Chapter Text
When Megumi finally spoke — not Sukuna but Megumi — his voice was a sleepy murmur that tugged at Satoru’s heart.
“Gojo-sensei…”
Satoru choked a bloody laugh, shifting to hold the boy more comfortably against him now that he knew the king of curses no longer controlled him.
“Hey, Megumi,” he rasped, letting gravity pull him and his student to the ground. “Welcome back.”
Megumi had been the first person to call Satoru “Gojo-sensei,” he recalled — before he ever started teaching at Jujutsu Tech, back when he first took Megumi and his sister in. He’d explained to the stony-faced five-year-old that he’d be teaching him how to use his innate technique to exorcise curses, and Megumi, who had always been a boy of strongly held principles, had been calling him “sensei” ever since.
But what was he thinking about that for? This wasn’t any time to be getting sentimental. Sukuna had been exorcised. That was one big bad down and one more to go. And Megumi was going to be fine. Satoru was going to get him back to the school and he was going to be —
“Gojo-sensei,” Megumi said again, and Satoru felt the kid’s lanky body relaxing into him, felt his spiky head growing heavy on his shoulder. When he spoke again his voice was a tearful whisper. “Tsumiki.”
“I know,” Satoru replied, beginning to rub his back. It was all he could do to keep himself upright with reverse cursed technique, but still he found himself trying to push some of it, any of it, across to the boy he held onto. “I’m so sorry, kid.”
Holding Megumi’s dead weight in his arms he thought again of his childhood, of carrying him to bed after he’d fallen asleep on the couch… It wasn’t like him to get maudlin like this. He must just be tired from the fight with Sukuna; that was probably it. He was more exhausted, both physically and emotionally, than he’d been since he fought the kid’s dad as a teenager, and he was getting nostalgic. That was all.
“I’m tired,” Megumi sniffed, almost petulant — a toddler past due for a nap.
Satoru tried to laugh again, but it came out sounding more mangled than he wanted. “You and me both,” he said. “But we gotta stay awake just a little bit longer. You can do that, right?”
Almost imperceptibly, Megumi shook his head.
“No,” he murmured. Then, “I’m sorry.”
Satoru’s throat tightened as he was forced, finally, to confront what his Six Eyes had been telling him since he struck the final blow.
Megumi was not going to survive Sukuna’s defeat.
“That’s okay,” Satoru assured him gruffly, tightening his arms around him in one final hug. “Hey, that’s okay. You did good, kid. You go ahead and sleep. I’ll — I’ll carry you back.”
The last words Megumi said to him were so sincere they punched through him like a bullet through glass.
“Thank you, Gojo-sensei.”
Then he was gone, leaving only the body Satoru had watched him grow into for ten too-short years. He needed anger, he needed rage if he was going to propel himself forward and give Kenjaku the ass-kicking he deserved, but there was only a yawning ache, now — a hole the size of Hollow Purple where all of his anger should be.
I failed him, he thought, over and over. I failed him. I failed him. He was my kid and I failed him.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, unable to move past the weight of that fact. Eventually, others appeared in his periphery. Shoko, Okkotsu.
Itadori.
“Sensei!”
Stop calling me that, he wanted to tell him. How could he, in good conscience, be called anyone’s sensei when he couldn’t even save his first student? He said nothing, however; he didn’t even look up.
“Sensei,” Itadori said again, stumbling to his knees beside him. The poor kid was already crying. “He’s not — he’s not — ?”
“He’s dead,” Satoru told him.
Itadori flinched as if slapped, and for a tense moment he could only stare at him, stunned. Then the tension snapped and he pitched forward, wrapping his arms tightly around himself as he began to sob into the rubble, the words sorry and my fault barely intelligible through his tears. And Satoru wanted to comfort him — It’s not your fault, Yuji, it’s mine — but not enough to let Megumi go.
“Satoru.”
Shoko’s hand came down lightly on Satoru’s shoulder, followed by the smell of a freshly lit cigarette. She didn’t make any jokes about cutting the kid up this time, though he wasn’t sure whether that was for his benefit or her own. She may not have been Megumi’s guardian, but she’d known him for as long as Satoru had.
“Let me carry him back,” Satoru insisted, holding Megumi tightly, protectively. He was sure that was why Okkotsu was here, but he met Shoko’s eyes with conviction. “I told him I’d carry him back.”
Shoko didn't protest, and Okkotsu didn’t, either.
Satoru pulled himself up onto unsteady feet, adjusting his hold on Megumi as he did. He thought again of carrying the sleeping kid from the couch to his bed, and he guessed, in a way, that was what he was doing.
It was just that this time he would never get up.