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Megumi forgets, but in each lifetime Satoru remembers.
The man remembers the sensation of being ripped away, remembers that imprint of brutality, the forceful way he was imprisoned in his own domain.
Satoru remembers the fucking pain, but he has always attributed it to the shame and indignity of being usurped by his own child. No, he thinks now, in a manor overlooking the scenery of upper-class 19th century England, it was simply the beginning of everything, of losing Megumi.
“Uranus,” Kronos-Sukuna-Kronos addresses him – not father, not papa, not old man why don’t you help mama in the kitchen, but Uranus. “You have grown obsolete.”
He cocks his head to the side, considers him, and continues, “I suppose it’s time for change then.” His flame-haired four-eyed son has him by the throat, so Satoru remains silent, but his eyes are loud, and his clenched fists louder yet.
Gaia-Megumi-Gaia sobs quietly below, pale wrists chained to the bedrock, and Uranus-Satoru-Uranus remembers that, too.
Kronos-Sukuna-Kronos lovingly looks at his feral mother, tells him, “Don’t worry mama, I’ll be there soon.” Without warning, he uses his strong arms to separate husband and wife, and Satoru thinks that if he could undo him – this evil offspring, this filthy usurper, Kronos – he would.
“Oh,” Gaia-Megumi-Gaia says, at the sudden action, “oh, ” and in his grief Megumi’s tears turn to rivers, and they roll restlessly against the mountains and the wild forests and against that tiny island where they shared lunch together. Even in sorrow Satoru’s wife is beautiful, and this is the last thing he remembers before he wakes up, in weak mortal flesh, and knows.
Down on earth humans call him George, and Satoru rolls the name against his tongue, tries to taste the sound of it.
GeorgeSatoru sounds fucking stupid, if he’s being honest with himself (“George!” the man said to himself once, indignant, “George! ”), and every time he wakes up the space beside him on the bed is empty and cold.
In his new and human body GeorgeSatoru one day stands up and drags his bed sheets and pillows outside, to the cool evening air. He lays there on the ground, the dirt more comforting than anything manmade in this world, and finally falls asleep.
When gods die it is a temporary and impermanent thing. Their divinity is caged in a much too fragile skeletal body, removed from their former omnipotence and invulnerability. This explains the insanity of so many immortals, who have become infected with these painfully human feelings of grief and jealousy.
This is what Satoru thinks about, as he burrows himself deeper into his blankets. Their son Kronos-Sukuna-Kronos must have picked up his envy and longing from the mortal world.
Traitorous son, for coveting someone else’s wife.
Satoru soon falls asleep.
Days turn to weeks which turn to months but still Satoru takes to camping outside. Right when it’s darkest before dawn, he will be fast asleep on the grass-covered soil. In the morning light he will remain impossibly handsome, but GeorgeSatoru is still unbearably disgustingly mortal and that is the problem.
He is sixty-five now, never married, and he finally gathers the courage to leave his manor and head for the nearest museum. The people here call him Young Master, My Lord, His Excellency – but none of these titles have ever felt right to him.
“Master George,” his butler calls out, carefully opening the entrance door for him. GeorgeSatoru doesn’t even bother looking at him, and quickly saunters into the Ancient Greece section. There are potteries here, and paintings that are in gilded frames, with the walls painted a soft buttery yellow.
“That vase is Apollonian in nature! And those, in comparison, are completely Dionysian in form and expression,” someone excitedly chatters right next to his ear, gesturing to a bunch of statues placed in the corner of the room. “And over there, Master, if you look closely! A rare find, said to depict the fabled Trojan wars!”
“No way,” another one gasps, spit flying, and GeorgeSatoru finds himself impatient with these people. They know nothing, and their ignorance is at once both amusing and infuriating to him.
You were never meant to understand us, the god-turned-human thinks, unkindly, as he reads some of the plaques near the relics. You are but a speck of dust, inconsequential – how dare all of you, to try to put us into words, into crude statuettes, into meaningless poetry.
How else will Satoru explain the ichor in their veins, the molten gold that separates them from the black-red-rust that humans bleed? Life began and ended when they roam the planes, with each careful breath and exhale. Their footprints became rocky terrain and valleys, and Megumi would smooth them over with the cutest furrow in his brows and with the gentlest curl of his lips.
You do not understand, GeorgeSatoru repeats in his head cruelly, then sadly. The curse of mortality, of inferior skin – which is to never know.
This is why he lets himself be pulled along, all 65 years of his puny human life, and the further they tour the mausoleum (Museum, the man corrects himself, then thinks, oh man what difference does it make) the hollower he feels.
He was a god, then: he was the god, and his head was wispy clouds and rolling thunderstorms. Every time he moved there were rain showers, and the entirety of the sky was his, belonged completely and utterly to Uranus.
But now he’s a George, amongst dozens and thousands of other Georges. The clothes on his back, the smooth metal cane in his hand, the polished floors – all of them serve as reminders of his loss.
In this cold building the mortal is stripped away from him, and he is Satoru – abandoned god, forgotten god, will kill Kronos as soon as possible – once more.
Never has home felt farther away than now.
When historians speak of Gaia-Megumi-Gaia what they forget to mention is: the subtle devotion; the way his eyes crinkled whenever he smiled; the fact that he liked to sleep in; the way his hands were smaller than Satoru’s, and that they looked best whenever they were sandwiched carefully between his own.
“My love,” Satoru says, “I miss you.”
No one answers back, but the man is sure that underneath the soles of his feet is Megumi, and that he continues to love, and love, and love.
GeorgeSatoru lives to see his seventies, and when he inevitably dies his body is left to decompose underneath the earth. Each shovelful of dirt is a relief, an expression of welcome back, sorry I kept you waiting – I’m here.
He crawls his way to heaven, to hell – to whatever part of the universe that has Megumi in it. He has never crawled before, ever, and it’s such an awful way to travel home. In his sleep he sees this massive mountain of greys and motley blues, towering over this unfamiliar body that houses Satoru’s soul.
“Megumi?” the man yells as soon as his feet land on Olympia, and the sound echoes in this golden palace that they have lived in for aeons now. He walks a little further, and says, in an even louder voice, “Megumi?! Are you there?!”
He spots little tracks of dirt behind, and sheepishly goes back to wipe his shoes on the welcome rug. Maybe if he was a little less messy, a little more organised, Megumi would finally appear and talk to him.
He looks around as he re-enters, and something shiny instantly grabs his attention.
Satoru turns his head, slightly curious, and his blood runs cold at the sight of it.
Carefully placed on their smooth mahogany table, as if the proof that sets him apart from others was some mundane and trivial thing, lies Gaia-Megumi-Gaia’s crown, an obsidian gem-studded thing of beauty. He never removes that damned thorny thing! His beloved has always been insistent on wearing that obnoxious crown, and it stays on during sex!
For Megumi to leave it here, out in the open, means that something must’ve gone wrong.
It’s like he wrote the most elegant looking “I lost something important, will be back soon” note on the cosmic-equivalent of a refrigerator. Bold of the Earth god to assume that Satoru won’t look for him – or come home immediately, as his case had been.
This is why the land had been so quiet, and why it feels unexpectedly empty. Where are you Megumi. Did you come looking for me why are you not here where are you where are you where –
Satoru settles back in mortal flesh, to delicate bones and fragile skin. He wakes up again, a Joel in this lifetime, and his curtains are silk, with his shirt a bright and expensive-looking red.
Outside the city is golden, carefully painted in the shy colours of creeping daylight. The buildings are tall, with sloped roofs and detailed archways. It is a beautiful place, and even the morning air is cool and pleasant to the touch.
Megumi is somewhere here, in the mortal world, willingly trapped in vulnerable human skin. JoelSatoru idly touches his finger, where a ring wrought from liquid gold used to be.
“Megumi,” he voices out loud to an audience of one (himself), feeling fondly exasperated. They could have been together by now, had his beloved been a little more patient. This is another thing that surprises people about the Earth god: this impulsiveness, this endearing spontaneity, the absolute unbearable fear of being alone.
“You will be the absolute death of me.”
So Satoru chases after Megumi.
Blond, brunet, wide shoulders, sometimes full breasts and strong thighs – Satoru may have no concrete form in the mortal world, but his desire to see Megumi again has never changed or wavered. He shifts from an Asahi into a Pedro, and sometimes Satoru is a they or a she, and it’s –
It’s hard.
Satoru wishes to share these experiences with his love, but his Megumi recklessly dipped his toes into the human realm, and now his beloved is missing. Did he get lost while he was looking for Satoru? It seems more and more likely, and the revelation leaves him simultaneously lonely and frustrated.
The next time Satoru dies he wills his matted corpse to dig himself deeper into the earth, to burrow so deep he’s left grasping at thick gravel and stones.
Megumi, Satoru murmurs around a mouthful of soil, desperate. Can you hear me.
Every layer, every substrate of the earth that he uncovers, and still, he does not find his silly little godling.
Until he does, in the crowded streets of Jakarta.
The overhanging lights are so bright it nearly hurts his eyes, but it is nothing against the sheer brilliance of finding Megumi again.
His love has wonderful red hair now, and it startlingly stands out amongst the brunets and black-haireds that line the streets of the city.
“Megumi!” Wang-Lei-Satoru half-yells half-sobs in relief, and shit his hands are shaking. He’s a foreign exchange student cramming his thesis paper till early morning, and on his way to get snacks he reunites with the most unexpected person on this side of Indonesia. “I missed you so much!”
It’s strange, though. Where are Megumi's tearful attempts at an apology? Why is he not attaching himself to Satoru’s widely outstretched arms? Why has he not come back to him?
“I’m sorry,” Megumi says awkwardly, looking mildly freaked out. His bright red hair is distracting. “I think you got the wrong person.”
What?
“This is the first time I’m meeting you, sir.”
His Gaia does not remember, and for the second time of his life as a mortal Wang-Lei-Satoru is at a complete loss for words.
Is it possible for a god to die from heartbreak?
“Satoru,” he voices out desperately, tries to look pleadingly into Megumi’s eyes. “Please call me Satoru.”
Megumi gives him a tense smile, unwilling to stay in his presence any longer, and immediately makes a run for it. Come the following morning he is gone from the city.
And just like that Satoru loses his beloved again, his other half slipping past his fingertips.
In the next lifetime it is the same, and the other one, and while it’s painful to reintroduce himself to Megumi as a complete stranger it is still infinitely better than those lifetimes where they never get to bump into one another.
Better than the ones where they nearly meet, only for them to bypass each other completely.
It’s like in the legends with Gaia confined to solid rock, and Uranus thrust so far up ahead that he can only see the barest and furthest parts of his beloved. On the earth’s tallest mountain the tips of their fingers nearly touch but are never physically reunited.
It was the worst kind of torture, to be so completely aware of one another’s existence without the freedom to be intimate again.
Satoru finds him again. Finds him in a hidden grove somewhere in Hanoi, in the crowded supermarkets of Manila, gives him a kiss so intense it imprints itself for three centuries outside a pub in Manchester.
Megumi forgets, and Satoru chases after him, and Sukuna joins them on earth only to get immediately sealed by nearly a hundred sorcerers in jujutsu-era Japan.
Uranus laughs hysterically, laughs and laughs until he gets himself sick from the feeling.
Ever since that incident however Satoru always finds himself reincarnated in Japan. He waits for Megumi to reappear again while keeping a close eye on any possible activity from his awful son Sukuna. Their familial bond never truly got severed while they were still living in Olympia, and it exists as a reluctant ache in his heart.
Satoru joins various sorcerers and shamans on their hunts, and teaches himself how to ruthlessly kill again. Titanic flesh can be pierced with primordial steel, and this alone is the prophecy Uranus whispers to mortal men.
Curiously enough, he gets reborn in the Gojo family the most. In his 1357th lifetime he is blessed with white hair and eyes so blue they look like a near-perfect replica of the sky.
This man is a son of god, fearful monsters begin to murmur in the dark, from under their beds, as he grows tenfold in beauty and in strength. They see what ordinary people can't, this primal mass of barely restrained fury trapped in the skin of man. Gojo Satoru is heaven-personified brought down to kill men.
And the skin feels right, like it finally fits him. He grows older and makes friends, drunk on the feeling of being alive — no longer a vessel built to house the cosmos but a person. An almost mortal who is wholly in love with both the earthly and the divine.
In the selfishness that is him Gojo Satoru finds the courage to believe again.
On his way home from his duties Satoru catches sight of someone who looks vaguely familiar, in that I’ve seen you before kind of way.
“Hey,” he loudly yells at the slouched form of a tiny Zenin brat, intrigued. Is that Fushiguro Toji’s kid? He hasn’t bullied anyone in so long, and Satoru could really use some practice. “Come here! I have something to say to you!”
The boy tenses, aware that the statement was aimed at him. “I don’t have money,” he says, cautiously turning around to face him. “What do you want?”
Gojo opens his mouth to reply, an easy retort ready on his lips (“My friend Getou,” the sorcerer wants to say, “I want my pride back, maybe even a rematch with your shitty dad.”) but the words immediately crumple and die in his throat. His hands are shaking, so he carefully places them in his pockets, and Megumi shuffles farther away from him and suddenly the realisation sets in, that this is where they meet halfway –
– with Satoru in a body thirteen years older than Megumi’s. His beloved is so tiny now, still just as perfectly formed from the nose to the knees.
“You,” he finds himself saying instead, painfully sincere, scrubbed raw and left wanting, “I want you.”
It must have been the wrong thing to say, because the boy hastily distances himself from him. Satoru is quicker though, and in a span of a few seconds he has Megumi in his arms again. He reverently thumbs at his wrists, takes note of the bone structure and the surprising smoothness of his skin.
We have changed, my love. Gojo Satoru thinks, marvels. Your fingers are different.
The man calmly peers closer at the child’s face, and he distantly hopes that his desperation isn’t very obvious.
He doesn’t want to scare Megumi away.
(He has waited for too long, and his limbs ache, and there’s dust gathering underneath his fingertips, his bones.)
Satoru catalogues every frown, every – occasional – smile, and thinks that if love was a person it would look a lot like him: all bright teeth and chapped lips and bold and kind and daring.
“You’re creepy,” the boy mutters eventually, little fists clenching at his sides.
And you have green eyes. Satoru’s entirety thrums with the truth of it. The universe gave back your dark hair, and even though we’re different people you’re still beautiful. A home with its wood panelling exchanged for brick and stone is still a home, and I’ve been on the road for too long.
But this Megumi is still young, fresh-blooded and delicate, and the sorcerer knows this is not yet the answer he’s looking for.
And so this version of Satoru laughs, and it is a wild, half-relieved thing.
“You’re such a brat!” the teenager exclaims in delight, and he only laughs harder at Megumi’s squinty-eyed glare. He spins him around in his arms, giddy.
“Do you want something to eat?” Satoru asks eagerly. “There’s a burger place nearby, I’ll treat you.”
Megumi perks up, only to frown again at him in mild disapproval. “We literally just met, you creep.”
Cute! His Gaia was reborn in the cutest body ever!
“That’s why we should eat there, as a way to get to know each other!” Satoru doesn’t wait for his answer. With a powerful kick he immediately starts running to the shop, taking great care to not drop Megumi. The boy squirms in his arms, but even that is half-hearted, like he’s slowly getting comfortable in his presence.
In a minute they arrive in front of the fast food joint. Satoru gently sets Megumi back on solid ground, still somewhat reeling in disbelief. He hasn’t smiled this widely in so long now. Truth be told it feels nearly alien on his face. “I’ll stay here with you.”
And then, if that wasn't enough, "Like I said, my treat. You can order anything!"
Megumi, in spite of his best efforts, smiles back.
“Promise?” He asks hopefully. For what, he doesn’t say.
“Yes!” Satoru cheerily replies, shaking a shiny credit card to prove the severity of his statement. Then he gets up, casually dusts his pants, and opens the door for him.
Gojo Satoru and his Megumi, who is a Zenin. It’s like everything he’s worked hard for has culminated into this reality, where they are not gods but humans in weak and clumsy bodies. His uneven pulse rate is an ever present reminder of this terrible mortality, beating in the hopes of seeing Megumi again – the lone and unchanging constant in all of Satoru’s lifetimes.
Once seated they talk – a lot. Or rather Gojo Satoru talks while Megumi listens, looking doubtful at some of his supposed achievements. It makes Satoru laugh when he catches the boy scoffing at him from across the table.
Shaking his head the man mindlessly stares outside their window and frowns. It’s evening already, and while he’s reluctant to leave Satoru still has his responsibilities as a top class sorcerer and heir. With a regretful sigh he pays for their meal and –
Stops, his body stiff as Megumi anxiously tugs on Satoru’s shirt sleeve.
“A-are you leaving?” The boy stumbles over his words, frightened at the thought of being left behind.
Satoru leisurely walks over towards his direction, his movements sure and confident. How could he not, when he finally found his beloved? His Gaia-Megumi-Gaia was better suited for a place more inviting than this grim off brand McDonald's, but this is okay, too. Home has never been a place but a person.
He kneels down, exactly at eye level, and replies, “Yes, but just for a little bit.”
Megumi immediately scrambles backwards, frowning and distrustful, but the sorcerer is quicker than him, stronger.
“Let me go!” The boy childishly beats his fists against Satoru’s left bicep. When that doesn’t work, he determinedly resorts to kicking. (His tiny feet are vicious, and Gojo Satoru’s technique is the only thing keeping his private parts safe.)
“Keep your dumb promises to yourself!” Try as hard as he might, Megumi isn’t able to hold back his tears at all. “Keep them and leave me alone!”
“No.” His tone is steady, and that seems to quiet down the boy’s protests.
Satoru shifts his hold on him a little, and smiles.
(He would’ve barged in earlier, taken what or who he wanted three decades, six centuries – a lifetime ago.
But he has learnt how to be patient, over time, and he can wait for a little bit longer, for Megumi.)
“No,” Satoru repeats, gentler this time. “This is not a goodbye, Megumi, but a hello, I’ll see you again.”
