kugisaki isn't politically relevant," she says. "So we send them to figure out how to exorcise Sukuna and pardon Itadori."

"That so."

"What do you mean, 'that so'?" Utahime asks, sitting up so she can turn to face Gojo. "It's a good plan."

He looks up at her for only a few seconds before he glances back down at the comforter. He's looked listless lately, apathetic, unenthused – understandably so, but it still makes her feel a little queasy. "Go for it. If you want."

"Gojo, we're supposed to be doing this together."

"Yeah, but you haven't needed any help," he reasons. "You know what you're doing. If you think it'll work, it probably will."

Ordinarily, that rare praise would warm her, but now it just makes her fist her hands around her pillow and sigh. "Maybe, but I want your input."

"Why, though?"

" Gojo."

"Fine," he sighs. "It's a good idea."

"See? That was all you had to say."

"So…Megumi was supposed to be in contention, but he has another…thing that he has to do, so it's between you two." Gojo crosses his arms. "Or both of you. Don't care as long as you don't make things worse."

"That's a lot of pressure to put on two seventeen-year-olds with no political experience," Maki shoots back. "'Don't make anything worse'? Is that really all the instruction you're going to give us?"

"Look, clans are clans. It's going to be a mess no matter who ends up as the head, okay? You're not going to be running the family by yourselves or anything. All I'm asking is that you don't make yourselves part of the problem."

Mai jerks her thumb in Maki's direction. "Her," she says. "Let her do it."

Gojo looks to Mai, then to Maki, who looks a little stunned but quickly recovers. "Maki? Thoughts?"

She shrugs. "Fine by me, unless Mai-"

"She was the one who wanted power," Mai says. "I just wanted to be left alone."

"Is that supposed to be an insult?" Maki gives her sister a hard look. "That was supposed to be an insult, wasn't it."

"It's just true," Mai says drily. "You always said one day you'd either lead the Zenin Clan or destroy it. Here's your chance, right?"

"…oh." Maki shrinks back. "Well…yeah. I mean, I'm fine with that. Being the head." She clears her throat. "I mean, yes, I'll do it. I'll lead the Clan."

Gojo almost smiles.

Yuuta hadn't known what to expect when Gojo had asked to meet with him, but it hadn't been this – downcast eyes, stooped shoulders, a warning.

"You're probably the strongest sorcerer now, y'know," he'd said, shoving his hands into the pockets of a worn grey sweater. "Sorry."

"Tsukumo, though," Yuuta points out. "She's a special-grade, right?"

"Well, yeah, but you're just a little stronger. So they'll probably shove all of the problems that used to be mine onto you." Gojo shifts guiltily in his house slippers. "Again, sorry."

"N-no, it's…it's okay," Yuuta stammers. "It's not like you could help it, and…and it's not like I'm doing it alone, right? I mean, we…we have each other's backs. I think."

"No, I know, but being the strongest…it means being alone a lot of the time. No one else understanding what you have to do." He sighs. "What you're responsible for. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but I can't just not prepare you for that."

"I mean, if it makes you feel any better, I kinda figured. That this would happen, I mean." Yuuta tries to smile but really just grimaces. "Does it?"

"Not really, but thanks." Gojo pats his shoulder. "You're a good kid, Okkotsu."

"Uh…thank you?"

"Take good care of the others," he goes on. "'kay?"

"Yeah. Of course."

There's not a lot that Inumaki Toge has ever been able to do when it comes to emotional support, but if there's anything he can do, it's this.

"Shake," he murmurs, his hand resting against Panda's shoulder, after at least ten minutes of prolonged silence.

"Thanks," Panda says faintly.

Inumaki has always been the man of the hour when there's nothing to be said.

"The clan head?" Yuuta raises his eyebrows. "Oh. Um. Wow."

"Yeah, 's gonna suck for a while," Maki admits, cracking her knuckles. "But it is what I've always wanted, right? Either end 'em or get to the top and fix 'em from the inside. So I can deal with it."

"You sure you're going to be okay?" Yuuta touches Maki's arm, unsure if it's welcome but unwilling not to try. "I mean. I'm not saying that you're not totally capable of it and everything because I know you are but-"

"You're fine, Yuuta." She knows by now when to stop him so he won't start spiraling, thinking he's said the wrong thing. "I get what you meant."

"Oh. Good." He laughs nervously. "I mean, I'm really happy for you and all. And…proud. You deserve this." He knocks his elbow into hers. "But also, isn't that a lot for a student?"

"I'm technically of age," she tells him. "Dunno how the other clans work, but the Zenin rule is that heads come of age when they turn sixteen."

"Well, yeah, but you're still really young. It's…a lot of pressure."

"So is being the strongest." She gives Yuuta a lopsided smile. "If you can do that, I can do this."

Maki links her pinkie through his; they walk, joined hands swinging in the space between them, and both try not to smile, because it isn't the time. They're children carrying too much weight, and they shouldn't be happy, and this isn't the time to celebrate.

But they are alive, they are together, and for once, after years of powerlessness and thankless toil, they are needed. And right now, that's enough.

"You know, I'm really starting to get sick of train stations."

"Yeah, same." Megumi scans the train for an open row, then takes Nobara's hand to make sure he doesn't lose her in the crowd surging onto the train before they make it to their seats. "Last one for a while, hopefully."

"Yeah," she says distractedly, fishing through her purse as soon as they sit down and coming back with a bag of Hi-Chew. "Want any?"

He takes one – mango, his favorite – with his free hand. The other, though it can, doesn't let go of hers; she swallows, then leans her head against his shoulder.

"Thanks," he says, stiff, a little distracted.

"Mmhm."

He thinks about trying to get her to stop – leaning on him, that is, making his heart race without even really doing anything – but doesn't. They have work to do, but not yet, and he can allow it. For now. While it's not a distraction.

Or something like that.

"You better not get stabbed this time," Nobara says aimlessly after a few moments.

"Don't plan on it."

Yes – something like that.

"You probably noticed that Fushiguro and Kugisaki left this morning."

Yuji nods. "They said they had some kinda mission," he replies. "Wouldn't say what."

"Yeah." Utahime can't help but reach out and push a stray lock of his hair out of his face. He hasn't had it cut in so long that he almost has a fringe now, forever falling in his eyes. If the gesture confuses him, he doesn't say so. "We decided we could spare them for a while to get some information."

"Oh, about the Zenins?" Yuji guesses. "'Cause Megumi-"

"No," she says, fighting not to smile. "About how to exorcise Sukuna."

Yuji's eyes widen, and he doesn't say anything. "That's…that's a good thing," Utahime reassures him. "They're trying to figure out how to do it without hurting you. Don't…don't worry about that. We're not going to-"

"Kill me to get rid of Sukuna? That was the plan, wasn't it?" Yuji doesn't even seem upset. It's frightening that he's become so resigned to something like that.

"That's the point," she says gently. "They're trying to figure this out so you won't get executed." He stares at her, uncomprehending – she elaborates.

"Itadori-kun," she says, reaching for his hand to give it a squeeze. "We're pardoning you."

He doesn't cry, or really say much of anything – he's probably shocked. But when Utahime opens her arms to him, he gladly accepts.

"You've done so well," she murmurs, rubbing his back like she now knows he likes. "We're gonna fix this for you."

It feels good, being the bearer of good news for once.

Chapter 31: Beginnings Notes:

It's...over? Is that even allowed?

...anyway. Merry Christmas, and happy last chapter, and I really, really hope you guys are satisfied with this one. This has been an amazing journey and this story means the world to me - thank you, thank you, thank you for following along. 3

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

February 2019

"I have ways of making your death look like an accident." Shoko leans against the frame of the open door. "Y'know. If I think you're not doing right by your girl."

Gojo raises his eyebrows, though not really in surprise. He's seen too much to be surprised by something as mundane as a death threat anymore. "How's that?"

"I'm serious, Gojo."

He eyes her warily. "No, I know."

"Look," she says, collapsing onto the mattress beside him as if her knees have been waiting to give out all day. "I get it. You're having a rough time. Probably will be for a while. But so is Uta." She jabs his arm with her index finger. "So am I. And the last thing she needs right now is to have to mother her own boyfriend."

"She's not-"

"You're a mess," Shoko interrupts. "Which is fine. But you need to…I dunno. Be upset, mourn, whatever – just don't mope. She's counting on you."

Shoko is harsh, but she's not wrong – perhaps he hadn't wanted to, but Gojo can see it in her tired, puffy eyes and the slouch of her shoulders and the way she collapses into bed when she finally gets the chance. He wants to feel guilty, to prod at open wounds and feed the part of him that insists he's worthless now; sometimes he does. But Shoko's words (not the threat, he knows she'd never follow through) ring in his head, sometimes.

She's counting on you, she'd said.

So he tries – tries – to push away the thought that he's nothing so long as there's something he can do for her, and he reminds himself incessantly that she'd wanted him to make the choice he did. He remembers her insistence that his strength had never come from his technique, though he still doesn't buy that, and that, for all that he's tried avoiding politics, he's picked up enough to be of use.

"Tax fraud," he tells Utahime when she frets over a way to remove Zenin Naobito from the picture because she's unwilling to resort to murder no matter how many times Maki endorses that option. "All of the higher-ups do tax fraud."

He might be weak and he might be a nobody but he's seen his clan's account books in passing enough times to know that there's ample room for a ten-year sentence in Naobito's finances, and by the time he's out, he'll be long dead. Foolproof. Utahime grins, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear – really? – and he nods, and inwardly sighs with relief.

"None of this is going to work if we don't formally fold Okkotsu into the Gojo clan," he tells her in the middle of another long night, wondering why something so obvious hadn't occurred to him before. "Seeing as I have no way to back myself up unless it's him."

She looks a little sad, but she agrees. Either way, he knows she's grateful for his help.

He brings dinner sometimes. He has to drive or take the train and he misses teleporting like he's never missed anything but Geto Suguru, but she never minds when the food has to be reheated by the time he makes it back. He touches base with Maki (Utahime can deal with Kamo) and Fushiguro (who seems distracted) and Kugisaki (who seems smug), making sure they're on-track even when he couldn't have veered further off-course. He takes the bottle of vodka from Shoko's hands when it's obvious she's going to drink herself into a stupor. He massages Utahime's shoulders. He does not ask to kiss her.

Gojo Satoru is not the strongest anymore, nor does he think himself particularly worth anyone's time, but if it's what Utahime needs, he can do his best to make himself useful. By some quirk of fate, it's fallen to Utahime and the students to reorder the world; he'll provide dinner and supervision and occasionally-useful input. He'll coach Yuuta and go to the gym at Utahime's gentle suggestion that it might make him feel a little more energized and gently prod Utahime to get more sleep and make an effort at consoling Maki when she's distraught at the adults' refusal to let her disembowel Naoya.

"Damn," Shoko comments after what feels like weeks of this. "Never thought you'd actually take that advice."

"It wasn't advice, it was a threat." He reaches over and plucks her sixth beer from her hands. "How are you not drunk yet?"

"Tolerance," she says, reaching for the beer – he's grateful to be tall enough to keep it out of her reach now that he can't teleport into another room with it. "Ya build it up quick when you have enough to forget, y'know?"

Gojo looks down at her for a moment, trying to formulate a response to that, and it takes a while to come up with one that'll effectively convey his very warranted concern for her well-being (he's had to think a great deal about well-being since his own went so terribly downhill).

"We're sending you on vacation," he tells her, expertly downing the rest of her beer even though he winces at the taste and then tossing the can in a perfect arc towards the wastebasket. "And then to therapy."

He likes to think he finally grew up once he lost the only crutch he had to lean on.

April 2019

Shoko doesn't understand why no one realizes that the stress lines around her mouth aren't from the strain of her work but of sleepless nights and endless, unbroken stretches of loneliness, and that a two-week cruise will fix nothing, and that all she wants is a companion or two. But she can't figure out how to put those longings into words when she's never been good with them.

Still, they don't go unheard.

Itadori looks more like a ghost now than he ever did with the shadow of a death warrant hanging over his head, even though Sukuna is exorcised, and he sees the ghosts behind Shoko's eyes, too. He doesn't offer anything except his silent presence and gentle admonitions not to drink herself to death, but in time, he starts to show her that he, surrounded by friends, is as lonely as she is.

He tells her about his grandfather, who he's strangely only now started to miss, and his childhood friends. He talks about Megumi and Nobara and all of the people who've come to be dear to him with so much joy that it's hard to reconcile with the sadness weighing down his words; she knows the feeling. He loves them, but they have things to do and roles to play, and he does not; he feels, without reason, left-behind. There are few freelance sorcerers of his level left, so his role is more vital than ever, but it feels empty. He's not fighting to save lives or eradicate a threat as tangibly as he used to, and his friends no longer have the privilege of being students who share lives and secrets and spend their off-days together. He tells her how even Todo seems sad, and how much that frightens him. He tells her how terrified he is of losing Megumi and Nobara to one another and of losing all of his other friends to time or bloodthirsty clans, and he tells her how terribly lonely it's been since their journey's end.

And if a seventeen-year-old can muster the kind of strength it takes to bare his soul when he's running on empty, perhaps Shoko can do the same, at least a little bit.

She spares him the worst – he's still a child, after all – but he learns that she was in love once, and that it was used against her. He learns why she drinks, why he's forever pulling cigarettes from her fingers. He learns that she never sleeps as well as she used to and that she, too, feels utterly useless in this new world where her skills are of no use. And she knows he can't give her anything for the pain, but she still feels a fraction less alone when he crosses to sit on the couch beside her and puts his arm around her shoulders and says that she's anything but useless.

It's good, being cared for, and when she sees Megumi and Nobara return from a mission and throw themselves into Yuji's arms, she smiles.

May 2019

The Kamo Clan is easy. No one questions Noritoshi's right to lead – even his father, hiding out in Shanghai, gives him the go-ahead to run clan operations in his place. That someone in such a strong position is willing to cooperate is a lucky break and a testament to the degree to which Iori Utahime is beloved by her students.

The same is not true of the Zenin Clan.

It would have been one thing had Gojo been at his former strength, or had Utahime not wanted to be so cautious about anything that reeked of murder. No one with sense was going to think that Naobito's sudden arrest was a coincidence, but no one could definitively blame the anonymous tip that had led to his jailing on Utahime's group, either; he'd been easy enough. But the rest of the clan remains to be dealt with and, should they wish to stave off a full-scale revolt, wholesale murder doesn't seem to be an option.

"So just let me beat up Naoya in front of the entire clan as a warning," Maki suggests.

It's a surprisingly sound suggestion.

"That'll be you if you try to overthrow me," she tells them. "If I'm feeling merciful."

And her legs don't shake when she grabs Naoya's bloodied collar and looks into his terrified eyes and sees her own reflected in them – they don't. Brutality is nothing new to her. She can't afford to regret it.

Her legs don't shake – they don't.

This is what she was asking for, she realized, because in this family there are only powerful and powerless and she's only made the switch from one to the other. She'd asked for power because she'd believed she could do better with it than could her relatives, and because she'd never had any; perhaps she had been too young to know that she'd never find a middle ground. She can't and doesn't regret her appointment to this position – at least it wasn't Mai – but she thinks she understands why Utahime had looked so reluctant to sign off on this plan and why Megumi, just back from a fact-finding trip to Sendai, had given her a weighty look on her way out that morning. Of course they'd known before she had. After all, hers is a family where brutality is power, and she could not have one without the other. Naoya won't be the first person she makes an example of.

Maybe she shouldn't feel like this when she hates Naoya with everything she has, but it's a human heartbeat that slows beneath her foot when she plants it on his chest, and she can't help but wince.

She'll have him sent off somewhere while he recovers and make sure he doesn't come back. All the better – she never wants to see that face or that reminder of the things it takes to stay in power again.

Sometimes Yuta hates them for days like this, because he doesn't know anything – they wouldn't tell him anything – except that Maki is bloodstained and trying not to let anyone see that her hands are shaking and when he tries to go to her, she won't let him into her room. It's obvious that they've made her do something they shouldn't have, and he says so – nearly raises his voice at Utahime and Gojo before Mai cuts in that making an example of Naoya had been Maki's own idea.

He's silent, then; Gojo looks dead-eyed with guilt, Utahime stricken, and he wishes he could resent them but he can't, really, when they hate this every bit as much as he does.

"Then I'm gonna go with her," he says, swallowing hard. "When she has to go to the compound. She…she shouldn't have to…" he has to stop so his voice won't break. "Keep doing this stuff by herself."

She hadn't requested backup aloud, but her hollow eyes had asked the question for her. And when she mentions that she's going to the compound and Yuta follows, she doesn't tell him to turn back.

Sometimes Nobara is the one who asks to go, others Panda or Inumaki. Megumi always tags along when there's something political to handle – he has the head for it. Even Mai does, sometimes.

But always – always – when clan business calls Maki to the Zenin estate, Yuta follows.

They both know what it's like to carry oversized burdens too well not to take them on together.

December 2019

"Satoru?"

"Hm?" he takes the open envelope Utahime passes to him and scans its label.

"Shred that," she tells him.

"Why?" It's from the Zenin Clan, important-looking, and-

Oh.

"Another marriage proposal," she tells him. "Some Zenin widower twice my age who says he'll get the faction of the clan that's still trying to oust Maki to back her if I marry him and ignore the fact that he should probably be in jail."

He shreds the envelope rather too vindictively.

"He'll be dead soon enough," Utahime goes on. "'sides, the only man I have any intention of ever marrying is you."

He says nothing and thinks about that far too often.

March 2020

"Do you really think that would help?"

Gojo shrugs. "Honestly, it couldn't hurt. You're on pretty decent terms with most of the higher-ups-"

She swats him with an empty paper towel tube they've both been too lazy to throw out. "We are the higher-ups, Satoru."

"The other higher-ups. You know what I meant. Anyway, I just think it would, uh…help me rein in the clan a little, and, well. You know." He smiles sheepishly. "It's something I wanted to do anyway."

Utahime smiles, though she tilts her face so he won't see how pleased she is. "Oh? So it's not just a tactical maneuver?"

"Oh, no, it's tactical." He tries to smirk but looks like he's grimacing; Utahime laughs. "Very tactical."

"But" – she turns in her office chair, poking his chest – "not strictly business, no?"

"N-no," he stammers. "It's…both…business and pleasure, if…if you will."

"Are you nervous?" Utahime asks, ducking a finger under his chin, lifting it because he keeps trying to look away from her and she's not about to have that. "You sure do sound like you are."

"No," he says, trying to fake his old bluster and failing miserably. "I know you're gonna say yes."

She smirks. "And if I didn't?"

"I'd ask again."

"And if I still didn't?"

"I'd go out and do something to prove I was worth your 'yes' and then ask you a third time."

Her nose crinkles. "I'm not going to make you do that."

"So…"

"I was going to say that this isn't a good time," she tells him. "But we're probably never going to have one, y'know? We made our beds. These are our lives now."

"So…?"

"We might as well," she says. "Since we have the chance."

"Is that a 'yes', then?"

"Well, obviously-"

He knocks his foot into hers, then leans forwards to hold her forehead against his. "Say it," he says. She can hear the smile in his voice.

"I did," she laughs.

" Say it," he repeats, half-giddy. "Say 'yes'."

She giggles, dropping her head to rest against his shoulder and holding on tight – the last thing she'd expected was a proposal in the middle of a workday, but she is so, so happy. "Fine, fine, yes!"

April 2020

There is absolutely nothing grand about the wedding, and Megumi, the sole witness to the signing of their marriage license, seems to wish he were elsewhere. There's no time for planning and less for a honeymoon; a weekend in a high-rise hotel is about all they can spare, and even that is interrupted by a few too many work calls. But it seems to have been a worthy investment.

Utahime's presence at Gojo Clan assemblies seems to intimidate at least a few of his more troublesome relatives into cooperation – hilarious, she thinks, when no one had thought anything of her two years ago. Apparently she's gotten herself quite the reputation. At very least he doesn't have to ask Okkotsu to follow him around like a one-man security detail on his own estate anymore when he sleeps with his bodyguard and home alarm system curled up in his arms. Grumbles quiet, though countless more about how he ought to have heirs already arise in their place.

But mostly, they give each other refuge from the world they're trying to remake. They ground each other, center each other; there is nothing easy or conventional about their marriage, but it is a comfort.

Utahime is grateful for that every time she stumbles home from a long day of meetings about the educational system or clan inheritance methods or any number of other things – grateful to be able to eat bread off the loaf in bed with her husband and forget, grateful that he'll hold her until she can't keep her eyes open. She's grateful that they care for each other, now, after so many lopsided months, and that he looks at her as if she is a wonder of the world, and that he touches her like he's starving for her when he knows that she's starving for him, too.

The path they've chosen is unpleasant, but at least there's a home to return to somewhere along the road.

May 2020

Graduation is a subdued affair after everything, but Mai still taps her feet nervously against the auditorium floor, throwing nervous glances at Maki every few moments when she thinks she isn't looking. Kamo is the first to catch her, but he's quickly distracted by something that Momo says and forgets to follow up; then it's Yuuta, who's seated next to Maki and probably thinks she's looking at him, which-

No.

No way in hell.

Mai and Maki have necessarily made a tenuous peace, but she doesn't think it's fair for anyone to expect that she's going to sit back and take the fact that her illustrious clan-head sister – her twin, whether either of them likes it or not – is consumed by desire for a special-grade pair of eyebags. Absolutely not, now or ever, is she going to be anything less than offended by the fact that that is the person Maki is probably going to spend the rest of her life making eyes at.

But she's wrong about him – he must've known she was looking to Maki, not him, because he gets up to talk to Yuji as soon as Mai approaches. Huh. So he does have some sense, she thinks.

"So," she says, playing with the hem of her jacket. "We made it."

"Uh-huh."

"I, um, wanted to talk to you-"

"Yeah, I got that." Maki always sounds brusque with Mai, but rarely means ill. "What about?"

"I…I've been thinking a lot," she says. "About what I'm going to do next, and…I don't think-"

"You have a college entrance exam prep book on your desk, Mai. I know."

Mai's head snaps up and her eyes widen in surprise. "You saw that?"

"'Course I did."

"And…are you-"

"Nah, do what you want. You always did hate jujutsu." Maki shrugs. "If you wanna go your own way, whatever."

Mai blinks at her for a few confused seconds before it sinks in – of course Maki wouldn't be upset by her choosing to do exactly what she'd done three years ago.

Obviously.

"Well, um, that's," Mai stammers, "that's good to hear, so…I…think I'm going to take a bit of a gap year to study for exams, and then…we'll see?"

It's a bold move when she's so closely tied to the head of her clan, but it's one she's sure of, so long as Maki is. She isn't much of a sorcerer anymore without her shooting hand – her prosthetic is too clumsy for precision – and she'd never wanted to be one to begin with. If this is a chance to start over, she'll take it so long as Maki doesn't think she's needed around here.

"Sure," Maki says. "Uh. Good luck."

She smiles. "Hopefully I won't need it."

June 2021

Megumi looks faint.

"You did what?"

"Punched through glass," Nobara says sweetly, then turns back to the saucepan of glaze that Yuji had put her in charge of watching. "Worked out fine."

"Your arm is in a cast, Nobara," Megumi points out. He sounds like his nerves can't quite take this. "Isn't that kind of stuff supposed to be Yuji's thing?"

"She can steal my brand if she wants to," Yuji replies, cautiously pushing up the edges of a souffle pancake with her spatula before he flips it and smiles at the way batter squirts out around the edges when it lands on its uncooked side. He's always liked how squishy these things are. He reaches over to pat Nobara's head and she doesn't even complain about his taking advantage of her height this time. "It's what she deserves."

"You two are idiots," Megumi decides.

"And you're not helping with the cooking, so which one of us really has a right to judge right now?" Nobara pokes him with Yuji's spatula. "Besides, it worked."

"The number of freelance sorcerers who are fit to work right now is way too low for people like us to be taking stupid risks!" Megumi protests. "Do you not think for a second that one of these days you might actually end up dead doing stuff like that?"

Nobara looks to Yuji, who's looking to her, and then they both look out at Megumi innocently.

"It worked," Yuji says. Nobara nods vigorously in agreement.

"You people," Megumi huffs, then walks around the counter to observe the status of their food. Bless Yuji, honestly, for having the patience for souffle pancakes on those breakfast-for-dinner nights at the cheap apartment they share. There are a couple already plated and he takes one; neither of the others says anything when he rips it in half and shoves one of the halves into his mouth whole, because they both think it's a little bit adorable the way his eyes light up when he tastes good food no matter how hard he tries to hide it.

"Good?" Nobara asks.

"Good," he says, offering her the other half.

"Aw, you do like me." She laughs, taking the offered half as Yuji pouts at having been passed over, and Megumi rests his chin on her shoulder as she eats, waiting for a verdict. She doesn't give him one, though.

"Well?" he asks after a moment. He sets his hands on her hips, careful not to jostle her injured arm. "Good?"

"Why do you care? You didn't even help."

"No, but I wanna know."

She huffs. "Now I just wanna say it was disgusting to spite you."

"Mean," Megumi huffs, giving her right hip a squeeze. It really is delightful how much Yuji has rubbed off on him since they moved here. "You liked it."

"Yeah, 's good. Now can you get off of me? The glaze is gonna burn."

"No," he grumbles. "I'm not stopping you from stirring."

"Fine, then." Nobara takes one of his hands from her hip and presses the spoon into his open palm. "You stir."

He does, one arm around her waist and the other stirring the glaze. Yuji tries not to watch them, flipping the last batch of pancakes. It's a comfortable rhythm in their shared life: Megumi and Nobara try not to act like they love each other as much as Yuji knows they do, and he pretends not to notice or care or long for things he doesn't have – no matter. It's worth it for the comfort of sharing a home with the people he cares for.

They have fun together, the three of them do, and he's never alone. He doesn't think he could ask for anything more.

December 2021

"What are you doing in there?"

"Oh, um." Gojo looks up. "Uh, not…much."

Utahime smiles, resting a basket of laundry against her hip. "You're doing something," she says, laughing to herself. "What is it?"

He turns to her, a little guiltily, and holds up a tiny white sneaker.

She shakes her head fondly. "Last-minute inspections?"

Not really. He just likes looking at their baby things.

"It's small," he tells her, looking down at the shoe – it barely fills half of his palm. He likes looking at it, trying to wrap his head around the idea of a person with feet small enough to fit those tiny shoes.

Her eyes sparkle like they haven't in months – he makes her feel light when even getting off the couch makes her cranky nowadays. "That would be the point, yes."

He's an odd one, her Satoru. She would have no other.

February 2022

"You can hold her if you want."

Yuji's eyes widen. "I can?"

"Yuji," Utahime laughs, reaching over to squeeze his arm. "Of course you can."

"Oh." He seems to have landed somewhere between terror and awe. "Um…all right."

He takes a seat beside the bed and, when Utahime passes him the baby, he tries to mirror the way she'd held him. He's not sure if she's right, but the baby doesn't fuss, and she feels feather-light in his arms – he can't help but smile.

"Hey there," he murmurs, stroking her face with the back of his finger. "You got a name?"

"Her name's Reika," Utahime tells him. "Pretty, isn't she?"

"Mmhm." His voice is far-off, but he nods in acknowledgement. "Real pretty."

She is lovely – she's so new that she's still red, and she looks more like his grandfather had than she does like either of her parents, but she is. Maybe just because Yuji knows the toll that all of the destruction she's had to perpetrate has taken on Utahime, and that being able to make something beautiful instead of tearing down what's failed is a precious thing to her. He's glad she and Gojo got that chance, and that they've chosen to let him be the first to meet their little girl (though, really, he'd just been the first to show up at the hospital). And he's glad that moments like this still exist in a world that wears on him more every day.

"Hime-sensei," he says, "I think you did really good."

"Aw." She pats his arm weakly. "'s sweet of you."

"No, really." He leans over to kiss her cheek, even though she looks like she might panic every time he moves with Reika in his arms. "You did good."

February 2025

"I thought we were never going to get out of there."

"Yeah." Yuta sounds listless, like he always is when he's about to fall asleep, but he's obviously still listening – Maki loves that about him. He always listens. "That took longer than usual."

(In truth, he thinks only of sleep and of her sharp voice earlier – "get my name right," she has to insist every six seconds, "I may be one of you, but my name's not Zenin anymore" – but he listens anyway. Of course he does.)

"I sometimes wish we could've gotten them all for tax evasion," she sighs, stroking Yuta's tousled hair. Truthfully, she wishes that she'd just have been allowed to kill them all, but it scares Yuta when she talks that way, so she doesn't mention that. "Honestly. Like talking to a brick wall."

"Mmhm."

She doesn't see the need to make him talk any more than he already has; her careful fingers undo the knots in his hair, not yet dry from the shower, and he lets out a soft, satisfied sigh when her fingernails brush his scalp. He's about ten seconds from sleep, she can tell, and she can't blame him – he still hasn't gotten used to the clan meetings he's allowed to sit in on as a legal member of her family now, and she'd wanted to spar afterwards, too frustrated to sit around. He'd almost fallen asleep standing up under the showerhead, and she knows she won't get much more of him after all of that.

Oh well. She knew what she was getting with him, and he's always been low-energy.

"Yuta?" she asks after a few moments when she notices that his breathing still hasn't slowed. "You still with me?"

"Yeah," he says sleepily, lifting his head. "Wha's it?"

"Nothing." She brushes her hair from his eyes so he can see her, then presses her hand to his cheek. "Just wondered."

"Sorry, I wanna listen more," he says. "I'm just really tired-"

"I know."

"Sorry."

"Don't be. You should sleep."

He mutters something she can't make out, burying his face in her shirt – one of the many she stole from him ages ago – and shifting his legs to stretch out for sleep. He's always said he likes to sleep this way, hiding in her arms as best he can. He's heavy with muscle, but she won't complain – he's a welcome weight, warm and familiar. His breathing finally slows, and she finds herself stroking down the ridge of his spine over his shirt.

She never thought she'd love this kind of thing the way she does, or be all right with knowing that she probably won't sleep for hours, but she can't say she minds.

April 2025

Reika is three when she manifests the Six Eyes, and Utahime should feel anxious, but she doesn't.

"Rei-chan," she murmurs, tying soft bandages around Reika's eyes after eye drops. "You're going to be just fine, okay?"

And Reika nods, trusting – she believes her, even though now it burns and she does not know why. She believes touchan when he tells her she's his special girl, and that she's going to do amazing things because of the way her eyes burn now, even when there are clouds behind his dull blue eyes when he says things like that. Even Uncle Yuji tells her she's going to be all right – she has no reason to think she won't be.

"What goes around comes around," kaachan likes to say. Reika doesn't know what that means; she asks, once.

"Just that this is exactly how things were supposed to work out," she says, and smiles.

Utahime can't be sure of that, but she thinks, watching Reika outgrow the pain and learn to live with six senses instead of five, that it might just be.

Notes:

A HUGE thank-you to everyone who followed along with Worlds Apart as it was written - you guys kept me going in more ways than you know. I hope you guys will remember this journey fondly as I do. Here's to whatever tomorrow* compels me to write**!

*let's face it, it's me - this might well literally mean tomorrow...
**It's a performing arts high school faculty au, but shhh-