Work Text:
It was disgustingly easy to slaughter the higher ups.
For all of their crowing, Satoru had always known that their strength was more of a bluff—especially when they were a strong gust of wind away from turning to dust. He suspected they spent all of their effort preserving their bodies through whatever fucked up means his Eyes could see but couldn’t comprehend, in the spare moments they had when they weren’t making everyone else’s lives miserable.
Perhaps they might have put up a nominal fight, against anyone less than a grade one active sorcerer, but under the pressure of limitless and the near instant carnage of a particularly condensed instance of blue, they barely got a technique in edgewise before they splattered against the walls. They gathered in one spot because they had to gall to tell him that he could beg to undo his sentence, and it took less than sixty seconds to kill them all. Years of dreaming about finally committing the deed did not create any giddiness or euphoria in its execution. At best, Satoru felt a mix of mild satisfaction, disgust, and apathy. It had been so easy… He always knew it would be. It was so, so easy for him to kill and destroy; Satoru didn’t necessarily believe that was a good thing, and the last thing he wanted was for anyone else to believe the same for themselves.
Satoru stood in the midst of premeditated gore and bloodshed and remained spotless. He stared at his hands anyway, as if blood would appear in the crevices of his fingers amidst the wave of his own agitated cursed energy. A part of him wanted to drop infinity and drench himself in their blood and let it squelch underneath his shoes; the other part of him vaguely wanted to throw up, or scream, or do anything to save him from the utterly underwhelming sensation that gripped his heart in the wake of turning what was left of jujutsu society upside down with a mere flick of his fingers.
In lieu of anything solid, the phantom crawling of nerves trickled through his skin and put a tremor in his fingers. Shoko had given him a clean bill of health after the— the box, once the migraines from momentarily being dunked under the pressure of the entire Pacific Ocean had faded, but sometimes the crawling came back anyway. Everything was overwhelming, compared to the Prison Realm, yet sometimes the lack of stimulus stuck like a tick under his skin and he failed to feel anything anyway, the living world lacking the intensity of nails embedded in his skin.
Satoru should have crushed their heads like grapes with his bare hands. He should have been coated in more blood than Toji had left him in when he ripped him open.
He didn’t, though, and he wasn’t. So Satoru stood, and stared, and wondered.
Suck it, Suguru, he thought mirthlessly, echoes of callous words spoken in the din of Shinjuku over a decade ago settling around him like ash. I’m a monster too.
There had been a time when Satoru knew Suguru better than he knew himself, before they both had been chipped away and whittled into strangers. After the pain faded, Satoru suspected that Suguru had thought—in that thick, illusioned, self-sacrificial head of his—that he would be the monster so Satoru wouldn’t have to. Instead, Satoru had to pile more on his shoulders just to keep the world in some semblance of peace. He still loved Suguru, despite everything, and understood the sentiment behind a level of monstrosity that Satoru never wanted to see on the either of them; he still resented him for leaving him alone—alone as a shield for eleven years, and alone as a sword, standing in a pool of the elders’ blood.
It probably made him a hypocrite, standing there and hating Suguru for thinking he could succeed in being the monster on his own, while his students still stood outside the fucking door, waiting for him despite his attempts to drive them away. Satoru liked to think he learned from Suguru’s mistakes, and that by picking his battles and not turning to extremes like genocide , the depths of monstrosity would not trickle down to them. He couldn’t save them from everything: they were sorcerers, after all. But, Satoru thought, staring at the blood underneath a layer of infinity below him, he could save them from this.
But… if he were truly to learn from Suguru, then he couldn’t walk away. Satoru knew firsthand how crushing that was, and how that birthed a monster in its own right. So, as much as he wanted to run away and teleport to where the late November cold would override the crawling, Satoru took in a shuddering breath, and with a practiced show of bravery, he sucked it up and walked back out the stupid, too-heavy, thick-with-now-useless-seals, door.
Asshole, he thought of Suguru one more time, far too understanding of why it was easier for him to turn his back and abandon everything. Killing the higher ups was easy; this was much harder.
“See?” Satoru gestured to the now lifeless room, purposely casual in light of his students’ scowls. “Barely took five minutes. None of you would have done anything faster than I could have, so no need to feel left out.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Yuuta argued, an uncharacteristic trench in-between his eyebrows.
Oh, Satoru knew what he meant alright. What they all meant. Just as Satoru had meant it when he didn’t want them to have to see it or participate. If things went wrong, their hands would be clean, just as he intended. If Satoru was more on top of things, he would have a better comeback, but admittedly he wasn’t quite back on his game just yet. In this moment, he missed the mask that was his blindfold, but he still couldn’t stomach the smothering darkness, even peppered with the abundance of cursed energy, so soon after…
Luckily, he was the sensei, so he could get away with being a bit petulant. “Too bad,” he whistled, breezing forward for the return hike along the obscenely long hallways of the Jujutsu Headquarters.
“Asshole,” Maki huffed, unaware of the irony of her word-choice as she matched his stride and punched him in the arm.
He let the blow connect, revelling slightly in the way his bones shook under the impact, even if it wasn’t a serious enough punch to affect his balance. A bruise from Maki was better than blood from the elders, after all. Plus, she honestly deserved it.
Yet Maki stared at him in poorly maintained shock. “What the hell, Satoru? I could have broken your arm.”
“But you didn’t, did you?” Satoru grinned, just so somebody would. “Good job pulling back your strength, by the way.”
I’m sorry, he failed to say, eyes catching on the deadened thing that was worming its way into her fierce eyes, and on the katana that looked too much like Mai, that you were alone when you killed your family. I’m sorry you were alone when you had to relearn how to carry yourself when the world became too fragile for you.
“Whatever,” she grumbled, taking the compliment in typical Maki fashion. Which was to say, her lack of fight was an indication of acceptance, and she looked away as she crossed her arms so she wouldn’t be caught looking anything but grumpy.
“Hey hey, you guys keep forgetting I don’t have long legs anymore,” Panda whined, working overtime to keep up even when they weren’t really going that fast. Or maybe they were, because Satoru had set the pace and he wanted to get out of the overly warded catacombs of Headquarters as fast as possible.
“That’s what you get for wanting to follow me to Headquarters,” Satoru chided, knowing full well that all of the second-years were a package deal, and he was secretly glad they still were. Even after everything. Especially after everything.
However, he had no intention of making Panda suffer the return trip, and without a second thought he scooped the now-tinier Panda up into his arms, bypassing the need to slow down altogether. It hurt, how familiar it was—just like when Panda was small the first time, as a proper toddler or cub should be. He shouldn’t be this small now, reduced in stuffing and power and stuck like that because there was nobody with the expertise to fix him.
I’m sorry, he didn’t have the courage to say, that your dad was killed because they hated me. I’m sorry you lost so much that I can’t give back to you.
The blood staining the room behind them would never fix that. There were limits to what monsters could accomplish, after all.
“And we’ll follow you to where you go next,” Yuuta added, determination still marring his face. Satoru was proud of him—incredibly so, in the way that made him wish he could claim the kid as something more than a distant cousin—but damn, he chose an inconvenient hill to die on, here.
“Who taught you to be so stubborn and argumentative?” Satoru teased, adjusting Panda—a blessedly solid and soft object—better in the crook of his arm so he could poke Yuuta with his other. “Where’d Yuuta go?”
The joke fell flat on his own ears when his brain immediately supplied the mental image of Yuuta with stitches across his forehead, fueled especially by the knowledge that Yuuta was similarly stubborn on the subject of fighting Kenjaku. Worst yet, Satoru knew that he would have to, with Satoru going to be predisposed fighting Sukuna.
I’m sorry, he knew Yuuta wouldn’t want to hear, that you have to be so strong, so soon. I’m sorry that they’re going to look at you like how they look at me.
Mercifully, it didn’t look like Yuuta noticed if he faltered. Or, at least, he was too busy flushing in a familiar display of awkwardness, proof that he was still that impossibly gentle boy, to notice or comment on Satoru’s possible spike in energy.
“You did,” Yuuta said softly, fondly, and something in Satoru’s heart started melting. Yuuta laughed a little, and Satoru was beyond glad that the dour thing weighing down his seventeen-year-old’s expression was starting to lift. “And Maki.”
“Damn right,” she snorted, and Satoru laughed along.
“Look at what you did, Satoru,” Panda huffed, fauxly haughty when he was nestled a little too deeply against Satoru’s chest, just like he would when he was a baby and Yaga would drop him off with a long list of dos and don’ts and even longer list of threats if his only available babysitter messed up even a hair on his kid’s body. “Now there’s two of them.”
“Salmon,” Toge agreed with a decisive nod.
If only Satoru could take credit for it. Maybe, if he was being kind to himself, Satoru could accept that it was thanks to him that they were alive and able to grow, but really, the people they became were testaments to their own character, not to his. The pride he felt was not for himself.
“Uh, where are you going next, anyway?” Yuuta asked, the question dialing back the intensity of his previous declaration.
He couldn’t scream on top of a mountain with these four trailing him like magnetic ducklings, so honestly, he didn’t know. Satoru had been too full of anxious anticipation to think that far ahead. “You tell me. This was the only thing on my agenda today.”
Satoru couldn’t run. Not now. He promised them, even if they didn’t know it, and he promised himself, to shield them from the pain of an exposed back in a crowd of people. Satoru may be a monster, but he would be their sensei. A monster for them, never to them.
He received surprise all around for his answer, however, and hints of concern. Maybe it was concerning that he wasn’t putting up a fight, but whatever. Satoru didn’t have the energy for that anyway.
“Tuna,” Toge said, knowing just when to break the silence, and having an idea to boot. He gestured, mimicking a flipping pan and then looking at Satoru pointedly. What was…? Oh! Right. Satoru did promise him to try his new recipe the other day, didn’t he?
With only one arm, there were many recipes and techniques Toge struggled with, now, but apparently being left behind by the other three in the Culling Games meant he had too much time to stress bake, and to focus on recipes he could manage in this state. Toge was still a capable sorcerer, through and through, but such a major injury had a way of altering things irrevocably.
I’m sorry, he thought ruefully, unable to find the proper words to express the sorrow he felt on Toge’s behalf, that you were hurt because I couldn’t escape the trap laid for me. I’m sorry there’s a new reason for people to think of you differently.
“Pancakes?” Satoru said, just to make sure he wasn’t mistaken. “In the afternoon?”
Toge glared flatly, before signing the word ‘lunch’ and glaring at Satoru some more. “Mustard leaf,” he chided, and in that moment Satoru knew he was busted.
“Look, it’s not my fault the geezers set the time close to lunch,” he argued, knowing full well he could have gotten a bite to eat anyway. Though it wasn’t like he needed it, per se…
“Ieri-san said that you keep forgetting to eat,” Yuuta said innocently and all the more savage for it.
Damn, Shoko ratted him out! Figures. Once again, Satoru would be glad that Shoko was climbing out of that hole of hers and finding new people to talk to, except it was at his expense. She had judged his eating habits before, but she didn’t press since she knew full well he had it handled thanks to reverse cursed energy. Unfortunately the stasis of the stupid box really did throw his already abysmal cycle off…
“Okay, okay, you got me,” he surrendered. “But that doesn’t matter, because we’re going to have Toge’s famous pancakes, right?”
“Salmon,” Toge affirmed, and Satoru knew he was going to be in soooo much trouble if he didn’t, at this point.
“As much as it pains me to watch your food crimes, Toge even got whipped cream for you to add,” Maki informed him, the hint of a smirk wiggling its way into the corner of her lips.
“Wait, how is whipped cream on pancakes bad…?” Yuuta wondered.
“He adds it with the maple syrup,” Maki said with disdain, as if it wasn’t delicious. (She sounded just like Megumi, complaining about the same thing, and since Satoru stopped being able to feel hunger, that pain settled to the bottom of his stomach instead, heavy and rotten and enough to take away his appetite, even though he promised otherwise.)
“Okay, yeah that’s gross. Sorry sensei.”
“Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it,” Satoru said with a shrug, and maybe he didn’t do a good job at hiding the hollowness that was started to crawl back through him, because there was a flash of distress in the curl of Yuuta’s cursed energy that had nothing to do with food preferences.
True to their word, nobody left him alone or gave him a break for the rest of the afternoon, from the trip back to campus to the insistence that he sit and watch as Toge made pancakes, handling the process on his own really well except when he used Yuuta or Maki as means to get ingredients or to hold the bowl steady. He sat in the chair that he was threatened into, a similarly banished Panda starting to doze lightly on his knee, and Satoru held onto the gentle warmth of the bustling scene with all the resolve he had left.
Let us be monsters with you, they had said in everything but direct words, but how could he? Satoru took up that burden because he didn’t have a choice, between being born with world-shattering strength and watching a turned back disappear into a crowded street, but he wanted more than anything for them to have the choice not to. Maybe there was always going to be something monstrous in being a sorcerer, and that was okay, but they were still kids, too. He wanted to find a way to express that in a way that will stick, but even if he couldn’t, he could try to prolong that choice that they had until they better understood what it meant.
How could he let any of them so readily choose to be a monster?, he thought as they shoveled pancakes onto his plate and watched him eat with too much of a vested interest, when these kids still had so much kindness left in them, despite it all.
Being a monster wasn’t a strength, but caring about life, both for themselves and for each other? That meant everything.
“‘Cause when it feels like there's nothing you can do
There’s something there still in you
That’s wanting to believe that you, you can do it too
If you can’t make out the edges of your pain
And in the night, you falter
I’ll be there, I have been there too
Just be by your side …
And give you more than words.”
—Hitsujibungaku, more than words (translated)