hc + geto for satoru
from here | @chaoslulled
gojo satoru & his perspective on geto suguru
introduction.
if you feel dirty, then get clean. gojo satoru could spend days under boiling water & still not be clean of suguru geto’s betrayal. he could spend days with eyes shut & still see the signature of suguru geto’s cursed energy. he could spend days, & there could still be a lot of unknowns. because ( for better or for worse ) geto suguru had introduced a second part of him.
satoru refuses to feel grateful. he can’t quite stop himself from feeling devastated, though.
first world.
gojo satoru’s childhood is first defined by the family grounds. he spends his time training or with too much non-freedom. everything is his & promised to be his. the grounds are set firmly, legally. they’re set on paper.
the grounds aren’t the priority, even within the clan. so he takes it for granted. this is what he’s told by authority figures.
of course, he disagrees. it doesn’t feel like he’s taking it for granted, really, because he doesn’t care that much about the outcome —- still, he cannot deny (even as a child) that he feels inevitable.
the first version of himself that satoru imagines for himself is determined by the world of the gojo clan. the grounds are a secondary priority because the system matters more. jujutsu energy & cursed energy & that sort of thing —in other words, satoru gojo will be the strongest because the hierarchy of the system says so. everything else will follow.
it makes him a little flat. it makes him absorb values that are only partially his own. it makes him better than everyone, it objectifies him to everyone.
satoru hates the phrase to paint a target on someone because it’s naive; it doesn’t reflect that there are those who are born targets. the great are born to be targets. the great are great no matter what.
there’s a lot that he hates. there’s a lot of pride that he feels because he has to, because sometimes his head aches too much for him to imagine that the strength he has may be anything but a blessing.
there’s a lot that he forgets to hate, too. even if he was certain of being a target, of being distrusting — he had been young enough that he didn’t question how:
someone else chooses his clothing, chooses everything for him. touches are fleeting things. daylight sometimes hurts. he is kept at distance. cats should only have unofficial names. parts of the self are meant to collect dust.
this is how things should be.
he doesn’t question what it means to be the strongest, what it means to be the greatest.
in hindsight, forgetting to question was a mistake.
second world.
it had been a battle between someone & someone whether he should go to the tokyo school. satoru himself had been a part of that battle — he laughs in authority’s face; he makes threats. ultimately, he isn’t really sure if he cares either way, but —
it’s funny. as he gets older, the greater difficulty people have telling him no.
it’s funny, too. as he gets older, he can’t fully shake from his body the feeling of old laws & customs & authorities. ( as he grows older still, grows into adulthood — he does better about disagreeing with these old ways ).
still, satoru is the product of old worlds whether he likes it or not.
his family ( his clan ) expects him to act old when he goes to school. ideally, he would act with some sort of immovable elegance. to be frank, satoru expects it of himself as well. but then he gets there, & his teachers expect nothing of him.
they had worked with the children of the clans before. despite all expectations, the teachers keep discovering that children are always children when they are allowed the freedom.
satoru sinks into himself — trying things because he can, pushing boundaries because he can, feeling their consequences differently for maybe the first time.
amid all that :
it’s one thing to be told you’re the strongest. it’s another thing to not yet be the strongest. it’s a third thing to meet someone else who stands on strength the that satoru does. there’s shoko, of course; she stands on a mountain of strength that she builds for herself with measured components. & then there’s geto, self-made & making the earth rise beneath his feet. his mountain is self-made, but it feels like it’s a natural phenomenon.
suguru used to joke that he was the strongest of his family, too. & satoru found it funny because — yeah, he guesses so. what does that mean though ? to think of strength in the jujutsu world outside the influence of old families ?
either way, he & suguru work well together. grass sticks to their necks & knees when they collapse in the school’s field — training or laughing or something like that. they work well together in the way that satoru cracks with the energy recently released, that suguru ambles & commands space around him.
suguru is elegant in the way that satoru might have been. elegant, in the limited way that a teenager can be, soured with some attitude & presumption & attitude.
there’s no concrete moment that they become friends. but it feels as though suguru ( force of nature though he is ) instrumented it — there’s something about him that presides over forces of nature. it feels like he manages to make satoru grow taller.
. . . satoru supposes too that suguru is someone kind to him. even when they fight (& they fight often ) , bumping heads & sometimes sparring without pulling punches. suguru has a habit of tugging on satoru’s ear when he thinks satoru is being extremely annoying but —
suguru is a collage of habits & familiarities that satoru learns to trust.
third world.
riko amanai, of course, changed everything. & years later when satoru is twenty-eight, satoru waves a hand & says something like well, we all know how that went. he has a terrible habit of making light of serious things, of laughing a little at things that make him uncomfortable. honestly, he doesn’t know where the habit came from. it wasn’t something that he did as a child —
but then again, maybe he hadn’t felt discomfort like the way he does until riko amanai. the star plasma vessel. when satoru hears those words, he always pictures them in lights —- star plasma vessel. as though they were some fantastic spectacle on the american streets of vegas.
the star plasma vessel dies, of course. a couple of years after her death, satoru still can’t decide if he feels triumphant or sick at how the most visceral memory of all of that is not how she died, but how he felt when satoru himself died. his body keeps telling him that he died, & his body keeps telling him how good it felt when he survived.
he is certain that he remembers everything after he survived — how he found the dead girl, how he had found suguru. or maybe he hadn’t found them ? maybe someone else had found them ? but still satoru had seen them, probably, & his body had been so sick on survival that he didn’t care as much as he might have. he left before shoko got to suguru, but he knew that she was coming. he thinks he knew that she was coming.
it was very gojo of him, he supposes. the clan would approve.
he teleported for the first time.
he remembers everything after he survived — including how easily he had made toji fushijuro fall, how he had laughed.
he doesn’t remember the sound of people’s clapping at the girl’s death though.
suguru does.
in the aftermath, it’s not as though satoru doesn’t see that suguru is fraying. however, he also see suguru through a type of fog, built from both the residuals of continued survival & the things that he’s learning. satoru is just wired.
& besides that . . . suguru has always been consistent & reliable. satoru can’t quite bring himself not to have faith in suguru’s being who he knows him to be.
it is a mark of bias. maybe it’s because somewhere along the way, suguru became one of his firsts.
super cheesy to say, right? haha.
satoru has a terrible habit of making light of serious things, of laughing a little at things that make him uncomfortable. honestly, he doesn’t know where the habit came from.
satoru is certain that suguru knows.
fourth world.
whatever suguru knows about satoru, it doesn’t change things. & there’s room for self-blame there, too, of course. even if satoru remembers everything after he survived, he doesn’t remember everything about the aftermath. After all, there was that fog of residuals from continued survival & things that he was learning. he had been wired.
& he didn’t pay enough attention to stop suguru from massacring a village.
honestly, he doesn’t care much about the village. he cares more than he used to, probably. after the dead girl, satoru feels a little more that maybe he’s starting to see normal people as being more than weak contestants in survival of the fittest. he’s feeling a little proud of himself, because it’s something that suguru could agree with —-
except not any more. now suguru is slated for execution.
he starts to wonder sometimes if it comes back to what satoru hadn’t done to prevent haibara yu’s death.
for the record, there hadn’t been anything that satoru could have done to prevent his death. he hadn’t been on the scene until later. but even then, he was wired.
when thinking about the choice that suguru had made, it becomes apparent that this is the first time that that satoru hasn’t been enough, that there’s nothing he can do to be enough.
suguru becomes one of satoru’s firsts for more than just the good. he is the first that knows satoru too well, that knows weaknesses satoru hadn’t considered. he is the first to use himself against satoru.
he is the first time that another person can be satoru’s downfall.
the fourth world lasts years. & suguru keeps rubbing salt in open wounds, & it’s infuriating because it makes satoru think that suguru probably doesn’t believe everything he’s doing either. it makes satoru think that suguru is waiting to weaponize satoru, that he is intentionally using satoru as a mode of self-destruction.
satoru can’t clean himself of that feeling.
suguru mocks him on the street, outside of a cheap fried chicken chain. he challenges him, & satoru lets him. it’s weakness, & it is not in-line with the values of the gojo clan. it is not in-line with the values that satoru sets for himself. suguru claims checkmate.
a week later, shoko asks satoru if he can capture a curse for her. weapon, he hears. so he says a lot of nasty things, & he doesn’t mean them. she knows.
he starts to do better faking sunshine & fucking daises after that. hopefully, it’s not always fake, to be fair. satoru really likes teaching.
the fourth world lasts years.
until it doesn’t.
fifth world.
the new world doesn’t start when he walks away from the body of suguru geto. suguru geto shouldn’t have been allowed to fester, but satoru let him. suguru shouldn’t have been allowed as much sway over satoru as he did, but satoru let him. the night parade of a hundred demons shouldn’t have happened, but it did.
satoru walks away from suguru’s body smiling — because he’s a teacher, & he’s fixating on being a teacher, & it matters. for a lot of reasons, it matters.
satoru walks away from suguru’s body a loser. suguru’s destruction is his own.
as much as satoru has loved suguru geto, he cannot forgive him for making him do that.
suguru has given satoru has much opportunity for love as he has given him for hatred, for guilt.
incidentally, suguru has also given satoru a path forward.
the new world starts a week after he walks away from the body of suguru geto — when he washes his face in the morning, sees flecks of toothpaste on his mirror, & suddenly feels dirty.
if you feel dirty, then get clean. gojo satoru could spend days under boiling water & still not be clean of suguru geto’s betrayal. he could spend days with his eyes shut & still see the signature of suguru geto’s cursed energy. he could spend days & there could still be a lot of unknowns. because ( for better or for worse ) geto suguru had introduced worlds to him.
satoru refuses to feel grateful. he can’t quite stop himself from feeling devastated, though.
end.
then there’s more. then there’s the contamination called kenjaku.
betrayal from the grave, guilt sent to the grave. it’s the product of negligence.
it just feels like hurt.
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