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“It’s ironic, isn’t it?” Gojo Satoru murmurs. Jogo trembles within his grasp. “When granted everything, you can’t do anything.”
1.
A couple months have passed, Gojo thinks.
He hasn’t really been paying attention to the time, but it’s impossible not to feel the way it wears away at the world – the way it has become lush and green once more, the vast majority of battles long gone, replaced with undergrowth creeping in through the cities that once were, overtaking buildings and ruins, all-consuming.
Gojo gets it – that hunger. Every curse does.
He tries not to think about how he had been so battle-hungry in life, too. It was probably better that way, though – at least he, adrenaline starved and energy-fueled, could withstand being used as a weapon by the people; at least he was more suited than anyone else.
But clearly not well enough. They were all dead, and he was dead-but-not-dead, a miserable ball of inklike void, curled up in on himself as tightly as he can, a restless bundle of cursed energy tucked away into a crevice in one of the endless ruins of the old world. He recalls, through the bitter violence of fight and surrender that forms the very matter of his cursebound soul, Kenjaku’s claim – “Good night, Gojo Satoru. Let us meet in the new world.” Gojo thinks he would have rathered he stayed asleep, in the airport, under the delusion of possibly being satisfied–
“Hungry so soon, little curse?” a voice murmurs. Gojo doesn’t deign it an answer, refusing to even raise an eye on his surface and observe the curse who is clearly intruding on his alone time. Yes, it’s probably dangerous, but it’s just Sukuna, and Sukuna said he would save Gojo for last, and Gojo’s pretty sure there’s still a few curses left on the globe, so he’s got nothing to worry about, really–
He’s promptly picked up by a large, clawed hand, and pressed up against what Gojo at first thinks is merely skin, and then, when it shifts, makes itself evident as one of Sukuna’s mouths, as teeth scrapes against the exterior of his swirling voids.
What the fuck??? Gojo thinks, followed promptly by What the fuck!!!, and something a little like concern and a lot like indignant surprise, because seriously, what!
Laughter brushes against him. “What’s the matter? Am I not allowed to be hungry, too?” Gojo shifts slightly, but all that does is cause Sukuna’s claws to deem him worthy of digging into. “Fear not, little thing. I am merely bored, and my typical nuisance has not been by to entertain me as of late.” Gojo is suddenly immensely thankful that he is a shapeless curse, because if he were still human, he might have done something terrible like flush, which is completely ridiculous, because he was always everyone’s nuisance, but having someone – someone stronger as strong as him – say it, and tolerate it, kind of, in the way only Sukuna does, well…
Gojo thinks, idly, that he might be a little lonely, but the strongest isn’t meant to get lonely, so maybe he’s just losing it a bit, like Kenjaku did.
He shifts a bit, forming an eye on his surface at last, and Sukuna lets him. Gojo blinks, takes in the overwhelming everything that is having sight after months without, and then focuses his gaze on Sukuna, who is peering down at him, gaze lidded and leisurely. For good measure, Gojo scrunches up his eye, the way he does when he pouts, and Sukuna blinks slowly at him, before promptly pressing a bite into him.
Gojo thinks of many potential responses, ranging from Hey!!! (indignant) to heyyy (allured) to I will bite you back I swear (hungry) but none of that matters when he currently lacks a mouth, and canines are currently sinking into the essence of his very being, utterly uncaring of it all, because it’s Sukuna, and Sukuna gets what Sukuna wants, and Gojo hasn’t even made any move to stop him. He could’ve slipped out of Sukuna’s grasp, he could’ve formed a mouth and said something, he could’ve bitten back, but he didn’t, and Gojo doesn’t quite know what to do with that, so, like many of his problems – a severe lack of sugar, the end of the world, the death of everyone he loved, et cetera – he shoves it into the dismal corners of the back of his mind to never be touched again.
And so, Gojo lets himself by dug into, and it could almost be considered gentle, the way Sukuna never quite pierces through his matter, the way Sukuna doesn’t tear away at him. It’s nothing like the way Gojo gets with his meals, when Sukuna unleashes him onto a curse or town of curses or an entire city of them, and it reminds him that they’re both at their core terrible, hedonistic things, except Sukuna was always the more patient one out of the two, always the one who enjoyed savouring his meals.
He waited aeons for Gojo Satoru to be born. It only makes sense that he was willing to wait just as long for Gojo’s death, his exorcising, too.
Gojo closes his eye, letting it melt into the rest of his being, and lets Sukuna chew.
2.
Gojo thinks that he must be completely and utterly pathetic, to act like this, but he can’t bring himself to care, not over the roaring, all-consuming hunger.
He had barely dragged himself to Sukuna’s door. One foot then the other, too weak to bother spending energy on twisting himself into a more malleable form. No, he still resembled his old self – somewhat – with two legs and white hair and void-like blood spilling from his middle, from his mouth. His old self would never stoop this low, would never give into the hunger the way he did now, but – he wasn’t that person anymore, was he?
It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he is a black-hole, consuming and devouring and craving, and Sukuna is a beast inclined towards something adjacent to compassion, or perhaps amusement, for terrible, starving things. That is what led Gojo here, sprawled across the floor of one of the temple’s many rooms, mangled hands digging clawed fingertips into the matt, faux-wound spilling inklike ichor onto the tatami like a bad memory.
Sukuna finds him like that: messy and dishevelled, a wreck, really, pathetic and weak and hungry and left entirely to the whim of the King of Curses.
“Oh, my,” Sukuna says, amused. Condescending. “What do we have here?”
Gojo groans from his spot on the floor. “I’m hungry,” he mumbles into the matt. “Sukuna, Sukuna, I’m hungry, I’m really–”
“Is that so? Well, I am sure another city will fill you up.” Gojo peers blearily up to glare at him. Sukuna knows what he is doing, forcing Gojo to admit it. To admit that he is so weak he can barely move, yet alone fight, that he needs Sukuna of all people to help him. “Is something the matter?”
Gojo hisses weakly at him, teeth scraping along the floor. “I’m hungry, Sukuna.” The Strongest does not need to beg, to plead, not to anyone. When Toji cut him in half, Gojo killed him. When the Higher Ups ruined it all, Gojo killed them, too. When Sukuna sliced him in two, well… Sukuna had always been the exception, hadn’t he?
Sukuna smiles. There is nothing kind about it. “I am aware, little thing. What do you want me to do about it?” Gojo whines, muffled into the matt, and Sukuna laughs meanly. “Let me guess – you cannot even hunt like this, can you? Did you drag yourself here for me to feed you, I wonder? Or are you here because you cannot help but want to feed upon me?”
“Please,” Gojo mumbles. He doesn’t know which he’s asking for.
Sukuna tilts his head from where he is standing by the sliding doors. “Come on, then. Surely you aren’t so weak that you cannot make it even a few steps?”
Gojo snarls, knows it’s not intimidating with him weak and near-immobile. Still, he drags himself forwards on shaky arms, nails getting ensnared in the tatami, faux-blood spilling around him, until he is before the other curse, trembling, teeth bared.
“That wasn’t so difficult, was it?” Sukuna croons, mocking. He kneels gently to the floor, two hands coming to cradle Gojo’s jaw. His fingertips brush over high cheekbones, before digging meanly into the flesh below them, forcing Gojo’s maw wide. He traces over razor-edged teeth, prying Gojo’s mouth open further, ignoring the low growl he gets in response. “What is stopping me from leaving you here? Why should I help you?”
Gojo blinks up at Sukuna with heavy eyes, thinks that if he were in a better state he might say something like you said to trust you or it’s your fault that I’m in such a disarray. He isn’t in a better state, though, and so instead he simply lets his eyelids slip shut, his weight sinking into Sukuna’s fire-kissed palms, malleable and pliant.
He can’t help the way he shivers when he feels Sukuna prick the pad of his finger on one of Gojo’s teeth, letting the blood spill over, trickling into his mouth. It’s not enough to satiate him, but he drinks it up all the same, licking at it feebly until the wound seals over. “Please,” he slurs out between the thumbs in his mouth. Please, more. Sukuna cocks a grin at him.
“Greedy,” Sukuna chides, and Gojo shifts at the words, but then Sukuna is snapping a finger, and the door is sliding open once more. Uraume appears on the other side, dragging a first-grade curse, tossing it on the floor next to Sukuna and nodding, before they are disappearing once more, the click of the door closing signalling their exit. The first-grade seems all but exorcised, unable to move. Just like himself, Gojo tries not to think. Gojo’s brief confusion stumbles to a screeching half when Sukuna tears off a portion of it and offers it to him, on hand stretching his jaw wide, another placing the morsel inside. “Eat,” Sukuna commands.
Gojo eats.
They continue like that for a little while – Sukuna tears off pieces, and places them inside Gojo’s maw, and Gojo chews, and for all that he is a prideful and cocky thing, his hunger surpasses that, and so he continues to let Sukuna treat him like some plaything, tries to convince himself that really he is the one winning here – getting Sukuna to give him what he wants.
It’s when Sukuna is placing the last piece inside his mouth that Gojo realises he is still starving – that dreadful, all-consuming hunger that never really leaves him – and decides on impulse to bite down, hard, on the fingers in his mouth. Blood spills over, thick with cursed energy, and for a brief moment, Gojo feels victorious, feels utterly elated, until he glances up at Sukuna.
The King of Curses is staring down at him, utterly impassive, but his pupils are blown wide, threatening, hungry. It is the look of a predator. Gojo freezes, meeting his gaze, and the two stare at each other, before Sukuna twitches ever so slightly and Gojo promptly turns himself into liquid matter, slipping out of Sukuna’s grasp and reforming on the other side of the room.
Sukuna raises a brow. “I was going to give you more, but evidently that isn’t necessary, little curse.”
Shit.
Gojo lets out a whine, wills himself to look a little more human as he turns his signature puppy eyes that never failed to work on Ijichi or Suguru. Sukuna blinks at him lazily, and leisurely rises to his feet, turning to leave the room.
“Oh– c’mon, don’t be like that, Sukunaaa–”
The door slams shut. Gojo sighs.
3.
Gojo’s body feels heavy all over, slumped against the other curse’s back, and he vaguely registers the uncanny appearance he currently has is; he was never as good as upholding his own humanity as Sukuna was – whatever humanity meant.
He’s dripping curse-ooze-blood-stuff from his slack jaw, spilling down Sukuna’s shoulder and front, and his claws are twitching from where Gojo’s arms are wrapped around Sukuna’s muscled neck. “I’m hungry,” Gojo grumbles into the other curse’s shoulder.
“Mhm,” Sukuna replies, and the sound is so familiar that it hurts. For a brief moment, Gojo is startlingly reminded of Itadori. That happens, sometimes – Sukuna will make a little comment, will say something in a certain way, that reminds Gojo that Sukuna was once trapped in somebody else’s body, learning the old-new world from the perspective of one of Gojo’s students.
Momentarily, Gojo wonders what his students would think of him now, seeing the man meant to be their saviour and guidance like this. Yuta had promised Gojo that he would not be a monster alone, and he isn’t, but only because Sukuna was right here with him, and wasn’t that terrible to think?
Like everything else, Gojo carefully shoves the thought into the back of his mind. It’s gotten easier and easier to do so; he isn’t sure if its the hunger, or the fact that names and faces have begun to slip away, or how Sukuna is there, with him, so often nowadays. Or perhaps its the scenery, the return of sprawling rainforests and vast deserts, the remnants of the old world slipping beneath the surface, swallowed whole by the earth.
Gojo briefly thinks that he could swallow the earth and still starve. He’s not sure if it’s because he’s a curse, or because he’s himself. Was he always this hungry? He always had the power to obliterate a country with the snap of a finger – that, everyone knew. He can’t quite remember why he never acted on it. Was it some attempt at compassion for all the smaller creatures of the earth? He can’t remember. That version of himself feels long-gone, now.
He sighs, tucking the bridge of his nose against the muscle of Sukuna’s neck, beneath his ear. Sukuna just let him feed upon the curses inhabiting a village, and then two, when Gojo had protested it wasn’t enough. However many hundred curses, and yet it wasn’t enough.
“...I’m hungry,” he repeats, grumbling. Sukuna doesn’t bother with a response, seemingly ignoring him.
Gojo doesn’t like being ignored.
He grumbles and pouts and prods at Sukuna’s shoulder for a while, and when that doesn’t work, he sighs, inhaling deeply – not that he has the need for that sort of thing any more – and takes in Sukuna’s cursed energy, delightful and dangerous and promising. It’s so close, pressed against Gojo’s mouth and nose, that he could simply just–
He takes a bite.
Sukuna stills. Gojo blinks, and it takes him a moment to realise what he’s done, what he’s doing, his pin-sharp teeth half buried in Sukuna’s shoulder. It’s only a nibble, really, jaw not unhinged anywhere near as wide as it could be, but he’s still undeniably biting.
…Oops?
When Sukuna still doesn’t shift, doesn’t even say a word, Gojo internally shrugs, and thinks fuck it, because he’s never made good decisions in the past, and he doesn’t plan on starting now. So, he lets his teeth sink a little deeper, and the swell of curse-infused blood scalds his throat, burns him alive in the best way possible, as if he’s eating the sun, and he thinks he’s going to go into a frenzy, until–
In one moment, Gojo is biting down. In the next, he has been torn away from the flesh, and is being pressed neck-first into the ground below, another two arms pinning his own on either side of him. The last hand grasps the side of Gojo’s face, forcing him to look up at Sukuna.
“Wow, Sukuna!” Gojo gets out through his teeth, half strangled. “If you wanted to pin me down, you could’ve just asked!” He winks.
Sukuna glares at him. Gojo winks again, in case he missed it the first time. Sukuna’s still glaring. “You think you are funny, little thing,” Sukuna states with a sneer.
Gojo shrugs as much as he can, pinned down like this. “I mean, yeah…?” Sukuna rolls his eyes, and then he’s leaning right into Gojo’s space, so close that he can taste the other curse in the air.
“Brat. Do not bite off more than you can chew.”
Gojo meets his gaze. “Well actually I can chew that much in fact you have seen me chew like a dozen curses twice your size in the span of a minute so I really don’t think that’s a good assessment to make like I mean–”
Sukuna tightens the grip on Gojo’s neck. Gojo, in that moment, forgets to breathe – forgets he doesn’t need to, too, forgets that he can dissolve in Sukuna’s palms and slink away.
Staring at Sukuna like this, gazing right into Sukuna’s eyes, into his own reflection captured within them, all he can think about is the way he is trapped. There is no escaping the end of the world.
“Point…taken…” Gojo grits out after a long moment that could be mere seconds or mere hours. Sukuna breaks their gaze, shatters it like he shatters everything, and presses his own teeth – double rowed, like a shark – into Gojo’s shoulder, right where Gojo had been biting into Sukuna moments prior. At the slightest nibbling of Gojo’s flesh, he shivers. “Point – gah, ow – taken!”
Sukuna smiles into his skin. “Good curse.”
4.
Gojo’s been lounging around, head slumped over Sukuna’s thigh, for what he suspects is approximately two years. Typically, he’d move around more, especially if he were on his own, but the number of curses left in the world has begun to dwindle, and so too has his energy with it.
It’s been a millenia, after all.
He’s been spending less and less time on his own, as the centuries have gone past. It almost feels like he’s back in the prison realm again, stuck in an endless lack of time. Curses, Gojo thinks, are stationary beings at heart. They are born from an amalgamation of individual moments, and are condemned to remain those snapshots of emotions for the entirety of their existence. Gojo can barely think past his all-consuming hunger, and hurt, and fear – past the battlefield, past being used as a weapon, past being alone, past being the strongest. He can barely think past the fact that he feels empty, so empty that he fears he would still be starving even if he ate the entire universe.
He nestles deeper into the cloth covering Sukuna’s leg.
They’re perched upon Sukuna’s throne, where Gojo assumes he’s looking down at a room devoid of subjects. Gojo wouldn’t know. His eyes – all six – are heavy lidded, his face buried into Sukuna’s warmth, barely suppressed by the fabric. He’s half liquid, the space where his being meets the skulls drooping and malleable. Gojo wouldn’t want to crush them – they are not breathing, and they are not an enemy.
The only things that Sukuna and Gojo kill are humans, and the curses born from them. When Gojo had once asked about all the skulls – the non human ones – Sukuna had shrugged, and stated that one of the disaster curses had brought them to him, with the claim that they did not want to erode. You did it for them? Gojo had queried. I do things only because I want to, Sukuna had reminded.
So – that leaves them here, perched on a tower of skulls together, Gojo placid where he leans against Sukuna’s thigh, a clawed hand raking gently through void-stained locks, dragging out a low, liquid hum out of Gojo. It’s strange – relaxing, if that is what this is. Gojo thinks that Shoko would have firmly attested to the fact that he has never relaxed a day in his life – even when you play games or watch movies, you always make it a competition, it’d be a skill if it weren’t so annoying – but he’s dead, now, and so is she, so what he did in his life doesn’t matter – except it does, because all that’s left of him in death is the stain of the negativity he felt in life.
The claws in his hair sharply tug. Ah. The King of Curses has caught on to him – can probably taste the negativity radiating from Gojo on his own tongues. The claws tug again, demanding, and Gojo tries to move with them, but realises he is so exhausted that he simply… can’t.
Eventually, Sukuna seemingly decides to take matters into his own hands, because Gojo is abruptly being yanked up by the hair, until his eyelids slip open, his gaze blurrily landing upon Sukuna’s own. “Mm?” Gojo hums. Sukuna doesn’t deign him a response, simply observing him for a long moment – seconds, minutes, hours? – before suddenly, Sukuna’s other three arms are prodding him incessantly. Gojo grumbles at Sukuna in response, snapping his teeth as much as he can.
“Become a blob.” Sukuna eloquently says.
“Huh?”
Sukuna briefly ceases the poking of one of his arms in order to wave it around lazily. “Become a void thing. I want to take you somewhere. It is a long journey.”
Gojo frowns. “I can…just teleport if…” he blinks. The lack of cursed energy is impacting him more than he’d like to admit. “...Just, gimme more energy, I’ll teleport…”
“I want to walk.” Sukuna tells him.
“What?”
Sukuna doesn’t repeat himself. Gojo stares at him. “Why would we walk?” Sukuna stares back at him like he’s an idiot.
“Because I want to.” At Gojo’s continued baffled stare, Sukuna laughs, dragging him forward slightly, so that he’s slumped on Sukuna’s stomach. “Aren’t you forgetting, little curse? It doesn’t matter how long it takes, because we have all the time in the world, because I want it that way. I can take my time, because I have taken time itself, because I wanted it. You forget my patience, forget that it is why you are like this, that it is why you were even born in the first place. You forget yourself, Gojo Satoru.”
Gojo blinks. It’s the most either of them have said in years. He decides that he does not care enough to verbally respond, and promptly drops his weight onto Sukuna in proper, his face melting into Sukuna’s sternum. Like this, Gojo can hear the faux-beat of Sukuna’s man-made heart.
“Brat. Did you forget what I asked of you, too?” Sukuna grumbles. Gojo peacefully pretends to be asleep – as if curses can even be such a thing – until Sukuna promptly scoops him up in all four palms, Gojo near liquidlike already, malleable in Sukuna’s hands. There goes being a nuisance, he supposes. Didn’t even bait a comment out of him, ugh. Satoru doesn’t have the time to lament the loss any further; he is moulded by Sukuna into a rough sphere – the tightest his immense cursed energy can be compressed into – before he’s abruptly placed on something warm.
It takes Gojo a beat to realise that he has been placed in Sukuna’s mouth. The stomach-mouth.
If he could, Gojo would pout. He’d like to think that if he could, Gojo would spread the particles of his being out as thinly as he could, and escape, or better yet, try and swallow Sukuna whole and see how he likes it. The only problem is this: Gojo can’t, and even worse, he doesn’t even think he would if he could. Not yet, at least.
It’s just… he’s warm, and comfortable, sat like this, and some would call it dehumanising, but the two of them never valued humanity above everything else like that anyways, and Gojo has always been alone, and Sukuna has too, but like this, they are undeniably connected, in the fear that Gojo can’t help but feel throughout his atoms, in the fear that Sukuna can taste on his tongue. It’s terrifying, like sleep paralysis – out of control yet completely at rest, and comforting in that way, too, a yawning grave swallowing him whole, seemingly secure in its promise that this is the end.
Despite the uncontrollable, base fear deep in the core of his energy, Gojo finds himself relaxing as he begins to rock in time with each of Sukuna’s steps. He has no idea where they’re going – the two of them have wiped out every curse civilisation that appeared, with only the smallest clusters and lone curses remaining for them now. They could have simply devoured landmasses whole, but they liked the thrill of the chase too much, and only fed off of humans and human-spawn anyways.
Gojo would almost go as far as to say that the trip was comforting, with how he was dozing, letting the days or weeks or months pass by, until abruptly, there are canines digging into him.
Gojo stills.
The teeth sink further. Gojo wonders, fleetingly, how many other curses, other humans, have experienced this. He wonders if they all felt fear, too.
He wonders if they tasted as sweet as he does.
If Gojo still bothered with a heart in his liquid form, he thinks it would be racing, but he doesn’t have one. Not that it matters – pressed close in Sukuna’s insides like this, he can hear Sukuna’s bloodred heart beating in doubles, enough for the both of them. The only difference is that Sukuna isn’t scared, and why would he be?
Sukuna is the end of everything.
His stomach-teeth still at last, buried into Gojo’s void-flesh-being, and after seconds, or minutes, or hours or days or weeks or eternities pass, Gojo finds himself settling once more, too tired to fight back, and almost too tired to fear. Almost.
It forces him to remain half-present, but his energy is seeping away from him – it takes him a moment to realise it’s because he’s bleeding, in the way only curses can, and that Sukuna is slowly sucking the energy – the almost-life – out of him. He thinks he might be losing his mind. He thinks that he can barely think at all.
…
He’s getting really tired.
…
They must have been walking for a long time. Perhaps a month, perhaps a century, perhaps half a millennium – what’s the difference, really?
…
During life, the Six Eyes will utilise Infinity in order to keep themselves safe from all harm. It is a barrier effectively as broad as the universe. Not even the sun’s warmth can breach it. It lives cold, and untouchable.
…
It faintly thinks that Ryomen the King of Curses its murderer Sukuna the heat-death of the universe must be a warm embrace, for that is what it feels.
…
Is it dead yet…? It already died, didn’t it? It was killed on the uneven courtyard steps, torn in half. It figured out a way to breathe, back then.
It can no longer recall how.
…
…
…
Eventually, after seconds or minutes or hours or days or weeks or months or years or decades or– the bite loosens, and it is spilled out, after centuries or millennia or aeons or eternity– away from the all-consuming warmth, the gentle caress of bladelike teeth tearing into it like the sun’s warmth. It is left cold again, and untouched. Pure, if not for the rot of vengeancedespondencyfailure that makes up the very threads of its being, acrid and decaying; negative energy, like any other curse.
Negative energy, like vengeance-despondency-failure-fear.
“Get up,” a voice commands. “You are the strongest, no?” It’s mean, but–
It rebuilds itself, atom-by-atom, molecule-by-molecule, until it resembles itself, bone-white hair and bitter blue eyes and the seams of the universe running down its cross-section.
Despite everything, it gets up, and thinks it might be starving.
5.
On their little ‘trip’, they hunt down a few dozen curses, and it still isn’t enough.
It isn’t enough, but Gojo’s feeling more energised than he has in centuries, the thrill of the chase coursing through him, the cruel satisfaction of sinking his teeth in deep, the blissful reward of cursed energy flooding his body.
It isn’t enough.
“I’m hungry,” Gojo informs Sukuna, for the fifth time in however-long. Misery craves company, wasn’t that the saying? Cursed energy yearns for more and more and more. Would Suguru think of him him as too passive, even now? Craving, hungry, yet forever damned to follow the wills of someone else? Fushiguro Toji had forced him to come back to life, the Higher Ups had forced him to use that life for everyone else's sake, Kenjaku had confined him into a prison that lasted for seconds/minutes/hours/eternities and–
“I’m hungry, Sukuna. Sukuna, Sukuna, Sukuna, c’mon, I’m–”
Fingers latch on to the ink-stained hair at the back of Gojo’s nape. “What are you going to do about it, little curse?” Ugh. Ugh! It’s not like Gojo chose this. Any of this. The first time Gojo Satoru made a choice of his own, it was to make a binding vow, to give his death for everyone else. The last time Gojo Satoru had made a choice of his own, it was to fight Sukuna with his everything, and give up his corpse in the aftermath. There is no interlude to this story.
“I’ll eat Uraume if you don’t do something about it,” Gojo settles on. “Or hunt you, instead.” he adds.
A laugh, pressed into the faux-skin of Gojo’s neck. A shiver runs through him, rippling across galaxies. “Careful,” Sukuna murmurs. “I might just eat you alive.”
Gojo cackles. “‘Might?’” he echoes, “I didn’t think you were ever uncertain about anything at all.”
Sukuna merely smiles, a baring of teeth that looks like it promises the end of the world. Like it promises the end of the universe, of universes, of everything.
…It’s a bad idea, to threaten Sukuna, of all people, but… Gojo’s hungry, and Sukuna’s the ideal prey, really – there’s extra arms and a large chest and a near-infinite vault of cursed energy and everything! Gojo had promised Sukuna a rematch, after all. Perhaps it was time.
The earth will reach its half-life soon, the sun brighter than it has ever been, oceans and forests beginning to dry out, victim to the sun’s natural course of life. He can see it, the changes in the atoms and molecules, the slow shift as the earth runs itself weary. If he looks further, he can just-barely make out the birth and death of stars and universes; they’re as close to Gojo as earth when Infinity forces everything so far away.
Sukuna’s hand remains heavy on his nape, burning, branding.
The King of Curses is the only cursed energy in sight, outside of Gojo’s own. It’s a little like a beacon and a lot like a promise, like the last ties he needs to cut, in order to ascend, to achieve nirvana.
Gojo starves.
He’s going to do it, he realises.
Cause and effect; Sukuna is born, a thousand years later, Gojo is born, and the world’s balance shifts once again. That balance is tenuous, now, with only them and the burning sun and the dying earth on the scales.
He’s going to do it. He’s going to kill Sukuna. Like he promised he would.
Sukuna’s fingers threaded through the hair of his nape feels something like a promise, and a lot like a threat.
—
Gojo Satoru is – was – the strongest for a reason.
Slight problem: Sukuna also was – is – the King of Curses for a reason.
See, the thing is this – whether Gojo was the strongest because he was Gojo, or he was Gojo because was the strongest, the truth is that physical strength isn’t enough. It doesn’t matter if his identity as a person was defined by his role as a weapon, if, part of his weaponhood is being smart. Or, in Shoko’s words, “the stupidest smart person half-alive.”
Gojo Satoru, after all, was able to awaken the full extent of his powers when he had been killed – a feat as rare as being gifted/cursed/utterly doomed with them in the first place.
So – he knows, even in this state, that he has a chance to win.
“You do not seem bothered by us being alone in the world,” Sukuna murmurs.
They are lounging together on sun-kissed stones, bathing in the evening sun and the restless wind. Sukuna is perched upon the rocks caressing the shallow creak, while Satoru remains draped across him, fluidlike void dipping into the slopes of Sukuna’s muscles, head settled upon the cushioning of his chest.
The world is silent. At night, they will stare into the stars, and Sukuna will murmur the name of each into Gojo’s ear, like he has for the past few days. The sky is prettier without the light pollution, Gojo thinks. He’s always been alone in seeing all the stars, as a Six Eyes; he supposes that’s barely changed. Except…
The hand knotted into his hair tugs. Right. Gojo forgot to respond. “Duh,” he mumbles eloquently. Was he always this tired? “We’ve always been the strongest.”
(The strongest. The loneliness that follows. The one who will teach you about love is…)
Sukuna laughs. The rumble shakes Gojo in his entirety, with how close they are pressed together. “Oh? No sympathy for Uraume?”
Gojo doesn’t bother with a reply. How is he meant to feel? The stars above are so bright, yet when he looks around, the world is utterly empty; it is completely barren of cursed energy. It is totally void.
Except for Gojo and Sukuna.
Gojo shifts, pressing himself into the plush of Sukuna’s body further. “...You never bothered with the whole, y’know,” he says, gesturing vaguely at Sukuna’s chest.
Sukuna raises a brow, cut into thirds. “Neither did you,” he replies. Gojo rolls his eyes. What is there to say? Maybe he would have bothered in another life, where he wasn’t the strongest, but strongest enough to save his students, to save Suguru, to save all the people who mattered and not himself. Maybe, once he’d been free of the higher ups, Gojo Satoru could’ve indulged in his own autonomy as a person and not as a weapon.
He is not that person.
Things like personhood and gender and relationships all seem so distant from him, now. He wonders, fleetingly, if that is the nature of curses as a whole, or if it is something inevitable to the own void that makes up his matter, and the endless space between him and everyone and everything as distant as the stars, and yet–
Sukuna’s touch is warm against him. When did Infinity grow so thin that it retreated into himself? It doesn’t matter.
He just needs to defeat Sukuna.
There is meaning in that.
—
In the body of a boy, the cursed spirit of Gojo Satoru remains perched upon the remnants of the former Tokyo Jujutsu Tech.
It is nigh unrecognisable, to any other eyes. Satoru knows this place, not from any kind of vision granted by the Six Eyes, but rather from the pull of his own memories. He has always been good with sight, and even better at longing for what is long-gone. He recognises the precise crest of the mountains, the type of trees. He finds an old cave that he, Suguru and Shoko had once discovered, and turned into a secret place to hide from Yaga. The walls have caved in. The dust has settled; the collapse occurred long ago.
The wreckage of the school is completely overgrown, replaced with newer and gentler life.
Satoru is not a part of it. He’s not sure if he ever was.
He lets his feet, void-stained and shorter than they would eventually come to be, carry him to where he made his first vow. It’s easy, coming up with his last. Satoru has always been quick-witted, and has always been a product of cause and effect.
A millenia ago, Ryomen Sukuna is born. A millenia later, Gojo Satoru is born.
In mere hours, the Six Eyes is reborn. In mere hours, the balance of the world shifts.
Throughout the years, the balance of the world remains shifted. Throughout the years, the Star Plasma Vessel grows, too.
In a second, the Star Plasma Vessel dies. For a second, Gojo Satoru dies, too.
Gojo Satoru is dead, the Six Eyes brings himself back to life.
Gojo Satoru is alive. The King of Curses is incarnated.
The incarnated King of Curses kills Gojo Satoru. His first binding vow brings him back.
Action and reaction.
Sukuna kills everyone and everything; Gojo Satoru exorcises Sukuna. He has to. There’s meaning in that, in the infinite cause-and-effect that Satoru has been caught within his entire life. So it’s simple, really. He has to do it, and so he will. He will make another vow.
The terms of this one are simpler than the last:
I will use every last part of myself in killing Sukuna.
Satoru will die either way, in the same way he inevitably died at the hands of Fushiguro Toji for not looking back, in the same way he inevitably died at the hands of Sukuna for not looking forward.
But this way, there will be meaning in it. That’s what Suguru had said, right? Satoru has been dead for seconds and for infinities, growing weary in the yawning grave of a dying earth and its impeding heat-death, wrapped in the warmth of Sukuna’s own arms. Even without Sukuna here in this moment, he still feels the burn, hotter than the sun.
Satoru was a weapon in life with nobody left to wield him. In death, his blade has been sheathed by the one he has to kill.
He has to. It’s just– cause and effect.
When he goes to wrap his arms around himself, gangly with youth, his arms don't meet the faux-cloth over his stomach, stopped by his own Infinity. Oh. He sees himself as a threat. That would explain the burning. Satoru closes his eyes, and lowers it manually.
When his arms wrap around himself, he only feels cold.
—
It will work.
It has to work.
Satoru is good at working in definites. Exorcise. Learn every technique you possible can. Exorcise. Protect the innocents. Exorcise. Protect the kids. Exorcise. Remain trapped for seconds-minutes-eternities in the prison realm. Wake up. Exorcise. Sign this meaningless agreement paper to handing over his corpse as a weapon to Yuuta. Exorcise. Die.
He’s never been good at the vague inbetweens, like Suguru is the best and worst person you have ever known; do something about it – he doesn’t, until there’s only the definite option of Suguru’s death left – like a spinning compass oscillating between North and South with nowhere to go, like you are sitting in an airport somewhere far away and you are sitting as curse reborn and–
None of that matters.
The definite is this: cause and effect.
Sukuna killed everyone, including Gojo Satoru.
The curse of that sixeyes child friend man weapon animal Gojo Satoru will kill Sukuna.
He has to.
It will work.
—
They are back in the flowerbeds. It is a warm, perhaps perfect, day. The sun settles pleasantly over the fields, and the grasses are gentle against Gojo’s back, infinity discarded. He asks,
“Would you change anything?”
There is birdsong in the distance. It is unfamiliar to that of Tokyo. Sukuna hums, harmonising with it. “No. I got what I wanted, did I not?” A beat. Gojo wonders if it is timed to that of Sukuna’s faux heart. “If I could not get what I wanted, my wants would have changed, and naturally, I would have changed too. I like to be satisfied. I am satisfied. I won. It is just us, and Uraume.” Something about his face softens, when Gojo focuses his gaze on the slope of Sukuna’s nose, the ease of the muscles in his jaw, his neck. Three hands settled between the rise of his chest and the dip of his second mouth, the fourth curled around Gojo’s neck. Eyes lidded, staring at the sun, unafraid.
Ryomen Sukuna, the King of Curses, satisfied.
Gojo rolls over, until his face is pressed to the side of Sukuna’s ribs, and lets the sunlight wash over him. He dozes to the gentle movements of Sukuna’s skin and daydreams of killing them both.
—
Inhale, exhale. It’s all meaningless, with Gojo being a curse now, but he does it nonetheless, so that Sukuna will not sense the fluctuations of his energy.
He is here to kill them, after all.
It’s simple: he brings his right arm forward, poised towards where he can taste Sukuna and Uraume’s presence in the air, and his thumb settles over his index finger.
How long has it been, since Gojo was no longer alone? Enough time has passed for them to clear the world of humans and curses alike, bereft of any place to hide from Gojo’s Six Eyes. He has incinerated entire cities. He has eaten them alive, and Sukuna has, too. Uraume froze an entire village, and Sukuna thawed it until it burned. The world has long since buried itself. Perhaps it is time that Gojo lays Sukuna and Uraume and himself to rest, too.
The fabric of himself as a curse is made of revenge and the frustration of a broken promise and loss and anger and fear and–
The curse of Gojo Satoru stares down the distant figures of Sukuna and Uraume, and moves to flick his fingers forward: Hollow Purple.
The world divides before Gojo can divide it. There is a valley scored through the earth, the universe itself cut in two, and through the rumbling of the world falling in on itself and the faint sting of a missing right arm – severed in two in the divide – Gojo savours the taste of his own fear: sweet.
It lasts only a brief half-second, before Gojo is teleporting, and then he is running, and teleporting again, and running again, melting down from human into mere galaxies that pool across the earth. This is a game they have played for a hundred millennia and barely any time at all in the vast overarching tremble of eternity: The King of Curses hunts down the Six-Eyes. He can feel Sukuna close behind, chasing, chasing, predator and prey.
Weapons are not meant to be prey.
Gojo turns around. He feels like a curse in the same way he did in life; his galaxies and ink-black matter swirled with hopelessness and frustration and the willingness to fight despite it and –
the prison realm opens behind him
– fear.
The fight is over in minutes. And what are minutes, to the eternities Gojo Satoru has spent existing? In one moment, he is lunging forward, teeth snapping at the bared skin of Sukuna’s neck, hopeless and restless and hungry, and in the next, he is being swallowed whole by the prison realm.
Its jaws are silent. The last thing he sees is the cutting grin of Sukuna’s maw.
+1
The prison realm is endless nothing. There is no clear distinction between where the void of Gojo’s being ends and the emptiness of the realm begins. His galaxies, dimmed and afraid, spill between the crevices of skeletons. He is not afraid of death, but…
From birth, Gojo Satoru was alone: the Six Eyes user is born once every few lifetimes. He was hailed the strongest from childhood. Surrounded by maids and other prestigious family, but utterly above them, and thus, utterly alone. Not lonely. He’s not lonely.
For a brief moment, Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru eclipsed each other, and Satoru was not alone. A handful of months is nothing in the grand scheme of the universe. In the prison realm, that first time, Gojo was accompanied only by the memories of lost affections and decomposing bodies in stasis, for several eternities.
But Sukuna – Sukuna was someone alongside him. He understood what it meant to be the strongest. The loneliness that follows. The one who will teach you about love is…
For however many seconds or minutes or hours or days or years or eternities that they have spent together, Gojo has been not alone, not truly.
He never expected to be back here.
He never…
Curling up within the webs of its own galaxies, the curse finds itself in the body of a child once more, wide-eyed and perhaps, lonely.
—
“Hey, Shoko, I was wondering,” Satoru begins. Beside him, Suguru rolls his eyes. Obviously, Satoru elbows him in retaliation, because rude! Their would-be fist fight is peacefully resolved by Shoko’s gesture for Satoru to continue. “So like, what even happens when people die.”
Shoko blinks. “Real descriptive,” Suguru helpfully inputs.
“I’m pretty sure when people die, they like, are dead,” Shoko adds.
Satoru groans, and rests his head upon his folded arms. “Fine, whatever,” he mutters. Assholes.
Suguru pokes him, seemingly guilty. Serves him right. “Why do you ask?” he murmurs into Satoru’s ears. “You’re the strongest, aren’t you? You shouldn’t worry about things like that,” A thoughtful pause. “Besides, I think that if you set your mind to it, you could do anything you tried to, even cheating death. Why, that reminds me, speaking of things you could do if you put your mind to it, our physics homework due tomorrow, Satoru–”
“Wowthatscrazy but I have to go actually! Cya ‘round, Shoko, Suguru!” Satoru chirps, hurrying to his feet.
Suguru is right, he decides. There’s nothing to worry about.
He’s the strongest. There’s no need to be afraid.
He’s the strongest.
—
When the prison realm is opened once more, the curse inside tumbles out in silence. It lays there for a beat, then another, curled and too-still.
“Little thing,” Sukuna murmurs. Hums. Pokes at it. “Get up.” It curls in on itself. Sukuna stares for a moment longer, before rising to his feet, and turning away.
Predictably, it strikes. Sukuna meets Gojo’s gnashing teeth with a grin. “Fight me,” he hisses. Gojo goes for the throat; Sukuna goes for the wrists. Gojo melts; Sukuna dismantles him. Gojo puts himself back together; Sukuna moves to unleash his domain. Back and forth. It’s almost nostalgic.
Perhaps Gojo has not changed as much as he had thought.
Their fights are rapid; Gojo vaguely wonders where Uraume is, if they got taken out in the initial battle. He wonders if he is fighting more honestly, without an audience. He wonders if anything about himself has ever been authentic at all.
It happens in only a moment.
Gojo is summoning his domain – Infinity has been cut again, and Sukuna’s domain has swallowed them both whole, and one of Sukuna’s palms is enclosed around the soft part of the underside of his jaw, thumb digging in beneath his ear. He moves to retaliate; the sound of the prison realm opening once more leaves Gojo still.
Sukuna smiles. “See?” he says. “I win,”
There are a million things Gojo could say to him. Shut up is a good start, a cocky sure you have is another. He’s Gojo Satoru, he’s the strongest, he… can feel the prison realm looming behind him, a yawning grave, with Sukuna pressed to his front, warm like the sun, like a supernova.
Gojo has the distinct feeling that he is about to be swallowed whole.
So he does the only thing he knows how to, and fights, like he did when he was eleven years old and C’mon lemme out just for a few minutes or I’ll shred this place, like he did when he was sixteen years old and said to Fushiguro You lost. You should’ve cut my head off, like he did when he was seventeen years old and Explain yourself, Suguru! Like he did when he fought Sukuna in proper for that first time, a millenia ago: You’re the challenger here.
He has always worked best in definites. Gojo Satoru, the strongest. Gojo Satoru, the winner.
He moves to clasp his hands together to teleport via Limitless; Sukuna severs them before he can. He is cornered. And so Gojo fights.
He thrashes in Sukuna’s grasp, and before long they are wrestling together. Neither of them are weak, nor are they unskilled, yet Gojo begins to throw pure cursed energy at Sukuna, and Sukuna returns it, back and forth, a howl caught in Gojo’s throat until suddenly he hears the prison realm opening again and he thinks would I rather lose or would I rather be alone and am I still the strongest and I vowed that I must fight Sukuna with everything I have–
Sukuna shushes him, and Gojo falls quiet despite himself, as silent as the dead end of all things, because he is the universe and all of its blackholes and space is soundless, and the memory of his students’ laughter, of Suguru’s soft lilt, of Shoko’s humming, of the battlefield – has faded into soundlessness, too.
Still, Gojo bites, sinking his teeth in deep to the flesh of Sukuna’s neck, tastes the bitterness of hunger and sourness of strength, and Gojo has always been one for saccharine things but he savours the taste all the same, greedy and starving and wanting and afraid. Blood pools into his maw, precious and energy-filled, yet Sukuna doesn’t retaliate, some strange tolerance as he muffles laughter into Gojo’s hair. Sure enough, Gojo’s jaw slackens, teeth never even meeting each other, and when was it that he was too weak to fail even that?
“Gojo Satoru,” Sukuna murmurs into the void of his hair. “Are you afraid?”
They have both wrought each other both to near-defeat. Now, at the brink of its cliff, all Gojo can taste on his tongue is Sukuna’s satisfaction. Satisfaction. The loneliness that comes with absolute strength. The one who satisfies Sukuna is…
Long ago, he said: “I fear what will happen when there are no more curses for us to devour, Sukuna.” Loosening the grip of his teeth, leaning back as much as he can in Sukuna’s grip, watching the blood flow, Gojo asks: “Do I taste sweet?”
When Sukuna bites into his neck, Gojo wonders if this is what it is like to be at the edge of a supernova, burning and catastrophic, blinded. When the tips of his teeth close in on one another once more, the pain is bright, searing, hotter than the sun, and closer to Gojo’s heart than anyone or anything has ever been. He tears out the flesh, and Gojo watches with Six Eyes as Sukuna swallows it, watches as the remnants of human/curse civilisation are buried beneath the earth’s skin, watches as the sun reaches its half-life, as the universe approaches its rapid heat-death, watches as he is devoured whole.
Gojo works in definites: Gojo Satoru is untouchable. And yet, and yet, and yet–
Sukuna’s warmth is so close to Gojo’s own. His four arms curl around Gojo’s form, a cradle, with no infinities to pass, and a hand tears delicately into the cursed flesh of Gojo’s skin, pressing against his ribcage before snapping his sternum and reaching inside, deeper, deeper, until his palm encloses around Gojo’s restless heart, and tears it out.
“Silly curse,” Sukuna murmurs. “You don’t need any of this,” A grin. “I’ll enjoy it nonetheless,”
The remnants of Gojo are burning him half-alive. Sukuna’s touch is thawing, melting him, scorching him, holding him close like he hasn’t been since he was a child. After a while, he begins to drift; Gojo works in definites: he has lost. It’s an oddly comforting thought – perhaps it’s because he had forgotten what true sleep felt like.
He knows what death is like, too. Gojo Satoru died at the hands of Fushiguro Toji aeons ago.
Gojo lets himself burn, as Sukuna continues to bite into the galaxies of his skin, a sun burning up the stars and the void. Perhaps Sukuna was the black hole all along, inevitable and all-consuming. It burns. It burns. It’s not the bite that exorcises, after all; it’s the decomposition of his very energy once it becomes a part of Sukuna’s own. Gojo watches every atom, until he can no longer, slumped back in Sukuna’s grasp. Even still, his faux-heart – mere cursed energy, like the rest of him – thuds in Sukuna’s hold, still fighting, like he had vowed: I will use every last part of myself in killing Sukuna.
Or perhaps, because–
Sukuna hums. It shudders Gojo’s energy within. “You taste sweet,” Sukuna tells him, voice gentle and cataclysmic, like the death of the universe.