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Satoru half-wishes he could have a peaceful moment of mistaking the figure in the kitchen for Yuuji. But no, that dark coil of cursed energy isn't his dear student's. The pink hair is right, of course, just as messy as usual, but the hand reaching up to the cabinet is marked in black.
"Midnight snack?"
Sukuna barely pauses before swinging the cabinet open and looking over the mugs. "Your modern excuse for tea is pitiful."
Well, fair. "Ah, yeah, none of the current crop of students has much of a taste for it." And since Satoru's always been one for bad ideas: "I've got a proper tea-set in my rooms, though."
That does make Sukuna pause, and turn to look him over, expression flat and revealing little. "... Hm. And what do you want in return, Six Eyes?"
God, Satoru wishes people would stop calling him that. But it's inevitable, so he doesn't show it, just slouching against the door-frame a bit more, grin widening. "Aside from showing off by amazing tea skills? Maybe I want to get you further away from my students before kicking your ass."
Sukuna snorts. "Oh, please. You know that the minute I so much as jostle this body too much I'll wake up the brat and get shoved back down." He shuts the cabinets and turns. "Well?"
"Hm." Yeah, it's pretty clear from the spirals of energies mixing and unmixing - the only reason Sukuna's out like this is because Yuuji's asleep. Probably even just gathering enough cursed energy for a technique would be enough to make him stir - meaning Sukuna can wander around and complain about tea, but he probably can't hurt anyone.
Good enough!
"This way," Satoru says, turning and leaving the building. Looks like it's tea time. Man, Shoko's gonna be pissed at him for breaking out the fancy stuff without including her.
Sukuna follows, out into the dark morning.
It's too early for even the earliest risers of the students to be up. Dawn hasn't even started to break over the hills, the sun still (Satoru checks with a glance) about thirty degrees below the horizon; about two hours until sunrise. The stars are pretty bright, for Tokyo (Tengen's barrier doesn't filter out all light pollution, but it helps), so it's no surprise that Sukuna pauses on their way up the hill, looking up at the sky.
Satoru pauses, too, trying to figure out what he's spotted. Let's see… with the light pollution being what it is, and the moon already set, normal humans still can't see anything brighter than about 19.25 magnitudes per square arcsecond. No milky way tonight, Andromeda galaxy wouldn't have caught Sukuna's attention like this - actually very little would, the stars haven't changed that much in a thousand years, except - aha!
"The International Space Station," he says. "Humans have come pretty far, scientifically! It's in low Earth orbit - a bit over four hundred kilometers above us. Circles the globe every 92.9 minutes. There's seven people aboard right now." Most people probably wouldn't have spotted it - it's relatively dim right now, reflecting moonlight down at them. But Sukuna's used to a sky filled with relatively stationary objects, not ones orbiting that quickly.
"Huh." Sukuna doesn't comment any more than that, and eventually starts walking again, so Satoru does too. He's always willing to share fun space facts, but he wants other answers out of Sukuna tonight, if he can get them.
The teachers' on-campus apartments are up into the hills a little ways. Satoru's got an off-campus apartment too, of course, but this one's useful for crashing in, for storing all the shit he doesn't really care about, for hosting guests. He doesn't do much of that shit any more - the diplomatic polite nonsense, where he's gotta dress up all traditional and do an absolutely perfect tea ceremony, four hours long with all the bells and whistles - but now that he thinks about it…
"What we nowadays consider a traditional tea ceremony," he says, sliding open his door, "Was really developed around the 1500s, so I'm gonna assume you don't care much about all that shit, and just make it like a normal person."
"Whatever." Sukuna waits at the entrance, even after Satoru's slipped off his shoes, flicked on the lights, and made his way over to the kitchen. Now, where the heck did he even leave the bowls…?
Satoru's gaze flicks over - not that it really needs to, but he's making a point. Wait, no, shit, Sukuna can't see under his blindfold, can he? Damn. All that effort wasted. "You can come in, you know. I'm not gonna eat you." Huh. "Huh, I wonder what would happen if someone else ate some of your fingers now? Would there be two of you running around?"
"If they survived." Sukuna finally steps in, taking off his - Yuuji's - shoes and leaving them next to Satoru's. "So. I'm here. What do you want?"
There's the tea set, his six eyes spot, in that cabinet on top of the fridge that he always assumes is just empty. "The guy who invented the modern tea ceremony was called Sen no Rikyu. Sometimes I wanna travel back in time and kick his ass for making it so complicated. Anyways, he wasn't a sorcerer, but one of his great-great grandchildren was. She inherited something of that sense of complication."
"Right," Sukuna drawls. "And why does she matter?"
Hot water kettle switch flipped on - if he's being lazy about this then he's going to be as lazy as he can be - fancy bowls, scoop, whisk, and box of matcha all set on a tray. "Do you want snacks to go along, or just the tea?"
"Just the tea."
Good, because he'd have to warp out somewhere to get snacks, and as casual as he's being with this, he's not yet ready to leave Sukuna alone, even though he knows Yuuji would wake up before Sukuna tried anything combative.
"What she did is lay out a clear and coherent contract for a temporary exchange of information between enemies," Satoru explains, carrying the tray over to the low table. "I've got a printed copy… somewhere in here? Probably that bookshelf over there. Bound in green cloth."
Sukuna is still for a long moment, staring down at him as Satoru arranges the bowls and matcha on the table. Satoru doesn't mind Sukuna being above him like this, standing while Satoru's sitting in seiza; it's one of the benefits of being truly strong, that stupid little power plays about the appearance of weakness don't actually mean anything to him.
He flashes another little grin Sukuna's way. "You have questions, don't you? I also have questions. I figure we could try talking circles around each other, or try and work out pacts with loopholes to each try and exploit, but since someone already did all the hard work for me, writing out something like that… how could I not take advantage?"
Sukuna doesn't reply out loud, but he does walk over to the bookshelf, sliding out the book Satoru had indicated and leafing through it. "This is the Codex of Balance in Truth; the Codex of Balance in Truth is the contract laid out hereafter; the contract laid out hereafter explains the Codex of Balance in Truth."
"Mhm. The way it works is we both vow to follow it for a set amount of time, or until one of us has left this room, or until one of us has stood up. That sort of thing. It doesn't force anything; it just makes lies apparent. There's more clauses in there, about who gets to ask a question when, and how you can refuse to say something. The tea'll take another few minutes, feel free to read through it."
It's quiet, then, except for the quite electric whistle of water heating up and the occasional paper-on-paper sound of Sukuna flipping to the next page of the contract. Almost quite enough for Satoru to be bored, to start dozing off in this morning-middle-of-the-night, except for how he's almost buzzing with the idea of getting some fucking answers from Sukuna. That's the real secret advantage he has; the fact that he wants something, wants to know what Sukuna knows, and any secrets he's holding won't mean shit to Sukuna.
Probably.
Haha.
While Sukuna is reading, Satoru prepares the bowls. A scoop and a half in each, checked over with a quick flash of his six eyes to make sure there are no major lumps; spoon wiped down gently with the tea cloth, partially out of habit and partially because Shoko would kick his ass if she knew he was treating her favorite tea set poorly. The bowls are dark raku ware, faint pine branches traced out on the sides; a couple centuries old. Not actually the fanciest set he owns, but the fanciest set he actually considers usable, outside stupid ritual diplomacy nonsense.
The kettle clicks off, leaving the water boiling. Satoru gets up, timing the breaths it'll take for the water to cool to just the right scorching temperature. By the time it's ready to pour, Sukuna has put the book down and sits, cross-legged, at the table.
Satoru pours and stirs for Sukuna first, then himself, not bothering to use his cursed energy to whisk the tea to foaming. He sits in seiza, habitually slouching in a way that would make the people who raised him foam at the mouth. Sukuna doesn't appear to care, though.
"For the period of time where we both remain within this room, and no other person enters," Sukuna says, all four red eyes focused on Satoru, "I vow to hold to the Codex of Balance in Truth, should you do the same."
"For the period of time when we both remain within this room, and no other person enters," Satoru says, "I vow to hold to the Codex of Balance in Truth, as you have done the same."
The words are traditional, specific, and binding.
The pact feels like a gust of warm air on the back of his neck.
Shoko is gonna be so pissed he didn't invite her.
Lol, as the kids say. Lmao, even.
Satoru drinks his matcha, hot and sweet and bitter, and Sukuna across from him does the same. Ugh. There really is something so disgustingly nostalgic about this tea. There's a reason he likes sweet, processed foods, and the reason is that they're nothing like home.
"Fushiguro Megumi isn't a Zenin," Sukuna says, an opening shot that would have taken Satoru by surprise only if he'd somehow lost all his brain cells in a tragic, freak accident and decided to not regrow them because he was tired of being so smart. "Why?"
"His father left the clan and took his wife's name," Satoru says. He's desperately curious to know what Sukuna knows about people like Toji, and heavenly restrictions, but just saying that is so gauche. "I found out about his situation after his father's death, and kept the clan from taking him."
"Out of the goodness of your heart, sure," Sukuna says dryly.
Satoru flashes him a bright, hilariously insincere grin. "Something like that. Do you know if anyone else who originated or was active during the Heian era is still around?"
Sukuna hums, taking another sip of tea. "I've seen signs that suggest some are, but nothing definitive enough for me to say who it might be. What is the Panda, and why is it a sorcerer."
"Yaga Masamichi's cursed technique involves imbuing cursed corpses; Panda is one of them, who somehow turned out sentient, able to use cursed energy, and curious enough to pursue this path of learning. I don't know how it happened, just that it did. Wild, right?" Satoru tilts his head to the side. "But Yaga's been able to keep his secrets from everyone - even me. Records of the Battle of Heian-Kyo speak of a cursed fire of the heavens, the Divine Flame. What was that Divine Flame?"
"Oh, that's not known any more?" Sukuna actually looks a little surprised by that. "The Divine Flame is a… I believe the modern terms would be a maximum aspect of my technique. It burns body and soul, leaving lands scorched and salted in the aftermath of my fury." Sukuna's eyes, all four of them, lock on to Satoru's blindfold. "There was no Limitless Six Eyes holder in my time, you know."
Yeah, that's in the Gojo clan records. During Sukuna's life, there'd been one Six Eyes user with a Shikigami technique, and one during his reign as a curse who hadn't had a second technique. Gojo Tomomi and Gojo Ryota. Satoru knows Tomomi's writings and records front to back – that's where he'd gone for the info he'd needed to help Megumi train his own Shikigami. "Haha, yeah, we're pretty uncommon! That's not a question, though."
Sukuna's eyes meet his, through the blindfold. "The technique you used on that forest spirit - the violet beam of light. What was that?"
Ah, turnabout is fair play. "That was Hollow Purple. The maximum extension combines the outward push of Red with the inward pull of Blue to create imaginary mass, annihilating existence."
"I see," Sukuna murmurs, looking down at his tea.
All right, now time for something interesting. "What do you know about Itadori Yuuji's unusual strength and resilience?"
Sukuna scoffs. "Not much. The brat barely notices that it's unusual. My theory is that it's a very low-level innate technique, an in-born constant one like your Six Eyes. That or he's got some Curse blood in him somewhere down the line. Very rare… but not unheard of."
Very, very rare. Officially the only curse-human hybrids are the nine Death Paintings; unofficially, the Gojo clan has records dating further back, even from before the Heian era, that have some concerning implications. Cursed revenants and incarnated vessels and body-snatchers… looks like he'll have to double-down on tracing the Itadori bloodline. Ugh, more paperwork.
Satoru expects a follow-up question about Hollow Purple - it is Sukuna's turn, after all - but it's taking a while.
And Sukuna didn't even say cool or wow or how interesting or whatever. What, is Hollow Purple not impressive enough for him? Satoru takes another sip of tea so that he doesn't start whining. Ugh, maybe he should have invited Shoko, just for someone to complain at.
" Pathetic ."
Yeah, not really the reaction he was going for.
Satoru lowers his cup, setting it down gently on the table.
Sukuna's half-grinning, bearing his – Yuuji's – sharpened teeth like he's just heard a joke. "All that power, and you still let them boss you around."
Satoru yawns pointedly. "As if I'd want to be, ugh, in charge. Having to manage all the boring asshole sorcerers who're running around? I don't give a shit about any of that."
"Hah! Bullshit, Six Eyes." Sukuna leans forward. "You love telling people what to do. You hate that they have power over you, power over your students, power over life and death. The only reason you haven't killed them yet is because you can't." Sukuna inhales deeply, eyes flickering closed. There's something almost animalistic, feral about it. "I can smell the power binding you. How many binding vows do they have you under?"
… Yeah, this was a mistake.
"Five," Satoru says carelessly. If he ends their talk now, Sukuna will know he's gotten to him, so more questions. What can he ask? Fucking anything. "So, back in the Heian era–"
"One to protect them from you," Sukuna muses. "One to protect you from them. One to control you. One to control them. That's the usual setup, for a strong sorcerer who's been stupid enough to get himself in a situation where he can be forced to make vows to bind him. But with you under five vows…" Sukuna's sharp teeth are bared, pointed. "Ahh, it's not you the vows are protecting, is it?"
Satoru Gojo may not physically attack, injure, harm, or knowingly cause harm or injury to any member of the Council of Sorcerers, the Heads of the Clans, or the heirs of the clans.
"That's not how this works." Satoru taps the contract. "A question for a question, and I–"
Sukuna laughs, slouching back. "Go ahead. Ask whatever little bullshit you can come up with to try and distract me. Or you could end this here. All you have to do is get up and leave." And prove how much this hurts you.
"How did you die?"
Sukuna doesn't flinch away. There's something on fire in his soul – that Divine Flame he spoke of, somehow the extension of a cutting and severing technique. A reversal? The opposite of breaking is usually thought of as mending, but could it be that in this case the opposite of splitting–
"The Ten Shadows summoned Mahoraga," Sukuna says softly. "As a human - even as strong as I was - the Divine General… would have brought me down."
Would have.
"I couldn't let that happen. At the height of my power? Pfft." Sukuna flicks the idea away. "I ripped out my own throat without a touch of cursed energy in my hands, and rose as a curse that would be feared for over a thousand years."
Ahaha. "Yikes," Satoru says. It's not the most fucked up thing he's heard, but it's certainly very… something.
"Who are your vows protecting?"
Isn't this such a fun exchange of information between enemies? Ugh. "The Council of Sorcerers. The Clan heads, and their heirs." He has to give a full answer, those are the rules laid down by this contract that he suggested like an idiot. "... The students of Jujutsu Tech. Ieiri Shoko."
Sukuna makes an understanding noise. "The Council and the Clans protected from you. And your students and your healer protected from them." He snickers. "And I was wondering why none of the clans had stolen her away. They still do that, don't they? Snatch up the ones with the best techniques, rape 'em into a stupid number of babies in the hopes of getting that technique for themselves."
Yeah.
Shoko Ieiri will not be forced to leave the grounds of Jujutsu Tech, nor will she be forced to remain in any location against her will.
"Sometimes it seems like nothing's changed in a thousand years," Sukuna murmurs, quiet and dangerous. "The weak forcing the strong to kneel, the Clans tying everything up in meaningless bureaucracy, potential and strength stifled out of nothing more than fear…" His four eyes meet all of Satoru's six. "If only there was someone here who could do something about that."
Satoru does not react.
He's made a lifetime of it, after all.
"Where does your power come from?"
Sukuna's lips quirk up. He doesn't comment on the change of topic. This is the game they're both playing. "A sorcerer," he says, "Is a complete cycle of cursed energy within themselves." He scoops up some of the matcha powder, letting it fall in a perfect circle on the surface of the table. "They use that which they generate, and generate that which they use. Nothing lost, nothing gained. Twins break that loop." Two circles, spilling into each other. "Two imperfect cycles, struggling to pull away from each other even as they struggle to merge. Like that Zenin student you have; just as she holds her sister back, her sister holds her back."
"Mai generates cursed energy," Satoru says. "Maki spills cursed energy."
"They'd be better off with one or the other of them dead," Sukuna agrees. "Because when a twin is no longer a twin…" he pinches the overlapping circles together, brushing away the excess matcha powder to form one smooth curve.
∞
"A modern symbol of an ancient concept," Sukuna says, "But one that I think expresses it rather well. As you would know, Limitless."
"That's an explanation of a concept. Not an answer."
"Aaah, right, I did get carried away with the theory behind it all," Sukuna says. "Well, with all that on the table, it's not that complicated. I ate my twin in the womb."
Yeah that tracks.
The weird arms, the weird eyes, the weird power, it all lines up. What a fucked up backstory. Shoko is gonna lose her shit when he tells her. If he tells her. If he doesn't stab himself in the head as many times as possible then heal himself so that he forgets this conversation ever happened. No, if he does that then Sukuna is gonna know he was bothered by the questions he's asking, damn.
Speaking of which.
"More tea," Sukuna says. It's not a question. Or a request.
Satoru's never going to pass up the opportunity to be a petty bitch. "You gotta use the magic word~"
Sukuna looks at him flatly.
Satoru leans an elbow down onto the table. "Either I'm weak enough to be ordered around without consequences," he says softly, "Or I'm strong enough that I should be bargained with. You can't have it both ways."
Because that's what this is - a negotiation.
If only there was someone here who could do something about that.
That's the real loophole in the vows the higher-ups have him trapped with, the gamble they bet their lives on and won. Have won so far, at least. If Satoru gets someone else to do his dirty work - there's no rules against that.
Sukuna has guessed that. Sukuna is offering.
The real question is what the fuck does Sukuna want.
The answer is it doesn't matter.
(Probably.)
It probably doesn't matter.
Whatever Sukuna wants will, long-term, be bad for his students and for the world, and he decided years ago that those are his top priorities. (Almost) nothing Sukuna offers him would be worth putting them at risk.
Even though–
Even though he can almost taste it. Old man Kamo's blood in the air, finally, after years of wanting the bastard dead. Whichever Zen'in snake they've appointed this year, chopped up and tossed on the steps of their compound. Great-aunt Gojo wheezing out her last, still hating him for having all the power she never could. Gakuganji is the best of them, and Satoru would still rather rip his throat out than see him still breathing. All of them, who caught him in that moment of weakness, that freefall shock right after Suguru had left, saw all the ties that still bound him and decided to pin him down right through the heart–
How is he supposed to balance that against Yuuji's life? Against the fate of the world?
It would be so easy to just let go.
Riko, what do you want to do? That's what matters most.
Yeah.
It's a choice he's made a hundred times, and it's not going to change.
Does he value the lives of his students because he is Gojo Satoru, or is he Gojo Satoru because he values the lives of his students?
In the end, it's Sukuna who will need to compromise here, if Satoru's ever going to be free of these bindings. A bargain, a deal, a negotiation – these things require give and take, and there are some, many things that Satoru is just not willing to give.
He's still leaning forwards, up in Sukuna's face. Maybe some of his unyielding will shows through. Maybe it doesn't. Time will tell.
Sukuna's - Yuuji's - lips press together tightly, before he abruptly relaxes. "Hah. You're trying too hard."
…Haha what. No seriously, what.
Sukuna continues before Satoru has to ask. "I get it, I really do. People, places, things… what point would there be to the world if we couldn't enjoy the things that exist within it? But no matter how hard you try, you can't make them last." Sukuna's eyes are half-lidded, framed by Yuuji's pink eyelashes, focused directly on Satoru. "You're young still, even if you don't feel it. But in time… everyone learns the truth, eventually. The sages preach that all that matters is the now, living in the present moment. And they're right. Past and future… these are concepts that exist solely within our minds." Sukuna holds out his empty cup, lets it slip delicately from his fingers.
Satoru's hand flashes out, faster than thought, to catch it before it impacts the surface and shatters.
"You can see the broken cup," Sukuna says, as quiet as death. "It exists in your mind. The cup is broken, the cup is empty, the cup is full, the cup is whole. The cup does not matter. All that matters is what you want out of it."
This is Shoko's favorite tea set. "It's a very childish philosophy, in its way," Satoru says. "Me, me, me. Nothing matters except what I want right now. One could say that the process of growing to adulthood is centered around learning to think of the future and what you want in the long term. Empires aren't built in a day."
"But they can fall in one," Sukuna says. "If we want them to."
"If we don't care for the consequences," Satoru murmurs.
Sukuna shakes his head impatiently. "A consequence is something in the future. That which happens happens… think about it this way. Why do things fall?"
This, Satoru realizes with hopefully no outward reaction, matters to Sukuna. This is a game of questions and Sukuna has just wasted one on philosophy. "... Because of gravity, pulling them down to the earth."
"Things fall because they are dropped. "
The cup is a clear image in Satoru's mind, as Sukuna must know it is. A triptych.
The cup full, in Shoko's hand.
The cup whole, as Satoru pours.
The cup broken, at Suguru's feet.
"Action is that which exists," Sukuna continues. "The thrill of combat is an expression of the self - the action of existence in the world. That is what makes it the highest truth. During a fight to the death, nothing else exists. If you are fighting to not die, then you are fighting for the future - for something that exists only within your mind. If you are fighting to survive… that is true living, true existence."
And Satoru hasn't been living. Not truly.
He's been getting by – teasing his students, hanging out with Shoko and Nanami, becoming weirdly genuine friends with Yaga – but it's just… going through the motions. Sometimes it's like he's become a caricature of himself, become what people expect him to be, tried so hard to break away from the fear that being the Strongest brought that he's looped around into being silly Gojo, haha, it's going to be so frustrating to see whatever nonsense he pulls next. All these emotions, these hopes and dreams and fears and bindings, and maybe what he wants is to just let go.
"If you choose an action," Satoru says quietly, "Then you also choose the consequences of that action. Whether or not those consequences exist. That is what wanting is. What do you want, Sukuna?" Riko's life, Yuuta's, Yuuji's – these things have consequences. Every single time, Satoru has picked the only option he could. He has chosen the consequences of those actions, and he lives with them. He has made them a part of himself. Because he is Gojo Satoru.
Because Gojo Satoru is him.
Sukuna sighs, runs his hand through Yuuji's pink hair. "Ah, you still don't get it. Whatever. Right now what I want is some more tea, Sorcerer. More broadly - the obvious. I want freedom. I want control. I want to see things burn. I'm bored."
"Tragic," Satoru deadpans. "... Yeah, I'll heat up some more water."
"Good," Sukuna says, his voice like an ember. "And then – we'll negotiate."