Cursed || Gojo Satoru x Reader

XVI. Observer

POV: GOJO SATORU

    For a moment, I thought my Six Eyes had been closed. The heavenly vision that made me the honored one. The power that kept me in the heavens. The infinite blue that made me a god. I truly thought that they had failed me.

    But my blood knew. It screamed and burned and rushed in my veins. My bones knew. They shook and rattled me to my core. My flesh knew. It recoiled and twisted up my body. My very soul knew. It sung his name in a wistful whisper, but the searing wound he'd left was fresh.

    "Why are you here, Geto?" I refuse to call him Suguru. I won't acknowledge our past, but as I try and slow my breathing, I feel as though every heave of my chest were powerful enough to shake mountains. My eyelids lower, in a pitiful attempt to relax my gaze, but I know that no amount of effort I put in could hide my stiffened spine.

    He smiles. I remember that smile, where the corners of his eyes bent like the corner of a river. Smooth, graceful, and in a youthful innocence. But I can no longer feel warmth- my blood has gone cold.

    Geto sighs, "Satoru, I didn't know you'd be here. I was only here to see, (y/n). I'm afraid we'll have to catch up some other time, if you're ever free." The second his voice reaches my ears, I can remember the sound of his laughter. It sounded of my childhood, the melodic laugh he had. If I can dig past our buried memories that I've razed into the ground, I can imagine Shoko's and mine, swirling into the air like a heartfelt symphony.

    But then I feel her eyes on mine. She is an anchor that draws me to shore, keeping me bound to the ground. My memories and Six Eyes tell me that Geto is standing before me. But I know that he is no longer the boy I knew. And the second he left Jujutsu Tech, I knew that Geto Suguru had taken a part of me that I could not replace.

    In the time that followed, I had never felt so alone. We had been the strongest. But then I had to stand alone. Just as I'd been when I was the child that no one dared to place their eyes upon. It was no longer 'we', simply 'I'. I, alone am the greatest. I alone am the honored one. I am the strongest.

    Then I remember when I first saw her. When I knew that I wasn't truly alone, that I had never been and I'd never known. When she met my eyes and spun her fingers and my whole world fell apart. But her power of destruction was the very thing that built me right back up.

    (y/n) meets my gaze, but she doesn't falter or speak. She knows that it's not her place to respond. She simply waits for me, as though time hadn't passed and I hadn't relived the last ten years of my life in ten seconds. So in a false bravado, I give a smile, hoping to mirror the embarrassment of an unwanted person in a conversation, and say,

"That was my bad. But, we are a package deal, so," I throw my arm over (y/n)'s shoulders and wink, "Unfortunately, whatever you tell her is going to go through me, too."

(y/n) looks as though she is in a state somewhere between disbelief, amusement, and embarrassment, but she manages to add, "The jujutsu sorcerers decided to have him monitor me for safety purposes."

Geto shrugs, replying, "Well, it's no difference I guess if you know that I'm here, Satoru. I figured you'd be able to track me down once I left with (y/n), anyway. But this does make it a little harder for me. I estimate that I have exactly two minutes until somebody recognizes me inside the barrier."

"So why are you here?" (y/n) asks. I'm surprised to hear the lack of suspicion and hostility in her voice. Judging by their prior interaction, I assume that they had some sort of relationship. But in the short time since Geto had left Jujutsu Tech, I couldn't believe that they would be able to have built a positive enough partnership for her to speak to him so casually.