Chapter Text
The middle school was empty. At least, for the most part.
It was far past school hours and by now the teachers and students were long gone. Walking slowly through the darkened halls, all you could hear were your own footsteps. But something else was here, that you knew for sure.
“Upstairs?” you mutter under your breath, slowing to a stop. Yes, upstairs. Right above you, in fact. It’d be much quicker to just burst through the floor, but Yaga was already on your case for too much needless destruction. You pick up again, this time towards the stairs but- it’s moving!
You take off down the hall, following the cursed energy above. You can’t hear it make any noise against the floor. It must be a flying type, or- you shiver- made of some kind of ooze. You hoped that wasn’t the case. You could feel it slow, and then turn right. Must be entering a classroom. You race up the stairs, two at a time. You’d like to get this over with quickly.
The door to the classroom is open, and you can feel the cursed energy growing stronger the closer you get. It must have sensed you by now, or at least heard you coming, but it stays in place as you reach the doorway, a staff forming in your palm as your hand closes into a fist. You have a split second to duck under a projectile as the curse screeches, its energy surging. It’s about your height and three times as wide, its shape contorting with its agitation at your presence.
You move swiftly, jumping and using a nearby desk to hop off and bring your staff down hard over the curse’s head. Only, the blow doesn’t land. Where your staff comes down, the curse splits into two, separating quicker than you expected and fleeing to opposite sides of the room. You huff, righting yourself. Must be an ooze-type. How annoying. And if your first hit was anything to go by, physical attacks won't be effective if you didn’t want it to keep multiplying. You could hear the curse- now curses- squelch as they moved against the floor. It was near a Grade 2, but didn’t seem eager to attack. Also didn’t seem capable of speaking, which you preferred.
You weren’t very strong when it came to energy attacks yet, but you weren’t exactly willing to use your curse technique in this scenario, either. You release your staff, it dissipating and reverting back into cursed energy as it flowed back into you. Raising your hand, you form a gun with your hand, pointer finger out and thumb raised. Your aim needed work, but as long as the curses weren’t very fast you could hit them. You could even practice locking onto its cursed energy and have the “bullet” chase it.
You point your finger at the curse to your right and shoot without hesitation. The curse screeches again and dodges at the last second, but your cursed energy bullet follows it- only for a moment, before it dissipates. You click your tongue. Locking onto the energy isn’t the problem, then. It’s your range. As you prepare to shoot again, the curse to your left screeches and shoots more projectiles. Three in total. You dodge them easily, getting closer to the other curse and distractedly locking onto its energy before shooting again. This time it hits, but it seems you hadn’t charged it with nearly enough energy. You groan in irritation.
Your attention quickly ends up split between the two as one curse continues to shoot projectiles in your direction while the other extends two… arms? Tentacles? Seemingly trying to grab at you. Looks like your attack had only spurred them into action, where before they seemed only to want to evade. You spend a minute dodging, trying to think of how to deal with them. It was easy enough to shoot recklessly until they died, but that would hardly satisfy you, especially if you were trying to cause minimal damage to the school.
The projectiles come quick with little pause in between and the arms twirl and twist around the desks, only growing longer as they follow you around the classroom. An energy attack that would cause minimal damage but exorcise the curses in one blow… that's what you wanted to accomplish. Your cursed technique was an obvious choice but against a Grade 2 it might not finish them off immediately.
You let out a small cry as you dodged and accidentally bumped into the teacher’s desk, the corner rammed right into your side. It was the perfect moment for one of the arms to catch you, grabbing your upper arm and dragging you into the grasp of the other arm that wrapped around your leg. Fuck, you were focusing too hard on the projectiles you completely forgot about the furniture. You might have to start taking this seriously if-
You could barely finish the thought before a large crash and a huge wave of cursed energy wiped through the classroom, instantly exorcising the curses and destroying everything in its wake. The arms holding you let go as they disintegrate along with the rest of the curses and you land on your feet, feeling anger already building in your chest. You curse yourself. Another thing you hadn’t noticed while you were too busy focusing.
“I had that under control,” you growl, turning to the source of the massive cursed energy you now sense.
“Ehhh? Didn’t look like it,” a wry voice drawls. You know he’s smirking at you from the sound of his voice.
“It doesn’t matter what it looked like, I was just about to exorcise it. You are overstepping,” you seethe. This isn’t the first time Gojo Satoru has interrupted your solo missions, and no matter how much you ragged on him for it, it wouldn’t be the last. He shrugs and walks across the room to you, hands in his pockets and a lackadaisical smile on his face. Not that you could see it.
“You were thinking wayyy too much. And you shouldn’t play target practice with curses, it’s cruel,” he says in an admonishing tone, like he’s chastising a student. He’s leaned in close, his breath fanning your face. You bristle.
“I didn’t ask for your notes. Stop following me on my missions. Weren’t you supposed to be on one of your own, anyway?” You push him away roughly with a hand on his face, heading for the door. Though as you walked through the classroom, you noticed something, stopping in your tracks. “Y-you completely destroyed the room!”
It was true. Where the desks were once lined neatly in four rows of five, they were now scattered around the floor, upturned and some completely dismantled. The bookshelves against the back wall were destroyed, books strewn around the floor and scorched pages lay about. The glass from all the windows had shattered and there was a giant hole in the wall adjacent to the door. He must have attacked from outside the classroom, through the wall. You grit your teeth in irritation. Yaga lectured you about being needlessly destructive, but Gojo was on a completely different level of destroying things unnecessarily.
“Yeah well, I finished mine early and decided to come see how you were doing. And the wall was in the way, how else was I supposed to reach my Princess in time?” Gojo shrugs again, passing you to leave the classroom through the hole in the wall. You follow, fuming.
“I didn’t need your help! And now Yaga’s going to get on my case again about damage!” You complain. “I was trying to think of a way to exorcise those curses without needless destruction, something I know you don’t know the first thing about. Make as big of a mess as you want on your own missions, not on mine!” Gojo barely seems to be listening. “Satoru!”
He groans. “Yeah, yeah I hear you. Man, if this is the thanks I get for being your knight in shining armor maybe I’ll just leave you to die next time.” You didn’t think you could get any angrier but his flippant attitude had always grated on your nerves, and his words only made your blood boil more.
“I didn’t need your help!”
The ride back to Jujutsu Tech was completely silent. The auxiliary manager that had been waiting on you seemed to be caught off guard by Gojo’s sudden appearance, but the look on your face had kept him silent, the palpable tension in the air serving to make him keep his questions to himself.
You were out of the car before it even came to a complete stop, stomping off with a huff towards the dorms. It was late, and all you wanted to do at this point was shower and go straight to bed. Gojo was close behind you.
“Come on, you can’t be that mad. I did you a favor,” he whines. He was always like this, overstepping clearly set boundaries without a care and then turning whiny when you got reasonably upset. You only roll your eyes and keep walking as you enter the dorm common room, not even acknowledging the presence in the room.
“Uh oh, what did you do this time?” Geto’s voice sighed from the kitchen table, a bowl of rice in hand. You were done arguing, heading straight for the stairs across the living room.
“I saved her life like the knight I am, talk about a thankless job!” Gojo pouts, but doesn’t try to follow you upstairs. He knows exactly how that would end, and figures he’d just let you cool off. His words only serve to fan the flame of your anger, but you’re already starting up the stairs. You won’t engage, but your tongue is bleeding from how much you're biting it.
There was no point in arguing with Gojo. You could yell in his face for hours and it would blow over him like a cool breeze. It had been like this since you were children. Always “coming to your rescue” when you never needed it, expecting gratefulness and adoration for his actions. You would never give it to him. He got it enough from everyone else. You would die before you gave him the satisfaction of having you sing his praises.
It wasn’t just the fact that he would come to save you unnecessarily, though. It was his attitude. His pompousness. His frivolity. His selfishness. You could go on and on. Gojo Satoru was a shameless, self-absorbed person with the biggest god complex you had ever seen. And what made it worse was that it wasn’t for nothing. With his Six Eyes and Limitless techniques to back him up, he had no reason to be humble. He was strongest, and those weren’t just words, it was a fact. Blessed with insurmountable power that would only grow as he got older, he was the strongest, alongside his equally as irritating friend, Geto Suguru. He was untouchable. He plowed over rules and did whatever he wanted because no one could stop him. He said whatever he wanted because no one could shut him up. He looked down on the weak. He looked down on you.
That’s what you hated most about him. Past his overprotectiveness and savior-complex, he was looking down on you. Because to him, you were weak. Something that needed to be protected, even as he lamented protecting the weak. But you weren’t weak, not really. You were a Grade 1 sorcerer at the age of 16. You had inherited your clan's bloodline technique. You had trained since you were a child to fight curses, had honed your abilities and body your whole life. You had killed more curses at this point than most adults.
But that didn’t matter. Not to Gojo Satoru. Not to your clan.
A week passed before you spoke to Gojo again. Normally, you’d go for much longer- you were known for the grudges you’d hold- but Gojo had made it exceptionally hard this time. Through training, classes, and meals, he would follow you around like a lost puppy, trying to annoy you into talking to him again. It wouldn’t work, no matter how hard he’d try.
“You still ignoring him?” Shoko had asked on the third day as you sat outside during training. The only reason Gojo wasn’t breathing down your neck at the moment was because he was on the field, sparring with Geto under Yaga’s supervision. You huffed with a nod, holding your knees against your chest.
“It seriously drives me crazy, him showing up and interrupting my missions and acting like he’s done me a favor,” you mutter, resting your cheek on your knees. Shoko gives you a sympathetic smile.
“He worries- not that I’m trying to defend him or anything. Maybe you should try interrupting his missions and see how he likes it,” she offers, a cigarette hanging from her mouth. You’re far enough away from Yaga that he wouldn’t notice it immediately, but you’re surprised at her boldness.
“Pssh. He’d probably like that,” you say. Shoko laughs. “I know I’m being stubborn, especially since he won’t stop no matter what I do, but I don’t want to give in and have him think it’s okay. I have to hold my ground against him, that way I can at least keep my dignity as a sorcerer. If he wants me to speak to him he has to at least apologize. I won’t reward bad behavior.”
Shoko laughs again. “You sound like you’re training a dog.”
“It feels like I kind of am,” you sigh. “A very hyperactive, clingy dog.”
“Hmm. Think we could teach him to fetch?”
“If you mean ‘buy you cigarettes’, then forget it.”
“Aww, how mean,” Shoko whines, leaning into your side. “I really need them, you know.”
You roll your eyes, a small smile on your face. Though it drops quickly when you notice a well of cursed energy making its way over to you. You hear his footsteps press into the grass. Geto Suguru.
“Yo. You’re up Shoko,” he says, plopping down into the grass next to you. He’s drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. Shoko groans and begrudgingly stands, stretching her arms over her head.
“What am I even sparring for anyway, I’m so not a fighter,” she grumbles, dropping her cigarette and crushing it into the ground with her foot before walking down the hill to where Gojo stands, not a hair out of place nor a bead of sweat broken.
“Don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you,” he grins.
“Good luck, Ieri!” you call, much to Gojo’s disappointment. Geto also calls out his own encouragement to Shoko as they take their stances. And while Gojo does take joy in demonstrating his strength against others, he does appear to be taking it easy on her. Today they’re only meant to be fighting hand-to-hand, no cursed energy, so he pulls his punches and blocks instead of dodging every one of her blows like you know he could.
Geto leans back on his hands, his head hanging back and face turned up to the sky as he lets out a loud groan. “Man, it’s crazy hot today.”
You let out a short chuckle and hum in agreement. “I wish we could’ve trained in the gym, I don’t know why Yaga-sensei likes to torture us like this.”
“Look at him. He’s not even sweating. It’s probably not even affecting him,” Geto says, then pauses. “Well, I mean he’s wearing a dark longsleeve jacket and definitely not sweating,” he corrects, a sheepish smile on his face. You roll your eyes good-naturedly.
“Right,” you smile. You never minded, but Geto always got a little embarrassed when he made mistakes like that. It was easy to forget you were blind. You never acted like it hindered you and certainly didn’t frequently comment on it.
Maybe there was a time when you were much younger where it was a problem for you- maybe it was still a problem for you, in some ways- but you were far past it causing you any real issues. You had exceptionally good hearing, which helped you map out your surroundings, and due to your inherited cursed technique, you were able to sense curses as well as curse users before they’d even be apparent to someone who could see. It was sometimes difficult when you were around non-curse users that were especially quiet, and it was easy for things to go unnoticed when you weren’t focused, but that never happened during missions (minus the one you were just on). In your opinion, it only helped you be a better jujutsu sorcerer, even if others might not see it that way.
Others like Gojo, maybe. Probably. He would never say it out loud, but you knew your lack of sight was at least part of the reason he was so protective over you. And it didn’t matter how much you proved yourself, he’d always worry like that. It didn’t help with how much the clans lorded it over him, especially with him being the main reason you were able to attend Jujutsu Tech in the first place. You once thought maybe it would make him hate you, how your clans forced you two together and made you into some delicate, fragile flower he’d need to protect. Instead, despite all his ire towards his responsibility of protecting the weak, he had leaned into that role as your “knight in shining armor” a little too much, to the point it was nearly suffocating.
A part of you admittedly didn’t hate it. A part of you wanted to fall into his arms every time. A very, very small, dumb part of you. Most of you hated it. Most of you hated him. The boy who kept you from harm every chance he got. The boy who spat in the face of all your hard work and training and stomped all over it like it was nothing. The boy who only had to wave a hand to decide your future, with no care for your feelings. The boy who had chained you to him forever and had no intention of letting you go.
The boy who was standing right in front of you, now.
“Want a drink, Princess? You look like you could use something nice and cold right now,” his voice was grating. Despite his generous words, his tone was teasing. Condescending.
You elected to not react, and lamented the way your eyebrow twitched in irritation. He would see it and take it as some sort of victory. You stayed silent, standing up and walking past him down the hill. It was your turn to spar, anyway.
“Just apologize,” you heard Geto say as you walked away.
“No way!”