Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s not every day that the great Satoru Gojō is summoned to Jujutsu High for a mission briefing. Usually, they call him up, point him in a direction and feed him to the wolves. And that’s just swell. He works well like that. In fact, he’s at his best when he’s on his own and the less he has to hear from the Elders, the better it will be for all parties involved.

Ijichi is the one who made the call. Typically, the higher-ups will contact him directly when there’s urgent business to address, but it’s just as well. He welcomes the break from all their moaning and harping over every little thing and their repeating of “Gojō, you can’t do that,” like broken records. Not that he ever listens to them.

So fine, alright. He’d rather be briefed by Ijichi than those faded old hacks, anyway. He’s at the school in the flash, out in the hall, his Six Eyes warning him of Nanami’s presence before he enters. Hm. That’s odd. Satoru doesn’t work well with others—not that he doesn’t love some good, old-fashioned bonding time with Kento. But he works best alone. Regardless of whom he’s partnered with, they only get in the way. Partners are more of a setback than an asset for the inheritor of the Six Eyes and Limitless, and the higher-ups know this just as well as he does. But here Kento Nanami is, summoned at the same time as Satoru Gojō, and there’s something off about this whole thing.

Satoru kicks open the classroom door. No one is impressed.

“Yo, Nanamin,” he greets with the laid-back wave of his hand.

“Don’t you start.”

Satoru grins. Kento hates that nickname, and it fills him with glee.  

He gives Ijichi another little wave as he plops down at one of the desks and kicks up his legs, making himself comfy. Briefings are never any fun. If he had a choice in the matter, there would be a lot less talking and a lot more exorcising. So he could get back to the important things in life, you know? Like sampling the sweet buns from every shop in Tokyo, or training Yūji by kicking his ass. It’s very intense. And it’s hilarious.

Ijichi sighs at him, pinching his brow with the knowledge that this is going to be one hell of a night, and hands them both a file. Satoru doesn’t bother with it. He’ll have to hear Ijichi repeat it verbatim, anyway. “We have an urgent mission for you two.”

Satoru throws his hands behind his head and tips the front legs of his chair off the floor, getting himself situated for the lecture that’s about to begin. “Let’s hear it.”

“Well…” Ijichi’s eyes fall to Kento, who nods. “It looks like two cursed wombs have appeared.”

Satoru hums his affirmation, but he’s not sure why that’s setting off the alarm bells. Cursed wombs are always popping up. For every new curse, there’s a womb. Usually, they aren’t found and exorcised before birth. That’s just how it goes. Two at the same time is a little weird, sure, but Satoru could still exorcise them both by himself. Kento could, too, if he had to guess. They’re not even active curses yet—how bad could it be?

Ijichi doesn’t look overly concerned, either, as he thumbs through his own copy of the file. “They’re expected to birth special-grades. The windows who reported them have observed them growing and changing, so it’s anyone’s guess when the curses will be active. They’re on the scene as we speak, giving me updates.”

“Ooooh?” A smirk tugs at the corner of Satoru’s mouth as he finally takes a look at the papers he so easily dismissed before. There are no photographs, naturally, but there are descriptions from the windows. One is reported to be a pale, silver wolf, which is… a thing, he supposes. Usually, the wombs are just as grotesque as the curses they birth, all fleshy bits and extra limbs and bulging eyes. Exoskeletons and the like. Pictures of horror, not that Satoru finds them scary. He’s too powerful to feel that fear. And, well, he’s seen them for as long as he can remember; they’re a part of his every day. He supposes, thinking back, that there are curses that aren’t quite so hard on the eyes. Some are humanoid, which isn’t so bad, and he’s seen a few that were born from pests like roaches and grasshoppers, so a wolf isn’t too farfetched. As a matter of fact, a curse like that would probably make a good shikigami. Like Megumi’s Divine Dogs.

He flips the page to see what they’re dealing with for the second one, and it’s… described as a black fox. Huh. That… hm. Something about that does sit a little off-kilter in his mind. One, sure, but two curses looking like non-humanoid mammals forming at once is a bit much. He scratches his chin as he tries to make sense of this.

“They appeared at the very same time,” Kento observes. He’s already done with the file. It’s closed atop the teacher’s desk at the front of the room. “Are they connected?”

Ijichi is sweating a little. This man has been through a lot over the years, but even he’s sensing something odd about this, no doubt. “That’s what the higher-ups are suspecting, though I’m not sure if that’s even possible.”

“It is,” Satoru says simply, “probably.”

“Is it or isn’t it?”

Satoru shrugs. It feels like it is, but he hasn’t seen it happen before.

“They may be born from the same category of negative thoughts,” Kento interjects. It makes sense. Maybe. If they squint a little. “If the same negative emotions happen to be feeding them in different locations at the same time, then sharing similarities would make sense.”

“But why at the same time?” Satoru asks. He checks the location of the wombs, one just outside of Kyoto and the other about two hours out of Tokyo, and tilts his head. “What could possibly be happening in these cities for them to birth the same curse simultaneously?”

“That’s what we’re hoping you can find out for us, Gojō.” Ijichi collects his papers into a folder and rests them at his side. “The plan is to exorcise them before they birth more special-grades, but our secondary objective is to find out what type of curses they are, if possible. Our superiors are worried this could be the start of a trend, so they’d like to get to the root of it before that happens.”

Makes sense. At this point in time, Satoru is not worried. He’s the strongest, after all, and they’re having the strongest sorcerer in the world take on a fetus. No-brainer, he’s going to come out on top. Kento will, too. As far as he’s concerned, it’s open and shut. Nothing to worry about. He’ll be back to his tour of the shopping district before the stores close, and maybe he can rope someone into a nice dinner to celebrate.

He stands with Kento at the front of the school, hands in his pockets as he looks up at the sky. It’s getting dark. Kento must not be happy about this; he’s going to be working overtime since the powers that be couldn’t be bothered to call them in before six. Ah, well. No big deal.

“What do you think?” he asks.

Kento curls a finger around his chin, brow furrowed, calculative as ever. “It doesn’t sit right with me. There are just too many coincidences between the two. If we exorcise them quickly, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Want a lift?” He waggles his fingers and grins. He doesn’t know if he could teleport all the way to Kyoto, but he’s never tried, so maybe? He’s pretty great. Satoru’s actually fond of trains because he can eat his snacks to-and-from his missions, but eh, he could probably go all the way to Kyoto with the Limitless.

“No. I plan to take Itadori with me,” Kento states, “seeing as he’s still under my care at the moment.”

Satoru watches Kento go with a frown. He was supposed to pick Yūji up tomorrow, anyway, but now he feels like he’s missing out. Other people get in the way, anyway. But he likes to show off. He really likes to show off. Hm.

“Megumi!” Satoru exclaims as he wraps an arm around his student’s shoulders post-teleport. Megumi’s looking a little disoriented from the trip, but he’ll walk it off. “Are you ready for this super important mission?”

“Why am I here?”

It’s a bit soul-crushing how much his student does not want any part in this. Satoru sighs. Kento must be having the time of his life, with Yūji there to observe. Yūji’s probably all excited and telling Kento he’s cool and amazing… Frankly, Satoru just wants to gloat and, in order to do that, he needs someone to be here. Sure, there will be Ijichi waiting outside the curtain, but it’s not the same. Maybe Megumi wasn’t the greatest choice. Would Panda have been better? Mmm, no, probably not Panda. Toge’s conversations are very cyclical and Maki is… Maki. Nobara may have been a better option. She’s not the type to get excited over this type of thing, though.

Then again, neither is Megumi.

Kento’s so lucky.

Still hanging off his student, Satoru grins and points to the sky. “That’s why. We’re exorcising that cursed womb.”

The file called it the ‘Tokyo location’ but it’s not in Tokyo. It’s actually over some forest by the mountains, a few hours out of the city, which doesn’t feel right. Curses are far more likely to pop up in crowded places, especially special grades, and this is about as remote as they can get. There’s always a chance, sure, but what could possibly be happening here to warrant such a nasty curse? His smile falls the more he thinks about it, scratching his chin with his free hand.

“Then why do you need me?” Megumi is no fun. “Just go exorcise it already. I was about to have dinner, Gojō-sensei. Please be more considerate.”

“We could grab a bite after this? I know a place.”

Megumi just gives Satoru that ruffled look that he so often does, and he’s really displeased, but whatever. They hang around for a little while until Ijichi and a few others show up by car.

Satoru observes the womb while the curtain is set up, nothing showing on his face. It’s big, about as big as any other cursed womb he’s come across, and from all the way over here, he can make out the top half of it above the treeline. Silver wolf, just like the report, curled tightly inside a ball of cursed energy. A red, swirling eye looks vacantly out at the world. And it’s strong. He doesn’t need Six Eyes to feel the violent spikes of cursed energy rippling off that thing. Megumi must sense it, too, as stiff as the kid is. That’s a special-grade, alright. The more he sees of it, the more it unnerves him. Not that he can’t handle it, of course. He’s Satoru Gojō. He can handle anything. But if that thing is born and manages to slip away before he can exorcise it, it’ll be a big problem. Something that powerful could do a lot of damage in the time it takes him to find it again.

But he’s Satoru Gojō, and this will all go swimmingly because of that.

The curtain goes up, and Satoru approaches with his hands in his pockets. He hesitates, staring at Megumi through his blindfold.

“Hey, Megumi?”

“Yeah?”

“Stay here.”

“What? Didn’t you just say that I’m here to exorcise that thing with you?”

Satoru nods to Ijichi and the others milling about the perimeter of the curtain. “If anything happens, protect them.” None of them will be able to handle whatever comes out of that womb, but Megumi might be able to hold his own long enough to help them escape. He’s Satoru Gojō’s precious student, after all.

“Yeah. Sure. Be careful.”

Satoru waves over his shoulder as he steps inside the curtain and saunters up to the womb. Now that he’s in the tree line, he wouldn’t be able to see his target were it not for the Six Eyes; the leaves are obstructing his view of the sky. But, well, he does have the Six Eyes so it’s a non-issue. The cursed energy fluctuations are becoming more frequent, so it could become active anytime now, which adds a little pressure to it all. It’s not his fault it took everyone else so long to get here. They should have just teleported.

He’s unfair, he knows. Sometimes other people can be so exhausting, though.

It takes him a few minutes to notice, and maybe if he was paying more attention he would have seen right through it, but his own thoughts distracted him, and he let down his guard. See, he’s not getting any closer. He tilts his head and stares with his Six Eyes at the wolf in the sky (what a sentence!) and it’s only then that he realizes that he hasn’t taken his eyes off the thing since he entered the curtain. There’s something about that spinning, swirling eye that draws him in. The moment he looks away, he realizes he’s still at the edge of the curtain.

He hasn’t moved since he entered.

This time, Satoru keeps his eyes on the trees ahead and walks. He doesn’t look at it. The surrounding foliage is left behind, and his shoes leave imprints in the mud. He’s moving now. Whatever momentary power it held over him has been broken and, he suspects, it won’t happen again if he doesn’t look up.

What a terrifying monster, to have power like that from the womb. It’s getting him all fired up.

Yūji’s not sure what he’s doing here, but it seems like fun!

Well, okay. ‘Fun’ probably isn’t the best word. Nanami brought him along on a special-rank mission just to observe, and he’s fine with that! Obviously, he wants to help, but they’re just exorcising a curse womb, so there won’t be anything for him to do. Nanami will be more than enough for that. It’ll still be a good experience to observe a first-grade sorcerer at work, and hey, he’s getting a little field trip to Kyoto out of it.

“Isn’t this a bit out of the way?” Yūji asks as they climb the stairs to an old shrine outside the city. It’s been long abandoned, but the stone steps are still in good shape, even if everything that’s wooden is rotting. He supposes that an abandoned shrine might bring about a curse. Anything is possible. “Shouldn’t it be forming in a hospital or something if it’s this strong?”

And it is strong. He’s still getting used to sensing cursed energy, but even he can feel how much that thing is giving off. They’re in the curtain, halfway up the mountain, and Nanami tells him not to look at it. He doesn’t really get why. Something about its eye or whatever. He trusts Nanami’s judgment.

“It’s strange, certainly,” Nanami says from a few stairs ahead. “But it could have been long-forming. Perhaps curses have been collecting here for decades, or centuries, and only came together to form a cursed spirit now.”

“Oh. Huh. I guess that makes sense. Thanks, Nanamin.”

“Don’t,” Nanami warns.

Yūji ignores him and smiles. “You’re buying dinner after this, right? ‘Cause I—”

They both pause. Nanami holds a hand out, barring Yūji from climbing any higher, and places himself directly between his student and their destination ahead. “Don’t move.”

“What? Why?”

Cursed energy ripples out from the orb in the sky, and the surface cracks and bursts. Winds rush the forest, sending anything that isn’t rooted to the ground flying, and Yūji braces himself with his arms in front of his face and his eyes squeezed shut. Dirt and branches and other debris whips violently at his arms, stones sharp enough to cut. He waits until the air settles to peek out at the world, and is confused when Nanami is no longer there in front of him. Looking up—he was told not to, but Nanami isn’t here, so does it really matter?—he finds that the womb is missing, too. Huh.

There’s a part of him that instantly assumes that Nanami’s already taken care of it, but the curtain is still up, and that doesn’t sit well with him. There’s gotta be something here. He cups his hands over his mouth and calls, “Nanamin? You there?”

No answer. He wasn’t told to turn back, though, so he shrugs and presses onward. Nanami probably went ahead while he was busy bracing against the wind. He still feels cursed energy, but there’s something about it that just—it’s weird, okay? He can’t pinpoint where it’s coming from. If he could, he’d be certain that the cursed spirit wasn’t exercised, but he can’t, so he’s not sure if it’s that thing’s cursed energy he’s feeling or something else entirely. It’s just bouncing around the curtain. Like it’s running. But fast. Like as fast as Yūji runs. Which is probably within the realm of normal for cursed spirits?

The bouncing around stops for a second and, out of curiosity, Yūji looks in that direction. It’s right off the path of the stairs, just a little into the forest, where he finds a small figure kneeling on the ground. A white mask cut with circles of black ink and three black tomoe cover its face, hair sticking out from the top and sides, and it… it looks like a kid. This cursed spirit, if that’s what this is, looks like a kid younger than Yūji. Like, what, eleven? Thirteen?

Looks can be deceiving, he knows, so he keeps his guard up as he approaches. He moves up slowly, quietly, but it doesn’t matter how quiet he is because the boy’s head snaps towards him anyway. Beyond the holes in the mask, a haunting red glow cuts through the darkness.

“Hey,” he calls, figuring all the other special-grades he’s met can talk so why the hell not, “are you a cursed spirit?”

The boy doesn’t move. It’s like he’s a statue. He hasn’t attacked, which is cool, but he’s oozing cursed energy like nobody’s business, and Yūji is pretty sure his assumption is correct.

Yūji looks a little closer at the dark robes the boy is draped in and scratches his head. “I thought it was a fox or something, what the heck?”

“The hell’s a cursed spirit?” the boy asks, slightly raising his head.

Yūji frowns. He’s starting to get very confused. “You. Probably.”

“I’m not,” the boy says matter-of-factly, looking a little less withered as he straightens his back. He looks down at his own hands, flexing them, as though he only now notices all of that power welling up in his little body. “What is this? My chakra…”

“Chakra?” Well, now Yūji’s really confused. The sorcerer part of his brain is telling him to either engage the curse and put an end to it while it’s still newborn and disoriented, or to find Nanami. But the rest of him is wondering why this curse doesn’t… look like a curse. Sure, he’s seen curses that look human before, but this… This takes to a whole other level.

“Hey,” the kid asks, “who are you? What village are you from?”

“Village?” Yūji’s starting to sound like an echo, but he doesn’t know what to say. “Um. I’m from Tokyo.”

“What nation is that? Tokyo? I’ve never heard of it.”

“Well, I mean, you were just born, so…” What is he doing right now?

The boy tilts his head and stands up. Now that his face is in full view, Yūji can make out three small tomoe in the boy’s eyes, just like the mask, spinning circles around his pupil. Then the curse—it’s probably a curse, right?—feels the mask on his face, scratching at it with his fingertips until he finds the edge, and slips it off to take a good look at it.

Whatever modicum of fight Yūji had is suspended when he sees the kid’s face. He’s just that—a kid. This curse or boy or whatever he is has a round face and messy hair, and nothing about him looks out of place outside the unsettling glow of his eyes. There’s so much emotion on his face as he inspects that mask, feeling the painted black beneath his finger pads, and it looks so horribly human.

The kid touches his own face, closing one eye and then the other. “The Sharingan? But, the rocks, I—my eye—why do I have it?”

Then again, curses tend to be a little on the crazy side. He’s probably a curse.

Yūji takes a low stance, bracing himself in case this thing—boy— whatever decides to have a go at him, and starts channelling his cursed energy. The boy must sense it because his eyes go up and widen, and Yūji knows he shouldn’t feel guilty, but he does.

“What are you doing?” the kid asks when Yūji lunges at it, fist reeled back, and—

And he can’t do it. He’s killed humans before, but this kid, it’s just, everything is so.

Wrong.

Even as his fist stops right before the boy’s face, the curse never makes a move to defend itself. Yūji has never seen anything like it.

The boy swallows and falls back on his butt, staring at Yūji with that same lost look. “Hey,” he—it—mutters, “what did you say I was?”

Yūji’s hand falls to his side in defeat. “A curse—”

The moment the word leaves his lips, Nanami flies out of the brush and slashes at the child without hesitation. Even with his weapon still wrapped, it should slice through him easily. It doesn’t. The weapon passes through the boy with no effort at all. In fact, the boy doesn’t even notice until it’s already happened, and he’s gawking wide-eyed at the blade that’s phasing through his chest.

Nanami puts himself between Yūji and the curse, calm and collected in the face of this very human spirit in a way that Yūji can’t replicate. He won’t have any qualms exorcising it. Nanami’s a professional, after all. But it doesn’t feel right.

The cursed spirit’s eyes have changed. They’re still that cutting red, but the shapes of the tomoe have twisted and combined, his eye pinwheeling in a way that it didn’t before. He’s pale, white as a ghost, not that he’s alive, as he leaps back and puts more distance between them. He still hasn’t attacked. Hasn’t even tried. Wouldn’t a cursed spirit do something by now? But no, it’s not human. The energy it’s giving off doesn’t feel like it’s from a sorcerer.

“Intangibility,” Nanami observes, bracing his blunt blade. “I knew this spelled trouble.”

The boy pats down his chest where the blade had previously phased through before looking up at Nanami. He doesn’t speak. It looks like he wants to. There are words on the tremble of his lips that go unsaid because there’s a weapon that’s being pointed at him—it— whatever .

Its eyes find Yūji and suddenly all Yūji can see is that spinning red.

The world around him is distant now, but he’s vaguely aware of it. Nanami tells him to take cover, but his legs won’t move. Every blow that Nanami tries to land on the boy just passes through until one hits—but the boy is gone and in his place is a log, cut in two and clattering to the ground, and they’ve lost sight of him.

Unseen hands drag Yūji to the ground and cover his mouth, and he feels hot breath on his neck.

“Shh.”

When Nanami turns to check on him, Yūji is already being dragged into an inky blackness cool to the touch, all-consuming as it blocks out the world that he came from, and nothing remains.

It’s sudden when it hatches. Satoru whistles as shockwaves ripple out from its core, and something small and distant falls from the orb in the sky. He sees a shape with his Six Eyes, looking more human than wolf, drop into the trees some distance away. All of that cursed energy built up in the womb is scattered now, lighting up the air like starlight. Well, it’s been born. Too late to stop that. But Satoru should be able to fuck around long enough to figure out what thoughts gave birth to it, so the higher-ups won’t be too upset. Not that he cares.

Before he teleports to it, he hears thunder. A sky muted and almost invisible beyond the curtain cracks and breaks with it, plumes of grey clouds twisting over the cursed spirit like an ill omen. This one’s got some fight in it, bending nature to its will.

He shifts through space, and suddenly he’s there where the curse fell, blinking at the empty little clearing between trees. What was left of the cursed energy after the birth was all gathered here, but it vanished in the time it took Satoru to teleport, which is a new and fun thing.

There’s something behind him. He can’t help but smile as he feels a body rush and jump at his back, and he doesn’t even bother to retaliate, hands in his pockets. There’s a blade to his throat, but it’s no ordinary knife, and an arm wrapped around his neck that doesn’t quite touch. He can feel the heat radiating off it, though. Body heat. As though it’s alive. Curses can be so funny sometimes.

It pushes away as he turns leisurely to face it, putting some distance between them, and it must realize what just happened. Satoru sympathizes. It’s just a baby, after all, and hasn’t learned to fear the name Satoru Gojō. He’ll give it a good lesson before it gets out of hand.

“Did I surprise you?” Satoru asks, something feral in his smile as he stares the curse down through the veil of his blindfold. If he didn’t have the Six Eyes, he may have hesitated; this curse takes the form of a young, pale boy with pale hair and those same hypnotic eyes that Satoru saw in the fetus. Aside from that, though, it can easily pass for human. Physically. The Six Eyes shows him otherwise. This is a cursed spirit, no two ways around it. But there’s a different signature to its eye as though it was taken from elsewhere, as though the curse wasn’t born with it, even though both eyes match.

What weirds him out the most, though, is that this little curse looks like it would fit right in as a member of the Gojō clan. It has all the right markers. Wouldn’t be too out of the ballpark to suspect his clan to be involved in deeds that would create a special-grade curse, either. But he’ll ignore that for now.

The curse straightens, flexing its blade. It has a tantō, of all things, which feels way dated for the times. The red eyes stare back beyond a painted white and red mask shaped like a dog or wolf, and it’s the mask that keeps it from feeling too human. But Gojō can see through that mask. He can see anything. And beyond that mask is just a boy with a cloth over his— its —face, and oh dear, he’s humanized it. Nanami would be so disappointed.

“A dōjutsu?” the curse asks, its voice an echo behind the porcelain mask, muffled and distorted.

“A what now?” Satoru counters, building up and concentrating cursed energy into a single point in preparation for a release of Blue. He needs to find out what type of curse this is first, he supposes, which is why he hasn’t taken it out immediately.

The curse doesn’t answer. It’s a bit rude, isn’t it? Aw, well. The higher-ups can suck it, then.

Instead of Blue, he reinforces his body with cursed energy and runs at the kid. When he goes to hit it—it’s not a kid, Satoru, stop thinking like that —his hand passes straight through it. He loses his focus for just a second because he’s Satoru Gojō, and he does not miss . The curse takes that moment of uncertainty to try another swing of the tantō, not that it can reach him, and they reach a stalemate. The curse jumps away. It likes to keep its distance. Satoru feels that if it hadn’t realized it couldn’t touch him, it wouldn’t be so slow-moving and cautious. This one thinks. Extensively.

Satoru isn’t bothered yet. This is a minor hiccup, and he’s pretty sure it won’t be able to survive a hit from Blue or Red, but it’s piquing his interest, and he thinks he maybe wants to get to know it better.

He launches himself at it, and it matches his movements exactly, like a mirror image, and they clash when they meet. The tantō’s blade never lands, and Satoru’s punch passes through the curse’s head like it’s nothing.

“You won’t land a hit on me,” Satoru explains because he’s a teacher at heart and giving a helping hand to a child is in his nature. Even if his tone is mocking and teasing and anything but informative.

“A barrier,” the curse observes, its spinning eye scanning Satoru’s everything as though it can see the Limitless, and maybe it can.

“That’s the infinity between me and you.” The curse rears back and tries to land another hit anyway. Satoru can’t help but laugh as it slows infinitesimally before it makes contact. “That’s the spirit!”

Satoru spins out to push the kid—curse, curse —back and kicks out with a cursed energy infused leg but, like every time before it, it cuts through air. There’s got to be a way around it. It’s a trick. But until he figures out that trick, they’re at a standstill.

“You’re a special one,” Satoru praises. They take turns exchanging meaningless hits, anyway. To waste energy, he supposes. “Wanna share your secret? I won’t tell.”

“Maa, this is new for me, too.”

“For a newborn, that’s entirely fair.”

“Newborn?”

“Testing your limits, I suppose,” Satoru says easily. He’s building up that cursed energy again, readying a hand to release it all at once. “Seeing what works? But I’m Satoru Gojō, and I have sweet buns waiting for me.”

The curse stumbles, caught off-guard, and stares blankly at him. “What?”

“And I’ve got to get dinner with my cute students,” he continues. “Nanamin’s footing the bill.” Ah, well. He supposes he can’t have Yūji and Megumi there when Yūji’s supposed to be dead. Maybe he’ll eat dinner twice.

It’s only now that Satoru realizes he still has his blindfold on. Silly him. He pushes it up onto his forehead and feels the burst of clarity as his Six Eyes reaches its full potential. The force of attraction builds at his fingertips, and the world around them crumbles to dust beneath the force. The boy’s fast. He puts enough distance between them to go beyond Blue’s pull, but not before the mask is sucked in. Satoru stops his attack and catches the mask as it flies by, turning it over in his hand. It really is just a porcelain mask. It’s a porcelain mask, but it’s part of a cursed spirit. He wonders if it reforms when it’s destroyed.

When he looks up, he tilts his head. Huh? Where’s the curse? His exceptional sight isn’t helping him locate it—until it does, and he blinks at a patch of rubble towards the end of Blue’s reach. The flickering, minuscule cursed energy that the spirit gives off is somewhere beneath all of that. Well, looks like the newborn’s luck ran out. So sad. He’d cry if he cared. Now all that’s left is to exorcise it and get those sweet buns.

Satoru kicks away the logs and rocks that are in a heap above the curse’s form and sighs when he finds an unconscious little boy beneath. It bothers him, though. The blood. It isn’t like he’s never seen a cursed spirit bleed before. That’s just a thing that they do, and then they reform whatever it is they’re missing. Eyes, hands. Arms. Legs, like this boy is missing right now. He can already see the cursed energy that was once so tightly controlled by the boy while conscious bursting to life and filling a crushed leg until it’s whole again. Those massive reserves are out in the open now that the boy’s not able to keep them under wraps, and this is undoubtedly the silver wolf from the womb. Satoru can see all that. He can nudge the kid with his foot and actually make contact. Exorcising won’t be a problem. He doesn’t know what birthed this curse, but he probably doesn’t want to know, either. It’s too… personable.

Satoru tends to have bad thoughts. He likes to press buttons that say ‘do not push’ and see the looks people wear when everything explodes in their faces. It’s hilarious.

Satoru is also a bit of a pushover when he’s not in high-stress situations. And right now, Satoru is anything but stressed.

He pulls his blindfold down over his eyes and crouches next to the small body at his feet. Pokes its cheek. It’s warm to the touch. Soft, as skin usually is. He pries its eyelids open, and the eyes behind it are unseeing. One is still that vibrant red, but the other has receded into a charcoal grey. Wonder what that’s about. Like him, a lot of its cursed energy pools around its eyes. When it was awake, it was pulled into both, but now it’s only being drawn in by the one still red. The left eye.

He pokes a little more. There’s a red tattoo on the kid’s shoulder. Beneath that cloth mask is a pretty cute face. Not hiding any grotesque mouths, just a mole.

Like this, it’s like the boy’s sleeping. But curses don’t sleep.

Satoru bites his nail. There’s a voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Nanami telling him to exorcise it before it wakes up. He doesn’t tend to listen to that voice.

There’s another voice, a louder one, telling him that this curse is different from the rest, that it’s special and unique, and he’s pretty sure the one in Kyoto is special, too.

He places a hand on its chest. Like this, a strong enough burst of cursed energy will do the trick. No need for flash and fanfare. Satoru’s not one to be sentimental, anyhow. Doesn’t matter how human it looks—it’s not human. Maybe it once was. Maybe it came from something just like him. But right now, it’s something else entirely.

You’re hiding Yūji, the voice tells him. You’re Satoru Gojō. There’s nothing you can’t do.

This voice sounds a lot like Suguru, taunting him, and he doesn’t like it.

His phone buzzes in his pocket and he considers it. Sometimes he forgets that lower-level curtains still allow communication. He’s so used to being shut off from the outside world that getting a phone call while exorcising is surreal to him. He sees the name on the screen and grins, his moral dilemma forgotten.

“Nanamin,” he croons, “just finishing up over here! What are you thinking for dinner? I’m craving sushi. Where should we—”

“Yūji Itadori has been kidnapped.”

Satoru shuts up. He stares down at the curse at his feet and the urge to rip through it with every drop of cursed energy he has is strong, but it flickers and dies in the same moment.

“I’ll be right over.”

Chapter Text

Obito is staring down at the teenager he’s pulled into his… portal… thing. He doesn’t really know what it is; he acted on instinct and this is where it got him. Kamui, some distant part of him supplies, but he’s so out of touch with himself that he isn’t sure where it comes from. The space is black and vast, endless even, and he thinks it might be a pocket dimension. The guy at his feet is looking but not seeing and Obito is wondering if maybe he’s under a genjutsu. And maybe Obito is the one who put him under said genjutsu. Not sure how he did that, really.

He presses the heels of his palms to his eyes and takes a deep breath. His Sharingan activated and he’s not sure how. But no, actually, he does remember. He remembers Kannabi Bridge and the crushing weight on his body and his gift and Kakashi—

His chakra flares to life and dies with his emotions. It’s a lot more volatile than it used to be. It’s no longer centred at his core, either, but flows from his heart to his fingertips and back again. Every part of his body is bathed in chakra and he’s never felt anything quite like it before.

Seeing as his guest is still frozen, Obito takes a seat on the blackness of the floor, crosses his arms and legs, and watches the stranger. Obito doesn’t know him, not at all. He’s a little older than Obito—no, younger, Obito’s an adult—but no, looking at his hands, he’s still—

His head hurts. Oh, and his heart isn’t beating. So that’s probably bad. But he’s not sure? Because, like, he still feels warm? And he’s not dead. Or is he? This isn’t what the Pure Lands promised. Where’s Rin—

Rin.

The hands he was staring at so intently fall into his lap and his whole body sags. Rin is gone. He knows that. It feels like a truth long known but not accepted. Like he’s compartmentalized his rage and grief for an endless lifetime and now, suddenly, it’s been released. And he’s just tired.

Obito knows that his mind is a mess right now. He can remember most of his childhood, up until Rin’s passing, but what comes beyond is fragmented and disjointed, and there isn’t enough there to paint a clear picture. He knows that, before this, he was older. He remembers staring down at his body, at pale mismatched skin, looking at scars in his reflection and a haunting Rinnegan eye, but all of that is gone now. His skin is his. It matches his complexion and it feels in a way that the foreign cells never did. The deformed markings of his face are now smooth, like the past has been forgotten, and isn’t that just convenient?

What bothers him is that he has the Sharingan in both eyes. He can feel them, and they won’t turn off, and he doesn’t know why. But what worries Obito most is that there are two. What does that mean for Kakashi, then?

Has he lost Kakashi, too?

Think. Think!

Yelling at himself to think isn’t working, either. That’s it. He’s all out of options. On top of that, he’s endlessly bored. There’s nothing at all to do in this pocket dimension. He could leave, but he doesn’t know where to go and he’s worried that the blond guy with the goggles is still out there, so he’ll stay put until he’s said his piece.

Obito snaps his fingers in front of the boy’s—yes, Obito is older, even if he still looks and feels like a child—face and suddenly, there’s recognition.

The boy looks around the place, then his eyes fall on Obito. “Huh?” He looks around again, blinking rapidly. “What?”

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Obito assures. He’s not sure if he’s in the headspace to do any hurting. “I just want to talk.”

“You’re that curse,” the boy states simply. “Where are we?”

“What’s a curse?” Actually, if he wants answers, he should probably be giving some, himself. It’s only fair, and Obito can be diplomatic. Probably. “It’s my place. Don’t worry about it.”

The boy makes a face and crosses his arms. “You really need to decorate.”

“Anyway, curse. That’s what you keep calling me. What is it?”

“Well…” He scratches his head, looking just as confused as Obito feels. “You. You’re a curse.”

“But why am I a curse if you’re not?”

“Because I’m human.”

“And I’m not?”

“Well, you’re not, are you?”

Obito opens his mouth to yell blasphemy but stops, staring down at his hands. In all honesty, he isn’t sure right now. His body feels new and different, and sensations take a different form now. He feels, but distantly. Touch isn’t at the forefront of his mind, but it hasn’t gone anywhere. The placement of his chakra is unique and new. He feels pretty human outside of that. It’ll hurt if he’s cut, he assumes. Not that anything can cut him if he uses Kamui.

“What’s your name?” he asks out of politeness, and because thinking of someone who’s older than him as ‘Kid’ and also younger than him as ‘Sir’ seems wrong.

The stranger narrows his eyes. “What’re you going to do with that information?”

Obito just looks at him. “Call you by it.”

“Oh.” He nods. Thinks for a moment. “Yūji Itadori. Do you have a name? You were just born. Would you?”

“I wasn’t just—” He cuts himself off and takes a breath. Obito needs to accept the fact that, in this world, he… he may be… a newborn curse. Whatever that is. “Obito,” he says, forgoing his surname. It doesn’t feel right in his mouth for whatever reason.

“Obito?” Yūji tries it out for himself, thumb and forefinger at his chin. “Okay, Obito. So are you gonna kill me now, or what’s the deal?”

“Why would I kill you? I need you.” It scares him, a bit, that he phrases it like that instead of telling Yūji that there’s no reason to kill him. As a shinobi, he’s committed war crimes. He was a child soldier. But the ease with which his mind tells him to utilize Yūji and not waste him is alarming, and the memories he can’t recall are scaring him a bit.

“Oh. That’s fair.” Yūji thinks again. “You’re not going to kill me after you get what you want, though?”

“No.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Can I even trust a curse?”

“I don’t know,” Obito groans, burying his face in his hands and feeling that headache come on stronger. “You tell me. I’m just a newborn.”

He hates that he says the word with his own mouth.

For a long time, all Kakashi could do was feel the ripples and waves of the outside world in his solitude. He was curled up, cocooned in a ball of warmth, and his eyes were open but unseeing. The land beneath him was a constantly shifting current of chakra. It ebbed and flowed like the ocean, with different chakra signatures marking the movements of life below. Kakashi was not a sensor, but all of this came naturally to him from there in his safe space. He could feel the world.

Distantly, he could feel something else, too. Something that had a matching signature to his. Brother, his mind told him, but he knew that he was alone in this world. He was drawn to it still, a world apart, somewhere far away, and yet he could feel it clearer than any of the signatures directly below. That signature brought him comfort.

Not many thoughts crossed his mind. Warm and safe left him content, and if he never woke up, then that was just fine. Something powerful approached, something that could crush him before he made it out into the world, and it could do so if it pleased.

When the matching signature flickered, something in him wavered, too. His whole body tensed, like the only comfort he had was going far away. The chakra flashed and burst, faded and spiked, and it upset something inside of him. For the first time in what felt like eternity, he stirred.

Then it was gone. Completely, utterly gone. He tried sensing farther, fanning out to the edges of his reach, but there was nothing left. Nothing but traces, soon to fade, and the memory of safety.

Kakashi woke up. The warmth cradling his sleep burst into an icy cold night that electrified his nerves, and something in his mind told him to hunt. He hit the ground, and it bent beneath his feet. Chakra coursed wildly through his body, buzzing to life on his skin, in his legs and arms, but pooled in his eyes. Both eyes. Both eyes held within them the clarity of the Sharingan.

Kakashi could see the edges of the world. It felt like the edges, at least, a black veil blocking out everything beyond it. He wondered if he could break through. If he was powerful enough. His brother’s chakra disappeared beyond that veil, so he would get there. One way or another.

Not brother. He needed to reign in the primal part of his brain that kept screeching orders at him. It was a part of himself he never knew before—something new, like his new body, so similar yet different from the one he was accustomed to.

The hairs stood up at the back of his neck as he felt a massive chakra signature approach, the one primed to be his executioner, that new part of his mind told him. Despite his own restraint, alarm bells were ringing throughout his body even long before, telling him to get away. He just didn’t care to listen. But now his matching signature was gone, and everything in his mind screamed at him to fix this.

He felt a distortion in the chakra before anything happened. Body-flicker, his mind told him. He could read the shape that it took before the jutsu was executed and put distance between himself and its destination. With a deep breath, he suppressed his own chakra. It didn’t come to him as easily as before. It was like throwing a dull kunai—it took a while to stick.

A crackle of light and the man with the impossible chakra was there in the grass. Hands in his pockets, looking for all the world like everything was under control. This was the threat. He wondered if this was also the one who took out his brother, but no. This man was still approaching Kakashi when the other signature vanished. Still, he might have information. Enemy, his mind screamed before he could brush off the thought.

Kakashi pooled chakra in his palm, energy sparking and cracking as Chidori formed, but he stopped. His mind flashed to blood, blood too thick and deep and red to ever wash off, felt the warm rush of his arm bursting through the bodies of the people that he cared about, and he couldn’t. It didn’t matter that this man was too strong to be struck down by it. It didn’t matter that he needed to find his brother.

If Kakashi had his tantō—

And then he did. It was there, in his hand where it always should be, the same scuffs and marks on the handle that his father left before him. He considered it, this thing that connected him to long-gone memories, before launching himself at the white-haired man and pinning him. Except that he didn’t. No matter the force he applied, he couldn’t touch the man. There was a chakra barrier surrounding him, or something like that. Kakashi couldn’t cut through it.

And the man couldn’t touch him, either. His body worked on instincts that he never had before, and anytime something was about to hit, it slid right through him. He didn’t know how he was doing it, or even how to stop it, but familiarity buzzed in his mind. Memories locked away were there and then gone again, and he knew that he saw this before, but not where or why. This ability wasn’t his. Not before. It belonged elsewhere.

The fight was pointless. He didn’t pay mind to any of it, running on autopilot as that primal voice in his head told him to kill this man or die trying. It devolved into a game of cat and mouse where neither could hit the other, so nothing they did mattered. They were just wasting time and energy. Kakashi had more important things to do. He needed to break through that veil and find the one who made his brother disappear.

Then the man did something. Kakashi sensed it before it happened and put as much distance between them as he could. This put him pretty close to the edge of the veil and, even that far out, the mass of everything around him was drawn in with incredible force, enough to destroy everything in its wake. As he braced himself at the edges of its reach, he thought he felt something. A flicker, just briefly, of his brother’s chakra. His heart swelled. The fight left him.

He let down his guard long enough for the surrounding chaos to crush him beneath its weight. This time, it hit.

Now, Kakashi wakes and everything is warm again. He can’t move, but it doesn’t matter. That warmth is so reminiscent of his time before that he doesn’t care if he dies. Before that, though, he reaches out and searches for his brother’s chakra.

He can’t sense anything. Nothing at all.

There’s shifting around him. Someone is there. A few someones, maybe. He looks out at the world only to find his eyes are covered and everything is dark. He can only make out the vaguest shapes moving in his line of vision. That’s fine; he’s a Hatake and has never relied on sight alone anyway. He sniffs the air and someone snickers. The scent is unmistakable. It’s the man he fought—the one with the powerful dōjutsu. There’s another in the room, too, but he doesn’t recognize this one. They know he’s awake but don’t seem to care beyond the brief amusement that the blindfolded one gets out of his scent tracking.

“Look, Nanamin,” that familiar voice says, high-pitched and giddy, “it’s like a puppy. Let’s keep it.”

“You can’t be trusted with pets.” This voice is quiet and reserved, much to the contrast of its partner. Kakashi is pretty sure they’re the only two in the room. “You’re sure its cursed technique can’t reach us through the blindfold?”

“Who knows?” A finger pokes at the skin between Kakashi’s eyes, and he wants to bite it off. This is a strange thought, but he’s feeling infinitely more feral than he used to. “But seeing as it hasn’t used it and its eyes are open, I doubt it.”

Cursed technique, huh? Kakashi wonders if that’s what they call dōjutsu in this world, or jutsu in general. Kakashi can’t see through the blindfold—not especially well, anyway, despite the extra clarity afforded to him by the Sharingan. Not well enough to place a genjutsu. And it’s strange how his eyes feel normal again, how he feels the Sharingan in his left eye but not his right. He doesn’t know what that was before.

Wait. This man can tell that Kakashi’s eyes are open even through the blindfold, then? Is that because of his dōjutsu? Thinking back, for the briefest of moments, he remembers the man taking off his own blindfold and a million different shades of blue reflecting back at him like glass. They didn’t make eye contact long enough for him to make sense of it, though, and his Sharingan could only identify vague attributes.

The man waves a hand in front of his face. Kakashi can see the shadow of it moving back and forth. “Hey there, Pup. Can you see me through that?”

Kakashi’s mouth twitches at the nickname. He wants to bite out this man’s throat.

Definitely more feral than before. Kakashi feels his chakra spike and takes a breath to settle it all back into place.

“I think it likes me.”

“It does not.”

He really doesn’t. He’s liking the other man more at this point. At least that one has sense. Kakashi keeps his mouth shut like a good little shinobi because he’s been in plenty of worse situations in ANBU and even the worst of tortures won’t make him spill his secrets.

“I really think it does,” Blindfold says, the grin audible in his tone. “I think I’m keeping it.”

Then again, listening to this man’s voice is worse than being waterboarded. He’s speaking from experience.

“Gojō, please. You are not keeping a curse. You have nothing in your arsenal that could keep this thing under control if it decides to go on the offence, save exorcising it. Cut out the middleman and be done with it already.”

Curse, huh? Well, it’s not as bad as what he was called before. ‘Curse’ is infinitely better than ‘Friend-Killer’ and he’ll take it any day. He doesn’t think it’s just an insulting nickname, though. It feels like he was taken apart and put back together in the wrong order. Like the pieces aren’t lining up. Something in his mind tells him that he’s no longer human. But what a curse is, exactly, and what that means for him going forward, he’s not sure.

“Aw, you’re no fun, Nanamin. We can’t do that. We still have business with it.”

The other one, this Nanamin character, lets out the longest, most patient of breaths. If he has to deal with this regularly, then he has Kakashi’s sympathies.

“Wait outside. I want to have a word with it.”

“Is that wise?”

“What are you worried about? I’m Satoru Gojō.”

There’s a lengthy hesitation before the door on the far wall slides open and then shut. In the split second that the door is open, Kakashi can feel everything beyond the room. He feels the immense chakra flooding this place and the signatures milling about far in the distance. It’s only for a moment, and then it’s gone again. There must be seals or something similar set up in this room.

“Now that we’re alone…” This Satoru Gojō fellow is quiet now. He reaches out, taking the edge of Kakashi’s blindfold between his fingers. “If I take this off, will you use your cursed technique on me?”

Kakashi tilts his head, considering. It’s the only part of his body that he can move. Even then, his range of motion is limited. “That depends on you.”

Satoru laughs as though the subtle threat sounds cute to him and slides the blindfold off. The effect is immediate, Kakashi’s Sharingan eye analyzing the countless papers stuck to the wall, the floor, the ceiling. They must be this country’s—or this world’s—version of seals. Paper seals were used back home from time to time, too, though mostly in the form of chakra suppressors and paper bombs. He can’t tell how strong they are or what they do with his Sharingan alone, and he can’t read the text.

“Well, even if you tried, you’re not strong enough to challenge me.” Kakashi hears those words and fixates on this Satoru Gojō character. Satoru is sitting backwards in a wooden chair, his arms draped over the back support, grinning wryly. His blindfold is gone, too, dangling in one of his hands, and his impossible eyes stare into Kakashi’s soul. They make the hairs on his neck stand up, chills run through his body, and he bristles at the sight.

He doesn’t like looking at them. Automatically, he casts his eyes to the room instead, inspecting it. He thinks those seals are on his body, too, but he can’t move to check. For them to need so many, though… Kakashi wonders if he’s a strong curse. If he’s a formidable opponent. Where does his rank lie in this new place?

“That’s the spirit,” Satoru says, ruffling his hair and eliciting a sound vaguely reminiscent of a growl from Kakashi’s throat. “Behave yourself, and you might live long enough to see a full twenty-four hours. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“What do you want?” Kakashi is done with his bullshit. He doesn’t think that knowledge of the Hidden Leaf’s secrets is this guy’s aim, so talking shouldn’t put anyone back home in danger.

Kakashi isn’t looking, but he can still feel those eyes watching. They go through him. They see all of him and he doesn’t like it. He was never the type to run from eyes like those before; he’s changed since waking up, and doesn’t know how to feel about that.

“You’re a newborn special-grade curse,” Satoru explains, his grin falling away. “I want to preface this by telling you that no matter what you do or how you play, you will never escape me. If you deceive me, I’ll exorcise you. If you try to run, I’ll exorcise you. If you attack, I’ll exorcise you. And if you try to hurt someone, you will wish that you were dead.”

Kakashi shrinks under his words, that primal part of him quivering while the rest of him goes unfazed. Kakashi’s learning that this new part of him has more say than he would like it to, though, and that bothers him. He meets Satoru’s eyes directly and doesn’t attempt a genjutsu. He just looks. And nods.

Satoru is satisfied with that. “I’ll start with a story. Do you like stories, Kiddo?”

“Get on with it.”

The man raises placating hands, amused. Teasing. Kakashi wants to hit him. Hitting him is more normal than biting him, and he’ll consider it progress as he reigns in his baser instincts. “My friend and I were dispatched to exorcise some cursed wombs last night. A few hours ago, in fact. Ring a bell?”

It honestly doesn’t. “What’s a cursed womb?”

Satoru gapes at him, searching him with those all-seeing eyes for the lie. Kakashi isn’t lying, though, and is genuinely just as confused in this situation. “Aren’t curses born with like,” he waves his arm in the air as he searches for words, “innate knowledge about this kind of stuff? The others were. This isn’t my first rodeo, Kiddo. You’re joking.”

“I’m a curse, is that right?” Kakashi asks instead. He doesn’t need to humour rambling. “What does that mean for me, exactly?”

“You don’t know?”

“Based on what you and your friend have been saying about me, I’ll assume that I’m not human. I’m different from you. And I can presume it’s nothing good. But I don’t have enough to go off of to come to any solid conclusions.”

Satoru narrows his eyes, still searching for the lie, it has to be here somewhere. “You’re a wordy little thing, aren’t you?” He twists around in his chair until he’s sideways, leaning his arm on the back of it, and gestures with his free hand. “Cursed spirits are just that—curses. When a human has negative thoughts and feelings, that negativity becomes cursed energy. All of that energy builds together over time and, eventually, once enough of it gathers, a curse is born from it. You’re the manifestation of that negativity.”

Hm. Maybe it is just as bad as Friend-Killer. “A cursed womb is the state a curse is in before it’s fully formed, then.”

“Fully formed?” Satoru laughs. “You’re just an infant. In time, you’d get stronger and change shape. Well, if I weren’t around. I’d rather save myself the hassle and deal with you now when you’re not as annoying.”

Kakashi stares dully at him. Satoru’s full of himself. So incredibly, impossibly full of himself. Kakashi wonders if that’s why this body looks so… young. He doesn’t have many memories of adulthood. Vague feelings, mostly. His clearest memories are those of his time in ANBU after Rin passed, but he retains enough to know that he’s been around far longer than a decade and a half. If given the time to grow, would he manifest as the man that he was before, with all of his memories intact? Or would he become something else entirely?

“I was inside one of these cursed wombs, then?” He’s not going to humour rambling. He’s keeping to that promise.

“You don’t remember?” Satoru leans in real close, looking through his eyes, and it’s unnerving. “You even used your cursed technique on me from the womb.”

“Cursed technique… Ah. Genjutsu.” He nods. “I feel like I may have.”

This man looks wholly unsatisfied with all of his responses, but Kakashi fails to see how that’s his problem.

There’s a brief pause in their back-and-forth where they just stare, unnerved by each other, before putting it all behind them and getting back to the topic at hand. “Right. So. There was another like you near Kyoto. I took Tokyo—your cursed energy was building faster, so they wanted to leave you to the strongest, me, of course.”

“Can you not stroke your own ego while you explain this to me, please?”

“A curse that has manners. Lookit that. One for the record books.”

“Please shut up.”

Satoru does not shut up. “Nanamin went with my student to Kyoto. But see, the curse that hatched there kidnapped that student of mine. And I would really like to get him home soon so we can all have dinner. But it’s already 4 a.m. and my favourite sushi bar is closed. Do you see the problem?”

“Maa,” it’s a verbal tic that comes to him so naturally, but he never used to speak like that. Not when he was young. He thinks he did later, much later, a lifetime ago. “I see your problem. But I fail to see what it has to do with me. Try tracking your student and the curse that took them. You’re wasting valuable time here.”

“Ah, but you see, Pup—”

“Do not call me that.”

“That curse is connected to you.”

Kakashi goes quiet. It tugs at his mind, long-gone thoughts of his instinct-driven brain, the word ‘brother’ repeating in his head like a mantra. The chakra—no, cursed energy—that comforted him from the womb, telling him that in this life he would not be alone.

And now that brother is being targeted by this madman mere hours after birth. After stealing a child.

Kakashi will never know family, will he?

He closes his eyes and sighs. “You think that I either know where they are or can track them.”

“Bingo.”

Kakashi doesn’t like the thought of his newborn brother immediately moving to bring someone harm. He supposes that’s how curses are in this world. How he, himself, is now. Maybe has more control over his baser self than others, maybe he’s different from the rest, or maybe he’s just fooling himself into thinking that he is. His brother might just be like every other curse, whatever that may look like.

He studies Satoru Gojō and wonders how much he should divulge. He still can’t be sure this man is good or bad, or that anything he said is true, and needs to find out for himself. “So,” he tilts his head, “what’s in it for me?”

“You can find them, can’t you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“But if you can, you will.”

“What makes you so confident?”

Satoru smiles, all hard lines and edges. “Enter a binding vow with me.”

“A what—”

“Binding vow,” the crazed man answers quickly, as though it explains everything if he just repeats the words twice. “A contract. The conditions… let’s see. Been a while since I’ve done this. Hmm…”

Kakashi can presume what a binding vow is—it’s a bit self-explanatory, and he assumes that the ‘binding’ part means there will be consequences if it’s broken, or that it can’t be broken in the first place.

Satoru holds up a finger between them. “Listen to my commands. Follow my word. For as long as you do, I’ll protect you from exorcism.”

So he’d get to live, then. It’s an option. Kakashi doesn’t fear death, but he’d like to learn more about this world before completely giving up on it. He’s tired, too tired, and even in this body, he can’t wash the blood off his hands. He can see it even now, staining his pale skin. There’s no excitement in this new adventure. He was happier before, blissfully unaware in the womb, with nothing to strive for and no one to fail. Kakashi has been a dog for a long, long time, and this partnership would just bring more of the same. A master-servant contract, essentially. Another leader to follow.

But if he breaks the vow, what worse could happen than his own execution?

And maybe…

“My brother, too.”

Satoru makes a face. “Brother? The other cursed spirit?”

He nods. “Guarantee his safety.”

“I can’t.” When Kakashi glares, Satoru’s hands go up. “He’s already attacked a human. My hands are tied. Unless I enter a binding vow with him, I have no way of knowing that he won’t hurt someone. Even then, there’s no guarantee. He could just break the vow.”

So the vow can be broken. Noted. “Then do that. Enter a contract with him, too.”

“I may need to exorcise him to save Yūji. Even if I don’t, he could refuse the vow. And then what?”

Kakashi tilts his head and considers it. He’s being unreasonable, he knows, but the connection that’s there implores him to save his brother, no matter how wretched a creature he may be. They’re connected. Halves of a whole. He can feel it. “Then, if your student is unharmed and my brother is willing and able. If he hasn’t hurt anyone. If you think that you can trust him. Under those circumstances, protect him for me. Please.”

One of the seals on his body has fallen off, the paper floating to the floor. He regains just enough mobility to bow his head low.

They’re at a stalemate. Kakashi won’t look up and Satoru won’t speak, waiting for each other to break. But Kakashi is a trained shinobi of the Leaf, or he was, in a far-off life that he only half remembers, and he is nothing if not disciplined.

The man across from him pulls the blindfold back over his eyes and frowns. “I agree.”

Satoru Gojō cracks first.

Chapter Text

Satoru Gojō is pretty sure he’s just been played.

He stands at the front of the room, leaning against the door frame, as he watches the curse pick off the talismans one by one. He’s released them, so now they’re just paper on its body, but it’s peeling them off between its fingers with as minimal contact as possible, as though they personally wronged it. Each paper floats to the ground and soon the curse is standing upright, only coming up just past Gojō’s waist. It’s his own fault for being so magnificently tall.

Like this, it doesn’t look like it has the power of a special-grade curse. It looks so close to human that Satoru could mistake it for one.

He thinks there’s a good chance this cursed spirit has found a loophole in their vow that it will exploit later, but that’s a problem for Future Satoru. Present Satoru just wants to find Yūji now before the curse that nabbed him kills him or, worse yet, feeds him a bunch of fingers. He reasons that this thing is only a few hours old and can’t possibly think far enough ahead to outsmart the great Satoru Gojō. It’ll be fine. He’s done things far more reckless than this.

At least now, he can command it to give him answers. He’ll be able to learn exactly where it came from and what it can do.

The curse’s eyes catch on the second blindfold still discarded on the floor, now buried beneath a thin layer of paper waste. It picks it up, brushes it off, and pulls it over one of its eyes, the one that’s still red, tying it at the back.

It… it’s so…

Cute.

When it looks up at him, Satoru grins. “Aww, I’m flattered! A mini Satoru.”

The curse twitches, glaring at him. “I’m not mimicking you. I need to conserve chakra.”

“Chakra?”

“Cursed energy,” it hurries to correct. “My Sharingan eye is a constant pull on my reserves.”

Satoru knows. He can see the way cursed energy rushes to that eye with fervour. Unlike his own eyes, this one depletes the curse’s reserves. Granted, Satoru’s mastered a lot of really difficult things to get the edge that he has and to make sure that he’ll never run out of cursed energy. Not everyone is so lucky.

The curse pulls the fabric mask up from where it’s been resting around its neck and, like this, only its one dark eye is visible. Satoru won’t question it. There are a lot of strange things about this one curse in particular, and he’s sure its ‘brother’ is just as much an anomaly as it is, but questioning can wait.

Yūji comes first.

“Take me to where they were last seen,” the curse commands. It must have gotten the rules of the vow mixed up. That’s not how this works. To his flat look, it sighs and adds, “I’ll scent them out.”

Right, yeah, it was doing that earlier. Sniffing them out when he and Nanami had it blindfolded. It’s a wolf, even if it looks like a child right now, so it makes sense. Heightened senses, all that fun stuff.

Satoru slides the door open and they step out into the hall side-by-side. “You’re sure you can find them that way?”

“It’s worth a shot,” the curse shrugs. “I might be able to sense my brother if I’m closer to where he disappeared, too. I can’t feel him now.”

Satoru hums, amused if nothing else. “So you’re naturally aware of it—your other half.”

“Something like that.”

They wander further down the hall to find Nanami waiting in a room at the end of it, pouring himself over a coffee. Fair. This has pushed beyond overtime and into crunch time, and they both need as much energy as they can get. It’s times like these that he envies curses who don’t feel that sort of exhaustion. When Nanami sees the curse, he visibly pales.

“Yo, Nanamin! I made a friend.”

“Gojō, don’t tell me you—”

“We entered a binding vow!” To emphasize this, he grabs the curse’s arms and raises them high so that it, too, will show its enthusiasm. It is not amused. “Aren’t you going to congratulate us?”

Nanami stares. He stares for a long, long time before he sits back down (when did he get up?) and pours himself another cup of coffee. “Frankly, I don’t give a damn.” Nanami is used to Satoru’s whims, and this is about what he expects.

Satoru places his hands on the curse’s shoulders now, leaning down next to it, much to its ire. He grabs his own blindfold, revealing his left eye to mimic the curse.  “And look—a mini Satoru. Isn’t it cute?”

The curse shirks out of his hold and stares dully at him. “Kakashi,” it says, emphasizing every syllable. “Call me Kakashi. Enough with the pet names.”

Satoru doesn’t expect a curse only hours old to have a name. That’s strange and new.

He’s still going to use the pet names.

He stands back up, one hand in his pocket, the other on the curse’s back. So far, it hasn’t tried anything. Let’s keep it that way. “Let’s head out now. I’ll teleport us. The kiddo will try tracking the other cursed spirit.”

Nanami pauses again, staring at the curse, and Satoru knows exactly what is worrying him. He gives a thumbs up over Kakashi’s head so that the curse can’t see, smiling. It’ll be fine. Nanami worries too much.

They exchange nods. They’ll have each other’s backs if something goes wrong.

Nanami gets up, but Satoru feels a tug on his sleeve. A dark eye stares up at him. He must have been tuning the curse out during his and Nanami’s silent conversation. Patronizingly, Satoru crouches down in front of the child, all friendly smiles and mocking. “What is it, Kashi?”

The curse twitches but doesn’t complain. Maybe this nickname is the lesser evil. “Before that, do you have something Yūji owns? Clothing, or something he keeps with him often?”

He blinks.

This curse… is really going to sniff him out, isn’t it?

He thought it was joking.

Yūji isn’t sure how he ended up in this situation. He’s sitting in a black void of nothingness with a cursed spirit that’s taken the form of a kid, and they’re eating instant ramen together.

Pretty sure the ramen’s stolen. Yūji eats anyway. He still hasn’t had dinner.

He finishes first and watches, chin in his palm, as the curse continues to pick at the food. “Do curses even need to eat?”

Obito shrugs. “I like to eat. So I’m going to.”

After spending the night with this kid—he can’t be sure exactly how long he’s been here because there’s no way to tell the time in this place—he’s pretty sure he’s recited everything he knows about jujutsu. He’s informed a special-grade cursed spirit of how the world works, and he’s not sure if he made a mistake or not. It seems like the explanations have settled some of the panic that was present in Obito’s eyes earlier, but even after answering a thousand and one questions, he hasn’t been killed or set free. Yūji is hesitant to be the first to resort to violence. So, what? Is Obito just going to keep him caged here forever? Like a hamster?

Obito wipes his mouth on the back of his sleeve and sets his bowl down. “So, if you were to exorcise me,” he starts, pauses, “ don’t, by the way. But if you were to, how would you go about doing it?”

Yūji thinks about it a bit, drinking his cola—because Obito is kind enough to offer beverages. Even asked what Yūji wanted like a good host. “Cola? What’s that? Where do you find it?” Like this, Obito slipped out of the black void and came back with handfuls of snacks. “Well, I guess I would just hit you really, really hard with cursed energy, ‘cause curses can only be exorcised by other curses.”

“That’s it?” Obito makes a face, drumming his nails against the floor. It doesn’t make a sound. It’s eerie that it doesn’t. “Am I that fragile now?”

Yūji doesn’t address it. He’s still pretty new to this stuff, himself. “You know, you sound like you’ve been around a while. Do you have memories of being human or something?” He knows that people can become curses. They don’t always spawn purely from negative energy.

Obito nods. “Yeah, actually. Is that a thing?”

“I think it is?”

“Maybe it’s a past life,” Obito muses, looking down at himself. “Maybe I’m just remembering when I was human, and now I’m something else, and I’m getting confused.”

Yūji frowns. Well, that sounds sad. He shouldn’t feel bad for a cursed spirit, but hell, he’s pretty sure they might be friends now. He’s staying over at Obito’s place, they’re sharing junk food and stories. They’re practically blood brothers at this point. And, well, the curse hasn’t done anything yet. It was just born. Maybe it will, down the line, and Yūji will regret this whole interaction. Now, though?

Now he’s going to boil another pack of ramen. Obito stole—er, obtained —a kettle, too.

It’s not plugged in. It’s not plugged in, but the moment Obito touches it, the water starts to boil. That’s pretty nifty.

“Say…” Yūji watches as Obito takes the kettle and refills both of their bowls, the steam rising up from the water. It’s not a decision he makes lightly. He knows it’s the wrong one, and that Gojō-sensei and Nanamin are going to scold him if they ever find out. He doesn’t like keeping things from them, either. “Want to be friends?”

Obito’s eyes go wide.

Now Yūji’s embarrassed. He rubs the back of his neck and stirs the ramen with his chopsticks. “I have conditions. I mean, I’ve never done this. Befriended a cursed spirit. I’m pretty sure jujutsu sorcerers aren’t supposed to do that kind of thing.”

Obito swallows. “Like what?”

“Like…” Yūji frowns. Obito even puts an egg in his ramen. “If you don’t hurt anyone,” he starts, “if you promise never to hurt or kill people. If you can promise that, then I guess it’s fine, right?”

Obito stares out at the vast expanse of the void, bouncing his foot. “What about in self-defence? What if one of your, um. Your sorcerer buddies. What if they try to exorcise me? What then?”

It’s a hard question and puts into perspective just how flawed this pact is. “If that happens… hm. You’ve really put me on the spot here, Obito.”

The cursed spirit laughs it off. He doesn’t sound upset or angry, just resigned. “I don’t think we’re in a position to have this conversation, Yūji. Thanks, though. It was a nice thought.”

This doesn’t make any sense. Yūji shouldn’t be feeling things over a cursed spirit. They’re not even technically alive, right? Angry with himself, he runs his hands through his hair and lets out a frustrated groan. “If that happens—you should fight back, you know? But only as much as you need to. Not enough to kill. So just—let’s be friends, alright?”

Obito picks at the seam of his robe, lowers his head, and nods. “…Yeah. Sure.”

Yūji smiles. It’s something that he may regret one day. He knows that. Just the sentiment alone could lead him down a terrible path in the future. But for today, he’s a bit proud of himself.

Obito is a lost kid who doesn’t feel anything like a cursed spirit. But he is.

Yūji ruffles Obito’s hair the way Gojō-sensei does his and laughs at the look of abject horror Obito wears on his face.

They eat their noodles.

“Say, Obito?”

“Hm?” Obito’s lying flat on the ground now, staring up at nothing.

“Are you gonna let me out of here one day?”

Obito meets his eyes and blinks. “Oh, yeah. That.”

Satoru Gojō is curious to see his new dog in action. He and Nanami stand back. The curse says it wants them to stay away so that their scents don’t interfere with its tracking, but Satoru is pretty sure that it just hates being near them. He has an inkling as to why, too.

He may have given Kakashi one of Yūji’s socks for the sniff test.

Just to confirm that this skill is valid and not some sort of trap, Nanami hasn’t shown them where he was when he encountered the curse. They’re at the start of where the curtain used to be, and that’s all they’ve shown their new toy.

Kakashi sniffs the air and starts up the steps to the old shrine without hesitation. One glance at Nanami tells Satoru that they’re on the right track. A little past halfway to the shrine, they veer off the path, to the right.

Nanami frowns. “This is where it happened.”

So he’s not lying about that nose of his.

And Satoru is back to giving it an identity. He really needs to stop doing that.

Kakashi walks a little further, then stops, a miserable frown behind its face mask. It looks over at them, mainly at Nanami. It doesn’t give Satoru the time of day if it can help it. “This is where Yūji was when you last saw him, am I right?”

“Correct,” Nanami shouts back. They’re still keeping their distance.

Kakashi scents the air once more, and that scowl deepens.

“Found something, Kashi?” Satoru asks, cupping his mouth to carry his words just a little further.

Kakashi ignores him, lifting its blindfold level on its forehead, revealing that red, spinning eye. He called it the Sharingan at one point or another. To Satoru, it feels similar to his Six Eyes, but in curse form. Right after its birth, Kakashi sported a nice matching pair of those beauties. They didn’t behave the same way, though. The Six Eyes showed Satoru that not only did they have different functions, but they pulled cursed energy at different rates. After their fight, one stayed and the other receded. The curious thing about this curse is that it seemed to already know that would happen.

He wonders what it’s looking for. Whatever it is, Satoru can already see it. Most definitely. He sees the trail of Yūji’s cursed energy and the traces of something else, something with a pattern so markedly similar to the one he’s staring at right now.

Kakashi is shaking. Its hand is in the mud, pressing into it, a trace of that so similar cursed energy beneath its fingertips. That cursed energy is everywhere—flecks of it, tiny threads torn away and discarded across the mountainside. Even Satoru’s Six Eyes can’t make sense of the pattern or see which came first, which is surprising. It all happened too close together in time, he supposes.

Kakashi sees, though. And Satoru sees Kakashi.

Kakashi stands again, wipes his hand on his pant leg, and shakes his head. “I can’t tell.”

Satoru smiles. “Tell the truth, Kashi. That’s an order.”

The first die is cast.

The curse glares dully at him and shakes its head. “I can’t tell,” it repeats slowly, as though its audience isn’t bright enough to follow its words. Satoru frowns. That’s not what he sees. Does it even understand the ramifications of breaking a binding vow? Is it ready for the consequences so soon after making one? “My brother was here,” it says, casting its eyes to the trees. “But he was everywhere. His scent—I followed it. I found where he landed after birth and followed the trail to the same area Yūji disappeared, but it doesn’t pick up anywhere. I can follow the scent of your teleportation because you don’t actually teleport, Gojō.”

Satoru arches a brow.

“You use that,” he flexes his hand, “that crushing technique you have. The one that draws everything in. You use it to draw yourself across an area at high speeds. It still leaves a trace. This, here? This is real teleportation.”

“So they just,” Satoru makes vague gestures with his hands, “disappeared?”

Kakashi nods.

The three of them enter a quiet stare-down. Nanami is quiet because he doesn’t want to have to deal with any of this, but Satoru and Kakashi? They’re entering an eternal struggle. Two big personalities are battling it out now, waiting and waiting until one caves and breaks and the other comes out victorious. This is an important moment in their partnership, one that will determine the fate of their vow and, in grave circumstances, the fate of Yūji Itadori.

Satoru pushes Kakashi over. It falls into the mud. Their staring contest is over.

While Kakashi seethes and digs himself out of the dirt, Satoru stares at his hand, the ghost of a warm touch fading fast beneath his fingertips. It’s as he thought.

“Hey, Kashi,” he calls, waggling the fingers that he just used to bully his pet curse. “I touched you.”

Kakashi swings its arms, flicking mud at Satoru. Satoru, being master of the Six Eyes and the Limitless, dodges. “I noticed.”

“You let me touch you.”

“I didn’t let—” But Kakashi sees it, too, now. It touches the spot on its shoulder where Satoru made contact. “You’re right. I did.”

“Your right eye,” Satoru starts, tapping the skin of his own eyelid, “it was red during our fight.”

“It was.”

“It’s not now,” Satoru nudges.

“It’s not.”

“And it’s not pulling cursed energy.”

“I know.”

Nanami looks between them and, again, decides that his involvement in this situation is not warranted. He’s been forgotten, left behind by two beings that hold so much ire for each other and yet still operate on the same wavelength.

Kakashi closes both eyes and focuses, taking deep breaths, in and out. Satoru watches with impossible vision as the other eye, the black one, draws in cursed energy, its intensity building up and up until Kakashi opens both eyes—

Kakashi looks at Satoru and one eye is black, and the other is red. The flow of cursed energy to that eye is abruptly cut off. This is more than a little disappointing.

“I can sense him,” Kakashi says. “My brother.”

Obito is getting the hang of this pocket dimension shtick.

Kamui exists everywhere and nowhere at all, all at once. It’s the result of endless possibilities outside of time and never bound to it, and it holds a lot more power than his young mind can grasp. Obito doesn’t understand a lot of what he can do.

What he does understand is that he doesn’t need to put Yūji Itadori back where he found him.

This is a good thing. Obito, at this stage in his development, is very much against confrontation. He knows his role in this world now, and it’s not a good one. Every human will see him as a threat to be dealt with, and now he’s gone and made a promise that he likely can’t keep to not bring harm unto the ones who want to harm him. In Konoha, Obito never would have made such a promise. He has seen all the horrors that the world has to offer. He watched Rin die by Kakashi’s hand—and it hurts, still does, even now, after no time and a lifetime, but it also feels like it happened to someone else and that it’s not his horror to relive—and he remembers the darkness of the world when he gave up his eye and let the earth swallow him whole. People die. People are killed. And they kill other people, too. They won’t hesitate to kill something that isn’t human. Obito won’t delude himself into thinking that this will end well.

But with Kamui, he has an escape route. There’s a way to avoid confrontation, something that only he can do, and he can keep himself safe. There’s this thing in his head that urges him to continue living even on his own with no one to rely on, and he can’t fight it. He doesn’t want to die. Or be exorcised. Or whatever it means for the existence that he has now to cease. And he doesn’t want to break his promise to Yūji, the first person he ever saw in this life, the one who reached out to him. Not yet. Not for as long as he can avoid it.

Obito doesn’t know why, but he thinks he’s good at avoiding things. He thinks that, with a cursed technique like Kamui, this makes a lot of sense. Right now, what he wants to avoid is that blond sorcerer who tried to exorcise him immediately after birth. That was quite scary and he doesn’t want a repeat.

As he draws an opening in the space-time of Kamui’s walls, he glances back at the pink-haired human blinking curiously behind him. Looking like a lost thing. Looking how Obito is feeling. It’s easy to get along with Yūji Itadori. They can understand each other with only a few words and snacks between them, and that’s something he’s never had before. Rin was always there for him. Rin was there, and he loved her, and maybe that’s why they never really opened up to each other. If they opened up, they had something to lose. It was easier to keep that part of himself secret, to bury it deep and pretend it wasn’t there even if Rin could see it. It must have been easier for her, too, because she did the same. And Kakashi—

Obito thinks that he’s never really looked at Kakashi before.

At the end of their time together, Obito felt something. He felt a spark, a bond, one that was slow to form and hard to maintain, one that, if they were given the time, could have become something. But they didn’t have time, and it wasn’t anything. Kakashi was always an ‘other’. The untouchable genius. The youngest ninja. The child soldier. Kakashi was cold and quiet and calculative, above-it-all and otherworldly, and Obito…

Obito was the unwanted Uchiha, up until the very end. A failure of his clan with tainted blood and nothing to show for himself. He never became anything.

No, that isn’t right. A painful thought shoots through his head, and he braces himself against Kamui’s walls as it overtakes his thoughts.

He became Kakashi’s eye.

But that eye is here, now, with him. And Kakashi is no longer here.

He blinks and Kakashi’s gone. In his place is Yūji Itadori, who has noticed his stillness and is looking a bit unnerved. Yes, Yūji is very different from the people Obito surrounded himself with before. He’s a bit simple-minded, but so is Obito. There’s kinship in that.

“Obito?” Yūji asks, narrowing his eyes. “You’re not going to change your mind and kill me now, are you? I really should warn you—”

“I’m not gonna kill ya,” Obito says with a snort. “I promised, didn’t I?”

Yūji nods. “You did. So don’t do it.”

“I won’t, I won’t.”

“Not that you could.”

“I mean, I probably could . But I won’t.”

“I dunno about that…” Yūji crosses his arms and raises his eyes to Kamui’s abyss. He’s thinking hard. “Sukuna wouldn’t—where is this?”

When they step out of Kamui, they’re in a city. At least, Obito thinks it’s a city. It’s loud, louder than anything he’s ever heard, and were his ears always this sensitive? Is this a ‘cursed spirit’ thing or an ‘Obito’ thing? The roar of everything before them is a constant buzz against his ears, and he wants nothing to do with it. The buildings reach high into the heavens, and he hates everything. He can feel the humans, their chakra—no, cursed energy—minuscule beneath his own. Obito’s started to suppress his. He didn’t even know that he knew how to do that, but he does, so he does it. There’s probably a reason for it, right? If he knows how to do it, then it might be important. Sensors could sense chakra during his time as a human, and he can sense cursed energy as a curse, so he thinks that people can track him with it. It’s probably an even easier task if he has high reserves. Dulling them might keep him safe.

Obito does not answer Yūji’s question because he doesn’t know where this is, either. He just went with a place where the blond sorcerer wasn’t. Anywhere but there, really. He decides that he’s not happy with his decision.

He rubs the back of his neck. “I didn’t want your sorcerer buddy to exorcise me when I dropped you off. Sorry about this, but I gotta watch my own back. I don’t want to be in a position where I need to hurt someone to protect myself.”

Yūji’s eyes are bright, wide-eyed with wonder, and Obito thinks that he used to wear expressions like those once, long ago. He thinks he wore them when he still had his precious people. Before he became… this. “You’re really going to try, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, well…” The ground is pretty interesting in this world. The streets are all perfectly edged like they weren’t made by human hands, and there are a lot of signs everywhere. And lights. Everything has a light. The sun has long since set, but the people here defy the laws of nature.

There are no stars in this world, he observes. Maybe the world is backwards. Maybe, if he digs a hole deep enough into the earth, he’ll find them there. A sea of them swimming at the centre of the planet.

Obito is embarrassed at his own sentiment and allows his mind to wander as a defence mechanism, and that feels very Obito to him.

“But seriously, where is this?” Yūji asks. “Is this Kyoto still?”

“Don’t look at me,” Obito mutters. “I’m like twelve hours old. I don’t know shit.”

“Should we celebrate your twenty-four-hour birthday, you think?”

“Shut up, Yūji.”

And Yūji laughs, the bastard.

It hits him all at once. It rips through his body like acid, this sudden, all-consuming pull, and his eyes find the direction it draws him in. There’s something out there, something distant. It’s not cursed energy that he’s sensing but something else, something so primal and there that calls to him, come find me.

He felt it before, he thinks. He felt it when he woke. Everything was dark and warm, and then it was cold and bright and that thing, that— whatever it is, it drew him to it. But he was trapped. There was a barrier. It set up a perimeter where he was born that he could not cross. So he ran, desperate for a weakness, some way for him to push through the veil and go beyond, to find that something that called to him. But he couldn’t. Sense only found him after he stood still. Sense, and then Yūji Itadori.

“Hey, you okay?”

Yūji’s hand finds his shoulder, but it passes straight on through. It’s instinct. Obito hasn’t been able to deactivate his Sharingan. It’s pulling his cursed energy at a steady rate, but he has the reserves to maintain it. For now. Maybe deactivation isn’t possible in this world.

“I’m fine,” he says, swallows. Obito isn’t sure what this pull is, and he’s scared. If this something has this much power over him, he worries about what will happen when he meets it.

The answer, then, is to never let that happen.

“You can take it from here, right?” Obito asks. It’s less a question and more a demand because he doesn’t feel this pull in Kamui. Kamui is his safe haven.

“But where is ‘here’, exactly?”

“You’ll do fine,” Obito assures, the warp of Kamui reforming. He already has his foot in it. “Just stick to the right, and you’ll find where you need to be.”

“Isn’t that mazes? This isn’t a maze—Obito!”

Obito is in the safety of his eternal void by the time the last syllable of his name leaves Yūji Itadori’s lips. He’s alone now, but the remnants of their time together are scattered all across his pocket dimension. He stares at empty ramen packets, used chopsticks and empty cans and scratches his head. It grounds him a little, and the panic that told him to abandon Yūji recedes. Now he just feels like a bad friend. But Yūji will be fine, right? He seems the type to have uncanny luck.

Obito really hopes he didn’t leave his new friend to get eaten by wolves.

Kakashi knows how Satoru Gojō’s teleportation works. That doesn’t mean he likes it.

When Satoru grabs hold of his shoulder, he shirks off his hand and puts distance between them. His new jailer doesn’t look so pleased, and he wonders if this is how Kushina’s Kyuubi feels. The distance is far but, if he can get cursed energy to work like chakra, it’s within the range that he can body-flicker.

“Follow my signature.”

“Signature?”

Kakashi doesn’t wait to explain. There’s a loud fear running circles in his head that tells him that if he waits, he’ll miss his brother. With a quick hand sign, he finds himself where he needs to be.

It’s a city. He knows it’s a city because it’s loud and large and there are people living in it. The city is quite a distance from the mountain. He’s in a green area, a park, and everything is bright despite the hour. It hurts his eyes.

By the time he’s regained his bearings, Kakashi is running. He runs toward that ever so familiar signature, finally, but in the distance, he can see a tear in the sky, black as night, sew itself up and disappear. Like this, his brother is gone again and they do not meet. It’s like he’s jumped head-first into cold water, and he can’t swim.

Something buzzes in his mind, and it’s only then that he sees the boy standing there, pink hair and tall, at least compared to his own height, and he knows through his keen senses that this is Yūji Itadori. There is a dirty sock that can attest to that. Yūji is safe. So, too, his brother will be.

His brother’s scent is all over this boy, and he doesn’t know why. No, he knows why, but even then, even if his brother spirited this boy away, it doesn’t account for how strong a stench it is. It’s disturbing his baser self, imploring him to demand answers, but he stays silent. Calm. It’s the only way he can control his cursed energy. The only way he can keep from being perceived as a threat.

Yūji notices him then and one brow goes up, hands on his hips, and they stare at one another.

“Are you…” Yūji’s voice fades. He’s not sure what he’s trying to ask. “Gojō-sensei’s brother?”

Kakashi does not want to be here anymore.

His eyes linger longer than they need to as he processes his stress, and he turns back toward the mountain, taking easy steps, waiting for the duo of sorcerers to catch up. “Your sensei is looking for you.”

“Gojō-sensei is?” Yūji easily falls into step behind him, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “You know him?”

“Maa, that seems to be the unfortunate hand I’ve been dealt.” There’s that tic again, a fragment of lost memory and a time that he never experienced. A life that is another’s, that is not his, built upon human sentiment.

The word ’sensei’ tugs at his heart, and he wonders if it’s for Minato-sensei’s sake. A man he will never meet again.

It’s only seconds after they fall into step together that Kakashi finds himself on the ground, his back to the earth and a weight on his chest, a boot at his throat. Satoru Gojō crouches over him, a finger curling up the lip of his blindfold to reveal an eye that encompasses every shade of blue and more. He’s angry.

If Kakashi needed to breathe, he wouldn’t be able to. That primal urge within him tells him to fight, but he won’t. He doesn’t need to. Instead, he taps the side of Gojō’s foot with his hand and coughs. “Ease up.”

Gojō does not ease up. Gojō presses harder.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, challenging Satoru Gojō,” says Satoru Gojō, loving the sound of his own name.

Oh, and Nanami is there, too. In fact, while Gojō is bleeding rage, Nanami has already located Yūji Itadori and confirmed his status.

Nanami places a hand on Gojō’s shoulder and finally pulls that all-seeing eye away from Kakashi’s very appreciative soul. The anger is put on pause as Gojō looks to his comrade and then to the boy behind him.

“Oh, Yūji?” Like that, every ounce of killing intent that was crushing Kakashi with cursed energy is lifted. Just—poof. Gone with Gojō’s flickering emotions. “You’re not dead?”

Yūji waves, sharing the same level of tact as a brick wall. “I don’t think I’m dead? I just ate ramen. Can ramen kill you?” A pause. “Hi, Gojō-sensei!”

This one reminds Kakashi of a vacant-eyed Obito. It would be charming if it wasn’t sad.

Gojō pulls his foot away from Kakashi’s throat, and he can breathe again. Not that he needs to. He picks himself up out of the dirt for the second or third time since his birth.

As the three sorcerers reunite, Kakashi watches them. Comrades in arms, so reminiscent of Team 7 before they were all lost. The human Kakashi must have died, and now Minato-sensei is alone. But not really. Sensei was the only one who had a family on their team, so he won’t be lonely. That brings Kakashi comfort.

He thinks that now is the best chance he’ll get to slip away. Reunions have a way of distracting people. Gojō has only given him one command at present, a useless one with an easy workaround, which does not include sticking by Gojō’s side or remaining non-violent. And if he’s out of earshot, Gojō can’t give him any commands.

Kakashi lowers the blindfold over his Sharingan eye and feels the dullness of its pull on his cursed energy. He does not leave. Gojō already boasted about his own prowess and warned that Kakashi can’t escape him, so why waste energy?

He has another reason for his easy compliance, though. As he watches the ecstatic teacher look over his student, as the blond one chastises Gojō’s short fuse, Kakashi is coming to understand that to survive in this world, he may need these humans. With compliance, Gojō will protect him from exorcism. If he plays nice, he can save both himself and his brother.

Gojō has more to lose in this pact than he does. And Gojō knows this.

Their eyes meet through the blindfold and tell him all that he needs to know. Gojō never should have made that vow. Their pact is to Kakashi’s benefit, and something inside is telling him to use this man until he no longer can.

Chapter Text

Satoru Gojō is not a man of easy mistakes, and he is not happy. He’s back home. Yūji sits at the table with a feast of sushi between them and Kento is with the cursed spirit on the other side of Gojō’s estate, setting up a room to seal it in.

It’s Satoru’s decision to separate Kakashi and Yūji before they go digging for information. It’s not a difficult decision to make, knowing that both curses involved are connected, and they don’t quite know in what way. As much as Kakashi calls the other curse his ‘brother,’ curses don’t have relations like that. There’s a theory forming in his head, blasphemous and beyond the scope of anything he’s witnessed before, that these two infant curses are halves of one whole. So, what would it mean if the halves were to meet?

Satoru Gojō is no coward, but he knows when carelessness could lead to someone getting killed, and he’s getting tired of crossing out corpses on his list of contacts. It isn’t that Kakashi has proven to be the most dangerous curse he’s encountered, nor is it that Kakashi is particularly violent. But Kakashi is clever. It is clever and it is observant. If it were human, a sorcerer, he’d take it under his wing as a student the first chance that he got. He needs people with skills like those if he wants to upend the jujutsu world’s status quo. Kakashi is not human, though. Kakashi is a curse. And curses kill people.

So, two halves of a whole, he expects the other curse to be about as strong and maybe just as intelligent, just as observant. He can handle that, no problem.

But what if they combined? If they’re this strong after just forming, what would that look like?

Now, Satoru doesn’t know that they’ll combine. Maybe Kakashi is only calling it ‘brother’ because they formed from the same source and there’s kinship in that. Taking that chance doesn’t sit well with him, though, and so he won’t. For the time being, at least until they’ve gathered more information, Satoru doesn’t want to give Kakashi anything to latch onto. Not until he has a chance to assess it for himself.

Yūji isn’t hungry despite his twelve-hour kidnapping. He’s picking at plates that he usually would have emptied by now, like something is weighing on his mind. He’s not hurt. They checked him over for injuries and there’s nothing, really, so that begs the question—what did the curse do with him during their time together? Asking now is a gamble. As much as he’s looking forward to the story of how Yūji Itadori, vessel of Sukuna, ended up alone in a park, this encounter means something to Yūji. He doesn’t want to force an answer.

So, he waits. He stuffs his face with nigiri and leans back to watch Nanami work down the hall. He laughs, too, at Kento getting saddled with talisman duty. There are over three hundred papers. It’s going to take him forever.

“Hey, Gojō-sensei?”

“Yes, Yūji, my lovely disciple?”

Yūji opens his mouth and says nothing. He takes a piece of sashimi between his chopsticks, considers it, and pops it in his mouth. Yūji isn’t one to hesitate. He has a hell of a lot of resolve for someone so young, the sort of resolve that looks death in the face and tells it how his story will end.

“Do curses… feel?”

Satoru’s easy smile falters. He sees what’s happening here.

“In what way?” But Yūji won’t explain, so Satoru is going to have to take this conversation into his own hands. He puts down his chopsticks and crosses his legs, gesturing his words with his hands. “They feel pain and have some baser emotions. It varies from curse to curse. But everything they feel is tainted by the negative thoughts that birthed them.”

His student isn’t satisfied with that, hand on his chin, pouting as though he has the answer that he expects but not the one that he wants. “They’re all like that?”

“They’re all like that.”

“You haven’t met a curse that just… feels different?”

Satoru sighs, scratching at the fabric of his blindfold. Kids and their sentimentalities. “Every curse is different. Special-grades are especially unique. They can mimic humanity to a fine art. But Yūji, they’re not human. They’re curses. It’s all an act. They’ll do anything and everything if it means that they can grow and kill. And if playing nice with a sorcerer translates to avoiding an exorcism, they’ll do it, no questions asked.”

Yūji deflates and pushes his plate away, sulking over the harsh truth that Satoru isn’t willing to hide. This is the ‘in’ he’s been waiting for, and he carefully steers the conversation in his favour.

“Did that curse feel human to you, Yūji?” Satoru asks, leaning on the table, keeping his voice low so that the other curse down the hall can’t hear.

Yūji nods, sighing. He’s sunken so low in his chair that his head’s barely visible across the table. “He never tried to hurt me,” he says, and he’s given it an identity now. Trying to convince Satoru, not believing him. “He just wanted answers. He was all… confused. Didn’t even know that he was a curse—” His head lifts. “Don’t cursed spirits usually know what they are?”

It’s sounding like a direct parallel of Gojō Jr. down the hall, and it’s confirming a lot of things for Satoru. “Usually. But every curse is different,” and he stresses this because this is the second time he’s said it and Satoru Gojō does not repeat himself. “If it used to be human, I could see the confusion.” But these two curses are one, so what would that mean? Satoru ponders this, chin on his hand. Truth is, he’s dead tired. Everyone is. Everyone except their little cursed spirit friend and, for some reason, Yūji Itadori.

“He did!”

Satoru’s chin slips off his hand and he bolts upright as a countermeasure. “What.”

“He told me that he had memories of being human,” Yūji says, smiling when there is no reason to smile. “Maybe that’s why he was so nice. He was really hospitable for a curse. We had cup ramen.”

“...Right.” It’s not often that Satoru Gojō can’t think of something to say. He backpedals a bit. Yūji’s going off about kettles that work without electricity and having an egg in his noodles because the curse is, of all things, considerate, and Satoru really needs him to focus right now. “Yūji, you’re saying that the curse explained itself to you, is that right?”

“Yeah.”

“And it wanted help?”

“Mm-hmm. He took me ‘cause Nanamin kept attacking him, I think. So we went somewhere private.”

“And where did you go?”

“His place.”

His place. Satoru smiles, chin back in his hand, regaining some of his control. “A newborn curse has a home? That doesn’t sound right, does it?”

Yūji shrugs. “He told me not to worry about it.”

“Where was it?”

“I don’t know? It was kind of, like, nothing.”

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, like—there was nothing there. Nothing in every direction. Not even a window. It was kind of depressing,” Yūji says, thinks. “Do curses get depressed?”

A teasing grin stretches across Satoru’s face. “Maybe you should get it a light therapy lamp.”

“Would that work?” It’s a joke, Yūji. Don’t take it seriously. “I don’t know. Obito just looked really sad. Like, all the time.”

“Obito?”

“The curse’s name.”

“You named it? Yūji.” Satoru clicks his tongue and shakes his head. “You shouldn’t get attached. You can’t take it home with you.”

“He named himself!”

Kakashi sighs as he’s shoved into a small room again, this time with company. Nanami is there with him, pasting endless paper seals on the walls one by one, and Kakashi would help if it didn’t mean building his own prison.

Before being sent away, Gojō gave him two more commands: “Stay put,” and “Don’t try anything.”

It’s the second one that leaves him sour. It’s vague, too vague, and it means that he can’t do anything. Kakashi knows what Gojō means by that but because of the risk of breaking the vow, he has to tread cautiously and that means he cannot try anything.

There’s a workaround to this, though. The talismans aren’t up so they’re not active, and if they’re not active then he can sense and hear beyond the bounds of the room. They know about his strong sense of smell, but they don’t know about his equally impressive hearing, and he uses this to his advantage.

He can hear every sound across Gojō’s estate, and they cannot hide from him.

Kakashi listens idly to the sounds of eating from the living space down the hall, watching Nanami carefully place each and every paper seal while simultaneously looking like he wants to go home. Nanami is like Satoru Gojō’s foil—everything that Gojō isn’t, he is. He’s quiet and self-serving (that, he thinks, may be the one thing the two sorcerers share) and he thinks that everything Gojō has done tonight is an endless series of mistakes and fuckery. And isn’t it just?

He thinks that he unsettles Nanami, but he doesn’t know why. Kakashi has yet to see a curse other than himself.

Gojō loudly and proudly exclaims to the boy that, despite the hour, he’s gone to the ends of the earth to get sushi for them because they deserve it, and Kakashi doesn’t need keen senses to hear it.

“Is he always like that?”

Nanami stills, looking down at him with a blank face. Kakashi can’t discern from expression alone what goes on in this man’s head. The tinted glasses block any emotion from his eyes, and he’s not the type to wear his thoughts on his sleeve anyway. So Kakashi is left with only mannerisms to clue him into what this man is thinking. But Nanami doesn’t make many movements, either.

“Always,” comes the eventual answer, and Nanami continues to stick the paper to every surface in the room. He’s almost halfway done… the first wall. 

Kakashi sighs. “You have my sympathies, then.”

They don’t say anything for a while. Kakashi can, quite literally, do nothing, and so he closes his eyes and listens to the other party. It’s maybe thirty minutes in that they start talking.

“Do curses… feel?”

Kakashi stares at his hand and wonders if it’s even really his, if he is Kakashi or just some ball of negative energy that has Kakashi’s memories. He isn’t sure. That primal part of his mind isn’t something that Kakashi ever experienced while alive, not to his knowledge at least, but the thought of those memories belonging to someone else hurts too much for him to consider.

Kakashi thinks that he feels. The terror of his memories still rings loud in his mind and the images of red on pale skin, the feeling of Rin’s everything on the tip of Chidori, is something he cannot forget. Right now, he’s scared, but won’t show it. No shinobi worth their salt would show fear in unknown lands. But hiding his fear doesn’t mean that he can’t feel it. It’s as real to him as the Sharingan eye that burdens him and the tantō that his father left behind.

“Everything they feel is tainted by the negative thoughts that birthed them.”

If Kakashi is a curse, then he wonders what thoughts brought him here.

“It’s Nanamin, right?” he asks finally, the nothing that passes between them a weight.

“Nanami,” comes the quick correction. Nanami chooses to focus on the task at hand rather than give Kakashi any attention, and that’s fair enough.

“Nanami,” Kakashi repeats. “Do curses feel?”

“You tell me.”

He doesn’t expect that. Their eyes meet then, behind Kakashi’s blindfold and Nanami’s glasses, and it feels different from when he and Gojō acknowledged one another. “I think that I do, but I don’t think that I’m supposed to.”

“You’re correct in that.” Nanami bends down to grab another pile of seals. The first half is done, and this is proving to be a longer task than either of them thought. “Curses do feel. What they feel is limited, however, and is not quite the same as what a human would. They’re not technically alive, you see.”

“But not dead, either,” Kakashi continues in his stead. “We just are.”

“He never tried to hurt me. He just wanted answers.”

Kakashi must feel because at this moment, his relief has him melting into the wall. His brother has not done harm. The vow still stands, and there is a chance that his brother will be protected. He sits there and wonders what it would have been like if they found each other. If those veils that the sorcerers put up didn’t trap them as they did. He wonders what his brother is like and why he feels this pull in his chest, this connection, the unparalleled desire to find him.

“If I’m honest, you’re not quite like other cursed spirits,” Nanami says, continuing the conversation of his own accord. “I don’t sense any malicious intent from you. I’m aware that you may just be good at hiding it, but I find it curious nonetheless.”

Kakashi smiles. It’s a sad, tired thing. “I don’t want to hurt you, if that’s any comfort. I might want to hurt Gojō.”

“You’re entirely valid in that.”

He laughs. It’s short, just a chuckle, but it’s the most at ease he’s felt since arriving—since being born, he supposes.

“He told me that he had memories of being human.”

They’re similar, he and his brother. He wonders if the other curse was also spirited away from their home, if they feel as lost and alone as he does now, and if maybe they can bring one another comfort.

Kakashi won’t ask after this. To be curious about this is to admit that he was once human, too. There will be questions, then. Questions that he can’t answer. He’s never liked sharing much of himself with others. Even his team, back in the days of his memory, he cast aside to face his burdens head-on and alone. They don’t need to know that he was human once. They don’t get to see that part of him.

“This is the first time I’ve held a conversation with a curse,” Nanami admits. “Outside of combat, anyway. It’s quite the change of pace, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.”

Kakashi closes his eyes again and feels like he could fall asleep like this. “I enjoy your company, too.”

“Obito just looked really sad. Like, all the time.”

The name is like a lead weight on his chest. Everything stops.

“Obito?”

“The curse’s name.”

“You named it? Yūji… You shouldn’t get attached. You can’t take it home with you.”

“He named himself!”

The cursed energy that he’s carefully controlled is released all at once as the last talisman is placed on the last wall. Nanami is quick to draw his weapon, but Kakashi doesn’t see it. It’s only a blip, only one moment, but he’s lost the little trust he’s gained.

He does not care.

The door to his prison flings open to reveal a very unsatisfied jujutsu sorcerer. Kakashi hasn’t moved, though. He’s well enough in his mind to remember their vow, and he was told not to try anything, so he won’t. He reins it all back in and smooths out whatever made it to his face.

They stare each other down, Nanami forgotten between them.

This time, Kakashi breaks first.

“My brother. His name is Obito?”

He can’t meet Gojō’s eyes. His attention is on the tatami mat, and it’s all he can do to keep from spilling his connection to that name and all of its history.

After much consideration, Gojō eases back into his usual, cocky self. No victims of his gravity-defying power tonight. “You heard all that?”

Kakashi nods. He feels unlike himself. Shy. Nervous. If he messes up now, he may never hear anything else about the other curse born with him. He may spend the rest of eternity stuck in this room with no one and nothing, and that is a fate worse than becoming a curse.

“Woooow. Our little Kashi is keeping things from us, Nanamin! I feel so betrayed.”

Kakashi doesn’t tell him to shut up because he wants to stay in Gojō’s good graces.

“Is there anything else you’re hiding?”

A command from hours ago echos through his head. “Tell the truth.”

“I can’t trust you with that.”

Gojō grins and it is not kind. “Spoken like a true curse.”

‘Curse’ is better than ‘Friend-Killer’. Thinking that numbs the bitterness that follows. He doesn’t address it. Instead, he turns to Nanami, still braced with a covered blade in hand. “Sorry for startling you. I didn’t expect to hear a name.”

Nanami clears his throat, straightens his tie, and waves it off. “Gojō, I’m leaving. And I’m not coming back. Goodbye.”

Gojō pouts. He doesn’t stop it when Nanami, true to his word, gets the hell out of there. In his retreat, Kakashi can see Yūji poking his head out from down the hall, curious and confused all at once.

He’ll get his answers from Yūji, he decides. Eventually. One day. For now, he’ll play Satoru Gojō’s pawn.

“Can I get a futon, at least?”

Satoru eyes him through the blindfold. “Curses don’t sleep.”

“This one does.”

Obito feels Yūji’s absence when he wakes up in Kamui alone. The mess is still there, so he tidies it up and dumps the trash outside his cozy little pocket dimension in a bin he finds somewhere far, far away from where he left Yūji. He thinks it may be a different country entirely, but he doesn’t know this world’s geography enough to be sure.

Obito doesn’t get hungry but can eat. He doesn’t feel tired, but he sleeps. He walks this world’s streets openly and without care because ordinary people can’t see him. When he calls out to some kids playing outside, they never register his voice. If he waves his hands in front of people seated on a restaurant patio, they won’t even flinch.

Yūji can see him. Sorcerers can. But sorcerers will also exorcise him on sight. So, what, is he supposed to spend all of his time alone? Forever? Obito’s never been good at playing ‘lone wolf’ like Kakashi. He craves acceptance and people and human contact. But human contact under these circumstances could be harmful to the people around him.

He promised Yūji he wouldn’t hurt people. So he won’t.

The first time he sees another curse, he doesn’t know what it is. There’s a monster skulking around an old building. Obito senses its cursed energy from the street and, with nothing better to do, he follows it. It’s a condemned apartment complex, complete with boarded-up windows and a sign that threatens prosecution for unlawful entry. There are a lot of buildings like that in this part of the city. Obito’s pretty sure laws don’t apply to cursed spirits, so he slides on through the front door and follows his senses.

It doesn’t attack him. Their eyes meet, and he grimaces, its bulging multi-gaze unnerving, dozens of green irises all focused on him. Then, it passes by. Obito is no threat to it. Obito is kin.

Does he look like that?

Obito kicks down the door to one of the units and stares into the first mirror that he sees. His image isn’t reflected. He grips the bathroom counter and grounds himself. It makes sense. Humans can’t see him; his physical body isn’t like theirs. Not having a reflection is understandable. It is, but now he’s worried that he really does look like that thing and—and poor Yūji, did he have to sit there and stare at—

Obito sucks in a breath and shakes his head. He’s being silly. He can’t look in a mirror, but he can look down at his very human-looking body, can feel his very human-feeling face, and has nothing to worry about.

While looking down at his body, he also notices that he doesn’t have a shadow, either. So that’s a thing.

At this point, he’s just a ghost.

Obito hangs around the complex for a while, observing as curses move down the halls, wheezing out nonsensical words and grievances that he isn’t equipped to unpack at the moment. The more he sees of them, the more he adjusts. They’re horrifying, sure. Grotesque. But they make eye contact with him, and that’s nice. At least someone can see him. He’ll take what he can get.

Now Obito sits on the edge of the roof, his legs dangling freely over the side, as he watches the curses mill about the street. There are a lot in this abandoned neighbourhood. He assumes many people left with bitter feelings that all coalesced into the curses here today, and it’s a bit sad. What gave rise to him, he wonders? To his other half, even?

He can feel that other curse, even now. Distance isn’t an issue. So long as he’s outside Kamui, the feeling is there. Fortunately for him, that other half either doesn’t have access to Kamui or isn’t interested in meeting, because they haven’t crossed paths.

It’s dawning on him that if he doesn’t confront this feeling, he may very well end up alone. And he will. Maybe. One day, when he gains confidence. The fear of being absorbed by that thing is still very real and true, but he’s also scared that he’ll be disappointed. That the curse he feels so connected to won’t be like him, but will be like the sea of others below.

Obito thinks he’s starting to understand what it means to be a curse. There’s this part of his brain that whispers horrors to him. It urges him to take and ruin and hunt and absorb. He thinks they all must feel like this, and that this feeling is what leads them to attack. And kill. And get exorcised.

The weird thing about it, though? He can suppress it with relative ease.

It feels like he used to have intrusive thoughts before. As a human. And it feels like he’s dealt with this for a long, long time.

Obito thinks bad things but does not act on them. If this is what a curse is, then he’ll change their definition. He made a promise to his friend, Yūji Itadori, the world’s friendliest jujutsu sorcerer. And he’s pretty confident he’ll keep it.

He doesn’t want to lose any more precious people.

Satoru wakes up late into the afternoon. That’s expected. They were up well past dawn, and even the world’s strongest needs his beauty sleep. He yawns and sits up in bed, stretching his whole body from his fingers to his toes and staring at the digital alarm clock at his bedside. Last night’s events are coming back to him, and he’s not ready to deal with the implications of them at this present time.

Right. He has a pet curse now.

He also has one Yūji Itadori, vessel of Sukuna, crashing at his place while training up his cursed energy control.

Satoru wants to say that his life is always full of fun happenings, but right at this moment, he just wants to go back to bed.

Satoru has work today. He has work every day. But he won’t go. He doesn’t call in; he just doesn’t show up. He’s Satoru Gojō and nobody can stop him.

Satoru gets dressed, ties the blindfold around his eyes, and leaves the room. His attention is immediately grabbed by the door at the end of the hall, covered floor-to-ceiling in paper talismans. After the sudden, unfiltered rush of cursed energy Kakashi released in the night, he added more to the outside of the room for good measure. So far, so good. No broken walls or burning buildings, and he can sense the curse still in the room. But it’s so good at hiding its cursed energy that it doesn’t even feel like a curse. Even Yūji hasn’t asked if it’s a curse yet.

Satoru kicks open the door like a thug and stares down at the small lump beneath the cover of the futon. Despite the grandiose entrance, Kakashi is asleep. Hasn’t even stirred. And isn’t that the strangest thing?

How does a cursed spirit sleep?

Satoru shoves his hands in his pockets and tilts his head at the small lump. In all honesty, he could just keep Kakashi sealed in here indefinitely. Curses don’t need food or water or sunlight. It won’t die from neglect. He could just take it out if he ever happens to need its services, and that would solve the issue of the flimsy vow between them.

Considering this, Satoru nudges the curse with his foot. That sounds too lame and boring. He already listed off a series of commands for it to follow before going to bed, nervous of the possibility that it would get out and ruin his everything before he got in some shut-eye. It’s on a decently tight leash. If it finds a loophole, he’ll fill it.

It doesn’t stir when he nudges it. So he nudges it harder.

Kakashi doesn’t move. Isn’t breathing, either, but that’s neither here nor there.

Frowning, he does the only thing he can do and texts Nanami.

‘How to wake up a cursed spirit?’

Nanami leaves him on ‘read’.

“Kashi,” he whines. His sleep schedule is too fucked for him to retain his usual joviality. “Kashi, it’s morning. Wake up.”

He could just leave it here. But that’s no fun.

“Kashi, I’ll exorcise you.” Nothing. “Oh, look. Sukuna’s finger. If a curse eats that, it’ll become infinitely stronger. I guess I’ll just leave it here. In the open. For any passing curse to snack on.” Nadda.

He gets a thought, then, and shrugs. Worth a shot. “Obito.”

There’s a flare of cursed energy, but it doesn’t rival half of what he felt the night before. Before long, Kakashi stirs, groans, and pokes his head out from under the sheets.

“Obito?” Kakashi asks quietly, rubbing his eyes. His voice is croaky and hoarse, like he’s actually been asleep, and Satoru still can’t believe what he’s seeing.

Kakashi meets his eyes and immediately his head falls back onto the pillow. He is miserable.

It fills Satoru with glee.

“Rise and shine, Kashi! It’s your birthday!”

Kakashi rolls over, his back to Satoru, and pulls the covers back over his head. “It’s been my birthday since I woke up. I’m over it.”

“Get up.”

The curse twitches, looking over its shoulder, narrow-eyed and feral. It gets up. It doesn’t have a choice because Satoru Gojō is a bastard who is abusing the hell out of their binding vow and does not feel one ounce of remorse. Unlike Yūji, he likes to think that he can see a curse for what it is and not what it looks like. This thing isn’t human. It isn’t even alive. So, he’ll treat it like a toy and get some enjoyment out of it while it’s still following his commands.

As they cross the estate, Kakashi sniffs the air. It doesn’t go unnoticed, Satoru gazing back at his trailing burden.

“Caught a scent?” It comes out more teasing than he intends.

“Yūji’s making breakfast.”

“Yūji doesn’t cook.”

Kakashi’s answer is a shrug. It doesn’t look like it’s fully awake, its visible eye closing periodically as it drags its feet.

The kitchen is alive with sounds. A frying pan sizzles on the stove top. The toaster dings. There are three places set at the table when there needs only to be two, but Kakashi doesn’t hesitate to take a seat. It’s going to eat with them. It will go this far to mimic humanity, and Satoru is as disturbed as he is intrigued. Their breakfast is greasy and heavy on the stomach, but Kakashi lowers its mask and takes small bites without complaint. Well, that makes sense. It doesn’t have a stomach. It shouldn’t be able to taste, either.

Yūji takes the seat next to Kakashi like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and Satoru is forced to sit across from them. His student smiles, watching Kakashi eat, content with himself.

“Hey, can you taste?” Yūji asks. No hesitation. The fact that he asks at all means that he’s figured it out.

Kakashi sips from its water. The staring doesn’t bother it. It hardly notices. “Am I not supposed to?”

“I’m not sure?” Yūji’s making that face again, the one that tells the world that he’s thinking too hard, and seeks guidance from Satoru where there is none. “I think Obito can. It seemed like he enjoyed the ramen.”

Satoru pauses and awaits the storm that’s sure to brew, but it never comes. This time, Kakashi doesn’t even turn at the sound of that name. It doesn’t ask after Obito, either.

“You’re a curse, right? Like he is?”

Yūji has no tact. Satoru is almost proud.

“That’s what they tell me.”

“Were you human, too?”

Kakashi pauses, his eyes finding Satoru’s across the table. Its pain is Satoru’s greatest pleasure, still under the ‘tell the truth’ command that it still remembers, clear as day, and it doesn’t answer. That’s fair enough. It’s too early in the morning (it’s well past noon, but that is not the issue here) to play games, even for the world’s strongest, and silence is answer enough for Satoru to draw his own conclusions. If it hadn’t been human once, it would have just—

“No,” Kakashi says, putting a wrench in the whole thing. Well, it has to tell the truth. It must just be an ordinary, albeit unorthodox, newborn curse.

Satoru has coffee now. He feels truly alive again and his energy returns in spades.

Kakashi also has coffee. They lock eyes and look bitter about the mirrored image they’re making.

Kakashi is the first to break eye contact. “How far will you allow me to wander?” It nods to the courtyard beyond the window. “Do I need to stay within sight, or can I walk the premises?”

Satoru wants to say ‘no’ and ‘not at all’ but he thinks about it. The estate is usually empty, as he lives separately from the rest of his clan. He’s Satoru Gojō, and if he says he can’t stand the look of them, they’ll get out of his damn space. He hems and haws, tilting his head one way and another, watching the curse’s growing irritation. It isn’t asking to go off the property. Realistically speaking, there’s no way a curse could wreak havoc on the land of the Gojō heir and expect to get away with it. But this curse, he suspects, can be manipulative. And this one is calculative.

“The courtyard is fine,” Satoru finally answers. “Outside of that, stay within earshot.”

“Human earshot?” Kakashi presses. “You wouldn’t happen to have special ears, too, would you?”

“Yes, Kashi. I, as a human, have very human ears. As such, my hearing is also very human. Very good!”

“You say, carrying a dōjutsu that is anything but.”

There’s that word again. Dōjutsu. A word that Satoru does not know from a newborn curse. It nags at him. He doesn’t like being left out of the loop, or being excluded from a conversation. But he knows that if he asks, he won’t get an answer. He could order Kakashi to tell him, but he doesn’t want to abuse his control over the curse more than he already has. That can come later, when it no longer listens. When it finds loopholes. Right now, it’s obedient to a point, and he’d be a fool to test its patience.

“Dōjutsu?” Yūji, echos with all the tact of a, well. All the tact of a newborn curse. He looks between the two of them, laying his head on the table. He looks tired. “Hey, Gojō-sensei, what’s a dōjutsu?”

Oh, no. His worst fear brought to life—a question from one of his students that he can’t answer. Satoru opens his mouth to bullshit something to save face.

“It’s an ocular jutsu,” Kakashi supplies readily, sipping his coffee, looking all sorts of bored. His fingers go up to the blindfold over his left eye, and he levels it on his forehead, revealing a bright red, spinning eye that seems to glow. “I suppose you would call it a cursed technique, though. They’re hereditary. But even if a parent has one, there is no guarantee that their children will.”

This newborn curse seems overly familiar with the Six Eyes. It begs the question of how, though.

“Oooh, I get it. Like Gojō-sensei’s Six Eyes.” Yūji’s getting better at understanding cursed technique terminology, though Satoru isn’t sure what all of this ‘jutsu’ talk is about. He’s just decided to tune it out. Maybe curses have their own language. “So, is that yours?”

Kakashi nods. “It was a gift.”

A gift?

“Obito has eyes like that,” Yūji continues, watching curiously as Kakashi’s attention is drawn. “You said you’re brothers. Is that why?”

Kakashi shakes his head. “Obito isn’t my brother.”

 What? Excuse me? Last night, Kakashi went on and on about ‘protecting my brother’ and ‘finding my brother’ until Satoru’s ears were ready to bleed.

Well, Satoru knows this. Curses don’t have family. But still, what the hell?

“It’s true that we share the same dōjutsu.” And suddenly Kakashi knows things about the other cursed spirit when he was completely unaware just yesterday. Kakashi touches the skin beneath his eye. “They work a little differently, though. His are natural, so he can deactivate them at will. I can’t. Unless I close my eye, my Sharingan will continue to deplete my cursed energy.”

Lies. Satoru saw it with both eyes active. The other one turns off. This one should, too.

But what does it mean by ‘natural?’

“But Obito couldn’t turn his off.”

“What?”

Yūji shrugs. “At least, they were active the whole time I was with him. It didn’t seem like he could.”

Kakashi frowns, bringing the blindfold back over its eye. “He’ll stop moving if he exhausts his chakra,” the curse mutters to itself.

“Huh?”

Kakashi waves him off and rises from the table. Its mug is empty, as is its plate, and it slides open the door to the courtyard without so much as a goodbye.

“Hey, Gojō-sensei?”

“Yes, Yūji?”

“Can you turn your dōjutsu off?”

Great, fantastic. Now his student is using that nonsense terminology, too. “Why, Yūji, if I could do that then I wouldn’t wear a blindfold, would I?”

“Oh. I guess that’s true. Maybe Obito really can’t, either, then. I wonder why Kakashi only has one…”

It doesn’t. But more important than that—

“Yūji,” Satoru calls, drawing the kid’s eyes back to him. He’s smiling, but he’s not happy. “When did you learn Kakashi’s name?”

“Oh, I asked him.”

“When?”

“Last night,” he shrugs. “After you went to sleep. I went to his room to see him.”

Satoru watches the small body beyond the window, his smile fading. It hadn’t mentioned speaking with Yūji. And it wouldn’t have. It used his absence as a chance to gather information, and that’s why its reactions to the name Obito are so muted. It’s already heard everything.

What else does it know?

Chapter Text

Obito hangs around abandoned buildings a lot.

It isn’t that he likes hanging around the creepy parts of town, but it’s only in places like these that he gets any company. The company being curses, of course. Since only they can see him, and he hasn’t run into any sorcerers in this country. Weird, that.

The cool thing about being a curse is that he can still interact with the world the same way that he did as a human, so he can steal whatever takes his interest. He feels a bit bad about it, sure, but it’s not like he has much of a choice. Can’t buy things—curses don’t carry cash.

He’s also learned that there are different levels of curses and that he’s what’s known as a ‘special-grade’ which makes him feel super important and even kind of cool. The higher ranked a curse, the more intelligent it is. He hasn’t met any that are ‘good conversationalist’ level of smart yet, but he has taught a group of grade 2 curses how to play cards. So that’s what he’s doing.

Playing poker with cursed spirits.

Obito is getting tired of winning. He sighs, staring between the five other cursed spirits loitering around the table, and isn’t sure what else he was expecting. Multitudes of eyes and eerily long limbs catch his attention, but he’s gotten so used to them by now that they don’t look grotesque to him anymore.

He’s a pretty boy curse, he’s decided.

“Where’s your spirit?” he asks as they all stare wobbly-eyed at their cards. Some still don’t know what the hell they’re doing. “Come on, you’ll beat me one day! I believe in you!”

They all grumble something that sounds like annoyance. It cheers him up a bit. He likes being annoying. He’s good at it.

It’s partway through their sixth game that he feels it—a swell of cursed energy that flickers and moves like a chakra signature—and he turns toward it automatically. It’s weird. He feels like a sensor type, but he wasn’t one as a human. This is how all curses are, he’s sure. This energy belongs to a human, though. That primal part of his brain tells him so. It’s also telling him to hunt, to consume this human and feed and grow on its essence, but he ignores it because his promise to Yūji has a bigger place in his mind.

But he is curious… This is the first time since Yūji and that blond guy that he’s felt a human with so much cursed energy, and he’s pretty sure that means that they’re a sorcerer. He wants to meet them. He also thinks that they’ll exorcise him if he does.

What a predicament.

Well, if they want to exorcise him then they’ll have to hit him, right?

He’s got this.

Obito abandons the poker game (he’s going to win anyway, what’s the point?) and wanders over to the window. It’s dirty and cracked and all sorts of gross, but he just crinkles his nose and wipes away some of the grime with his sleeve. His poker buddies are already outside. They flung themselves onto the street the moment they felt that energy, and they launch themselves at the guy standing there.

The sorcerer isn’t scared, but he can see them. He just looks tired, like he hasn’t slept in eighteen years. Something about that resonates with Obito. Even though he’s only thirteen.

It’s whatever. It’s just a feeling. There’s kinship in it.

The sorcerer only unsheathes his sword when the curses are a breath away. Obito follows his movements closely with the Sharingan and watches in slow motion as he cuts them down one by one. It’s ten seconds and all of Obito’s hours of drilling card games into their heads are now wasted. He’s mad. A bit.

He steps through Kamui and arrives in the street before the man, arms crossed and scowling. “Hey,” he spits and nods to the traces of curse energy still lingering in the air, “those were mine. Get your own.”

The sorcerer stares at Obito, then aims his sword.

“Do you know how hard it is to teach things to a grade-two curse?” He steps forward, unperturbed, confident now in his seamless control of Kamui. The human takes aim, lowers his stance, and launches off the ground. The blade never hits. Now the human is behind him, a little perplexed, staring at the sword that did not cut. “Let alone five. They made me feel bad for all the shit I put Minato-sensei through. That’s how bad it was.”

The sorcerer tries again, but the blade slips through like Obito is made of air. Even with the cursed energy imbued in the blade, nothing sticks. He’s feeling mighty cocky, now. Look at him go. He’s so cool.

“And now,” he continues, turning to face the human. It’s instinct—he ducks when he sees the blade coming for him and slips beneath it. With a twist and a flourish, he launches his foot into the air and knocks the sword onto the street. He kicks it away for good measure. “Now I’m going to have to start all over again.”

This guy still isn’t bothered at all. He’s looking between his hand and the sword and sees what happened, but Obito doubts that he really understands it. “You’re impermeable,” the sorcerer says.

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Rika.”

The curse that comes at the human’s beck and call is a powerhouse, and Obito isn’t ready for this. He’s just a newborn. Or whatever. He can sense the insane cursed energy coming from it, and he’s pretty sure it’s a special-grade like he is. But see, Obito doesn’t want a fight. He’s just annoyed.

Averting his eyes, he raises his hands up in surrender. “You win.”

The human blinks. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“Why?”

Obito shrugs. “I’m a pacifist or something. Hey—what’s your name? Do you know Yūji?”

The mask of indifference is off, and the human is wholly confused.

Kakashi has taken a shine to the courtyard. He spent the first few days of his new life doing little else but practising taijutsu to learn this body’s limits. Or lack thereof, as it turns out, because the body does not feel fatigue in the same way that a human’s does. It’s only when his cursed energy depletes that he feels tired, so he waits for it to replenish in between training sessions. This body’s a lot more convenient than his last in a way that seems entirely unfair, but maybe that’s one of the perks of not being alive or dead.

Today, Kakashi wants to see if he can mould cursed energy the same way that he could chakra. And honestly? It looks promising. What he remembers of his fight with Gojo is mostly taijutsu, but he can feel cursed energy in the same way that he could chakra. It isn’t all that unfamiliar to him.

Speaking of Gojō, Kakashi is pretty sure that he’s scared the guy. He doesn’t know what he did to scare Gojō, but he feels nervous energy coming off of the man whenever they cross paths. Gojō’s suspicious of his intentions. That’s fine. He probably should be.

For right now, Kakashi is going to try kneading cursed energy. He closes his eyes and draws the energy that makes up his body into his core, where he starts to work it. So far, it behaves the way he expects it to. The most basic test that he can do is probably…

After a few moments, he draws the energy down to his feet and walks straight, continuing up the trunk of the tree in the middle of the courtyard. His feet stick to it as though he’s standing firmly on the ground. No wavering, and they don’t come unstuck. It works fine.

He tries the same with the pond to the left of the tree and, unsurprisingly, he can tread the surface of the water without causing so much as a ripple of disturbance. This isn’t what he really wants to test, though.

Kakashi levels the blindfold on his forehead and feels the clarity of his Sharingan activate. With it, the sparks of Chidori flare to life on his fingertips as he reels back his arm. Soon they’re visible, the churn of chakra into lightning—cursed energy, they call it here, but it feels very much the same. Once it gathers and compresses in a way that feels nostalgic to him, he launches himself at the tree—

“Stop!”

Kakashi breaks his sprint, but the energy has to go somewhere, and he chooses the ground. Except that he’s on the bridge that crosses the pond. Chidori splits the wood into pieces and shatters everything in its path like broken glass. By the end of it, there’s nothing left of the bridge but the handrails and the splinters that float atop the water. Kakashi is still dry, though, his chakra pooled at the bottom of his feet, and he narrows his eyes in the direction of the voice.

Satoru Gojō.

Gojō is annoyed. He’s not keeping up that always-present, skin-deep smile of his, and Kakashi thinks it may have something to do with the property damage. But he isn’t sure.

“What,” Gojō says, trying to bring that fake smile back, “are you doing, exactly?”

Kakashi shrugs, still standing over the water. Once he starts controlling his energy, he can’t be bothered to stop. It feels natural to him. “Experimenting.”

“With my garden.”

“It isn’t well-kept. I assumed you wouldn’t mind.” There are weeds everywhere. He’s pretty sure the only reason Gojō’s making this a thing is because it’s Kakashi who’s destroying it. If it were Yūji, he’d find it hilarious.

Gojō closes the distance between them and looms overhead. Kakashi looks up at him, annoyed by his height, and his Sharingan automatically analyzes Gojō’s eyes. He can see the large pool of cursed energy in them, but the Six Eyes doesn’t weave genjutsu or anything like that, so there isn’t much information for his Sharingan to latch onto. From what he can gather, the Six Eyes allows its owner to see far more than a normal human can. It’s so powerful that Gojō can see when his vision is obstructed, so intense that the sensory overload when his eyes are uncovered is disorienting when prolonged.

He wonders if Gojō sees through his eyelids.

That’s a very Obito-esque thought and instead of addressing it, he’s going to compartmentalize it for later.

Gojō has his arms crossed like a scolding parent. Kakashi decides not to tell him that he’s pretty sure he used to be an adult because he doesn’t remember that period of his life, anyway. “It’s like this: I, Satoru Gojō,” his own biggest fan, “have opened up my home to you, a curse, out of the goodness of my heart.”

It’s actually because he got overly excited, made a bad deal that he can’t get out of, and is now stuck with the consequences of his own actions.

“I’m even letting you use the courtyard unsupervised.” This is a lie. He can feel Gojō’s eyes on him even when he’s supposed to be alone. “Respect my shit.”

It’s a command. This is, what, the seventeenth? Kakashi sighs. It’s getting hard to keep track.

“Understood. Could you pick up some training dummies, at least?”

Gojō considers him for a moment and sits down on the engawa surrounding the courtyard, crossing his legs. “What is it you’re training for?”

Kakashi shrugs. “I don’t want my reflexes to dull. Even if this world is peaceful, the possibility of conflict still exists.”

“Peaceful?” Gojō leans back, grinning as he looks to the sky. “First time I’ve ever heard that. Good one.”

“Your village hasn’t been destroyed.” Kakashi’s village hasn’t, either, but something nags at him. He dreads getting back the memories that he’s lost. “And as far as I can tell, it isn’t wartime. You wouldn’t be here if it were.”

“Sure, there’s a war. A war with curses.”

Kakashi rolls his eyes. “When you start drafting kids my age to die in foreign lands, let me know. Humans are crueller than any curse.”

“You haven’t met any, though,” Gojō says. “Curses other than yourself.”

“Then bring me along next time you go to exorcise one.”

“That’s not—”

“I’ll help you,” Kakashi says simply. “I don’t hold any kinship with them. Whether you like me or not, I’m an asset. Yūji’s a good kid. If my helping you will make the world safer for people like him, then so be it.”

“What if it’s Obito?”

Kakashi dismisses the thought entirely with a wave of his hand. “Obito’s too far out for us to reach. He’s been gone—ah.”

Gojō leans in, and their eyes meet.

“He’s back now,” he says simply, feeling the twist and shift of his brother— no, stop that, we aren’t brothers— as he goes in and out of Kakashi’s sensory range.

He isn’t sure that this Obito is the one that he knows, in the same way that he isn’t sure that he’s the Kakashi that Obito knows. But it’s possible. Obito died at Kannabi Bridge and if Kakashi also died to get here then—maybe.

 It doesn’t feel real. Obito has been dead for months, now. No—years, well over a decade, perhaps. It’s all a haze.

“So?” Gojō presses, a wry grin on his face as he watches Kakashi hesitate. “What’ll it be? You going to exorcise him with me?”

Kakashi blinks. “No. We have our deal. If he hasn’t hurt anyone, then—”

“He’s a curse who’s been out on his own for a week,” Gojō says. “He’s hurt someone. Guaranteed. So? You gonna tell me where he is, or are we at a stalemate?”

It’s not a hard decision. If this is the Obito that he knows, he wouldn’t have caused harm to anyone without reason. Obito was the stupidly friendly sort. He was always late to everything, careless yet cocky, and a terrible shinobi. But he put the needs of others before his own. He was selfless and kind in a way that Kakashi never could be.

And if it’s not his Obito, then… maybe it won’t matter.

The moment the car is parked outside, Kakashi throws itself out the door and dry heaves on the side of the road. Apparently, curses get carsick. It’s hilarious. Satoru’s picked up such a fun toy.

They’re standing smack-dab in the middle of a neighbourhood zoned for redevelopment. A lot of the houses in the area are vacant, and the whole thing has been slowly dying over the past two years, so it’s a bit of a ghost town. As such, they don’t bother with a curtain. If Kakashi’s insistence that Obito hasn’t harmed anyone is correct, then there won’t be a reason for them to fight in the first place. And, well…

No curse can escape Satoru Gojō.

The only real concern Satoru has is what will happen when the two halves of the curse meet. Now, he doesn’t have any evidence that something bad will happen when they do. It’s just a hunch. Being the strongest, his hunches tend to be pretty good. He has a knack for danger in the worst way possible. But hey, maybe he’s wrong. He’s been wrong before. Probably. Maybe. It happened at some point.

Satoru rounds on the little cursed demon spawn that finally caught its breath on the sidewalk and points a finger. Rudely. “Now! I’ll be heading inside, Kashi, and you’re going to stay here. Sound good?”

Kakashi scrunches up its face, looking pale and sickly despite not even being alive, and gathers itself up off the cement. “I want to see him. Let me.”

“I’ll bring him here when I’m done with him,” Satoru promises. He’s an asshole, but he’ll keep his word. As much as their meeting worries him, it also sends a thrill through his body at the thought of what disaster will spawn from it. He’s excited. “Until I do, don’t move from here.”

“But—”

Satoru tuts, waggling a finger at his young charge. “Now, now. If you break our vow, I’ll exorcise him. Don’t make me do that.”

“I hate you.”

Oh, he knows. He lives for that.

Satoru spins in a flourish and makes quick strides to the entrance of the apartment building in front of them. This is where Kakashi’s senses have led them. He can sense cursed energy from here, sure, mostly from low-level cursed spirits that don’t warrant his abilities. Is the kid—curse, curse, don’t humanize it—pulling one over on him? But no, Kakashi’s cursed energy barely registers. Satoru’s watched it train and has seen the way it coils and traps its own energy in its body so that it can’t be easily detected. This Obito curse might be able to do the same.

While his steps echo up the stairs within the apartment, Satoru Gojō obliterates every curse stupid enough to approach while barely lifting a finger.

Obito has learned that he is very lucky it was Yūji who he met when he woke up.

He’s sitting in some abandoned building somewhere, in some random corner of the world, heaving his breath and hiding behind furniture that’s layered in dust and debris. The windows are boarded up, the room is dark and he is safe.

Okay, so the sorcerer never hit him. Never even figured out his Kamui trick, which is good. But he wouldn’t leave Obito alone. Even when teleporting across the city, the guy would find him somehow and try, try again. Obito even broke his stupid katana!

So now Obito is far, far away where no human should be able to travel to in a reasonable amount of time. The curse following that sorcerer around was different from the others, perhaps a special-grade like him, and she made him feel all sorts of wrong. She’s dangerous; he needs to watch out for her.

Today more than ever, he misses Yūji Itadori.

Then he feels it—the pull, the draw. His brother is nearby. His whole body tenses at once, but then… then he relaxes. He takes a breath. It’ll be okay, he tells himself. In the end, despite all of his fears, he really wants to meet this person. He wants to know why he feels so connected to them, and to see what kind of person they are, and if maybe…

Maybe they want to be friends.

So Obito stares at the door from behind the couch, eyes narrowed, waiting for something to happen. He can sense something powerful making its way through the building and can only assume, since his brother feels so close, that it’s the one who he’s been waiting for. As it gets closer, a scent starts wafting through the building, one that nags at him, screams at him that he knows this person, but he couldn’t possibly. As a human, he didn’t have senses like this. He wouldn’t remember a scent from his life before. And yet, it feels like he does.

Footsteps creak across the old wood floor and stop just outside the apartment door. The scent is powerful now and Obito is still, his mind turning over names in his head, again and again, and—

Oh.

The door’s kicked in. It swings wide and slams against the wall, and it’s all cracked around the handle. On the other side stands a tall, lean figure beyond the hazy dust-filled plume that was kicked up in his violent entrance. Pale, with pale hair, his eyes pooling cursed energy like nobody’s business.

A mask covering those eyes. Covering eyes that are filled with chakra.

A memory buzzes through Obito’s mind of a small body with a hitai-ate purposefully slanted over an eye.

“Oooooi,” the man calls, cupping his mouth. “Come on, little cursed spirit! Come on out! I just want a good look at you!”

But it… couldn’t be, could it? How could he look like that when Obito looks like this? It just doesn’t add up, it—

“Oi, Obitoooo~”

Obito’s head snaps up, and his body follows, swaying unsteadily on his feet. The man notices him immediately and smiles, shoving his hands back in his pockets. Obito doesn’t know what to say. This man looks different, really different, but Obito is pretty sure that’s the case for himself, too, even if he can’t look in a mirror. Can’t hold that against him, either. And his voice is different—but how would Obito know? The last he remembers—

The man closes the distance between them, blanketing Obito in his shadow, and tilts his head. “You crying? That’s hilarious. ”

“Shut up, Bakashi! I got something in my eye!” He hides his face behind his sleeve, scrubbing at the traitorous tears he finds there. How lame. How utterly stupid. It’s bad enough that he’s a stunted little kid reborn as a curse while Kakashi’s all tall and shit, but he’s sobbing like a loser in front of his cool, socially-inept jōnin buddy on top of it all. Sage, this is so embarrassing.

When no further remarks are made, Obito peeks out from behind his sleeve. Kakashi’s staring, eyebrow raised behind a blindfold that covers both eyes.

He sniffs, fighting back the waterworks as he lowers his sleeve. “Can you even see like that?”

“I can,” Kakashi says. It’s not the voice that he expected Kakashi to grow up to have. It’s lighter, somehow, with a curious lilt to it. Kakashi always used to sound so dead inside that it throws Obito off. “You’re giving me looks. I don’t like it.”

Obito looks at the floor. “Sorry,” he mutters, much like a pouting child. “I just—you’re different than I remember. I’m trying to adjust to it. But you smell the same.”

“Smell?”

Obito blinks and then his eyes are back on Kakashi because he’s a creature of habit, and he can’t be bothered to hold still for more than a scant few moments. “Isn’t it weird? I’m, um. I’m a curse now,” he says, rubbing the back of his head. Now he’s all shy again. “But my senses are all— bam! You know? Like yours. I recognized you like that.”

“I know we’re having this ‘touching reunion’ and I hate to be the one to break it to you, but—”

“I know you’re human,” Obito says quickly, raising placating hands. “I know I’m the only one who… But who cares? Or—do you care? Are you a jujutsu sorcerer in this world? You didn’t come to… exorcise me, did you?”

Kakashi stares at him for a while. He’s crossing his arms, tapping his finger, doing all sorts of little, subtle movements that aren’t very Kakashi-like. He vibrates with energy, like a child who can’t sit still. Then he shrugs. “Screw it,” he mutters to himself. Smiles. Crouches to get down to Obito’s level—which is more insulting than it has any right to be. “Sure. Let’s play.”

Kakashi taps the space next to him and Obito takes a seat. They both lean against the wall, staring across the room at the boarded-up windows and the sunlight peeking through the cracks.

“I don’t know how I ended up like this,” Obito confesses, drawing his knees up to his chest. “I remember Kannabi Bridge. And giving you my Sharingan. And… I know about Rin.”

It still hurts, but it feels far away, like it happened to someone else. Like he can move on this way. These aren’t the Pure Lands that he was promised. He thinks there’s a possibility of Rin having been reborn here, too, but he hopes that she wasn’t. Not as a curse, at least. Not the way that he was. Maybe when he’s done here, he can see her again.

“I know it wasn’t your fault,” he says. “I know that you didn’t want… I saw everything. Through my Sharingan, I saw it. So… I’m not mad. Just bitter.”

When he looks over, Kakashi has his chin in his hand. “What bridge again?”

Obito twitches. “You grew up to be an ass, you know that?”

“Forget all the sappy stuff.” Kakashi claps his hands. “Let’s get back to this curse business. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

“No… You know what? Show me your eyes.”

Kakashi tilts his head. “You sure?”

“Yeah!” He stands up and hovers over his old friend with crossed arms and new determination, his eyes cutting through the dark with their ever-present red, spinning. “You better still have my Sharin…gan…”

The blindfold goes up to reveal not red but blue. Every shade of blue and more. Obito sees those eyes, and he feels like he’s being pulled in, like they can see all of him and everything he ever was, and he takes a step back. It’s automatic. The part of his mind that he can normally suppress is screaming, raging at him to get away, but he can’t move. He can’t leave Kakashi, not when they just found…

“You’re not Kakashi, are you?”

“No,” the man answers and stands to his full height. The kind smile doesn’t look so kind anymore. Obito activates Kamui but, before he can slip through it, the stranger latches onto his wrist. He used the moment that Obito was opening the portal for the rest of his body to grab onto the part that wasn’t yet passing through. “I’m Satoru Gojō, and I’m the real monster here.”

Kakashi taps his foot impatiently as he’s forced to wait outside. He’s furious. If he knew that Gojō had no intention of letting him meet Obito then he wouldn’t have led him here in the first place. He should have known better. The fault lies with him. A shinobi should never trust anyone but, in his desperation to finally meet Obito, he messed up.

Some very cursed things have been spilling out of the complex ever since Gojō entered, and Kakashi can tell what they are at a first glance. It’s a bit insulting that everyone is comparing him to creatures like that . He’s been picking them off with his long-ranged attacks, getting some practice in (and pretending that they’re Satoru Gojō) while he awaits his overseer’s return, with or without the other curse.

A part of the wall blows up, so that’s a thing. Masonry bursts out and falls below, tremors wrack the ground, and Kakashi’s blindfold goes up. The instant clarity of his Sharingan allows him to see the two figures falling with the rubble, and his attention is drawn to the smaller, darker figure that hits the ground first. Warmth rushes through him and he feels soft.

Obito.

It lasts half a second before Obito’s dashing off with Gojō right behind him. And damn it all, Gojō looks like he’s having the time of his life. He’s showing his eyes, wild and intense, encompassing every colour that Kakashi can see. He never planned for this to go peacefully, did he?

The primal part of Kakashi, the curse, wants to throw Gojō’s desecrated corpse down a well and seal him in it.

Gojō never hits the ground. He’s in the air, hanging there like gravity bends to him, cocking his head to the side and grinning. Tracing Obito’s every movement with his eyes. He raises an arm lazily. Kakashi remembers this, can still taste the ozone in the air as everything shifted.

“Obito!”

The boy turns at the sound of his name and his eyes widen. He changes course, veering straight for Kakashi while Gojō’s fingers light up not with blue, but red. A deep, violent red. Sharingan red. Obito’s fast, lighter on his feet than he ever was as a human, and he closes the distance between them in a heartbeat.

“Obito, just wait—”

Arms wrap around his neck, and he’s falling back, blinking dumbly at the dark mess of hair obstructing his vision. Beyond it, he watches as the world is repelled by the force from Satoru Gojō’s palm, crushed and screeching through the air, the apartment upended because Gojō decided it to be so, and everything goes black.

“Kakashi!”

His ears are ringing. That familiar voice feels so far away, but the arms wrapped around him are real, the body weighing down on him is heavy, and the skin touching his feels warm. When he blinks away the spots in his vision, he’s on his back, a trembling ghost lying atop him, sobbing, snot and tears soaking into his shirt and making him cringe. He’s stiff beneath the embrace. It’s foreign and strange and like nothing he’s felt in so long.

Everything around him is dark, endless and empty, a void of nothing that stretches into eternity. His Sharingan weaves patterns in his eyes, trying to see through the illusion, but there is none. This realm is real. Obito is real.

With a tremendous effort, he brings a hand up to rub circles between Obito’s shoulder blades.

“What are you crying for, Crybaby Ninja?”

Obito just cries harder, holds tighter. As though Kakashi will vanish if he lets go. Like this, Kakashi can’t move. The body overtop of him is too much of a burden, so he lays his head back down and stares into the void of nothingness above. It’s cool in here. Other than the heat of Obito’s body, everything has a chill to it. It’s a bit nice. It was so hot out there, in the heat of Japan, the unending cicadas singing through the trees. Here, all he can hear is Obito’s hiccuping breath.

“I thought he was you!”

Kakashi blinks, trying to look at Obito’s face, but all he can make out is a mess of hair. “Gojō? Me? How?”

“Shut up!” Obito’s voice cracks in the middle. He’s fisting Kakashi’s shirt desperately and angrily, like his own stupid mistake is unforgivable. “He smelled like you, okay?! I don’t know! He just, he felt like you, and I just—”

Kakashi snorts, closing his eyes. “I’ve spent time around him, so he’s carrying my scent. Maa, I suppose I’ll forgive you.”

Obito scrubs at his eyes and pushes himself up with his hands, staring down at Kakashi. But the moment they can see each other, tears well up, and he’s red-faced and crying onto Kakashi’s shirt again. He’ll reek of Obito by the end of this.

“It’s really you this time, right?” Obito asks. His voice is warble-y and hoarse. “You’re not a shadow clone or something, are you?”

“Haven’t tried that one yet. You think it’ll work? With cursed energy, I mean.”

“It’s really you.”

“Please, stop crying on me. It’s disgusting.”

Obito scrabbles off of him, and Kakashi can finally sit up. While Obito collects himself, Kakashi takes a look around the place. There’s a large pile of cup ramen neatly stacked some distance away. And a kettle. Red, as described by Yūji Itadori. They’re in some… pocket dimension, or something, if he had to guess. A pocket dimension created by the Sharingan—

When he looks back at Obito, two spinning red eyes stare back at him. He wants to ask how it’s possible when Kakashi still has the left—no, he has another, one that functions perfectly somehow—but the questions die in his throat. Obito’s telling him something, talking about how he’s been alone, drifting from city to city, country to country, trying to find some purpose in this life, but Kakashi isn’t listening. His heart aches, and it finally dawns on him this boy is Obito Uchiha.

The boy he got killed.

“Cover your eye!” Obito demands, loudly , right next to his ear. A small hand yanks the blindfold down over Kakashi’s Sharingan and his vision dulls in response. He hadn’t even realized. “Jeez, what’s wrong with you? I can see the chakra leaving you as we speak. When did you get so spacey?”

Ah, someone else is calling it chakra.

It feels like he’s home.

“You still have it,” Obito observes, his shoulders hunched. “My eye. But then how do I have two?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you’re Kakashi. You know everything. It’s annoying that you do.”

“Maa, I’m just as lost as you are, Obito.” Obito. The teammate who died, the connection that he lost, the friend that he failed. It doesn’t feel real. But everything feels right, like the world is spinning on its axis for the first time since he woke up that day. All the bitterness and fondness he feels for this boy swells within him.

Obito’s nose scrunches up. “Ew. What’s that look you’re giving me?”

For the first time since Kannabi Bridge, Kakashi smiles.

He smiles even though it hurts.

They’re together, now.

And nothing will pry them apart.

Not Gojō. Not the world. Not the Sage, himself.

“I found you.”

Chapter Text

Satoru Gojō stares down at the space where the curses disappeared, a thumb and forefinger to his chin, perplexed. Below, the grounds are completely destroyed. His reversed curse technique has decimated the land, repelling everything within its radius, and it’s a good thing that this place is slated for redevelopment.

Not putting up the curtain was probably an ‘oopsie’ on his part, but what the elders don’t know won’t hurt them.

He thinks he’s starting to get a grasp on how those curses remain untouchable, and if he’s right, it’ll be hard for one person to nullify the ability on their own power. It feels like teleporting, as Kakashi mentioned, but it’s like they can teleport bits and pieces of themselves at once without actually severing their body. Honestly, it would be easier to deal with if they were just going fully incorporeal. The way that it stands, actually exorcising them will prove difficult.

The world’s strongest, greatest, and most handsome sorcerer may have let two special-grade newborn curses escape to wreak havoc across all of Japan. Oops.

Well, it’s Tuesday. These things happen.

Now that the initial euphoria has passed, Kakashi is looking over Obito’s body with a fine-toothed comb, rolling up sleeves and pant legs, taking off shoes—

“Would you knock it off?!”

Kakashi blinks when he’s pushed to the ground by a very angry Uchiha.

Obito puts his shoes back on, rolls down his sleeves, and pats himself down, scrutinizing Kakashi all the while. “What’s gotten into you? You’re so weird now. It’s creepin’ me out.”

“You’re dead,” Kakashi mutters. He can’t look at Obito when he says it. If he does, all he’ll see is a small body crushed beneath an impossible weight.

“Yeah, well. You are, too.”

“And Rin—”

“I know about Rin,” Obito sighs. “I wasn’t… dead, Kakashi. After Kannabi Bridge. I, um… survived. I saw when Rin was, well… you know.”

No, that can’t be. Kakashi tries to bury the words as soon as he hears them, but he can’t. He can’t, and he can’t breathe because that means that he left his still-living teammate to die—

“Stop it,” Obito grumbles. He’s moving now, boiling water in the kettle with his jutsu, and the sound of it bubbling fills the silence. “I know what you’re thinking and don’t. You made the right call.”

“But—”

“I don’t remember much about what happened to me after that, but… It wasn’t really living. Whatever it was. It felt like I was dead, but my body was still moving.” He pours the water into two cups of ramen and covers them, setting the cups between them. Neither of them needs to eat, but it feels normal to do this. “I feel more alive as a curse than I ever did as a human.”

Kakashi feels it, too, ever since reuniting. The voice yearning for companionship has quieted and there is peace.

Peace?

No, no, this is all wrong.

“Gojō’s still out there.”

Obito stirs the noodles with his chopsticks, impatiently waiting for them to soften. “Well, yeah. Which is why we’re in here. And not there. That guy’s a fucking freak.”

“No, Obito—” Kakashi latches onto the boy’s wrist and squeezes. “We need to go back. I haven’t moved yet.”

“Huh? What do you—”

“ Now, Obito.”

“But—”

“Just do it. It’ll be okay. Trust me.”

Obito eyes him a moment longer and lowers his head. “But my ramen…”

Satoru is sticking around the obliterated landscape only because he’s got nothing better to do. Well, no, that’s not true—he’s a busy man and yadda yadda—but he’s thinking. It’s never good when he thinks.

The last command he gave to Kakashi was to not move. The command has been broken, the vow has been sullied, ergo, Kakashi will be facing the consequences. Gojō now has permission to exorcise on sight. He’s feeling around for cursed energy but can’t seem to locate them, so they must be in that ‘blank space’ that Kakashi couldn’t detect. So instead of heading home and buying some kikufuku for the ride, he’s sitting here on top of the car wondering about a lot of things.

When the curses materialize exactly where they disappeared, Satoru has questions. Those questions can wait.

He’s gonna destroy these kids.

Gojō pulls the blindfold up over one of his eyes, an unkind smile on his lips, and raises his other hand.

“Stop!” Kakashi holds up placating hands. That’s probably the loudest he’s ever shouted in Satoru’s presence. “I haven’t moved!”

He twitches. Kakashi’s standing exactly where Satoru left him. But he’s been gone for—

Ah, but he never took a step. He was pushed over, fell into some wormhole or something, and then came back to the very same place without making any voluntary movements of his own.

This curse is hard to shake.

Shoving his hand back into his pocket, Satoru hops over to them. He watches the red-eyed one flinch.

“Looks like you made a friend, Kashi.” He waves, all sunshine and cheer. “Hi, Obito! I’m Satoru Gojō, your brother’s creditor.”

Obito makes a face and looks at Kakashi but is given no answers. Shrugging, he stares, forlorn, at the noodles in his hands, one cup in each, and holds one out to Satoru. “Ramen?”

Satoru is mildly confused when it’s shoved into his hand. Yūji did mention that this curse is hospitable.

He finds himself sitting on a curb with two cursed spirits next to him, staring at the soggy noodles in the cup. They’ve absorbed most of the broth and are bloated and cool to the touch. He isn’t sure he wants to eat them. In fact, he’s pretty sure that he doesn’t. Beside him, the curses are fighting over the other cup of ramen. Not over who gets to eat it, but who to give it to. They keep pushing it into each other’s hands like two toddlers who really don’t want the toy that their parents gave them, and they’re getting angry about it.

“Eat, Bakashi! You’re the one who keeps depleting your chakra like an idiot!”

“Whose fault is that?” Kakashi shoves it back. “You’re the one who was hungry.”

“Cursed spirits don’t get hungry!”

“And yet you wanted them anyway.”

“I wanted to share them, Idiot!”

What is happening right now? Satoru watches their fight, and it’s somehow the strangest thing he’s seen all week. For the first time since they met, Kakashi is actually acting like a child. He’s fighting loudly over something stupid and inconsequential, scowling like kindness is being pulled out of him by force, and yet he’s the most animated that he’s ever been.

Ah. Shit. He humanized them again, didn’t he? Yūji can never know about this.

Bored and holding no interest in soggy noodles, he pushes the cup ramen against Obito’s chest. Both boys— curses, fuck— look up at him questioningly. “You’re making me feel bad. Eat.”

Obito doesn’t need to be told twice.

The cursed spirits eat quietly and without fuss, all the while Satoru stares at the doom and devastation he brought about the property. Apparently, without reason. He hangs his head and sighs. Something tells him that Obito’s been true to its word and hasn’t harmed anyone. When he met Kakashi, it was prickly and high-strung. Like a cat doused in water. At that point, it harming people felt like a very real possibility. This kid, though?

Obito is droning on and on about meeting a sorcerer in a ghost town and being chased through every neighbourhood because he couldn’t get away. Never does he mention fighting them. Just running.

Satoru is tired of objectifying them, and now there are twice as many as there have been, and he just can’t be bothered anymore. Fine. He’s humanized them. It’s not like anyone has to know. Even if they did, what are they going to do about it? Challenge him?

Ha! He’s Satoru Gojō. He does as he damn well pleases.

“I’m not cutting a deal with this creep,” Obito says, throwing a finger over his shoulder at Satoru Gojō.

Kakashi’s explained about binding vows and how he’s been chained to Gojō by one but, honestly? Obito doesn’t want any part in it. To be tethered to the guy who attacked him unprompted just a few hours ago? Nah. Pass. Bad move. The last thing he wants is to become someone else’s cog.

In this life, Obito is going to live for himself. For himself and for Kakashi, the only connection to his humanity that he has left.

“Obito…” Kakashi covers his face with his hands and groans. “He’ll exorcise you if you don’t.”

Sure enough, the freak is waving at them, all sunshine and rainbows, and Obito doesn’t know how he ever mistook this guy for Kakashi.

“Look, I already made a deal!” he shouts, angry that he’s back to being ordered around the moment that he meets people who can see him. “I promised I wouldn’t hurt anyone. Isn’t that good enough?”

“Not really, no,” Gojō says. He wanders over and leans an arm on Kakashi’s head, then his weight, and Kakashi has no choice but to support the fucker. Now, Obito has seen his friend act as a tool of the village, but this is ridiculous. “A binding vow is different from a promise. There are karmic consequences for breaking one, which is the incentive you have not to do so. So, what’ll it be? Should I fire up Hollow Purple?”

“Hollow what?” Obito groans, loud and angry, and the control of his cursed energy slips for just a second. “I’m not signing a slave contract!”

“No?” Gojō’s hand goes up. “Oh well.”

Obito steps back and raises placating hands. “Hold on just a sec! I’m thinking!” He bites his lip. It isn’t that he thinks this guy can exorcise him that easily; whatever attack is thrown his way, a perfectly timed opening of Kamui will see him safe and intact. Better still, he can just close off his dimension entirely and Gojō can’t reach him.

Obito’s hesitance is not for his own safety but for Kakashi’s. Kakashi, who’s so wrapped up in this man’s games that he can’t move. He doesn’t want to sever the connection that he just found. More still, he doesn’t want to leave his other half behind.

He takes Kakashi’s hand in his own and squeezes it.

“What if we amend the conditions?” he tries. “Lighter on both ends. I’ll promise not to hurt anyone, and you’ll let me stay with Kakashi. If you think I’m gonna break the vow, you can exorcise me.”

“Obito, don’t—”

“You’ve taken away Kakashi’s free will and I won’t leave him behind,” he says. “It feels wrong when we’re apart. I don’t want that. But I don’t want to be so restricted that I can’t protect him.”

Gojō is staring at him through that stupid blindfold, and the weight of that stare is enough to set his hair on edge. He won’t back down, though. This is all he can do for Kakashi. The only way he can keep them both safe.

Gojō shrugs, leaning off of Kakashi. “Sure.”

Both curses are very, wholly confused. “Really?”

“On one condition.” The sorcerer raises a finger. “If you break your vow, it’s Kakashi that I’ll exorcise.”

“What?!”

Gojō shrugs. “Since this is impeding my vow with Kakashi, I’ll need approval from both of you. So? What’ll it be? I exorcise you here and now, or I exorcise Kakashi later?”

“That’s not—”

“Fine,” Kakashi sighs. Obito shoots him a look, and Kakashi squeezes his hand back. “We’ll do it. All Obito has to do is keep the vow, right?”

Obito knows that. If he doesn’t hurt anyone, Kakashi will stay safe. But putting Kakashi in danger like that in the first place… he hates it.

He bites his lip and nods. “Fine,” he spits out with more aggression than his other half. “But I don’t have to like it.”

Gojō grins. “Then it’s a deal.”

Obito sours when the Gojō estate comes into view. “Gross. It reminds me of the Uchiha District.”

That’s not quite right, though. This estate doesn’t look nearly as expansive as the Uchiha District back home. This is more like a family compound; while there are multiple buildings, the Gojō estate doesn’t have shops and services in it, and it probably doesn’t have as much land to it, either. But it gives off that same dreary vibe that Obito remembers from walks with his grandmother through their clan’s land, filled with judgment and whispers about the many ways that he failed his family.

Obito kind of hates his clan. It’s filled with a bunch of self-important pricks who only care about glorifying the Uchiha name and stroking their own egos. This is probably why this Satoru Gojō guy rubs him the wrong way; he feels like the perfect embodiment of all those ideals drilled into Obito by the clan about how a person’s worth is governed by their talent and usefulness.

Kakashi doesn’t acknowledge the remark. He’s covering his mouth, his skin a sickly shade of grey, looking like he’s trying not to throw up the ramen they ate.

Gojō calls it ‘motion sickness’. Obito doesn’t get it. They’re in a moving vehicle, some beastly machine that Obito’s seen around a lot ever since coming to this world, but he feels perfectly fine. It’s actually a pretty comfortable ride. Better than leaping through trees or hiking. There’s even some nice cool air that comes out of the vents and chases away the baking summer heat.

When they park the vehicle within the compound’s gates, Kakashi practically throws himself out and lies on the grass. The buildings here look more like what Obito would expect to see back home, wooden with shōji screens and aging roof tiles. All he can sense is one cursed energy signature laying about inside that sparks familiarity within him, but he can’t place it.

He takes comfort in knowing that it can’t be that sorcerer he met in foreign lands. Humans don’t have Kamui. They can’t travel that fast.

He glances down at his now dry-heaving counterpart. “You know,” he sighs, throwing his hands behind his head, “I could have gotten us here a lot faster.”

“That’s no fun,” Gojō, says as he slams the car door shut, a perfectly unpleasant smile across his face.

“You find this hilarious,” Obito observes, nodding to his poor other half spent and tired on the grass.

“Delectably so, yes.”

What a fucking freak.

“Just because you can teleport doesn’t mean you should ,” Gojō continues as he rounds the vehicle and nudges Kakashi with his foot. The glare he receives seems to assure him that the other boy is just fine, and he heads up the porch. “You miss out on a lot if you don’t stop and smell the flowers now and then.”

Obito pauses halfway through helping Kakashi up. “The heck’s that supposed to mean?”

Gojō just shrugs.

Inside, they’re led to an ominous, cramped room covered floor-to-ceiling in paper seals. Obito’s face scrunches up, and he takes an automatic step back, the voice in his head imploring him not to enter. This is where Kakashi’s been staying? Poor kid. If he’s remembering correctly, he has a few years on Kakashi (not that it matters now when they’ve started these new lives together, on the same day) so he’s feeling extra protective. And, well, he still has some free will. It’s only natural that he uses it to counter Gojō’s unfair control.

Besides, he’s bitter about Gojō just going along with his misunderstanding when they met. He doesn’t think he likes this guy very much.

Obito points into the room. “You can’t be serious.”

“You can fight over the futon,” the man adds lightly. “There’s only one.”

“Then get another!”

“Curses don’t sleep. You’ll be fine. ”

“I like to sleep.” 

Amidst their bickering, he can hear the patter of footsteps down the hall, a sound that the sorcerer remains oblivious to, and pokes his head around the corner.

Shuffling down the hall is a pink-haired teenager who looks like he just got roused from a nap. But, wait, Yūji is—he knows—

Yūji yawns, scratching his chest, and then his eyes fall to Obito. He blinks a few times, still waking up as he assesses the trio before him.

“Oh, Obito. You’re here.”

It’s a bit disappointing how uneventful their reunion is. Obito wiggles his fingers in greeting. “Hey. You know this guy?” He nods to the tall Kakashi-wannabe looming over him.

“Yeah, that’s Gojō-sensei.”

Oh, no. So this guy’s Yūji’s instructor? Poor kid. He and Kakashi must have suffered a lot.

Gojō gets a phone call. The pair of curses are shoved into the sealed room before Obito can seek out any proper one-on-one time with his little sorcerer buddy. Apparently, Gojō has a meeting to attend. And if he isn’t there to supervise, then he’s not going to let them run amok in his home. Which is stupid and insulting. What, does he expect them to set it on fire while he steps out?

Well. Obito knows a few jutsu that could do that. But he’s not that much of a menace.

Obito kicks the door and huffs when his foot doesn’t even hit the wood; the paper seals seem to act like a barrier against cursed energy, and their bodies are made up of it. Beyond the walls, he can’t sense or hear anything. These seals cut them off completely from the outside world and it’s making him uneasy.

Kakashi’s already propped himself up against the wall and settled in. He must have gotten used to this if he’s been under Satoru Gojō’s influence for days now. It’s a sad thought. While Obito was off wandering the streets and learning about this world, Kakashi played the role of a caged bird.

“So, what?” Obito prompts, dropping to the floor cross-legged. “Do we just wait for him to come back?”

“Something like that,” Kakashi sighs. “He usually isn’t long. He’s been hanging around the house a lot, actually… I don’t know how long he can keep this up.”

“What do you mean?”

Kakashi swipes a hand through his hair. He’s mostly recovered from the car ride, but he’s still looking a little pale. “Gojō works as an educator at a school for jujutsu sorcerers, but I don’t think he’s done any lessons since he found me.”

“Bet his boss doesn’t like that,” Obito mutters. “Does he have a boss?”

“If he does, he probably doesn’t care. Gojō isn’t the type to listen to others.”

“Yeah. I noticed.”

They share a knowing look and sigh.

It isn’t too long before the door to their prison slides open and a head pokes in. Yūji blinks at them with his stupidly blank but endearing eyes.

“Hey,” he greets again, “you guys bored?”

Kakashi’s standing before the words leave the boy’s mouth like he knew this was going to happen all along. Like he’s been waiting for it.

As Obito follows them out, he pieces it together and snorts. They’ve been doing this all along, haven’t they?

Gojō probably knows, too. That seems like just his brand of chaos.

Satoru Gojō stands in a dark room surrounded by a bunch of old fools past their prime. He smiles, his posture leaning and his hands in his pockets because this is the most respect that he’ll ever afford them.

“Gojō,” one of them booms, a threat in his voice, “we have yet to receive your report on the cursed wombs that appeared over Tokyo and Kyoto. It couldn’t be that you failed, could it?”

Satoru pulls his hands out of his pockets and throws them up in the air, his grin stretching. “You got me. I, Satoru Gojō, inheritor of the Six Eyes and Limitless, have been bested. By fetuses. ” He laughs, hearty and full, and it echos through the room. “Come on, do you hear yourself right now? And hey—the Kyoto one was Nanami’s responsibility. But I don’t see him around here. Why’s that, Old Man?”

Oh, they are furious. A commotion roars through the room until all of the elders are fighting and accusing him of this and that—failing to complete his duties as both a jujutsu sorcerer and an educator, disrespecting his superiors, armed robbery. The usual. He rolls his eyes behind his blindfold and lets it all flow off him like water. Satoru already knows why Nanami’s not here; it’s not Nanami that they want to shit on. It’s him. Of course, it’s him.

“Look: the threat has been dealt with. I did my due diligence. You don’t have to worry about any new special grades running amok in downtown Tokyo. I handled it. ”

One of them scoffs. “Like you handled Yūji Itadori?”

Were he a lesser man, they wouldn’t be alive right now. “Oh, please. Cut me some slack, Elders! What did you want little old me to do about that when you sent me on a mission halfway across the fucking country?”

Satoru’s been playing their game for a long time, now, and he can play it a little longer.

“How dare you—”

“I told you to trust me,” he says. He’s not smiling anymore. “I said that I had Sukuna’s vessel under control. But what did you do? You sent my first years to take on a special grade while I was away. You set them up to fail because you wanted this to happen, you wanted me to take the blame, kill two birds with one stone. Nice and easy, right?”

If they weren’t pissed before, they are now. But so is he. Knowing that he could kill them all in an instant is what allows him to rein in his temper long enough to not do that. Even a month later, it still infuriates him. He feels rage crawling beneath his skin whenever he thinks of Yūji’s washed-out corpse in the morgue and the dark shadow that crosses Megumi’s face whenever Yūji’s name is spoken.

They’re rambling on, lecturing him—him, the Satoru Gojō, like they have any right—about how even he, the most powerful, skilled, talented, handsome, unstoppable jujutsu sorcerer in the history of the world , is crossing lines that he should not cross. These pompous fools have really deluded themselves into thinking that they can control him. Like they’re reining him in, keeping him in check. Like they ever could. It’s hilarious.

Satoru smiles and raises placating hands. “Now, hold on. I don’t think I deserve all of this. You got what you wanted. Sukuna’s vessel was destroyed. Now we can go back to sealing away his fingers and hoping with all our might that they don’t fall into the wrong hands. We can do that, just like you wanted, instead of destroying them once and for all like I suggested. Gosh, I’m such a fool! What a bad idea , right?”

They verbalize the threats on their tongues. This isn’t the first time he’s gotten into shouting matches with the higher-ups, and it won’t be the last. He stands there, listening to their reprimands, monologues about the order of things and the importance of tradition, how all these measures have worked for hundreds of years, so why would they stop now? Talk, talk, talk—these are the most elite members of jujutsu society, but that’s all they know how to do. They throw tantrums like children, breaking their own rules and throwing stones at the first sign of an opinion in their house of glass. Stubborn mules, too stuck in their ways to see anything outside their own personal bubbles. Oh, wow, how much he hates them. But killing them won’t change anything. They’ll be replaced within the week, and all Satoru will succeed in doing is losing the respect of those around him. There won’t be any changing the world if there’s no one by his side. Can’t bring on a revolution all on his own. He needs people for that.

He needs his kids.

“All you know how to do is talk, huh?”

The earful that he gets is entirely unwarranted, and he tunes it out while wondering where the best place would be to grab some kikufuku before heading home.

He’s standing outside a little shop with a bag full of his favourite sweet treats, walking down the street with a hand in his pocket as their little bitch fight replays in his head. Wow, he’s pissed. So pissed. Like if he dies right now, he’ll become a cursed spirit himself levels of pissed.

That brings him pause. There are two of those things waiting for him back home. Two special-grades and Sukuna’s vessel. And it’s a bit… hm. It sits wrong with him. Those kids. Kakashi said that he wasn’t human before, but that’s not what it’s looking like. So, let’s assume that they were, indeed, human at one point or another. Well, that just opens up a ton of questions, doesn’t it?

The first is: how long ago were they alive? Are they curses that recently formed, like he assumes them to be after he found them in their wombs? Or did something trigger them to become curses long after death? It seems a bit of a stretch, sure, but it’s not impossible. Nothing’s impossible when curses are involved. What makes him wonder this at all is Kakashi’s aversion to cars, like he’s never seen one before in his life. Obito didn’t have all that much of a reaction, though, which puts a wrench in that.

The second is: how did they die? They look to be the same age, perhaps Kakashi’s a bit younger. Are they appearing at the ages that they were when they died? Why would two kids who know each other die around the same age, at the same time? Was it at the same time? There’s a mystery in there. And these aren’t just any old cursed spirits. They’re special-grades. Satoru’s seen a bit of what they can do, but he thinks that there’s more, especially when bringing into consideration the incredible cursed energy control that Kakashi displayed back in the courtyard. He can pull the energy into his stomach and mould it, and then he carries it across his body and unleashes it in ways that Satoru’s never seen before. It’s different from cursed techniques, he thinks. And he has a hunch that Obito can do the very same thing.

On top of that, they can warp between places—at least Obito can—and become intangible at will, effortlessly, as easy as breathing. To him, that feels more like a typical cursed technique than everything else he’s seen of them. They have those eyes that act like the Six Eyes, but are far more limited, and he isn’t quite sure of all they are capable of. Their eyes pull more cursed energy when they go intangible, so it may have something to do with that.

But the strangest thing to Satoru—the one thing that he can’t understand—is how human they feel.

They’re old friends, powerful for newborns, and can think for themselves. They’ve also proven that they can and will go without harming humans if it’s to their benefit. One’s befriended Yūji. They eat and sleep even when they don’t need to, they have thoughts and opinions, and their emotions feel raw and real when crossing their faces.

But they’re curses. They can’t feel. Not like humans can. Everything they do is for survival and to carry out the will of the negativity that birthed them.

Satoru Gojō stares at himself in the window of one of the shops that he passes by, and he doesn’t see the handsome, dashing World’s Strongest that he usually sees. He sees a hypocrite.

Curses can’t be like this. They can’t be humans. They’re not like humans. It’s never been seen before. Every action they take, every word that they speak, is a means to an end and a step toward their goals. They can’t taste cup ramen and don’t have cravings. They won’t share without reason, and they can’t be scared or feel love or longing. It has never been so.

He sounds just like the elders right now, doesn’t he?

Satoru sighs. A hand goes up and with a funny little pull, he finds himself not in the streets of Tokyo but at the front gate of the Gojō compound. It’s late, so he’d usually expect Yūji to be doing his cursed energy control exercises and the house to be quiet, but he can hear something distantly. It’s coming from the courtyard, he thinks, so he takes the long way around and wanders along the back porch as the sounds get louder. Voices. He could already see the cursed energy through the walls, and he knows long before they come into sight who it is he’ll find here.

Yūji has a red-eyed cursed spirit hanging off his arm. Satoru genuinely doesn’t know what they’re doing, so he stands there and waits, head tilted.

Yūji pushes cursed energy into his fist and tries to hit the little gremlin that’s using his arm to ground himself but misses—they’ll need to work on his aim, Satoru notes, because he really shouldn’t have missed that—and Obito vaults off his arm and into the air. He spins in a flourish, lands on Yūji’s shoulders, and grins like the smug little shit that he’s turning out to be.

“Aww, come on, Yūji! You can do better than that!”

Yūji groans and tries to snatch the small body off his shoulders, but his hands pass right through. “Hey, that’s cheating! You said no intangibility!”

“Obito, he’s right,” Kakashi sighs. “You lose a point.”

“What?! But it’s just, like, second nature at this point!”

“Then make a conscious effort not to use it. ”

Pouting, Obito hops off the teenager and lands quietly on the ground. They’re sparring, but it doesn’t look like the curse is fighting back at all; they’re just trying to help Yūji land hits. Bit odd for a cursed spirit to be helping improve a sorcerer’s skills, but eh, Satoru will let it pass.

Off to the side, Kakashi’s seated on the bench next to the now-destroyed bridge. He’s cleaned up the debris, at least, and he claims that he’ll repair the damage eventually, but that’s yet to be seen. Arms crossed, his visible eye trained on the sparring partners dancing around each other in the open space, he feels a lot older than he is. He’s the only one of the three that’s actively looked Satoru’s way, but he doesn’t even wave. Satoru is deeply wounded.

He takes a seat on the bench next to Kakashi, crosses his legs, and offers up the bag in his hands. “Kikufuku?”

It’s an honest surprise when Kakashi takes it. There’s some sniffing, a narrowed eye, then the mask comes down, and he pulls one out of the bag to eat. “Obito will like this,” he states simply.

“That so?” Satoru joins mini-him in watching. Yūji finally lands a hit—he cheers in triumph, and that’s probably the first blow he’s landed since Satoru left, poor kid—but is immediately horrified when Obito hits the ground.

“Obito?! You okay? I didn’t exorcise you, did I?”

Kakashi sighs from Satoru’s side when Obito doesn’t get up.

Yūji’s panicking now, crouched by the boy’s side, wide-eyed and frantic. If he thought for just one minute, he’d realize that this isn’t how cursed spirits act when they’re exorcised, and the sheer fact that Obito’s cursed energy isn’t breaking apart into remnants is proof enough that he’s perfectly fine. “H-hey, Obito, you’re okay, right? Kakashi? Kakashi, I think I hurt him!”

Kakashi’s sitting with his head in his hand, looking bored out of his mind. “Look again, Yūji.”

“What?” Yūji stops shaking the boy’s shoulder and squints, long and hard, until Obito can’t help but crack a grin. Obito laughs at the sorcerer, mocking him, rolling on the ground like an idiot, and Yūji pouts. “I was really worried there, you know!”

“Sorry, I just—” Obito catches his breath, though he doesn’t need to breathe. “I couldn’t resist. Sorry. My bad. Don’t worry, Yūji. You can’t exorcise me. You’re too weak.”

“Hey!”

Satoru tilts his head. It’s not what he expects to come home to after a council meeting, but maybe it should be. He knows what this lot is like separately and, well, now they’re together. That should have warned him well enough.

They’re like old friends.

Kakashi finishes his little treat and watches over them fondly. Fondly. Imagine that. A cursed spirit. Satoru is ready to kick himself. It isn’t like he’ll let his guard down around them. He’s not stupid. But the desire to otherize them is dwindling, and he just can’t be bothered anymore. The unease of the twin cursed spirits coming together is long gone. Merge? Them? Before he left, they were fighting over who got to use the futon because Satoru doesn’t have another spare. They bicker like a married couple on the verge of divorce, and—if they were ever to merge, Satoru is pretty sure they’d willingly destroy themselves.

“Oh, Gojō-sensei!” Yūji finally greets him, his face lighting up. He’s only noticing now? They need to work on his cursed energy detection, too. “When did you get here?”

Satoru smiles and holds out the bag. “Kikufuku?”

Obito snatches the bag out of his hand and goes rummaging through it, shooting Satoru wary glances now and then as he and Yūji huddle around the bag.

That’s not very nice. Satoru hasn’t even had one yet.

“They’re like one person, don’t you think?” Kakashi asks, endlessly amused. He’s lost the edge that he had the first few days that he spent here. Obito’s presence puts him at ease.

“I don’t know about that, but they get along well.”

“Maa, Yūji’s like Obito when Obito was younger.”

“Last I checked, you’re both newborns,” Satoru teases. That one sentence confirms that they existed before, and that they are likely older than their bodies allow.

“That’s what you keep telling us.”

“How old were you before you died?”

“Who knows?”

“Tell me.”

Kakashi glares at him. He hates every command that passes Satoru’s lips and Satoru is living for it.

“Older than you, probably,” Kakashi says bitterly. “I don’t remember well enough to say.”

“You said you weren’t human,” Satoru said. “How did you lie without consequences?”

Kakashi shrugs. “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”

Huh.

It gets Satoru thinking, and it’s never good when Satoru thinks. What does that mean, then, for Kakashi not to consider himself human? What does he think of himself as? A tool? A monster ? Or something else entirely?

“Were you a jujutsu sorcerer?”

“No.”

“What were you, then?”

“A weapon,” Kakashi answers in a dismissive hush, “utilized by my village.”

Village. Not town or city. Not a country. A village. Sure, there are still villages. Tons of them, all scattered across the countryside, the world. But it’s not as common these days to meet someone from a village, and maybe it’s a stretch, but Satoru wants to think of this as a point toward his theory.

Kakashi leans back, resting his weight on his hands as he stares up at Satoru with that half-lidded eye. “Maa, you would know a thing or two about that, wouldn’t you?”

“That’s very rude, Kashi,” he says with a pout. “I’m not a weapon. I’m a god. ”

Kakashi’s sigh is long-suffering.

Chapter Text

Kento Nanami is awoken by an abrupt spike of cursed energy directly outside his apartment. He opens his eyes to the dull midnight blues of his room and leans over to grab the glasses on his nightstand and then his blade, still wrapped in its usual spotted cloth. Checking the clock, it’s 3 a.m.—that delicious hour when curses start to frenzy. This is unfortunate; Kento is off-duty and the last thing he wants is to suffer through unwarranted overtime.

By the time he’s reached the bedroom door, the cursed energy is gone or, more likely, suppressed. He won’t bet on the unlikely scenario that whatever it belongs to is just passing through. Instead, he keeps on high alert, weapon in hand, as he passes through the apartment.

There’s banging at his front door, loud and frantic, almost violent, and he braces himself for whatever’s on the other side to break through and attack.

“Nanamiiiiiiiin,” whines an all too familiar voice, muffled by the wood and wall between them. “Nanamin, I know you’re in there! Open up! It’s your favourite person!”

It’s worse than he thought.

Kento very seriously considers just going back to bed and pretending that this nuisance isn’t here, but he’s known Gojō for a long time. If he tries that, Gojō will just teleport into the apartment, regardless of whether he’s been invited or not. So with a heavy heart and a skeptical eye, Kento unlocks the front door and opens it a crack, just enough to see the impossibly blue eyes of the man grinning at him from out in the hall.

“You realize what time it is, don’t you?” he asks. “Keep your voice down. You’ll disturb the neighbours.”

Gojō waves off his concerns. “Let them be disturbed. Life’s so boring when things always go your way,” says Satoru Gojō, the man who makes sure everything goes his way. “Move over. I gotta talk to you.”

Kento does not move. “This couldn’t wait until morning, Gojō?”

“Oh no. No, it can’t. See, Nanamin—”

“ Don’t. ”

“I think I’m going to raise curses.”

Kento stares long and hard at this irresponsible maniac of a human being and slams the door in his face.

Gojō stops it with a foot. His grin widens as he holds the door open with one hand and casually inserts himself into the apartment, unaffected by the very unwelcomed stares he’s getting from the one whose name is on the lease. “You’ll want to hear this, Nanamin. I promise you will.”

Kento has known Gojō since their academy days. He knows well enough that Gojō does not take ‘no’ for an answer when he’s enthralled. His Six Eyes are wide and hyperfocused on something that only he can see, a manic grin across his face, and there’s no deterring him when he’s like this. So, Kento takes the loss. He steps aside to grant Gojō entry, shuts the door behind them, and locks it for good measure. His blade is forgotten on the kitchen counter, and he follows his guest into his living room.

Gojō’s already made himself at home, kicking back on the recliner with his legs crossed and arms behind his head. It’s far too early to be dealing with this, but Kento is pretty sure that he won’t be getting any more sleep tonight, so he puts a pot of coffee on and waits by the island that separates the kitchen from the living room. The groan and bubble of the coffee maker trick his brain into thinking it’s four hours later than it is.

“So?” Kento presses when Gojō doesn’t immediately go spilling all of his new and exciting secrets. “What’s got you in such a mood? I’d rather you keep your visit short and concise if it’s all the same.”

“But Nanamin,” Gojō says, those impossible eyes falling on him, “why would you say that? You love me.”

“I love when you’re not around.”

“Really hurts, coming from you.” He is not hurting. He is grinning. Then, suddenly, he jerks up from where he’d sunken into the recliner and leans forward on his knees. Where is his blindfold? Usually, it’s a permanent fixture on his face outside of combat. When Kento asked about it once, long ago, Gojō told him that without a buffer, the vision of the Six Eyes can be overwhelming—disorienting, even. What is it that he wants to see so badly? “So, I found that curse. The one who took Yūji.”

Ah. This is about those special-grades. Kento knows that Gojō is deeply curious about them, but he expected both to be exorcised by now. It’s been quite some time. If that one curse—Kakashi, was it?—has yet to break the binding vow protecting him from Gojō then that is truly impressive. He’s spoken with Gojō about the details of the vow, and it’s very restrictive and one-sided. On top of that, knowing Gojō, he’s been abusing it to hell and back. 

“Or, more specifically: Kashi found him. Tracked him down like a bloodhound. Isn’t that neat?”

They already know how impressive the curse’s nose is. Kento leans forward on the island, watching freshly brewed coffee drip from the filter basket into the glass pot below it, each droplet rippling out across the surface. A pleasant morning fragrance wafts across the apartment, giving the illusion that it’s the final stretch of nightfall before dawn and not the goddamn witching hour. “And? What do you plan to do with them now?”

“I’m keeping them,” Gojō says without pause, the smile gone from his face. “They’re mine.”

“You can’t keep curses like pets,” Kento chastises, feeling that twice is two times too many to be having this conversation. “It doesn’t matter how much stronger you think you are, Gojō: at the end of the day, no matter how powerful you are or how in control you feel, one mistake could end lives.”

They’ve both suffered that firsthand.

“They’re not pets,” the egocentric narcissist counters. “I’m not looking at them like that. This isn’t a game to me anymore, Kento. There’s something about these two.” Implying that it was a game before. But Gojō’s tone is quiet and flat and so unlike himself that it gives Kento pause. It’s not a voice Gojō takes often. The joviality that usually carries his words is only a whisper and whatever he came here to discuss, it means something to him.

Gojō doesn’t wait for a response. “They’re special cases like Yūji. I can tell. These kids are cursed spirits—I know that. I keep looking at them with my Six Eyes, trying to spot the lie, but they’re made up exactly like any other curse. They’re indistinguishable. But they behave just like humans. They sleep and bathe and eat even when they don’t have to. And when they saw each other, Kento? Kashi’s a whole new person now. He actually feels like a kid.”

It is at this moment that Kento realizes his long-time associate has fallen into the same trap of humanizing these curses as Yūji Itadori. This is deeply, wholly wrong. Gojō’s not the type. He doesn’t have that sort of useless sentimentality—not like this, not for curses. And yes, Kento admits that he started falling for Kakashi’s laid-back charm, too, for just a brief moment. But he never once looked at that curse and saw anything other than a threat.

Gojō is looking at him, looking through him, and it feels like every thought he has is being plucked from his head and laid bare in front of this man. Gojō knows what Kento is thinking and narrows his eyes.

“If you don’t see it, then that’s fine,” Gojō says. “I’ve spent over a week now trying to consolidate all the weird vibes I’m getting from them into something that makes sense but it doesn’t. Nothing about these kids fits with what we were taught about curses. Nothing. ”

The coffee finishes brewing and silence fills the apartment. Kento takes this time to pour them each a cup and walks them over to the coffee table. He provides his guest with sugar and milk and watches as that easy grin returns, as though this whole conversation never happened, and his guest stirs three sugar cubes into his cup.

After tasting the sickeningly sweet peace offering, Gojō raises a finger, as though to mark his words. “So, I give up! Instead, I’m going to see just how special they are.”

Kento dreads even asking but feels obliged. Gojō is just waiting for him to say these words. “And how do you intend to do that?”

“I’m so glad you asked. ” Gojō sets the mug down hard on the table and starts flailing his arms to gesture his words, the same way he always does when he’s overeager. “I’m going to feed them cursed energy.”

Kento stares long and hard at his guest, his mug raised to his lips, and he has yet to take even one sip. Instead, he quietly puts it down and starts walking back to his bedroom. “This is a waste of time, and I am going back to sleep.”

“Hear me out!”

“No.” If he hears any more, he’ll be liable when all of this blows up in Gojō’s face. He’s already shirking his duties by not reporting on the status of the cursed spirits as is.

“They were human,” Gojō hollers down the hall.

This means nothing; plenty of special-grade curses were human, once. And many of them were jujutsu sorcerers. There is a very real chance that he or Gojō or any of their colleagues could one day become curses, too, after suffering an unfair death. He shudders at the thought of Gojō rising after death to become a curse and does not dare to wonder if a curse born from this incredibly infuriating man would be on par with Sukuna or worse. If that day ever comes, he’s retiring.

When Kento slams the bedroom door shut behind himself, he can hear the muffled call of his guest making one last-ditch effort to pique his interest. “Heeey, Nanamiiiin! Have you heard of chakra?”

He has not. But he does stop before making it to the bed.

“See, Obito and Kakashi keep throwing that word around,” Gojō continues. “But I don’t think they’re talking about cursed energy when they use it.”

Closing his eyes and releasing a long-suffering sigh, Kento reluctantly opens the bedroom door back up and returns to his seat on the sofa, much to Gojō’s glee. He finally takes that much-needed first sip of coffee and feels his mood even out.

“Aw, Nanamin, you do care!”

He does not. But this man won’t leave him alone until he does. He waves his hand dismissively. “On with it, then.”

Gojō leans back, nursing his cup of coffee-flavoured sugar cubes, tapping his finger against the rim. His grin only lasts as long as the silence between them; by the time he speaks, it’s gone again. “I’ve prodded the kids a bit but, to be honest, I’m not getting anywhere. Kashi’s very good at avoiding direct answers, even under my commands, so it’s like trying to put together a puzzle in the dark.”

“You’re good at that.”

“ Without the Six Eyes,” he corrects, and is that exasperation Kento hears? “Even if I got a straight answer out of them, I’m not sure if it would help any; they don’t seem to remember much about what happened before they formed in the cursed wombs. Kashi’s dropped hints that he was older than he looks now, too.”

Well, curses can vary greatly from one another. No two are the same—even this mirroring pair that they happened upon isn’t one-to-one with each other. Though vengeful cursed spirits born from humans tend to be their own category, there can be variations in them, too.

“But I want to know,” he says. And what Satoru Gojō wants, he gets. No exceptions. “So, I had a thought.”

Oh, no.

“You know how cursed spirits change after getting stronger? Yeah. So. I’m going to do that. To Kashi. I’m going to make him stronger, and I’m going to see what happens.”

Kento Nanami covers his face with his hands and breathes through the moment. “Gojō, I’ve known you a very, very long time.”

Gojō grins. “Like an ill fate.”

“Right. So, I’m saying this with a lot of history behind us: that was the stupidest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Aww, you’re so sweet! Thank you!”

“Do you realize what you’re saying right now? You’re going to strengthen a curse, one that’s already a threat in its own right?”

“If he tries anything, I’ll handle it.” Gojō shrugs. “You can go to the elders with this if you want, but you really don’t want to do that. ”

Gojō’s right. Kento doesn’t want to do that. He would much rather go back to sleep.

“It’s the only way I can think of that might lead to answers,” Gojō says, bouncing his foot with nervous energy. “I think they lived a long time ago, Nanami. I think they’ve seen things that aren’t in our history books and I want to know every last detail of what they went through and how they died. But I’ll never find out if I leave things as they are.”

Kento gets to spend the five hours before his shift listening to a very unhinged sorcerer with a god complex elaborate on all the little intricacies of his interactions with the curses since they started staying with him. He drones on and on about his first encounter with Obito and the separate binding vow they made, how the boys—boys, he says, and not cursed spirits —have been interacting with Yūji Itadori and, finally, how they managed to flip Gojō’s viewpoint on its head.

“I won’t be like the elders,” he says. “I’m not so stuck in my ways that I’ll stay blind to what’s right in front of my face.”

Kento has never seen Satoru Gojō act like this before. As he allows the hours to fall away with this stupid, self-important man’s monologues, he dreads the future that this will bring.

Mornings in the Gojō family estate are louder these days.

Satoru falls into bed at seven in the morning. He hits the pillow hard and fast and lies there like a corpse because, wouldn’t you know it, even a true god among men cannot escape complete and utter exhaustion. It’s the weekend, so he doesn’t have classes to teach—not that he’s been doing any of that with the Goodwill Event right around the corner. The kiddies have all been training among themselves. He checks in on them all, gives them a little pep talk now and then with sparkles and glitter and a lot of hype. Then, he comes back to the Gojō estate to tolerate the three brats that stick to him like glue. Well. He makes them stick.

There’s no such thing as rest for one with the Six Eyes, though; it’s ever active so long as he’s awake. Even now, on the edge of sleep, information is flooding him like a tsunami, and he groans as everything that hits him makes it that much harder to pass the fuck out.

But the real nail in the coffin is the loud, boisterous voices beyond his bedroom door. There’s a shouting match going on somewhere in the estate. His mouth twitches. The sealed room down the hall is soundproof, so he shouldn’t be able to hear the curses, but he does.

Yūji let them out again. What a pain.

Satoru rummages around his nightstand for his blindfold. Once he has it in hand, he curls his fingers around it and swipes it over his eyes. Everything dulls just a bit, just enough for him to process all the information he’s being fed. There’ll be no sleeping, and he has no one to blame but himself. So, with a sigh and a groan, he stretches from head to toe and pushes off the mattress. Who needs sleep? Not him. He’s Satoru Gojō, and he has big plans for today.

Once he’s out in the hall, he can make out some of the shouting. Apparently, Obito was giving Yūji a cooking lesson and neither of them was paying enough attention to the stove. Things burned, they fought back and forth about it, and now they’re all sitting at the table, eating breakfast like nothing happened.

“Sukuna?” Obito questions, mulling over the word. “Oh yeah… you mentioned that name before. Who is he, exactly?”

Satoru narrows his eyes. The curses asking after Sukuna doesn’t sit well with him. So far, the only one who’s noticed his presence down the hall is Kakashi, their eyes meeting briefly through the blindfold.

“Obito,” Kakashi chastises like a well-trained mutt. No, wait—Satoru is going to stop talking like that. Old habits and all. “We talked about this: don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Satoru doesn’t like the sound of that. He wants them to spill all of their dirty little secrets. But he has to wonder how Sukuna came up in the first place.

Yūji, bless his damned soul, sees absolutely nothing wrong with a curse uttering that name. He rubs the back of his neck and considers his words as he swallows a morsel of his breakfast. “Oh, yeah. He’s like the king of curses, I guess. I’m kinda new to all of this, too. But he’s really dangerous, and I’m his vessel. He’s annoying. Always talking in my head.”

“So you’re a jinchūriki,” both curses say, then exchange narrow-eyed looks.

“What’s a jinchūriki?” Yūji asks because of course he does. If he didn’t, Satoru would have.

“It’s nothing,” Kakashi says before Obito can open his mouth.

That’s something Satoru’s taken notice of: Obito is perfectly willing to answer any questions they have. It’s Kakashi who keeps holding his cards close to his chest and reining Obito in. Satoru’s pretty sure that if he gets Obito alone, a chat might bear some fruit. But right now, his focus is on Kakashi—the one that he can control.

“I’d like to hear, too,” he chimes in as he saunters down the hall, pushing back the haze of a sleepless night to smile at the kids. He’s earning a lot of looks from the little guy with the matching blindfold, but he’s used to that by now and sits down across from Kakashi anyway. “Tell me what a jinchūriki is, Kakashi.”

Oh, how this kid hates him. It’s the fuel Satoru needs to get through the day. He can see the mental leaps Kakashi is doing, trying to think of a workaround, but the kid gives up pretty quickly this time.

With a dull glare, Kakashi rests his chin on his palm. “A tailed beast container,” he answers, as though that makes any sense.

“Elaborate.”

“They’re vessels,” Kakashi continues, “that house powerful, destructive beings inside their bodies.”

“Like Kushina,” Obito chimes in helpfully, earning a dirty look from his counterpart. “What? It’s not like he’s gonna know who Kushina is, Bakashi. Stop worrying so much.”

Bakashi. He likes it. He thinks he may have to try it out for himself.

“Yeah, Bakashi,” he teases immediately, earning the dirtiest glare from the kid yet. “I don’t know who Kushina is. So tell me.”

Kakashi exchanges an I-told-you-so look with his counterpart before heaving a sigh. “She’s just that—the jinchūriki of our village. There’s nothing more to tell.”

They spend breakfast exchanging idle chatter, Obito mentioning something about seals—what would he know about those, Satoru wonders—and rambling on about how it now makes sense why Yūji’s chakra network looks so weird. All this chakra business can be addressed when Satoru isn’t dead on his feet. The food is burnt and over-seasoned, but Satoru is getting used to their experiments in the kitchen.

As the trio makes their way into the courtyard for their latest training session, Satoru wonders how things turned out this way. It stays at the back of his mind as he settles on the engawa with some tea and watches the children play.

Apparently, Satoru’s lessons aren’t good enough. Kakashi is explaining water walking—that thing that shouldn’t be possible for just any old sorcerer off the street. When the first explanation goes over Yūji’s head (with talk about the flow of cursed energy through his body, kneading it in his stomach and guiding it through his ‘cursed energy’ network down to his feet, then spreading it evenly across, who can blame the kid?), Kakashi starts on another lecture, a much more basic one, explaining how chakra—he slips up and uses that word instead of ‘cursed energy’—works, what it is, and how it moves throughout the body. It’s easy enough for Satoru to grasp in basic terms, but the level of control Kakashi is insinuating he has over his cursed energy is honestly ridiculous.

Satoru sees these kids, and he sees a very ancient practice lost to time. The discipline needed for something like this is beyond what the average apprentice is capable of, but Kakashi’s describing it as though it’s a natural, easy thing that anyone with a bit of cursed energy can manage. He wonders if that’s what it was like when these kids were human. Was sorcery—or rather, chakra control—a common practice in their village? If so, when did it move from being ‘chakra’ to ‘cursed energy’? Was it after people came to understand just where this power they had came from?

Or is chakra something else? Something more general? Is it something that even the Six Eyes can’t detect?

After Yūji falls through the water and Obito spends four straight minutes laughing at him, the two spar, leaving Kakashi to sit off to the side on his usual bench and act as an impartial observer. Kakashi never offers to spar, and Satoru can’t help but wonder why. He wants to poke and prod and push until Kakashi spills all that he knows, but Satoru’s holding his tongue and biding his time. If he tries to rush this, he worries he’ll break the poor kid.

Satoru hasn’t forgotten what he’s dealing with. Even if the kids seem easygoing and harmless right now, they’re capable of a lot of destruction, and enough provocation could set them off. Curses don’t do very nice things when under pressure. But they maybe kinda sorta earned the tiniest smidgen of his trust, and he wants to start loosening the chain. Just a bit. Just enough. And if it all goes south, well…

What’re they going to do? He’s a cursed spirit’s worst nightmare, and he does not like being played.

After Gojō digests breakfast, he beckons Kakashi over from across the courtyard. The boy reluctantly obeys, standing before him all prickly like a cat in water, and crosses his arms.

“What is it?” Kakashi asks after a while, glancing back at his little friends.

“You and me? We’ve got business to attend to.” Gojō grins. “Feel like getting your hands dirty?”

Kakashi has seen enough abandoned buildings to start wondering about the economic state of this country. He shifts on the ground, feeling tens of dozens of small bursts of cursed energy flitting about behind dilapidated walls, broken windows and sheet metal. This area is a lot like the place where they found Obito—slated for redevelopment and completely abandoned by the people who used to live here. When he catches a glimpse of some strange, tentacled thing crossing the alleyway to his left, he tenses.

This is his first time seeing a curse other than Obito or himself up close, and he doesn’t know how he feels about it.

The signatures he feels are weak; they do not threaten him. But their energy feels like bugs crawling beneath his skin. There’s this unpleasant aura to it that makes him want to leave. It’s nothing like Obito’s, so reminiscent of a powerful Katon, crackling and airy like wisps of smoke on an open flame. He wants to believe that these things skulking around in the shadows, hiding from Gojō, are something else entirely.

But this is how the jujutsu sorcerers see them. This is what they look like to Gojō, Yūji and Nanami.

He looks up at his warden. Gojō’s all smiles, but it doesn’t come across quite as jovial as usual. Gojō is a bit… off today. There’s a nagging voice in his head telling him to use that to his advantage and plan his escape, but why would he leave? Being at this man’s beck and call is not much different from being collared to the Hokage. Gojō’s more annoying, and potentially more bloodthirsty, but he isn’t the worst person to be tethered to.

For all that Gojō threatens them, he lets Kakashi and Obito stay together. Obito’s all that he has left of the life of Kakashi Hatake.

If he were to leave, where would he go?

“Go on, now, Kashi!” Gojō cheers in that annoying, sing-song voice of his. “Your job is to clear the area.”

“Wait. You want me to exorcise them.”

“Yep.”

“All of them?”

“Every last one.”

“But—” Kakashi closes his eyes to better sense all the scurrying bodies in the district and lets out a shuddering breath. There are too many to count, trapped within the confines of the curtain Gojō created. He doesn’t even know how to exorcise a cursed spirit. “ All of them?”

“You’re wasting time, Kashi,” Gojō cautions, this gleeful look on his face that makes Kakashi feel the distant feral urge to rip off this man’s skin with his teeth. “If you finish before sunset, we can get sushi! Doesn’t that sound fun?”

Obito likes sushi. It’s a random thought, but now it doesn’t feel so daunting. There are seven, maybe eight hours before the sun goes down. He can do this. He’s dealt with more enemies in his life as a shinobi with far worse time constraints, so he can handle it.

Since when is he the type to complain about his orders?

Kakashi feels out the signatures one more time and maps out a route in his head. If a strong enough hit of cursed energy from a sorcerer is enough to exorcise them, then it should be the same between one cursed spirit and another, right?

Kakashi levels his blindfold on his forehead and feels the clarity of his Sharingan cutting through the harsh shadows between buildings. He can see the signatures of the curses hiding from Gojō, and he feels the pull on his reserves now, just as he remembers it. But his cursed energy reserves are larger than his chakra reserves were as a human, he realizes. If he’s lucky, maybe he won’t spend two weeks paralyzed from exhaustion—

Kakashi blinks. He… doesn’t remember that ever happening before. He’s only recently acquired Obito’s eye. It’s been less than a year, he thinks, from where his memories end. Did he really grow up to be so reckless?

It doesn’t matter. With a short body-flicker, he’s running at his first target, his tantō in hand. It’s strange how, when he thinks about it, the weapon is just—there. Like it’s always been there. Like it’s a part of him.

Before he reaches the curse, he sends a burst of cursed energy through the weapon, feeling waves of that chakra-like substance fill the blade with sparks of Raiton, and he makes the first cut.

The curse, this monstrous-looking thing with too many eyes and something grotesque about its body, breaks apart. He watches with his Sharingan as the cursed energy dissipates, remnants floating there and fizzling out right before his eyes. Soon, there’s nothing, no trace but the flecks of cursed energy soon to fade.

If he or Obito dies, this is what will happen.

Kakashi does not dwell on intrusive thoughts. He keeps up his momentum, slashing through one enemy and then another, picking up speed as he goes. They’re all moaning human regrets; everything they say is word salad and there’s no structure, rhyme, or reason to it. Gojō called him a special-grade. Does that mean these are lower-tier curses? Is this the difference between them?

After the first hour, Kakashi grows numb to it. It’s like exterminating an infestation, and his body goes through the motions without even needing to try. A few of the curses attack him, but nothing leaves a mark. The more he slays, the stranger he feels, like his body is fit to burst with energy.

It’s more chakra than he’s ever had, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.

There’s something in his head that won’t leave, telling him to keep going, to take and absorb, and it’s only now that he realizes he’s been feeding off of them. When they break apart into remnants, he takes their energy for himself, as naturally as breathing.

Kakashi looks down at his hands, and they seem different than they did before, his fingers long and thin and scarless. He turns them over, head tilted. The ground is a little further, the world a bit smaller.

He takes a step and all he sees are flames beneath a crimson sky. The world is rubble at his feet, wood charred to ash, houses trampled and splintered beneath an impossible weight, and the red-orange body of the nine-tailed fox a silhouette in the night.

Oh, he thinks numbly. This is what it feels like to have your village destroyed.

It doesn’t hit him all at once. One thing comes, then another—Sensei’s coronation and the day that he died, he and Kushina added to the ever-growing list of graves he needs to visit. ANBU was the only thing in his life after that, nightmares of all the blood on his hands waking him in the small morning hours, trying to scrub away the sins of his own incompetence.

Kakashi is not thirteen. He’s not sure how old he is anymore.

As the final curse breaks apart, its energy flowing into his body like oxygen, Kakashi stares numbly at the darkened building around him, its cobwebs and graffiti, creaking stairs and broken railings. All he can see is blood that is not there, and the weight of all the lives he’s taken bears down on him.

Satoru checks the time on his phone and hums, tapping an impatient rhythm with his foot. It’s sunset now, but Kakashi hasn’t come back. He can still feel that Kakashi’s in the area—the kid hasn’t run away or anything like that—but Kakashi’s been standing in the same spot for quite some time now, and this isn’t what Satoru expected. Well, if he wanted to make the curse more powerful then he’s done that; Kakashi’s sporting twice the cursed energy he started out with, and it would be mildly terrifying if he were anyone other than Satoru Gojō, World’s Most Dashing Sorcerer. The energy won’t stay this high forever. It’ll fade a bit in time, but Kakashi won’t lose it all unless he’s drained. Say… in a battle.

A battle that Satoru would win should it ever be deemed necessary.

With the bright wash of gold in the sky and Satoru’s very empty stomach, his longing for a nice sushi platter and a good cup of sake is hard to ignore. He shoves his hands into his pockets and saunters absently toward his little protégé’s flare of cursed energy. There are no curses left in the area; they accomplished what they set out to do, and it’s time to collect his little buddy.

Kakashi’s on the second floor of one of the buildings on a side street, so Satoru hops up the stairs, humming a tune and considering their celebratory meal. He supposes that he can’t bring two cursed spirits to a sushi bar—they’re not visible to normal humans, and it would be pretty weird for the people around them to see food disappearing into thin air—so he wonders if it would be best to order pick-up and eat at the estate. That takes a bit of the fun out of it, though. He likes not being there now and then.

When he reaches the landing, Satoru pauses. The boy standing before him is looking a bit different from when they last saw each other. Looks like his little experiment paid off. The light through the window is casting hard shadows against the curse’s body, but Satoru would be hard-pressed to miss Kakashi’s new height. He’s not as tall as Satoru, but he’s taller than he was. Older. He has that mask again—the painted white and red hound mask, the one he wore during their first encounter—and he’s back to wearing that grey and black uniform, some ancient-looking armour that doesn’t feel all that protective. It’s lightweight—built for speed.

On his shoulder, there’s a curvy red tattoo. Was that always there?

Kakashi settles him beneath that swirling red eye, uncovered beneath the mask.

Satoru waves. “Yo!” To the nothing that Kakashi matches his greeting with, he pouts. “That’s not very nice, Kashi. Are you mad I made you work? I’ll make it up to you with sushi.”

For a moment nothing happens, the tantō limp at the kid’s side, and Satoru slips a finger beneath his blindfold just in case. When they first met, it was like Kakashi was moving on autopilot—not entirely in control of his own actions. There’s always a chance that’s happening again, that he’ll need to subdue the kid or, well.

Honestly? He doesn’t want to think about the other option right now.

But all Kakashi does is look down at his hands, flexing his fingers and clenching his fists, like he’s only now acclimating to the changes in his form.

When he looks up next, the Sharingan eye is closed.

“What did you do to me, exactly?” Kakashi’s voice is soft and tired, and something is wrong. But it’s not biting. There’s no anger or resentment or—or anything, really. No animosity.

“Nothing at all,” Gojō says, closing the distance between them. He whistles as he sizes the kid up, still looking like a teenager, but on the older side. “You did this all on your own. I just gave you a nudge.”

“Can you fix it?” he asks, damn near pleads, and what is this?

“There’s nothing to fix.”

Satoru Gojō may have fucked up.

Kakashi doesn’t say anything else. The tantō fizzles and fades into nothing, the cursed energy that makes it up returning to its host, and he stands there like a lost thing. Like he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Just this morning, he was mediating between two loudmouths and lounging under the sun.

Satoru hooks an arm around Kakashi’s shoulders and pulls him close, escorting him out of the building with a heavy, burdened sigh. “Let’s get you home.”

Chapter Text

They’re standing just beyond the sliding doors of the Gojō family estate, boxes of fresh sushi hanging loosely from Kakashi’s fingertips. Everything about him is a complete shift from how he was this morning. For one of the first and only times in his life, Satoru Gojō is feeling a smidgen of guilt. Kakashi’s whole body sags like it’s too heavy for him to carry, his visible eye distant and dark, watching something that is not there. Beyond the shōji screen, the warm lantern glow casts shadows from within. They can hear the voices of the two kids still inside, chatting absently about something—Satoru catches Megumi’s name.

He goes to open the door, but Kakashi stretches out a hand, blocking his path. Their eyes meet between the blindfold. Kakashi won’t relent. He won’t look away.

“I need you to promise me something, Gojō.”

Satoru tilts his head, pressing a thumb and forefinger to his chin. He would usually dismiss a command like that with a chastising remark, but something about this feels different, and he keeps his mouth shut.

“What you did to me today—don’t try this on Obito. Promise me that.”

He does not promise. He needs the facts first. But something is telling him to heed this boy’s words carefully, now so many years older than he was, carrying a weight that he cannot hold. “Tell me why.”

Kakashi scrubs a hand in front of his face and lets out a trembling breath. “Obito—he told me something before. That he survived when I thought he died, but it didn’t feel like living. That he feels more like himself as a curse than he did as a human. I’m…” He finally looks away. “I’m worried. I don’t want him to get those memories back. Please don’t make him.”

Satoru huffs, reaching over to ruffle the brat’s hair. “I won’t. I promise.”

Kakashi doesn’t expect this. He stills, his grip failing on the take-out box in his hand, but he’s able to catch it before it hits the ground.

“We’ll keep you as my guinea pig. Sound good?”

“Yes. Okay. I’m fine with that.”

“Good.”

He hopes that, with a little luck, the next stage in the curse’s evolution won’t bring with it so much dread.

Kakashi and Gojō have been gone for a while and something doesn’t feel right.

Obito balked at the notion that he should just stay home with Yūji while the master-servant pair went out to ‘take care of business’, but Kakashi told him that it would be okay, so he kept himself at the estate. Yūji needed a training partner, anyway, and it didn’t feel fair to leave the kid home all by himself. Obito might look like he’s just a brat, but he knows instinctively that he has a few years on Yūji, at least, and he wants to be a good role model.

After Yūji managed to land a hit, Obito fought back. Just a bit. No cursed energy—he stuck to taijutsu, mostly, and Yūji couldn’t keep up.

They’re sitting inside around the chabudai. It’s late, they had lunch hours ago, and now they’re resting. Obito sees this kid, and it’s so strange. Yūji is fifteen, but he’s still only a student. That seems a bit, well—

Old.

He doesn’t ask about Yūji’s circumstances. Everyone’s different. Maybe it’s personal. Maybe he was born to a civilian family, and it was only recently discovered that he had strong chakra—er, cursed energy. A civilian wouldn’t know how to fight, right? Well, he might’ve picked up a bit of self-defence if he lived in a trade hub. Those towns see a lot of crime.

It’s fine. Obito and Kakashi will whip him into shape. They’re practising with him more than Gojō is, anyway. Soon, they’ll have him tree-walking. It’s possible with cursed energy; he and Kakashi can do it.

He makes himself tea, but Yūji grabs a can of soda from the fridge. They keep the door to the courtyard open because the evening breeze is absolutely gorgeous.

“So what’s all this training for, exactly?” Obito asks. It’s been bugging him for a while.

“Oh, It’s for the Goodwill Event, or something like that.” Yūji shrugs. “It’s an annual competition between our school and the one in Kyoto? I don’t know. Gojō-sensei’s bad at explaining things.”

More like: Gojō doesn’t take the time to explain things well.

“But I’m gonna come back from the dead for it, so I’m all fired up!”

Obito gives the kid a look. He trains his Sharingan on the kid and yeah, Yūji’s very alive right now, so he may have lost it. There’s something else in there, too—like a foreign body at the core of Yūji’s cursed energy, and he tilts his head as he tries to look at it from another angle. It reminds him of a genjutsu trail, honestly. Even being an outsider to his clan, he knows a thing or two about genjutsu through his Sharingan, and it’s easy to spot an outsider’s chakra leaving residue in someone else’s system. This doesn’t feel quite right, but it’s the closest thing that Obito can compare it to.

“I’m pretty sure you’re not dead, Yūji,” he says flatly. “I hate to break it to ya.”

Yūji pouts, wiping away sweat on the towel around his shoulders. “Well, not anymore. But I was. For a little while, anyway. And now I’m not.”

“Uh-huh.”

Yūji rubs the back of his neck and sighs. “My friends still think I am, though, ‘cause the higher-ups in the jujutsu world can’t know I’m still around. Gojō-sensei said that. We’re gonna make a surprise entrance at the Goodwill Event and show off how much stronger I’ve gotten!”

Obito feels like he’s missing maybe two or three explanations in order to make sense of the nonsense Yūji’s spouting, but oh well. He’ll find out eventually, he’s sure. “Let’s get you water-walking by then. That’ll be a cool way to show off.” Even though any run-of-the-mill genin can do it. Oh, well. Anything to get his star pupil fired up.

He thinks he likes kids.

“Yeah!” Yūji grins, making fists with his hands. “I can’t wait to see the look on Megumi’s face.”

“Megumi?”

“Oh, you haven’t met him yet. He’s my roommate. Well, he was before. You know. The death thing. But—”

A ripple of cursed energy fans out from beyond the front door of the estate. Obito leans over to try to see down the hall from where he’s sitting while Yūji rambles on about his little friend from school. He recognizes Gojō’s signature immediately because of course he does; the man’s presence is its own warning. But the one next to him is a bundle of radiating energy and Obito tenses up at the sheer magnitude of it, unapologetically there , so potent that even Yūji shuts up and turns to it.

And then it’s gone, cut off, suppressed. Like a rush of cold water, Obito feels his twin curse’s presence and everything is just a bit wrong with the world.

What did they do to him?

The front door slides open to the always-grinning face of a blindfolded idiot as Satoru Gojō presents himself at the far end of the hall. “Yūji, Obito! We’ve brought with us spoils of war!”

Behind him, Kakashi quietly stands in the doorway. He goes to slip off his shoes and freezes, something crossing his eye before he calmly follows Gojō inside.

The thing is: they’re curses. They don’t wear clothes—not really. The fabric over their skin is just as much a part of them as their blood and bones, and it’s strange for Kakashi to forget that. He’s usually more attentive than this.

As the pair steps out of the dark hall shadows and into the sunset glow from the open shōji screen, Obito’s stomach drops. Kakashi doesn’t look like himself. He’s taller now, maybe even older than Yūji, and for a moment Obito wants to be excited but—

But Kakashi isn’t looking at any of them. Not really. When his eye falls on Obito, it feels like he’s looking a little to the left. He smiles, though—this small, pathetic thing, as he holds up a box of take-out.

“Hungry?” Kakashi asks, and the voice is different, both deeper and softer and something isn’t right—

It’s as Gojō takes a seat by the table that Obito lunges for him, the predatory instincts always at the back of his mind surging forth, and he wants Gojō’s throat. Gojō did this. Gojō did something to Kakashi, he changed him or broke him or—

He only realizes what’s happening when his back slams into the wall, Kakashi pinning him there with one hand and holding up the blade of his tantō with the other. Obito coughs, clawing at the forearm against his throat, digging his fingers into it, but Kakashi’s hold has more strength behind it and the only way Obito could get free right now is with cursed energy.

He can’t pry his eyes away from that fucking clown on the floor, and everything in his head is telling him to make Gojō pay for whatever this is. He wants Gojō to bleed. He wants to watch the life drain out of those impossible blue eyes and—

“Obito,” Kakashi calls in a low threat, “ enough. ”

Those words ground him. He bites his lip and slowly, cautiously drags his eyes up to meet Kakashi’s. The fight leaves him, his body limp in his other half’s hold, and he doesn’t remember why he was mad in the first place. Distantly, he thinks Kakashi’s using a genjutsu on him, but he doesn’t really care. All it’s doing is calming his nerves, bringing down his killing intent.

Kakashi looks like a different person up close. There’s a dark rim around his twin Sharingan eyes, the bruising of a man without sleep. He’s lost the baby fat in his cheeks and his face is angular in a way it wasn’t before.

Oh, he thinks distantly, I’ve been left behind again.

From behind their quarrel, Gojō waves absently. “It’s fine, Kashi. Let him go.”

Kakashi shoots Gojō a narrow-eyed look. “I don’t think that’s wise.”

“I’m a god,” the sorcerer says, and he may actually believe those words. There’s nothing of concern in his voice, no caution or unease, like he expected this scenario before he even entered the estate. “I’ll handle it . Trust me a little.”

And because of that command, the grip on Obito’s throat loosens, and he slides down the wall, rubbing at his neck. It hurts. Kakashi must have put cursed energy behind it. Not to attack, but to suppress. And as he steps away, the tantō in his hand dissipates into nothing. He does all this as naturally as breathing and when he blinks, the second Sharingan is nothing more than a memory.

Obito runs a hand through his hair and feels more like himself again, but as he glances around the room, he bristles. Yūji’s looking at Obito in a way that he never has before, like he just watched a betrayal, and Obito ducks his head. But Gojō isn’t even phased. He’s setting out sushi platters on the table like nothing happened. And Kakashi—

Kakashi sighs, bending forward to offer Obito a hand. “Have you calmed down now?”

Obito stares at that hand for a long time, its fingers slender and pale. When he takes it, his own feels so much smaller. He’s hefted to his feet on Kakashi’s strength alone and when they’re standing across from each other like this, the height difference is immediate.

Staring down at his feet, he nods.

Kakashi smiles and it feels wrong on his face. “Come eat, okay?”

The four of them sit around the table and the atmosphere is oppressive. Obito keeps his hands on his knees, schooling his eyes on the table as Yūji watches him, but Gojō’s passing around chopsticks like nothing’s happened. Kakashi’s pulling down his mask, ready to eat like this is okay.

How did Kakashi grow? There has to be something that Obito’s missing and the urge to catch up is nagging at him. They’re always together. They’re mirrors of each other, so why is he stagnant when Kakashi’s changing?

There’s a sushi roll on his plate, and he blinks, lifting his eyes to see that Yūji’s the one who put it there. The betrayal is gone from his face and he’s back to smiling.

“Don’t let it go to waste,” Yūji says. “It’s not every day Gojō-sensei treats us, you know.”

“Um—” Obito licks his lips, looking around at the table, Gojō pouring sake. “Yeah. Sure.”

The weight in the air lifts with the passing seconds. Gojō pours himself a second shot of sake and Kakashi raises a cup of his own. A small grin tugs at the corner of Gojō’s mouth. “Just how old are you, exactly?”

“Old enough,” Kakashi says, meeting Gojō’s gaze evenly.

“I don’t believe you for a second.” But Gojō fills his cup anyway and Kakashi drinks.

Dinner’s a more awkward affair than it usually is, both because of Kakashi’s appearance and Obito’s outburst. Yūji clearly wants to ask what happened, but he’s side-eyeing Obito, worried that if they bring it up, he’ll fly off the handle again. Wow, he really shamed himself, didn’t he? Every little scrap of trust they’ve built up over their short time together is slipping through his fingertips. Yūji’s worried, Kakashi’s disappointed, and Gojō…

He’s not sure about Gojō. Logically, since he tried to attack a human, Gojō should be—

Obito pales when he realizes that he was one wrong move away from breaking their binding vow and losing Kakashi. If Kakashi hadn’t stopped Obito, his life would have been forfeit. Is that what Gojō wanted? Is that why he didn’t do anything?

Kakashi stepped in because Obito was about to ruin everything.

He’s the first to retreat. He puts himself away in that room covered floor-to-ceiling in paper seals and presses his back against the wall, burying his face in his arms and feeling all of his regret.

When the kiddies retire to bed for the evening, it’s time for the adults to talk. Well, the adult and the adult-to-be found in his little curse buddy. They’re drinking together because, at the end of the day, aberrations like Kakashi don’t have to abide by Japan’s age of majority. The moon is full and high against the velvet sheet of night. There’s garbage from their take-out everywhere across the table and dishes in need of washing, but they shove it aside to clear a place for their binge-drinking. Kakashi holds his cup as naturally as he holds his liquor. He’s no doubt done this in his human life, and this body is a bit of a trick. It’s an amalgamation of what Kakashi thinks he is, not his true identity.

The real Kakashi was the wolf in the cursed womb.

Satoru tilts his head, swirling his drink as he considers this boy before him. He’s like a little bag of suffering and angst. Every movement is a burden, every passing second much too long. But despite everything, the moment that he entered the building and was faced with his other half, he forced it all down and put on a smile. Played the part of the elder. The responsible one.

“Don’t hold it against him,” Kakashi says, his voice small and silent as he stares out at the pond in the courtyard. “It won’t happen again. I won’t let it.”

Trying to run to that little brat’s defence before there’s ever any danger. Cute. “I’m not mad.”

“Shouldn’t you be?”

Satoru shrugs. “I assumed he’d fly off the handle when he saw you. As I said, I could’ve handled it. I’m not gonna hold his affection toward you against him, Kashi. What do you take me for?”

“An opportunist,” the brat replies readily.

He groans and drops his chin onto his palm, staring through the black fabric of his blindfold at the kid. Er. Young man? Nah, kid. Still a runt, just a big runt. “Look: I think you and I gotta hash some things out. I feel like I’m the bad guy here and—” And he stares at the little curse he just fed copious amounts of cursed energy, the one who looks like he’s just been shot in the knee, and that gross niggling of guilt rears its ugly head again. “I’m not looking for an excuse to exorcise the two of you, okay? Let’s preface this talk with that. Clear the air a little.”

Kakashi is skeptical. “That’s all you’ve wanted since the day we met, Gojō.”

“Yes,” he nods, “and no. Would’ve gotten you two out of my hair real quick, so that’d be nice. But I don’t know if you’ve noticed—hi, I’m the world’s strongest man, and I need to know everything. If I find something that I don’t understand, I push its buttons until it breaks. That’s who I am. And you two have been in that exact column of ‘everything’ that I have yet to uncover.”

“So, you want to break us.”

“ No ,” he says, dramatic and insulted. “Hm, well, maybe a little. But you know what, Kashi? You’ve convinced me that you’re different. And now I don’t know what I want.”

Kakashi leans his head on his hand, mirroring Gojō’s pose, and they just sit there analyzing each other for a while. It’s late enough now that the fireflies are out and the cry of the cicadas has petered off, leaving them with little more than the chirping of crickets to fill the space between their words.

It’s Kakashi who looks away first. He fiddles with the rim of his cup, smoothing his finger along its edge, tilting it. “You want to learn about us?”

What’s this? An in? “I do.”

Kakashi pulls the cloth up off his eye and places it down on the table. As he opens it, a cutting red stares back at Gojō, soaking up the darkness as three tomoe swim around its iris. Kakashi presses his fingers to the skin below it, the touch gentle with affection. “This was Obito’s eye,” he says, “when we were human. It’s a genetic marker of the Uchiha clan. But he gave it to me.”

Satoru blinks slowly behind the blindfold and makes a face. “Uh-huh. So people in your village just… traded eyes back and forth? What, like bargaining chips?”

“Sure, let’s go with that.” Kakashi rolls his eyes, and it’s nice to see he’s learning a bit more sarcasm, but Satoru wishes he would aim it somewhere else. Like at Kento. “He gave it to me because he was dying and I’d lost my own. Our teammate transplanted it.”

“Which is, again, a totally normal thing to do.”

Kakashi’s glare is worth it. “Do you see why we find this place so strange? Sorcerers are so limited in what they can do. You’re basically just teaching Yūji to punch cursed spirits with some energy behind his fist. That’s absurd.”

Well, Satoru now sees why their village is so strange. But now the vertical scar along that red eye is making a lot of sense, even when the eye itself is not. Why is it that this one is a permanent red fixture while the other recedes? Why does Kakashi act like he only has one of them when he’s clearly used the other before? Even just tonight, when Kakashi subdued Obito, both eyes were spinning that same red.

Kakashi can see the questions on his face, and this little shit looks like he has it all figured out. And oh, Satoru wants to tear this kid open and see all of his secrets. And he could very well give a command to hear all about it. They could sit out here all night listening to Kakashi’s explanations until Satoru’s curiosity is sated.

But he hesitates.

See, Satoru isn’t stupid, and he can see what Kakashi’s doing. Giving him the information that he wants, not what he craves. All of this opening up is a front for whatever it is Kakashi remembers now that’s left him broken and small beneath the might of his new cursed energy.

Satoru won’t touch this red flag.

“Can I ask you something, Gojō?”

An easy smile plays across Satoru’s lips as he pours them another round. “Please, Kashi, how can I be of service?”

“Cursed spirits, they’re,” he starts, hesitates, “ we’re not physical constructs, correct?”

“Correct.”

“So my appearance right now…”

“Isn’t real,” Satoru affirms. On second thought, he adds, “It’s your perception of yourself. Am I making sense?”

“I think so. Maybe.”

Kakashi closes his eyes and draws in a breath. He stays like that for a while, this curse that breathes and drinks and acts like he’s still alive. Satoru can do is nurse his drink and allow Kakashi the time to do whatever it is that he’s doing. It looks like he’s meditating, but not quite. Kakashi’s done this before, too, when the other kiddies were training. He said he was looking in on his chakra pathways or some shit like that, but Satoru had the decency not to demand an at-length explanation.

When he opens his eyes again, both are grey. For the first time since his birth, Kakashi turns the red eye off.

Satoru gives him a big smile and a thumbs-up. “Good job, Kashi! Gold star!”

Kakashi lets out a shuddering breath and slopes back on his floor cushion, downing his drink in one go. There’s something soft about his eyes now, like relief, and Satoru won’t ruin it.

They can talk later. Why not celebrate this small victory amongst all the filth?

Kakashi and Gojō part on the way to bed. Kakashi obediently opens the door to his room, and allows Gojō to seal them in. Staring up at him from the ground is a very young boy, looking even smaller as he curls his arms over his knees. Kakashi’s chest clenches at the sight of this phantom shinobi back from the grave. He’s looking at Obito through the lens of his age now, and all their years apart become a gaping chasm of whys and what-ifs.

Obito did not return to Konoha. All that time he was alive, living, breathing and growing somewhere else while Kakashi sat in their village like a good little soldier and watched as the bodies gathered at his feet became a mountain.

It’s not fair, is it?

But with the rush of dinner behind him and the burn of alcohol in his body, everything is hitting now, and he feels the burn of tears against his eyes. His throat is tight and dry, and he swallows, but that only makes it worse. “Obito,” he greets, and his voice breaks. “Are you okay?”

Obito lifts his head and works his jaw, his hands a white-knuckled grip on his robes. “Kakashi? What’s wrong?”

Kakashi drags himself further into the room before kneeling down, his weight too heavy a burden on his aching body. His hand trembles as it touches the face of this ghost here with him, solid beneath his fingertips. Obito is real, he reminds himself.

Obito is all that he has. The one good thing left in this rotten world.

His lips twitch, a smile trying and failing to pass them, and he searches for words. “Can I be weird for a minute?”

Obito hesitates. “Um. Sure?”

Kakashi pulls Obito fast against his chest and hugs him tightly, afraid that if he lets go, this illusion will fade like the rest. The body stiffens in his hold and, awkwardly, small hands curl around his back, nails digging into the fabric of his grey flak jacket. They reassure him that this person is real and that, at least for one brief moment, he has someone to lean on.

“You’re scaring me, Bakashi…”

“Sorry,” he whispers. “Did I hurt you earlier?”

He feels the head on his shoulder shake. “No,” Obito says. “What happened to you?”

Kakashi steels himself from the lies he’s about to tell and breaks their embrace to smile down at the boy. “I had a little growth spurt. Nothing to worry about.”

Obito eyes him, shifting to sit cross-legged on the floor, and mutters, “What about this is ‘little’ to you?” He makes a face as he fully assesses the elder teen, like he’s only just now noticing Kakashi’s clothes—the uniform that he’s been dressed in ever since he woke up in this strange place. In all fairness, he forewent all the gear and the flak jacket after his first few days, so Obito may not have realized. “Why are you dressed in ANBU gear?”

“Because I’m in ANBU,” he says. Thinks. “Was.”

“But—why?”

Kakashi’s mouth twitches. Behind his eyes is a village burning to its foundations, blood, bones, and flesh—

“I was promoted after Rin passed,” he answers dismissively.

“You… remember more, don’t you?”

Kakashi nods.

“Like what?”

“This and that,” he says. “Nothing important.”

“I feel like you’re lying.” He never realized Obito could be perceptive. “But I’ll let it pass. Just…”

Obito grabs his hand and gives it a squeeze.

“Tell me next time, okay?”

Living with the Six Eyes can be pretty burdening. It’s not something people think about unless they have it—combining it with the Limitless makes him virtually unkillable, so how could it have a downside, right?

But when a moment becomes a minute in his mind, Satoru Gojō has to wonder how freeing it must be to live as a normal human being.

There’s a sound like footsteps in the hall, and it’s enough to drag his brain out of hibernation. The moment he’s awake, his mind stretches out across the house as his eyes, ever-seeing behind his eyelids, analyze the cursed energy remnants around him for a disturbance. He can see the bundle of energy in the room down the hall that makes up Yūji, and another in the sealed room where the cursed spirits sleep. But there’s only one. It’s Obito’s. He can feel the minute differences between the mirrored curses without trying, his brain giving him answers to questions he never asks.

One second passes.

Satoru sits up and looks towards the hall to find another bundle of cursed energy moving through the estate. It’s Kakashi’s, headed out of the sealed room. But Yūji is asleep, there’s no one else to open the door from the outside, and images of their time together flood his mind. He’s bombarded with every passing detail, the Six Eyes forcibly searching for an outlier, but neither cursed spirit has ever touched the talismans on the walls, not once, not once—

One second passes.

There’s an ocular jujutsu in his mind, one that he’s still uncovering the mysteries of. They call it the Sharingan, and he’s watched time and again as that newly familiar black-on-red drew up cursed energy from the curses’ cores to weave its techniques. It mimics. Kakashi’s mirroring of his movements the night they met circle back through his head, every little action a perfect copy. Their stalemate—the moment when the curse realized that he couldn’t be touched, and he realized that the curse was intangible. The remnants left behind of a cursed technique he’s unfamiliar with as two boys vanished out of the air into nothing, the spike in energy when they arrived, the ripple through reality as they weaved it around their fingers.

One second passes.

His brain sticks with that. It works out simulations to see if that intangibility could have gotten Kakashi through that door, but the moment that Kakashi tries to pass through, it breaks. The talismans are they for a reason. They can’t be touched, not physically, by cursed spirits. It’s the whole reason they work, forming the walls of a prison entirely their own. They could argue that it’s not physical touch because Kakashi is passing through— something —before returning to the mortal realm on the other side of the door. But his mind is saying no, that’s not what happened here, it’s something else, something different, the talismans should prevent that sort of teleportation because their job is to keep what’s inside from leaving—but it could work. The Six Eyes isn’t entirely denying the possibility because he doesn’t have enough information to verify this, and he needs to know needs to understand or else this will not end—

One second passes.

The eyes. They pull cursed energy differently between them, and the one they draw upon to become intangible is always the right. Time and again, it drains their reserves and gives them a power surpassed only by the Limitless in its ability to protect. The other eye. The other eye. It’s the other eye, there’s something he doesn’t know, and he needs to know —

One second.

Satoru gets out of bed and pads across the room. He slides open the door and pokes his head out into the hall, catching the trailing edge of someone turning down the bend. Darkness means nothing to the Six Eyes, and he’s never truly been alone in it because, to him, night is only slightly dimmer than day. He can’t imagine what true darkness is. It doesn’t exist in his world. The energy moving away is Kakashi’s, Obito is still in one room, Yūji in the other. Everyone else is in their place, and he has answers he needs to get before his thoughts crash down around him.

One second.

The door to the sealed room is left open and Satoru leans into it. At first, it looks as it should. He scratches his head and sees the back wall covered in paper talismans, the left, the right. Obito’s curled up on the futon with his head burrowed beneath the covers save a tuft of black hair, looking small and content and nothing of the little monster he was at dinner. But when Satoru steps further into the room and turns around, his mouth twitches.

One second.

There are no talismans on the door. He pulls it closed, double-checking, but every single one is gone. There are none on the floor. They didn’t fall. They didn’t come loose. Every other piece of paper is seamlessly in place except the ones needed to move the door, and without a full seal on the room, its barrier becomes ineffective. The curses can come and go as they please. The Six Eyes pulls at his compiled thoughts of the right eye and how it functions, replaying every moment he’s seen the pair pass through an object or just out of grasp, and he’s analyzing the remnants in the room. They’re not exactly the same as what he sees around the boys when they become intangible. There’s a difference in the pattern and movement, the strength behind it, and his mind is on loop. When they faze through, their bodies aren’t there. Pieces of them slip through to someplace else, and direct contact is never made. It’s not like the Limitless; they’re not slowing their enemy down as they draw near. They’re avoiding. Avoiding by crossing a barrier that only they can. Their bodies are the mediator between one plane of existence and the next, the only boundary, their limit.

One second.

Their right eye works in close combat and their left eye works long-ranged. How ? What triggers it? How can it be stopped? How far away can it work, and where do the objects it moves go? Is it that same place that only the two of them can access? Or do they become nothing?

Gojō is consumed by thoughts he can’t control.

The door to the bathroom at the end of the hall is left ajar, and the tap is running. He steps lightly towards it and leans forward to see through the door as Kakashi dry heaves into the sink, his head bent forward as he pants and gasps and trembles beneath his weight. Kakashi’s gagging, but nothing will come up. He’s a curse, not a human, and the food he eats breaks up into cursed energy in his body. Kakashi does not have a stomach. He can’t digest the way a human would. Everything that he’s feeling right now is a product of his perception, and nothing will get him through this but his own mental fortitude.

Kakashi lifts himself up, scrubbing at his hands in the stream of water, using half a bottle of soap to lather them. He digs his nails into his palms and scratches at the skin, leaving trails of red behind like claw marks.

He’d be hurting himself if that body were real.

Satoru stands in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, listening to the gasps and chokes as they steadily devolve into sobs. The Six Eyes gives him a clear view of the cursed energy that makes up this living, breathing thing sitting in the realm between life and death. His mind is working still, changing seconds into minutes and running through the options of how he should react. Kakashi hasn’t noticed him. Satoru’s presence is loud and so very there, but Kakashi’s so far in his own head right now that the outside world does not exist. The control Kakashi has over his cursed energy is wobbly and uncertain, threatening to release the full depths of his strength without a moment’s notice and wake up the whole house.

Satoru steps into the bathroom and leans around the teen, turning off the tap. Kakashi’s body freezes, his breathing stops, and time stills.

He grabs the towel off the rack and guides Kakashi by the shoulders to face him, their eyes meeting directly with no blindfold left between. The Six Eyes always makes the kids feel threatened. So, he crouches down and takes one pale hand in his, carefully dabbing at it with the towel. He stares at the rubbed-raw marks that linger because Kakashi's mind has deemed them real enough to leave imprints, and then he takes the other. Repeats. Kakashi watches him do this through bloodshot eyes, but his tears are long dry.

“It won’t come off,” Kakashi whispers, his words unsteady with the tightness of his throat.

Satoru holds those hands, searching for some mark or stain where none can be found, not even with his ocular jujutsu, and he understands.

The Six Eyes gives him plenty of time to think.

Satoru smiles up at Kakashi. “No? Hmm, let me see…” He turns the hands over, humming as he carefully inspects each and every finger, and then he makes a small exclamation. “There we go. Found it. Let me try, okay?”

He smooths the towel over Kakashi’s long-dry hands one more time, gentle in his touch, between the fingers and the nook of the palm, all the way to the wrist, and gives them another hard look.

“There. Good as new, see?”

Kakashi raises shaking fingers up to his eyes, turning them over, and his shoulders slope. The rigidity of his body eases with a trembling breath, and his hands fall to his sides as he faces the sorcerer crouched before him. It feels like they’re actually seeing one another.

Kakashi returns to the room and Satoru tucks him in. Before long, the curse is fast asleep next to his partner, their breaths floating on the open air. Satoru sits against the wall, deciding that sleep is a thing he cannot afford, and one by one he plucks the talismans from their place. He stays because it’s all he knows how to do.

Satoru Gojō has never been one to walk away.

Chapter Text

When Obito wakes up, he thinks that he’s been moved.

It doesn’t make any sense, and he knows that he’s being silly because this room is their own little prison of untouchable walls and impassable barriers. But as he rubs at his eyes and stares at the space before him, he’s missing the paper seals. They’re just—not here. Gone.

Gojō wouldn’t have removed them. Obito firmly believes that, especially after his fuck-up yesterday. In his defence, he doesn’t know what came over him. Ever since he became a cursed spirit, he’s had this niggling, opportunistic feeling that he should take and hurt and feed, but intrusive thoughts have always been easy for him to ignore. He dealt with them a lot, growing up. He doesn’t know when or why, but that fact is cemented in his brain. When he saw Kakashi, though, his carefully maintained control fell through the cracks, and suddenly he was taking every negative emotion out on the leash and chain that is Kakashi’s keeper.

Did Kakashi remove the seals? Could he? How, though, and why? This’ll just piss off Gojō, and then they’ll have a whole new problem on their hands.

Affairs in the kitchen are normal on the surface. The scent of food wafts pleasantly through the halls of the estate and for once it doesn’t smell burnt, but Obito’s usually the first one up. Finding all three of his housemates already there leaves him quietly unsettled. Yūji’s cooking and that’s fine because Yūji is a good disciple and has taken to Obito’s culinary lessons quite well. No burning this time. Good job, Yūji! Kakashi’s sitting out on the engawa, his back against the shōji screen, eyes closed like he’s found momentary peace. There’s no need to disturb him. But Gojō?

Gojō’s head is down, resting on his arms at the kitchen table, and he looks like he took a Doton to the face. He doesn’t even move as Obito enters the room, even though he can clearly sense the chakra signature approaching. Not even making a sound. No ‘Rise and shine, Obito!’ or ‘Aww, look, he thinks he’s people.’ Well, Gojō hasn’t been as forward with his insults as that lately, but there’s usually some teasing.

“Morning, Obito,” Yūji greets with a lopsided grin. His plate is already empty and he dumps it in the sink, stretching his arms and rolling his shoulders with a satisfied sigh. “You slept in pretty late today. I thought you’d be up by now with how early you went to bed.”

“Uh—yeah. I was tired.” When he retreated to his room last night, he didn’t sleep. It didn’t feel like he deserved to be in their company. And, well, he doesn’t need sleep anyway. Logically. So he’s not sure why he was in bed as late as he was. “You can leave it there. I’ll wash them once everyone’s done.”

“You sure?”

Obito smiles and nods to the courtyard. “Go train. You’ve gotta prepare for the Goodwill event, remember?”

“Yeah,” Yūji smiles, his face lighting up sort of like Kushina’s, “thanks. I’ll master water walking today!”

As the kid runs out of the room, Obito rolls his eyes and calls after him, “Maybe try figuring out tree walking first!”

And then he’s alone with the half-dead man at the kitchen table. And it’s an incredibly awkward affair.

To be honest, he hasn’t spent much time with Gojō. He hasn’t wanted to. Every time their eyes meet through the blindfold, he bristles on instinct, feeling the Six Eyes on him even though he can’t see them. So when there’s an opportunity to get away—say, to train out in the courtyard—he takes it in a heartbeat. Better to stick with Yūji than to feel trapped by this man’s gaze, right?

And, well. He’s still holding a grudge over their first meeting. But you know what? Seeing Kakashi aged up a little, it’s eerie how alike they are. Kakashi and Gojō. And it’s not just their appearance—though that’s part of it, obviously, or else that embarrassing mistake never would have happened. It’s the way they act, the way they move, this vibe they carry with them and the presence they give off. Dialogue between them couldn’t be more different. Gojō’s a sarcastic, self-centred bastard, and Kakashi tends to be quiet and succinct. But they feel like these imposing monsters coasting through life with a lot of baggage trailing behind.

Prodigies. The unapproachable geniuses.

Obito, on the other hand, is very normal. Maybe a bit below average. Oh, look, his inferiority complex is showing.

Not one to waste food, Obito grabs the plate that Yūji prepared for him (aww, how sweet) and takes purchase on the chair across from the self-proclaimed god, who still has not moved. Gojō’s plate sits untouched in front of him, and it’s mildly infuriating because Yūji put so much effort into making it, and it’s going to waste. Obito leans forward to nudge him but aborts halfway, this sort of fear response building up in his chest as he remembers falling from a building while terror reined from above. Instead, he pokes Gojō with his chopsticks.

There’s a loud, tired groan, almost a whine, and no movement.

So Obito does it again.

“Go play with your little buddies,” Gojō grumbles, his voice muffled by his sleeves. “I’m busy.”

“It’s bad manners to waste food,” Obito says. “At least finish your plate before you nap.”

“I’m not napping,” Gojō corrects, lacking his usual vigour. “I’m meditating.”

“Then ‘meditate’ after breakfast,” he huffs, nudging Gojō’s plate closer to him. “Come on. Yūji worked really hard on this.”

Eventually, Gojō props his head up just enough to settle one covered eye on the curse across from him. “You’re really pushy, you know that?”

“Rin called it ‘determination’.”

Gojō finally sits up, stretching languidly like some predatory cat, and something cracks in his shoulder. He yawns. Now that Obito can see his face, he looks deathly pale, like he hasn’t seen proper rest in days. “Rin?” he asks absently as he fumbles with his chopsticks, looking nothing like the threat that he was on the battlefield only a short while ago. It’s like he’s lost half of his motor functions. It’s… honestly a bit unsettling, to someone so easily confident lose all of his zest.

“Our teammate,” Obito answers absently as he picks at his meal. It’s a little cold, but still edible. “My friend. She’s gone now.”

Gojō doesn’t say anything. He’s doing the same thing, poking and prodding at the meal and only occasionally taking a bite. They make it through half their plates under a heavy silence. It’s not as bad as he expects it to be, and he’s having trouble finding the anger he had last night.

“I’m sorry,” Obito says. “For what it’s worth. About last night. I saw Kakashi and I think I got really… scared. I don’t know why.”

Gojō waves him off. He’s not bothered by Obito’s aborted attack and that’s probably the strangest thing about all of this. Gojō wasn’t trying to get him to break their vow, was he? That had nothing to do with it. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, “because there’s an infinity between me and you.”

“What does that mean?”

The man just shrugs. In place of words, he drinks his cold tea and pokes at his omelette.

Obito finishes eating and waits on the chair for Gojō to scrape up the last of his meal, but Gojō’s taking too long and Obito’s impatient, so he starts on the rest of the dishes in the meantime. Yūji was thoughtful enough to soak the pans he used, so the food waste comes off easily. As he goes through the motions of his daily chores, all the can think about is Granny. She taught him to cook, and he did most of the upkeep around the house. Granny had a bad back, after all, and weak knees. She wouldn’t be around by the time he was an adult, he knew, but for the life of him, he can’t remember if she’s passed. It’d be nice to see her again.

Something happens as he scrubs the grime off the plates. He stills as his eyes find the dark purple fabric of his sleeve. All he can see in his head is Kakashi in ANBU gear, clothes that Obito’s never seen him wear before, and something isn’t right. He’s thinking and thinking and thinking, trying to feel out the wrinkle in his mind, but it’s so folded over itself that it’s almost a knot, and—

Obito never wore this in his memories. The sleeves are long and loose. As he tilts his head forward, the hem of his collar brushes along his chin. It’s Uchiha clothing in its truest form, but this outfit isn’t a part of his childhood. Black pants. A pale obi and a purple belt. This isn’t right. Kakashi’s wearing clothes from his memories, so why isn’t Obito?

He knows, though. He knows that this is something from the memories buried deep inside, and as he looks down at his right hand, he sees pale white tissue that doesn’t belong to him. When he blinks, it’s gone.

But grafted onto his body were foreign cells that pulled all the broken pieces of him back together and kept him moving. That much is true. He knows this, but he can’t think about it.

Because if he thinks about it, it might just follow him into reality.

Gojō’s presence beside him has him nearly jumping out of his skin. Another plate is placed in the sink, picked clean, and when they look at each other, Gojō tilts his head.

“You’re very afraid of me, aren’t ya?” the sorcerer asks.

“No,” Obito spits, feeling heat flush his cheeks. “You just—startled me. That’s all.”

“Uh-huh. Sure, we’ll go with that.” Gojō turns until his back is pressed against the counter and props himself up with his elbows. Apparently, he isn’t going anywhere. Obito’s got himself a companion. Great. He’ll speed through his chores to end this quickly. “You know, you’re a lot more forward than Kashi. More direct. I like that about you. Why don’t we have a chat?”

Obito glares dully at the man, angling himself a little further away. He doesn’t like the sound of this and, honestly, this is probably the longest conversation they’ve ever held. It’s a bit unnerving. But he feels bad for always letting Kakashi take the lead with Gojō, and he feels even worse now that things are… different. So he bites his lip. “No village secrets. I’m still Konoha-loyal.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” Gojō confesses with a short laugh. “Your boy over there is tight-lipped. But you’ll spill your guts for me, right? For old time’s sake?”

This man is delusional but Obito isn’t as worried about hiding their histories as Kakashi is, so he just rolls his eyes. “Question for question. Give and take. Final offer.”

Gojō hums, tilting his head this way and that like he’s mulling it over when, clearly, he’s had his answer from the moment the words left Obito’s lips. It’s weird how he’s like that. To Obito, it feels like Gojō’s decisions are instantaneous, as though he weighs the pros and cons of every situation in a matter of breaths, but he always acts like he’s deliberating on something. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe it’s just to piss people off. “By all means, ask away.”

Gojō giving him the floor first is a bit surprising. Obito sets the last of the plates in the drying rack, shuffles over to grab the towel hanging off the stove handle and starts drying the utensils one by one. “About Yūji,” he starts, eyes flicking up to judge Gojō’s reaction. Nothing showing on his face. The kid’s not taboo, then. “He told us about being a vessel for—Sukuna, was it? That’s not… We have jinchūriki, so I get the concept, more or less. But something about this feels off.”

“Go on.”

Wow, an open invitation. He eases up a bit, back straight, and he’s not hiding his curiosity anymore. “I scanned him with my Sharingan last night and I can see the foreign chak— cursed energy . But there doesn’t seem to be a seal in place. Why is that?”

Gojō’s lips twitch and he is not smiling. “Explain.”

Obito huffs. That’s the same tone he uses with Kakashi when he’s exploiting their vow, and he doesn’t appreciate it. “Well, when we put a tailed beast inside a jinchūriki—a vessel—we use a seal to bind and contain them. It’s what keeps them from breaking free. That, and the jinchūriki’s own efforts. But there’s nothing stopping this Sukuna thing from breaking outta Yūji and—isn’t that dangerous? Shouldn’t we do something about that?”

It’s uncomfortable how quiet Gojō is. He stays there, leaning back with his arms folded. For the life of him, Obito can’t read what’s going on in this man’s head. That’s the scariest part of dealing with Gojō. For all that he’s a playful, easy-going man on the surface, there’s something below that nobody can see but Satoru Gojō himself. “Yūji holds him back by sheer force of will,” Gojō confesses. “We don’t have a seal that can contain him. All we managed was to take his fingers and turn them into cursed objects. That’s all we could think to do.”

Apparently, Gojō is like Yūji in that their explanations are never whole, but he gets the gist of it. “But it shouldn’t be that hard. Trigram seals are pretty sturdy, and—”

Obito stills as sigils flood his mind, easy and natural, and he can see them in his head. But he doesn’t know the first thing about seals. Does that mean—

Maybe when he returned to the village after Rin died, Minato-sensei taught him. Seal Masters were a dying breed with the loss of Uzushio, and it would be important to pass on that knowledge, wouldn’t it? And—and Obito doesn’t think he’d mind that. Using seals.

When he thinks about it, he can draw up jinchūriki seals as easily as breathing.

“Anyway,” he finishes, opening the top cupboard to put away the glasses. “It was just a thought.” He stretches up, balancing on the tips of his toes to reach the top shelf where the rest of the glasses are, and he groans as his new partner-in-crime lifts the glass from his fingers and sets it in place.

Grinning like the smug asshole that he is.

“My turn,” Gojō says. “Konoha. Your village, right? Tell me about it. Do you know how long ago you were alive? What’s chakra to you, exactly?”

Apparently, this man doesn’t understand the rules of the game. Or, more likely, he just doesn’t care.

Yūji falls out of the tree again. It’s the third time today, and he groans because the curses make it look so easy . He doesn’t know how Gojō-sensei helped him stand on the water when he was given that lesson about domains (the one with that unregistered special-grade) but he feels like what the curses are trying to teach him is very different.

The thing is: Obito’s the one who’s been helping him, more or less, and he’s a kinda bad teacher.

When he first told Yūji to walk up the side of a tree, he just demonstrated it and said ‘do this’ without any explanation. Then, he was told to put cursed energy into his feet. Which didn’t do anything but reinforce his kicks. But hey, it works for Obito, so it should work for him, too, right? Does he just need to keep trying?

Yūji brushes the dirt off his pants with a pout. Maybe he should just go back to Gojō’s training. At least it taught him to hit things really hard.

No, Yūji Itadori doesn’t give up that easily! But he decides that he does take breaks, sliding down the trunk of the tree to rest at its roots. It’s been almost forty minutes of this with no progress, and even he needs a moment to sigh and reflect on his failures now and then.

Across the courtyard, Kakashi is sunning himself on the porch. Their eyes meet and Yūji grins, waving at the curse and earning an awkward wave back. Kakashi’s always pretty quiet, especially when Obito isn’t around, but he’s said a lot less ever since he came back with Gojō last night. Usually, Yūji opens the door to the curses’ room when he wakes up in the morning since they can’t do it themselves. Kakashi will smile at him and say a greeting, and occasionally he’ll make small talk. Today, Kakashi was already out of the room by the time Yūji crawled out of bed and all the talismans were gone. So that’s kinda weird, right?

He’s worried. Kinda. Something’s bothering Kakashi, but they haven’t known each other long so Yūji’s not sure how to broach it, or if he should poke at the issue at all. But it doesn’t seem right to just let a bad thought fester. That sort of stuff sticks with you. Like a splinter.

Kakashi kinda looks the way Yūji’s been feeling ever since the incident with Junpei.

Alright, he’ll think about it. In the meantime, he has a tree to climb!

When he falls this time, he starts feeling a little sulky. Sparing a glance at the engawa, he sees that he’s being watched. Kakashi’s arms are folded, his head tilted, and both of his eyes are red, spinning as they fall on Yūji. Then, when he blinks, they’re back to grey.

“Do you want help?” Kakashi asks eventually. His voice has changed; he doesn’t sound like a kid anymore. It feels like he could be another student at Jujutsu High or something. Like they’re peers. Which is funny, ‘cause this guy was a lot shorter like twenty-four hours ago.

Yūji gives a thumbs up. “I’m completely lost!”

Kakashi sighs and shifts, slipping off the porch and onto the stone path that cuts through the courtyard. When he stops, Yūji realizes that Kakashi has some height on him now. Not much, but a little.

So what happened, anyway?  Or is this another one of those festering thoughts that people say not to touch, even though leaving it alone is just going to make it hurt more later?

Hm. Yūji really doesn’t like the sound of that.

“To tree walk, you have to pool chakra at your feet,” Kakashi says, demonstrating by walking up the side of the tree and hanging upside down from a branch with no effort whatsoever, exactly like Obito did. Which is totally unhelpful and not cool at all and Yūji is not jealous.

“That’s what I’ve been doing,” Yūji sighs. “But it doesn’t work. And like, I think I damaged the tree a bit?” The bark is splintered where he keeps trying to step on it. Gojō’s probably not going to like that… if he notices.

“No, you’re using cursed energy,” Kakashi corrects lightly. His voice is really smooth, like someone trying to patiently explain a hard concept to a child. “Maa, I don’t think the people here know about chakra, so it’s only natural that you’re using it wrong.”

They’ve mentioned it a lot—chakra. Yūji just thought that it was another name for cursed energy, and that was that. “Then what’s the difference?”

“Cursed energy is raw,” Kakashi says. “Chakra is manufactured.”

“I’m not following.”

Kakashi hums low in his throat as he considers the subject further. Eventually, he locates the still-broken remains of the bridge and wanders over to it. With one finger, he taps one of the half-standing beams splintered off the railing, and it cracks beneath the touch. “This is cursed energy,” he says. Then, he taps the wood again, and it follows his finger as he pulls it away, like it’s been glued to Kakashi’s hand. “And this is chakra. Essentially, it seems you can work cursed energy to change its attributes. There are pathways that carry the cursed energy through your body that you can manipulate so that it’s malleable under your will.”

Okay, so, Yūji’s not sure if he gets it. “Basically, I have to do something to the cursed energy first before it makes me stick to things?”

Kakashi nods. “You know how to pool it into a specific part of your body, so you’re good at moving it, but you haven’t learned how to knead it.”

“Then, how do I do that?”

The curse tilts his head, considering this, and then asks, “Would you mind terribly if I used a genjutsu to show you?”

“What’s a genjutsu?”

“It’s an illusion,” Kakashi says, “one that can manipulate people. But in this case, I might be able to use it to pass on my chakra knowledge. I think it’ll be easier for you to understand that way.”

“Oh. Okay!”

Kakashi blinks, taken aback by the sudden acceptance. “You’re sure?”

“I mean, yeah?” Yūji shrugs. “Like, I guess it sounds a bit scary, but I trust you.”

The courtyard is quiet for a little while as Kakashi shifts his weight from one foot to the other, his face softening. “I can see why Obito’s taken a shine to you,” he says. “Look into my eyes, please.”

Yūji stares very hard at said eyes, watching them shift again from grey to red, tomoe weaving in their irises. Suddenly, he’s not seeing the courtyard. There are thoughts in his head that aren’t his, guiding his body to move. He closes his eyes to feel the cursed energy running through his body, buzzing beneath his skin and in his veins, and he tries to follow its flow. It’s weird, but he can almost feel a pattern emerging, one that he traces to a core in his stomach.

He wants to move the cursed energy in that core to his feet, but he needs to manipulate it first, working it there where it’s at its most volatile until it becomes something different, something tamer. When it loses some of its edge, he releases it into the pathways that he followed to get there and guides it down toward his feet, where it settles on the soles of his shoes.

“Good,” Kakashi says, and suddenly the courtyard is here again. “Climb the tree, Yūji.”

Yūji blinks, looking left and then right, and everything is exactly as he left it. The bridge is still busted up, and the sun is still high. The tree’s still splintered, Kakashi’s still tall, and the grass is still green. But it feels like he’s been somewhere else for a while.

There’s a strange feeling on the bottoms of his feet, buzzing with energy, and without a thought in his head, he plants a shoe on the trunk of the tree.

And it sticks.

Yūji blinks, fully expecting this attempt to have failed, wondering if he’s still in the illusion. Looking over his shoulder, he sees Kakashi nodding encouragement, so he uses the stuck foot to root himself as he lifts the second one and it, too, sticks to the tree. Now he’s sideways. And it’s all sorts of bizarre. For a second, his feet won’t come off, but he eases the cursed—er, the chakra —in one as he goes to lift it, and it peels away without trouble. Like this, he can walk up. Sideways. Defying gravity. And, for good measure, he hangs upside-down from the same branch that Kakashi did earlier.

A big grin breaks out across his face as he cheers. “Hey, look! I’m doing it, Kakashi-sensei!”

Kakashi’s eyes go wide and the colour drains from his face. It doesn’t last. Before long, he’s smiling, too.

“Good job, Yūji.”

“Genjutsu?” Satoru repeats, watching the little curse from behind the veil of his blindfold. It’s another one of their weird terms. They have so many of them that it’s hard to keep track. His Six Eyes tells him this isn’t a new one—that he heard it before at the start of this mess.

“I can create illusions with my eyes,” Obito confesses easily. They migrated to the chabudai in the main sitting room and are now seated across from one another on the floor cushions to have their talk. The door to the porch is closed now, and the two of them are alone, nothing but infinity between them. “If you want to see Konoha so badly, I could just show you with my genjutsu.”

Hm.

Satoru recalls meeting the red and black eye of the wolf in the cursed womb and being sucked into a loop of walking but never reaching his destination. When he shook himself out of it, he realized he hadn’t even moved. It was almost like suggestive thought, but more powerful, and it even stalled the Six Eyes for a moment. That’s nasty stuff.

If this can be used visually, then he wonders how the Six Eyes will handle it.

His mind is working again, turning seconds into minutes, drawing up the pros and cons of this kid’s proposal, and the cons are piling up pretty quickly. For one: this technique, or at least something similar, has already proven to have some level of effect even on the great Satoru Gojō. For another: if the illusions are as vast and varied as Satoru’s experience and Obito’s words are implying, there’s no telling what sort of manipulation this kid is capable of. Satoru has decided to trust these kids, yes, but he’s not stupid. Just last night, this kid made to attack him. Even if they were human and even if they were victims, he needs to maintain a level of caution because the curses that he’s dealing with right now are special-grades.

The problem is that he needs to know. He’s found something unfamiliar and the Six Eyes demands that he follow this black hole down to the pits of hell. Logically, he should see through a visual illusion. His eyes see everything. No exceptions. What would that look like, though? What would that be? Would his abilities negate intrusive thoughts, too, implanted by someone else?

The wolf, the eye, a loop of pursuit with no end, one second.

“Well?”

Satoru hums, head tilted. “Sure,” he says easily. He’s too tired to play mind games with his ocular jujutsu right now.

Obito blinks. “Really? Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

The kid’s uncertain now, drumming his fingers against the table. He still keeps his eyes red and active—that Sharingan jujutsu—even when Kakashi’s figured out how to turn both of his off, which is interesting. Obito seems to be able to maintain the constant drain on his cursed energy, even though he has a lot less saved up. “Um. Okay. Then… take off your blindfold? I don’t think it’ll work if I can’t see your eyes, even if you can see mine… No, wait, it should, right?”

Satoru drops his head onto his palm. “Why, I don’t know, Obito. How about we test that theory out?”

Obito just doesn’t want to see the Six Eyes. He knows. It makes the kids anxious, and he’s not in the business of forcing people into uncomfortable situations. Except when he is.

“Yeah. Sure. Okay, I got this.”

When Satoru blinks, he’s outside, blue skies above and grass at his feet.

Well. Sort of.

Satoru can see the image Obito’s projecting onto him clear as day, but he can still make out the outlines of the real world mixed in with it all. It’s like looking at a photograph with double exposure, and it’s disorienting, to say the least. It’s what he expects, more or less; the Six Eyes doesn’t lie. He’s sure to have a massive headache after this, though. As though he doesn’t already.

Alright. Let’s see what this kid can do.

There’s a cliffside behind the small, simple structures that make up the buildings with four really poorly carved faces all lined up like a certain monument in another part of the world, and it’s, uh… pretty shit, to be honest. But Satoru isn’t focusing on that. They’re in a field. The grass is patchy, there’s a little stream nearby. It’s quaint. Over to the left, there are some really cheap-looking practice dummies set up, looking like they’ve been through hell and back.

Then he sees the kids. Obito, Kakashi, and a third—that Rin girl, probably. They’re running through some formation, throwing shuriken at the targets because apparently, Satoru isn’t the only one in the habit of giving sharp objects to small children. Each of them seems to have their own fighting style. After a few moments, the image shifts and the trio are throwing themselves at a tall blond instead.

Obito breathes fire. So that’s a thing.

Kakashi’s eyes are a matching grey, with no scar to speak of. They’re trying to get a bell at their teacher’s waist, it looks like, but the two boys have no teamwork, and it’s almost hilarious how bad they are together.

And to think Satoru once thought that they’d fuse. That they were two sides of the same curse. If they ever tried to meld together, they’d probably short-circuit.

Eventually, Kakashi gets one of those bells, falling on his face in the process. Despite the lack of teamwork, their sensei praises all of them for a job well done.

Satoru would have laughed in their faces. What a pushover.

It’s a bit strange, though, as Obito and Kakashi fight and Rin placates, because he thinks Kakashi’s the issue here. He’s the one thinking little of his teammates and leaving them out, yet he’s the one who reached the goal all on his own. But his victory is a hollow thing.

Satoru can relate.

“I thought I’d show you memories,” Obito says, inlaid over the image that he’s feeding to Satoru’s brain. “I figured that was the best way to keep it accurate. Is it weird?”

Satoru waves his hand. “It’s cute watching you guys fail. Charming, even.”

Obito narrows his eyes. “How does anyone put up with you?”

He smiles, all sunshine and rainbows. “I’m very easy on the eyes, Obito.”

“Ugh. The worst. ”

“Show me more. What’s next?”

Obito rolls his eyes and the illusion bleeds away to a school, kids walking home from class. It gives him more to look at. He’s walked down the streets of this strange, old-fashioned place, following a slightly smaller black-haired curse down a narrow path. The village feels old and archaic, but not so old that it shouldn’t still exist today. Satoru’s never heard of a Konoha, though, not even in the history books.

As much as he’s getting what he wants, there’s nothing to ask about; he’s just seeing the layout, the overall aesthetic, and he doesn’t have questions. Well, not about this memory, anyway.

“What was the training for?” Satoru asks.

The outline of Obito’s real-world self shrugs. “Team-building. Shinobi training. That sort of stuff. Kakashi was on my genin team, and he led my first chūnin mission, too, as my captain.”

“Wait wait wait—shinobi? You guys are ninja ?”

Obito blinks. “Um. Yeah. You didn’t know?”

“That’s so random —that’s hilarious . Wow. I love that.”

He’s getting a lot of dirty looks as he grins and teases, but the ugly truth of these images isn’t too hard to find if he peels back the calm facade of this sleepy, old-world village.

These kids are child soldiers. The school? It’s indoctrinating them into the collective mindset, making everything around them seem totally normal. Obito’s sitting here across the chabudai from him, this small thing of maybe thirteen, barely even a teenager, and all the little glimpses he’s seen into the boy’s life tell him that this child has been to war.

And so has Kakashi. Kakashi, who can’t wash the blood off his hands, who wakes up in the night, removes all the seals on his door, just to scrub away trauma that he can’t escape.

Kakashi does not want Obito to grow up and relive whatever comes after this, and now, neither does Satoru.

But Satoru doesn’t say anything. He smiles with his chin on the backs of his hands and watches on, keeping his thoughts to himself.

One second.

He’s putting it together now. Theories, and a lot of them. Sealing—Obito knows seals, but they probably aren’t the same as the seals used in the jujutsu world. If they’re anything like this ‘chakra’ bullshit then they might be more flexible, easy to mould. There may actually be some merit in seeing if this kid can draw one up that can contain Sukuna. For all that Yūji’s execution is just delayed, Satoru will always want to see a future in which Yūji can live. If there were a way to permanently, unequivocally seal the king of curses into the body of Yūji Itadori, then maybe there’s a path they can take that leads Yūji to a full life.

Satoru hates watching kids die. Too many times he’s seen their remnants break apart, nothing but a hollow emptiness left in their wake and the knowledge that the people protecting them have failed.

One second.

He sees Obito, this kid whose life was cut short. Maybe not literally. Maybe Obito gets to see his twentieth birthday or his thirtieth, and maybe he’s older than Satoru. But what does that matter when he’s had his childhood ripped away from him? What, barely out of training wheels and already risking himself for the sake of something the adults in his life have decided is greater than him?

And Kakashi? That kid. That boy hidden behind a mask, all the spark gone from his eyes, crying into a sink when the rest of the world is sleeping because he can’t wash away the horrors that he’s seen.

Jujutsu High isn’t much better. Satoru knows this. His kids are risking life and limb to exorcise cursed spirits just as he did at their age, just as Suguru did and Kento and all the names lost to time, regretting their choices in their final moments of dread.

But this feels different. Satoru doesn’t know why. Not very, not in big ways, but there’s some fundamental truth that makes the jujutsu world’s situation and that of the curses’ homeland seem vastly different.

Satoru wants to throw this world on its head. It’s why he started teaching in the first place. The only way that’ll happen is if the new generations make it so, and he’ll sow the seeds of revolution for the bright future that he sees.

These twin curses don’t get that. Their world never changed and here they are, the embodiment of their negative thoughts before death, failed by a system that doomed them from the start.

One second.

“Hey, Gojō?”

“Hm?”

“What happened to Kakashi?” Obito asks. “How did he age? You did something, right?”

There’s a nagging thought in his head, intrusive and demanding: I want to tell him. He deserves to know.

This thought is not his. It’s Obito’s, threaded through this genjutsu and flagged by the Six Eyes as a lie. Satoru can see as much, not necessarily because he’s immune to the illusion, but because it’s too far from his reality for him to believe.

Maybe they can’t run from their pasts and maybe these memories will come back regardless, but it doesn’t have to be now. Satoru agrees with Kakashi.

“Who knows?” he says with a smile, the image playing over reality, finding him at a park. There’s a small boy talking to a small Obito, a green scarf around the kid’s neck. He looks happy, a bit full of himself, and Obito seems to think he’s so cool. But the games they’re playing are just another means to an end, inviting a future of violence into these too-small lives. “Must’ve had a growth spurt.”

It turns out that not all worlds have revolutions. Not every story has a twist. And the sun does not rise for everyone.

If this is the world that Obito’s coming from, then maybe he doesn’t need it.

Chapter Text

Kakashi watches his pupil balance effortlessly atop the surface of the courtyard pond, practicing the forms they went over yesterday. It’s an old-world feeling, one that he’s carried with him for a long, long time but can’t quite recall. This, what he’s seeing right now, it’s nothing new.

Nostalgia. That’s what this is. Training Yuuji makes him feel nostalgic for a time he doesn’t know. What memories await him when next he feeds?

Remembering is inevitable; even if he tries to run, a new fact of his past will rise to the surface now and then when he eats. Any food he puts into this body breaks down into cursed energy, and that cursed energy gives him back more pieces of himself. It won’t stop until his history is laid bare and staring him dead in the face. Well, maybe there’s one way to stop it.

 If he distances himself from all of these small, inconsequential things that make him feel human, if he lives as a curse , then he might keep his ignorance. Even now, thinking about it, he knows he can’t go through with it. These mundane routines are all that tether him to Kakashi, the human who existed before him, and he’s not ready to let go.

What would that mean, to live as a curse?

It’s several minutes before Yuuji notices him, too focused on making the newly-learned hand sighs that he’s shifting through, drilled into his head during their last lesson. He’s summoned a trio of basic clones before long. The kid’s a natural.

Kakashi made the call early on to start Yuuji off with academy-grade jutsu and he stands by that decision. They don’t have time to burn through his thousand jutsu right now, with the Goodwill Event kicking off tomorrow, and having a firm grasp of the basics will always be more important than showing off a few flashy parlour tricks. Even a henge, when properly utilized, can turn the tide in battle.

And, well. This is a school event. Yuuji probably doesn’t need S-rank ninjutsu in his arsenal to start with.

“Kakashi-sensei!” Yuuji greets with a big grin. He waves his arms in the air and the clones all do the same. It’s a wonder how he has so much energy first thing in the morning; he and Obito are the real monsters out here. “Look, I made the clone things!”

“Very good, Yuuji,” he says with a yawn. They’re decent, solid clones, especially considering the time restraint that Yuuji’s been under to master this low-tier jutsu. There’s something special about this kid.

“Can we try something new today?”

Kakashi should shut down that request quickly before he gives his student false hope, but he finds it hard to say ‘no’ anytime Yuuji addresses him like that.

Sensei.

Kakashi isn’t fit for that title. No matter how his title of ‘prodigy’ may have fooled everyone, he realized over the years that his poor teamwork is what got Obito killed all those years ago. It doesn’t matter that Obito is, or was, alive. Obito’s survival doesn’t change the simple fact that he played his role as leader poorly, and he has regrets, and he had to live with those regrets up until the day that he died.

Though he’s good at following orders, Kakashi’s never been good with people. It was worse after his father died. He was too stuck on what the White Fang’s suicide meant and too confused about what why his father was condemned when, to Kakashi, it felt like he made the right decision. Saving your friends should always come first. Protecting the people you love is worthy and noble and just—

Those very same people that Dad saved spat on his name after he died. The village decided that no, his decision was the incorrect one. He should have let them die.

Kakashi, scared to become what his father had, agreed. And he hated it, every minute of it, because he knew that he was lying to himself.

So, he decided to abandon Rin. He fought with Obito. And despite all that wasted time between them, time that could have been better spent trying to help their friend, he turned on his heel far too late and it was Obito who paid the price.

Kakashi has only ever made wrong decisions.

But Yuuji calls him Sensei.

“Maa, I could teach you how to make real clones.” Kakashi drags his steps as he walks across the stone pathway to the open space of the courtyard that they’ve claimed as their training grounds, blatantly ignoring the bridge he promised Gojo that he would fix. “It’s a bit tricky, though.”

Yuuji makes a face, walking effortlessly across the water to the shoreline. “Aren’t these,” he throws as thumb over his shoulder at the copies behind him, “real clones?”

“No,” Kakashi sighs. Even without his Sharingan, he can see the fuzzy edges of these clones. They’ll fool an enemy for a moment, so they work in a pinch, but Yuuji hasn’t had enough practice to make them convincing. “Those are just illusions.”

“Like your genjutsu?”

“Exactly?”

“So, like, I’m gonna learn how to make a physical clone?”

When Kakashi nods, the boy’s face lights up like starlight. He’s impossible not to be fond of, the kind of person that makes the air vibrate with energy, so similar to—

To…

Someone.

Technically, if this were Konoha, teaching this technique to some non-shinobi, or even a genin, would be a big taboo. The shadow clone technique is strictly reserved for jōnin-rank shinobi because halving one’s chakra and dividing it up between two bodies is a taxing, cumbersome process that can easily lead to chakra exhaustion. It’s hard to master on top of that. But Yuuji has some pretty deep reserves to tap into, he listens well and hangs on Kakashi’severy word. If they’re cautious, he’ll be able to handle at least one shadow clone, and having a second body to utilize would help make up for the lack of variety in Yuuji’s arsenal. Kneading chakra is a very new thing to Yuuji, so this may be a bit unwise, but if he can pull it off then it might give him the upper hand in the event.

Kakashi doesn’t rely on genjutsu for his training lately. As convenient as it is, once that illusion fades, Yuuji will have to get used to doing everything on his own anyway. It helps explain concepts but when it comes to sparring and actually practicing jutsu, Kakashi’s found it best to let his pupil learn organically. The trick is to keep his explanations simple: if Kakashi goes in with a lecture, it’s just going to fly over the kid’s head.

Their lessons work in shifts. Once Yuuji understands the basic idea of what he’s supposed to do with the shadow clones, Kakashi calls for a break. The kid hasn’t successfully made a clone yet, sure, but it’s easy to tell with the Sharingan how he’s coming to divide up his chakra, and that’s good enough. Yuuji decides to nap under the big tree that marks their training grounds—stealing Kakashi’s favourite spot, but that’s fine—and Kakashi decides to leave his student in peace. Instead, he’ll…

Hm.

Kakashi wanders. He’s spent so long in this estate that he’s getting pretty sick of it, but his mind is running too fast for a nap right now and there’s nothing better to do. He walks along the porch until he comes upon an open shōji screen and finds a very odd duo sitting on the other side. Red and blue stare back at him, Gojo’s blindfold resting on the chabudai, and the whispers he caught before he turned the corner have already died out.

Obito and Gojo hang out together a lot these days and it’s disconcerting.

When Kakashi doesn’t leave, Obito stretches in some exaggerated manner, as though his conversation with the one across from him was already over. “I should get started on those dishes,” he says very obviously. As his arms circle down, he slips some papers off of the table and hides them behind his back. As though Kakashi isn’t watching him do it. Like he’s trying to cover something up and is doing a piss-poor job of it. Well, Obito’s never been good at keeping secrets. “Oh, and Yuuji has that event thing tomorrow. I should do laundry, too. He’ll need a clean uniform.”

“Oh, yes,” Gojo says, mocking Obito with the same stiff, awkward tone he’s using, “you should go do that. So many things need to be done. Better hurry.”

Obito, still being obvious, keeps the papers hidden behind his back as he gets up and backs out of the room, only acknowledging Kakashi when he’s halfway to the door. “Well, I’m off, then. Oh, Kakashi—didn’t see you there. I was just—going to—clean.”

Kakashi rolls his eyes. Watching this is painful. There’s a black smudge on Obito’s cheek and an inkpot on the table, painting a pretty clear picture of what they were doing. Kakashi should probably ask, but he won’t be getting an answer, anyway. Besides, something tells him that he doesn’t want to know.

Obito slips out of the room and scurries away down the hall, his footsteps fading, and the two left behind have a lot of silence to catch up on.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Gojo says matter-of-factly as he rests his chin in his hand. “Quite frankly, I’m hurt. Also: good morning, Kashi! So nice of you to join us. Me. Whatever.”

Well, he wasn’t trying to hide it. With a sigh, he gathers up his will and sinks down onto the floor cushion across the table. Gojo’s eyes fall on him in that uncomfortable way that they do, seeing through to the essence of his self, and he doesn’t look up. If he does, he’ll see the one person he’s shown his weakness to, and it scares him.

“How’s Yuuji doing?” Gojo asks.

“You should see for yourself. He’s your student, after all.”

Gojo dismisses the accusation with a wave of his hand. “I had him where I wanted him to be a week ago. Your little boot camp is just an added bonus. Besides…” He tilts his head and stares at the wall with purpose, a sly grin on his face. There’s nothing there—nothing Kakashi can see. But Gojo’s looking in the direction of the courtyard, straight at their training grounds. “I’ve been keeping an eye out.”

This man can see through walls and Kakashi shouldn’t be surprised.

“Clones. Imagine that. You’re just full of surprises, aren’t ya?”

Kakashi sighs. “Spare me.”

“I get the feeling you have a lot more tricks up your sleeve than Obito does,” he continues, drumming his finger along the table in an annoying way that grates on Kakashi’s ears. “Like that chakra shit, for example. Seems to me that you know how it works now, but he doesn’t.”

“It came with aging up,” Kakashi confesses, willing himself to meet the uncomfortable stare of the Six Eyes head-on. “You told me before that I should have come pre-wired with knowledge of my place in the world. Well, it happened. I get it.”

Gojo whistles. “So you’re finally feeling like a curse? Wow. Took a while.”

“No. Not really. But I’m starting to understand.”

Kakashi knows how he uses chakra now. Cursed energy—that raw, untouched power that makes up his body—is still a bit of an enigma, but he knows enough to use it. Manipulate it. Change its attributes. He understands how his body works, that his physical form isn’t who he is but a projection of how he sees himself, and that he’s not a child. He’s not a teenager. Not an adult. He just is. And, much as he hates the thought, his true form may not look human at all.

When he calls upon his tantō, he’s materializing a piece of himself, and when his mask falls away, the cursed energy that makes up its shape merges with the rest of him.

Everything about him is fake.

Despite this, Kakashi wakes up at night with horrors in his mind like he’s still a living, breathing, traumatized person. As though Kakashi the human and Kakashi the curse are one and the same. But he still doesn’t know that to be true.

Gojo doesn’t ask about that night. Not at all. There were no jokes when Kakashi got up the next morning, no teasing or prodding, not even an off-handed comment. Isn’t that strange? This man who needs to know everything allows Kakashi his peace.

“Thank you,” Kakashi says quietly, staring out at the garden beyond the porch. Wow, this is awkward. Very, very awkward. He scratches his cheek when there’s no response, knowing that this came out of left field and he should probably expand on it. “For the other night.”

The smile falls off Gojo’s face, his hands find the table, and here it is. Now, he’ll ask. And Kakashi will answer, even if it’s not forced out of him by their vow. He’s the one who brought it up, after all. So, he’ll open up. Let Gojo in just a little, just this once. The egotistical bastard has softened up to them and Kakashi wonders if he should try to do the same. Maybe it’s time to leave the past where it is and build something new here.

Maybe he can learn to let go.

“I want you with us at the Goodwill Event.”

Kakashi chokes on his impending confession and stares directly at the Six Eyes because what the fuck.

Gojo’s grinning again. The sombre mood lasted a whole half a minute, so maybe Kakashi should be impressed. Here Kakashi is, all pumped up for the deep dive into personal traumas that he was so sure Gojo would prod, and they’ve changed the subject. Maybe he should consider it a mercy.

“Let’s be honest: I’m not going to be able to hide two special grades in my little corner of Japan forever. Even the great Satoru Gojo has his limits,” he says. “The elders think that Yuuji’s dead, but that’ll change tomorrow when he makes his appearance at the exchange event. I figure it’s best to rip the bandaid off all at once. It’ll hurt less that way.”

This is a terrible, horrible, no-good idea. And Gojo knows this. “Isn’t it a school for jujutsu sorcerers?” A nod. “Exorcists.” Another nod. “People who will actively want me dead.”

“Hey, you won’t be alone! They’ll want Yuuji dead, too.”

Oh. Right.

Kakashi hasn’t thought much of it. Yuuji’s told the story of his very-real-but-not-very-long-lasting death and vaguely mentioned that his friends don’t know that he’s alive yet, but that was just backstory—it didn’t have any bearings on their day-to-day. Not until now.

Yuuji is something of a jinchuuriki, except the monster sealed inside him seems to be stronger than a single tailed beast. If Yuuji dies then that thing, Sukuna, may die with him. It makes sense that there would be some people out there intent on seeing that happen. But it’s Yuuji. That sweet sunshine child. The one that tugs on memories Kakashi doesn’t have and who makes it so easy to forget the horrors newly carved into this body.

He can taste smoke on his tongue, thick in the air, from a night he’ll never forget. He can see the distant body of a towering fox as it crushes beneath its might the village that he calls home.

Kakashi blinks and he’s in another life, a new one still full of promise, where a man with impossible eyes makes a silent proposition.

Gojo is asking Kakashi to be that boy’s guard. He’s not using their binding vow to force this job onto the curse. This choice is Kakashi’s to make, and Kakashi says ‘yes.’

The sorcerer’s lopsided grin is warm and off-putting. Kakashi doesn’t like when Gojo starts feeling too human; he’s so used to the man going off about being a god among men, an undefeatable champion of cursed energy, that Gojo rarely feels like a real person. Right now, though?

Kakashi shudders to think that Satoru Gojo, beneath his broken abilities and untouchable skill, is just another guy.

Gojo hides all that humanity behind his blindfold and it’s nice that they can go back to playing normal, no eyes meeting eyes or feelings being explored. Kakashi is bad with those. “I won’t lie: they’re gonna go after you. The very first thing they’ll do is try to exorcise the rogue cursed spirit wandering around. Hell, they might cancel the whole event and evacuate the area. It’ll bum Yuuji out, so let’s avoid that.”

Is being a special grade curse really that big of a deal? Kakashi has some big reserves, sure, but he doesn’t feel like any more of a threat than the human Kakashi was. Well, no—Obito shares his Sharingan with Kakashi now, so he’s a bit dangerous. After evolving, he figured out how to actively work Obito’s Mangekyou, too, which is how he got the talismans off their bedroom door. Before, he mostly used it subconsciously.

“I don’t suppose you have any magic ninja tricks up your sleeve that might help with that?”

Kakashi presses his thumb and forefinger to his chin as he thinks. “The main issue is that they’ll flag me as a curse, right?”

“Right.”

“I could try a henge.” When all he gets is a blank stare, he sighs. “I can transform my body. It’s an academy-grade technique, but it’s effective enough.”

“C’mon, Kashi,” Gojo teases in that grating way that he does, “making yourself look pretty won’t hide your cursed energy.”

Kakashi rolls his eyes and brings his hands together, pressing chakra through the seal they form, and his body goes up in smoke. When it settles, he looks exactly the same and Gojo is entirely unimpressed.

At first.

Kakashi looks down at the inkpot left out on the chabudai, his mouth dry as, through the glass, he can see himself reflected back.

It’s been a long, long time.

He tried it in the mirror a few days ago, all this new information about chakra and cursed energy fresh and buzzing in his head. There were so many things he wanted to try—too many—and he needed to keep occupied so that his thoughts wouldn’t spiral. It’s getting easier lately, training with Yuuji and having something to look forward to in the morning, but for a few days, Kakashi had a lot of time to himself.

It seems that jujutsu sorcerers can’t sense chakra like they can cursed energy. So, if he kneads enough of it and suppresses what’s left over it should, in theory, be hard to tell that he’s a curse. As a bonus: using chakra to wear a henge makes him visible. For some reason. That remains a mystery, but he’s not going to question it.

Gojo looks like he might, though. He’s peeling back part of his blindfold to stare with a wide blue eye at Kakashi, his pupil shaking as it thoroughly scans every inch of his body for a lie. Then the blindfold goes down, the hand goes with it, and nothing shows on his face.

“Well, I can still tell,” Gojo huffs, as though not wanting to admit defeat here, “but it’s good. Real good. They’ll see through it if they’re looking for it, but it’s a convincing lie. We just need to make sure they don’t suspect anything. It doesn’t matter if they find out later; I just don’t want to ruin the event. The kids have been working hard on it. What about Obito—can he do this?”

“No,” Kakashi says. “I don’t think he’ll be able to manage it unless he absorbs more cursed energy, and I rather not resort to that.”

“So he stays home.”

“He won’t want to.”

“But he will,” Gojo challenges, “because he’s a good boy.”

Kakashi makes a face. Since when has Gojo thought well of Obito? What’s been going on between them?

“Alright!” Gojo claps his hands, all sunshine and rainbows. “One problem solved. Now, I’m gonna head into town for some kikufuku. Wanna come?”

“Not in the least.”

Gojo shrugs. “Your loss.”

Obito has secrets now. He keeps them hidden at the back of Gojo’s closet, behind a bunch of clothes that all look the same and under boxes of junk that should have been tossed out a decade ago. Well, they have a secret, but Obito’s the only one with any motivation to keep it.

It all boils down to avoiding a lecture from his somehow-older twin curse.

Just like every day before it, Obito grabs the black and white shoebox at the very end of the closet behind all of Gojo’s crap and adds the new seals he’s sketched to the pile already forming at the bottom. None of them are viable yet—he doesn’t know if he’s ever designed a seal from scratch before—but he’s copying parts of the jinchuuriki seals and it’s helping him remember.

He wonders if he grew up to be a seal master. Whenever Gojo catches him working on it, a bunch of questions follow and Obito points out different sigils, explaining what they mean. He’s not sure why Gojo cares, but it’s kinda nice getting to relive all this long-forgotten knowledge.

Once the pages are safely tucked away from prying eyes, Obito crawls back out of the closet on his hands and knees.

His heart nearly stops when he finds an unimpressed teenager standing in the middle of Gojo’s bedroom. Or, it would have if he had a heart.

“Obito,” Kakashi calls, sounding like a scolding parent—Obito hates their new dynamic with a burning passion. “What are you doing? You know Gojo doesn’t want us in here.”

Actually, Gojo gave him permission. To, you know, keep their secret. But Kakashi can’t know that because then the whole point of it is lost.

“Playing ninja,” Obito says and feels stupid for it. Gojo told him that kids play games like that here (in between laughing, again, at the fact that they’re from a bonafide ninja village ) so it’s the first thing that popped into his head. Now his face is red because he realizes that he’s a fucking idiot.

Kakashi scrubs a hand over his face, as though Obito’s words physically hurt him, and sighs. “Forget I asked.” He nods to the door. “Come on. Let’s go before he looks this way with his Six Eyes and kicks up a fuss.”

Obito follows him out of the room. It’s past dinner. Yuuji’s in the kitchen doing clean up and Gojo’s off somewhere, probably, eating a bunch of sugar and being a menace to Nanami over text. That’s his usual routine at this time of night.

As they shuffle down the hall and into their (unsealed) room, he stares at Kakashi’s back. To Obito, Kakashi doesn’t look like Kakashi anymore. He looks like a stranger. And it’s weird, okay? Because Kakashi’s always been the youngest, and now he’s not, and Obito is, and he’s quiet one moment then scolding the next. Sometimes he’s gentle, as though cutting words might shatter Obito into pieces, and other times he’s shutting out the world and everyone in it.

Kakashi was always difficult—it’s why they fought—but it was never like this.

They drag out their futons and get ready for bed, even though it’s rare for Kakashi to actually sleep these days. Obito’s caught him leaving the room in the middle of the night but never says anything about it. It has to do with Kakashi’s new memories, no doubt, and as much as he wants to know what happened beyond his own recollection, he’s scared.

They go through the same nightly routine most humans do, even though they’re no longer people and washing their faces or brushing their teeth doesn’t accomplish anything. It tethers them to their humanity, he thinks, still buried deep inside of them, even in these new bodies, and reminds them that the lives they lived are still theirs. That’s the way he sees it, anyway. Kakashi, he’s not sure. It’s hard to read him now, harder than it’s ever been, and Obito doesn’t know a thing about this new person his old friend is becoming.

But he wants to.

Kakashi might be using silence to protect Obito. From what? Well, everything, maybe. Or nothing. From Gojo, the future, the past, and the infinity between them. Whatever it is, Obito’s teetering on the edge of fear and frustration, and it’s getting to the peak of what he can tolerate.

For all that he looks like this, and for the little that he remembers, he’s not a child. Kakashi needs to stop treating him this way.

There’s a lamp in their room now and a bookshelf. A little table, some knickknacks. Gojo shows up with furniture every once in a while, no explanation, and they just sort of accept it. They’ll argue over where to put these unprompted offerings, trying to keep the small room as open as possible yet unwilling to reject anything they’re given because each new addition makes it feel more like a home and less like a prison.

When the light goes off, they stare at each other from their pillows, burrowed beneath sheets. This is how it is every night. They both have things to say but won’t say them, too stubborn to open up and talk it out like adults.

Obito decides this game of chicken is bullshit and he’s over it. “Kakashi?”

“Mm?”

“Are you okay?”

It’s such a simple question, but he watches with the clarity of his Sharingan as a million different things cross Kakashi’s face. “Why?”

“I’m worried,” he confesses, rolling onto his back to stare at the ceiling. “I guess you changed as you got older. I mean, people do that, right? But every time I look at you it feels like I’m seeing someone about to jump off a cliff, as though nothing matters anymore, and it has me fucking scared.”

Okay, yeah, so Obito doesn’t want to be this honest, but it’s out there now and there’s no taking that back.

The way Kakashi blanks has him feeling sick. And—and ‘why.’ Kakashi asked why. Why someone would want to know if he was okay. Why Obito would ask.

Does he really not know?

“I’m fine, Obito. Honest.” Kakashi trains his voice into its usual calm, but Obito felt a small spike of cursed energy when he asked his question and it was enough of a tell. “I just have a lot to think about.”

“Wanna share with the class?”

Kakashi sighs. Seeing as they won’t be sleeping anytime soon, he props himself up on his elbow, supporting his head with his hand. “You never came back to Konoha.”

What?

“It’s been so long,” Kakashi says, shuddering. “I know that you’ve been with me in this world all this time, but in my head, it feels like it’s been years. I don’t know how to act around you, what to say, or…”

Okay, okay. He pushes back the torrent of thoughts swarming his head— I had to go back why wouldn’t I go back the village is my home it’s all that I know— and breathes, uselessly, through lungs that aren’t real. Fuck that. Who cares? For all he knows, Konoha is nothing more than a relic buried beneath overgrowth by now. Nothing that happened in their past lives matters.

Of that world, they’re the only ones left.

“Kakashi,” he calls, reaching through the space between them for a pale hand, giving it a squeeze and feeling awkward as hell in doing so, “don’t take this the wrong way, okay?”

Hesitantly, Kakashi nods.

“You’re a fucking idiot.” When his twin curse gives him an odd look, he rolls his eyes. “What, you gotta put an act on around me now? What’s changed? You’re a little taller, so what?”

“A little?”

“ A little, ” he spits like he’s cursing the world. “Nothing’s different between us. I dunno. It feels like you’re making something out of nothing here, Bakashi.”

Kakashi’s smile is a tired thing, aged beyond its years. “Maybe I am.”

Then Kakashi ruffles his hair, just to piss him off. And it works.

Yuuji’s practically vibrating. He’s all packed up like he’s going on some massive road trip, but apparently the school isn’t that far from here. Add to that: Gojo can teleport. Kakashi has Kamui (though a part of him still insists he shouldn’t share their secrets with Gojo). Needless to say, there won’t be a need for a car ride, much less the vacation that Yuuji thinks he’s going on. 

And why is there a crate in the middle of the room?

Kakashi dreads telling Obito to stay home, but when he goes looking, he finds his twin curse in the courtyard with a bunch of wood, tools and nails all piled next to the pound. Where did he steal all of that from?

“Obito,” he calls, drawing Sharingan eyes to him, “we’re heading out. Listen… I know you want to come, but I don’t think—”

“I’ll stay home,” Obito says, twisting back around. He’s tilting his head this way and that, staring at the remnants of a very sad, very dead bridge that Kakashi will get to eventually, probably, at some point or another.

That… is not a very Obito thing to say. “You will?”

“I’m sick of looking at this bridge and Gojo won’t shut up about it,” Obito huffs. “If you won’t fix it, then someone has to. And there’s a bunch of chores to do and stuff, so. I dunno. Maybe it’ll be nice having the place to myself for once.”

Everything about this feels wrong. Kakashi can’t help but eye the other curse as though some underlying truth might reveal itself, but Obito’s genuinely just pulling out the wood that’s floating on the surface of the pond. “If you’re sure,” he says slowly.

Obito was excited when Yuuji talked about his friends from school. He’d wanted to meet them. So, honestly, Kakashi expected a fight.

Obito grins back at him, depositing the aftermath of Kakashi’s long-forgotten training session in a heap by all of his supplies. “Bring me back a souvenir or something. And lots of stories.”

Kakashi smiles. Obito tells him that he overthinks things. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Maybe he should stop worrying so much.

Gojo and Yuuji deserve one another. How did he end up stuck with these two, exactly?

Kakashi sighs as Yuuji nestles himself into that ominous-looking crate, surrounded by some ugly little trinkets Gojo scrounged up. Their big reveal plan is absolute garbage, and Kakashi doesn’t see this ending well. But Yuuji’s convinced this will wow and amaze the friends he hasn’t seen in a long time, so who is Kakashi to trample on all his hopes and dreams?”

“This is a terrible idea,” he says aloud despite himself.

“Oh, come on, Kashi! Lighten up a little!”

“Yeah, Kakashi-sensei! This is the best plan ever. ”

Ugh. He wishes he stayed home with Obito. Fixing the bridge would have been less painful.

Kakashi’s already put on his henge. He’s kneaded chakra through his body to use in the event that someone really does try to attack Yuuji—this way, his henge won’t waver with the use of his cursed energy—and he has his reserves on a chokehold. Gojo checked him over for any faults in his disguise before they left and gave him the all-clear. Hopefully, this whole thing will go over smoothly.

Gojo seems to think that his identity as a curse will be blown before they leave anyway. “It’ll be fine,” he said. “You’ve got a binding vow with the world’s strongest, remember?”

If Gojo’s so strong then why is Kakashi here in the first place? He should be able to protect Yuuji all on his own.

Once Yuuji is securely tucked away in the crate and the crate is on a trolley, they’re pushing it—by hand—to Jujutsu High’s Tokyo campus. Despite this being some elite, specialized school, it’s out in the middle of nowhere. Gojo hasn’t explained much about the school except that it’s where he teaches—Gojo is a teacher , somehow, and Kakashi struggles to remember that—and there are very few students because jujutsu sorcerers are rare. Yuuji’s only one of three first years. It’s nothing like Konoha, where anyone who has workable chakra levels is dropped into the academy by the age of five or six.

“You’re sure they won’t be able to tell?” Kakashi confirms because, despite everything, he apparently doesn’t want to die. The thought of leaving Obito alone in this world makes him feel sick.

“Well, with that attitude, maybe they will,” Gojo teases. “Come on, Kashi. Relax. If Satoru Gojo says you’ll be fine, then you’ll be fine. ”

He remains unconvinced.

“Are we almost there?” Yuuji asks, poking his head out from the top of the crate, his body hidden away behind Gojo’s trash. Er, souvenirs. “It’s really hot in here. I kinda hate it.”

Sage, help them all.

Obito stands in a curse-filled alley somewhere in Tokyo. Grotesque bodies pass him by unnoticed, as though he’s just another fixture in their world, and he supposes that he is. If he doesn’t bother them, then they won’t bother him. There’s kinship here, somewhere, despite how different they look on the outside.

Kakashi must think he’s too thick-headed to put two-and-two together, but c’mon. He was a chunin by Kannabi Bridge and he likes to think he’s not as stupid as his prodigy friend used to consider him. Obito took note of the crippling flare of cursed energy that followed Kakashi to the Gojo estate the night he aged up and it’s not hard to imagine where he got it from. They’re curses. They feed off of cursed energy and make it their own. And the best way to get a lot of it at once? Well.

Obito can hazard a guess.

He wants to know where he was all those years if he wasn’t in the village. Vaguely, he remembers a cave, and an old man, the foreign cells of his right side falling to pieces whenever he tried to stand. It didn’t matter, though, because he needed to save Rin.

Rin died and everything went black. Soon, he was standing over a blood-soaked battlefield, her cold body in his arms, wondering where it all go wrong.

The thing is, in his head, he imagines himself rushing to Kakashi’s side to make sure his still-leaving teammate was okay. He can picture them returning to Konoha together, burying their dead and rebuilding the bridges between them. And it hurts, and it’s hard, but they’re not alone and they get through it.

That’s not what happens, is it?

There are questions in need of answers and Obito will get them one way or another.

With shaking limbs, he conjures fire at his fingertips and takes aim at one of the multi-eyed monstrosities passing by. It turns to him, uncomprehending, voicing the regrets of the humans who have passed through like an echo of years gone by.

And he can’t do it.

For as hard to look at as these things are, he sees himself in them. He sees Kakashi. At the end of the day, they’re not much different from the standard everyday curses that swarm abandoned buildings, hospitals, and wherever else negative thoughts gather. They’re stronger, sure, and that makes them smarter, and maybe there were humans once when these curses weren’t. But beyond that, they’re the same. Gojo intended to exorcise them the way that he would have any of these because, to him and his freaky fucking eyes, there was no difference.

Maybe Obito was never cut out to be a shinobi. He loathes to admit it, but he doesn’t like fighting all that much. Sparring is fun. Helping Yuuji train is hilarious, and he wants to see how well he can match up against Kakashi’s new form one day soon—but killing people? Killing curses ? All so he can, what, remember some shit from a life he’s no longer living?

Is he that sort of person?

The flames die out in his hand and he groans loudly like a scolded child. He glares at the curse he was intent on killing, then sticks up his nose and starts walking away. This whole thing is stupid and he can’t do it. Hell, he used to play cards with curses like these! Yet here he was, thinking his stupid little brain would let him set a bunch of these guys on fire just so he could catch up to Kakashi. Ha!

It’s when a seven-armed husk of meat and flesh drags a small child into the alley by her wrist that Obito stills, feeling the heat beneath his skin. Her mother’s calling for her beyond this curse-infested crevice, her voice ringing clear through Obito’s sensitive ears, and he turns on the mound of curses swarming after her small, unseeing body.

Oh, look.

A reason to fight.

While Satoru Gojo runs ahead with the trolley, filling the air with nonsense words about gifts for the Kyoto students and shoving at these kids the contents of the crate, Kakashi meanders over at his own pace, giving himself time to properly assess the situation, much as his human counterpart would during a mission. Their cover story is that he’s a member of the Gojo clan, not from the main branch, with a non-sorcerer parent. Why? Because, as Gojo always used to say: “You’re like a little Satoru! It’s so cute!”

Kakashi’s not so little anymore, but he won’t deny they share similar features. Just to push that point, he paled his hair when he made the henge, trying to bring out more of a similarity between them so that these strangers won’t question his lineage.

There aren’t that many kids, as expected, but he can put names to the faces of two just off of Yuuji’s descriptions alone: Megumi and Kugisaki. They remind him of something, vaguely, but he’s not too sure. When Yuuji jumps out of the box, arms in the air and a big smile on his face, those two are the only ones who react. And their reaction is not positive.

Kakashi sighs. See, this is why he said it was a bad idea. Personally, if a close friend who he thought died—ah, wait, he has one of those, doesn’t he? Well, if Obito went missing for a long time—he did that, too. Hm.

If, when Obito returned, he made a spectacle out of it, showing that he was fine and that he actively did not reveal himself to Kakashi for weeks or months despite knowing how crushing of an impact his death had, it would have felt vile.

Satoru Gojo may very well be the strongest, but he seems to teeter between eerily perceptive and terribly dense. His insight is top-tier. His people skills? They’re shit.

Not that Kakashi can say anything; he tried bettering himself when he lost Obito, but after Rin, the burden was too heavy for him to carry alone. He struggled a lot, and he’s not sure he ever succeeded in becoming the person that he wanted to be.

Also: why is there a panda?

Kakashi stops behind his ‘cousin’ and all eyes are on him. Yuuji is an unexpected surprise, sure, but at least they know him. Kakashi’s a complete stranger. It makes sense that they’re wary.

That just means Yuuji is getting even more ignored. Poor kid. This is all Gojo’s fault, as usual.

There’s a girl, lean with dark hair and glasses, tilting her head at him. This must be Maki. Gojo’s already warned him about her; she can’t see curses without a medium, so she’ll be the ultimate test. If she takes off her glasses and Kakashi isn’t there, this game ends. “Don’t tell me you’re another dead friend of theirs.”

Kakashi opens his mouth to say that no, he’s not. But technically he is. Well, the dead part, at least—the two first years are strangers.

Shockingly, no one is suspicious after Gojo hooks an arm around his shoulders and pulls him in. “This little guy is Kakashi Gojo. He’ll be chaperoning the event. Play nice, okay?”

Is that what he’s calling it? And no one above Gojo has approved this, have they? He’s just doing what he wants like he always does and everyone else just has to deal.

When Obito breathes, he feels cursed energy jitter through his body. The girl’s long gone, back in the arms of her mother, no doubt, but he’s still here.

On a bit of a rampage, one could say.

See, he hated it at first because cursed spirits feel pain. Maybe not as strongly, maybe not in the same way as humans, but they can hurt just the same. He sees it on their faces as their bodies break apart, absorbed by his own, their strength thrumming through him like a song.

It got easier. When he looked down at his hand, fingers long and thin, he realized this is how Kakashi did it.

He’s not sure where he is now but he can feel the pull of his other half elsewhere in the world and it’s enough to orientate him. One alley doesn’t hold enough curses for what he needs, so he’s moving through the city streets, looking for anything old and abandoned where these things might gather. Normally, they pay him no mind. He’s one of them, after all. Another curse. Another monster.

But when he attacks, they swarm.

Obito’s eyes itch as they shift into his Mangekyou, a flood of new information filling his brain. He steadies his sights on a lunging, six-headed bird… thing. Fuck, he doesn’t know. These things don’t make any sense and their bodies always look like they were slapped together from discarded parts. Poor fellas. They didn’t get Obito and Kakashi’s luck, and that’s such a shame.

He calls for Kamui and each of those heads lops off into his pocket dimension, leaving behind a spray of blood and gore and cursed energy that calls to him like a siren.

“Oh,” he hums, “this is new.”

Obito has another toy to play with. Well, this solves the mystery of where all those talismans went. Kakashi remembered how to use their eyes in the very same way he is now.

Obito must be catching up.

Chapter Text

When Yuuji reveals himself to his friends, he expects an emotional reunion filled with tears and hugs and maybe a bit of yelling. That’s okay because he gets it—it’s a lot at once. Together again, they’ll take on the Goodwill Event and come out on top, proving themselves to the second-years, to Gojo and Kakashi, and everyone will find their proper place.

He doesn’t expect to be interrogated like a spy.

Yuuji shrinks under his classmates’ glares, pouting. Megumi and Kugisaki are quiet and bitter like he’s betrayed the whole nation and he gets it, really he does, but it’s not like faking his death was his idea.

Kakashi must’ve known this would happen. All those warnings he gave are making a lot of sense right now.

“So?” presses the long-haired girl with the glasses, arms crossed as she scrutinizes him. This is Maki, the one they were told to watch out for—the one Kakashi’s least likely to fool if something goes wrong… or something. Yuuji doesn’t know; he only heard in passing. “Who is he? That Kakashi Gojo guy. Something’s up with him, isn’t it?”

Yuuji is not the best person to go to if you want a secret kept. He’ll try, damn it, but his best defence is not bringing up the topic in the first place. Once he’s caught in a narrative, his honesty shines through even if he doesn’t want it to. “Um. Well, he’s Gojo-sensei’s cousin, right?”

Panda, the uh… talking panda… is hovering over him, too, right next to Maki. He looks over his shoulder at the third and final second-year, head tilted. “Does Gojo even have a cousin with that name?”

“Bonito flakes,” Inumaki answers resolutely. Um. Okay. What does that mean, exactly?

“Yeah, see?”

No. No, Yuuji doesn’t see it. In fact, he’s totally, impossibly confused.

Megumi sighs, shoving his hands into his pockets as he finally gives Yuuji the time of day. “Inumaki-senpai is a cursed speech user. His technique amplifies the power and compulsion of words, so he limits his speech for safety reasons.”

But that doesn’t explain the panda? Like, at all?

“That aside,” Megumi continues, shifting his weight to face his seniors, “I don’t recall Gojo having a relative by that name. Whoever that guy is, there’s definitely something going on with him. Gojo’s keeping secrets.”

Oh, man, they’re really suspicious. How long will it take for them to figure out Kakashi’s a cursed spirit? Will they even make it through the event?

They won’t try to exorcise him, will they?

All eyes are on Yuuji again and suddenly the ceiling looks mighty interesting. He doesn’t wanna lie to them! Honest! But he doesn’t want Kakashi getting attacked, either, because like… Kakashi’s a really good guy even if he’s a curse. Obito, too. Sure, there was a bit of kidnapping in there, but that just happens, right? They shared cup ramen! They’re blood brothers now!

“You got something to say, Yuuji?” Maki asks. “You’ve been hanging around Satoru for months now. Why not share with the rest of the class?”

“Um.” He looks between all of them and the words bubble up in his chest, ready to spill his guts out. Maybe if he tells them the whole story they’ll understand. They seem pretty reasonable, right? At least Megumi? Because, like, Megumi didn’t want him executed even after he ate Sukuna’s finger at the start of this journey. He’ll understand.

Won’t he?

“Forget it,” Megumi says. “Let’s worry about that sorcerer after the exchange event.”

Kugisaki gives Yuuji another look as she leans against the wall. “What’s the plan, then? We’ve got an extra body now. No thanks to someone.”

That’s just mean…

“It’s a bit late in the game to change strategies,” Maki says. “What can you do, Yuuji?”

“Punch, kick.”

“We have enough of that,” Panda says.

“Aww, man… Oh—” He perks up, grinning as he proudly declares, “I can do some ninjutsu.”

Yuuji expects a lot of wowed faces, starlight eyes and admiration—he doesn’t get that. Instead, he gets a room full of skeptical looks and absolutely no one taking him seriously.

It’s nice watching Gojo get bullied. Kakashi enjoys sitting back to observe as one principal catches the self-important deity in a headlock and the snarl from the other promises death a thousand ways. The debate on what do to about Kakashi is long, miserable and boring, but it’s nice to find people who’ll stand up to Gojo’s stupid, self-serving ideas even if he lords over them in combat. Evidently, it’s never the strongest in battle who are at the top of the food chain. Kakashi remembers that well enough from his human counterpart’s returning memories.

Gakuganji, the elder standing half an inch from death who runs the Kyoto school, is vehemently against Kakashi’s inclusion in the event, especially as a chaperone. Kakashi gets to stand on the sidelines while the ‘adults’ battle it out with words, some more articulate than others, and Gojo once again infuriates a whole room of people.

They’re suspicious of his identity, but no one is leaning toward him being a curse. That’s good enough for now.

The final nail in the coffin is Gojo bringing up a band of special grades that have been causing a fuss as of late. Kakashi tunes back into the conversation when they’re mentioned.

Gojo throws a thumb over his shoulder at Kakashi, which is as rude as it is entirely expected. “My cousin here can mask his presence like a champ . It’s real cool. He’s a neutral party, so why not let him skulk around the event grounds while the kiddies play?”

“Do you honestly believe they’ll attack today?” Iori, the Kyoto supervisor, asks. She’s the calm and collected type, at least until Gojo’s involved; he’s already managed to flare her temper three times since they got here. They took a moment alone earlier, before the principals filed into the room, to exchange theories of a traitor in their midst. Kakashi’s been instructed not to worry about it—he wouldn’t know what to look for, anyway—but it makes him curious nonetheless.

“How should I know?” Gojo kicks up his legs and makes himself nice and comfortable as the rest of the room settles on him. He has that I-know-something-that-you-don’t look on his face, but it’s all a bluff. Probably. It’s hard to tell with Gojo sometimes since he plays his hand close to his chest in matters like these. “But it pays to be cautious. Come on, where’s the harm? He won’t sabotage the event—I’ve got him on a tight leash!”

Kakashi can practically feel the binding vow tighten over his throat. When he presses his fingers to his neck, though, there’s nothing there. It’s all in his head, a physical manifestation of his own uncertainty. But at the end of the day, that vow is the only reason he’s able to be here like this. It’s why he can stay with Obito and why he’s allowed to train Yuuji. Because of it, he gets to live out these peaceful days.

He doesn’t regret it. Not for a moment.

“That’s not a good thing,” Iori mutters, side-eyeing both Gojo and the cursed spirit behind him.

“Aw, c’mon,” Gojo urges. He gets up, rounds the table, and squishes Kakashi’s cheeks between his hands. The urge to Kamui away is overwhelming, the murderous will to drive Chidori through Gojo’s chest even more so, but Kakashi schools neutrality onto his face and remains perfectly still. He needs to keep those cursed spirit instincts in check for all of their sakes, but Gojo makes it so hard sometimes… “Look how cute he is. Look at this face. What’s he gonna do, huh? Let him chaperone. At the first sign of trouble, he’ll report back to me. Then I, Satoru Gojo, World’s Strongest, will quickly and effectively handle it, and the kids can get back to their free-for-all.”

It’s Principal Yaga, the head of the Tokyo school, who’s the first to agree. Their debate drones on for a while longer, words passed around that aren’t exactly cordial, and throughout all of it, Kakashi watches the sky through the window. It doesn’t feel all that different from dealing with the council back home, really. Minato went head-to-head with them a few times both before and after his coronation, especially when Kushina was pregnant. Kakashi was always at her side back then, her personal guard appointed by the Hokage, and protecting her was a mission he held in the highest regard.

A lot of good it did her in the end. He remembers standing over her grave, another stain of failure marking his past, and he feels sick. Her son survived, though, rejected by all the village for his title of jinchuuriki, the very same title that had Konoha once heralding Kushina as a hero. What was that boy’s name, again?

Ah. Naruto.

Pain shoots through him like white-hot lightning and his chest is tight. In a time still foreign to him, that name means something.

An hour later, Kakashi’s making his rounds through the event grounds, committing the layout to memory. It’s mostly forest with some buildings inside. By the end of it, he’s sitting on the shingles of a roof while fully cloaked. From what Gojo said, it may be the Kyoto students, themselves, who attack Yuuji. Special grades? They’re not worried about those. His own peers are the most likely perpetrators. To them, Yuuji is the vessel for the king of curses. He’s not a person—he’s a threat.

Yuuji is to jujutsu sorcerers what Naruto was to the people of Konoha.

That’s fine, then. Kakashi will monitor the situation and intervene if necessary. Curse or not, he should be able to handle a few children, even if their expertise lies in exorcising creatures like him. When he feels around for the curses released in the area, he finds that even the strongest one is rather weak. If exorcising it is their goal then they can’t be as much of a challenge as Gojo or Nanami, even in a group.

This time, Kakashi will see his mission through without failure.

Nobody will die today.

Apparently, murder is allowed in the exchange event. Kakashi’s not to intervene.

How, exactly, is he supposed to keep Yuuji safe, then? He’s not even allowed to put a stop to extreme violence between students, but Gojo gave him that command— protect Yuuji. So how should he adhere to an impossible order?

Satoru Gojo is a bastard.

There’s an announcement over the speakers, Gojo’s grating voice kicking off the start of the group battle and Iori’s soon to follow with, “Um, some degree of injury will be unavoidable, but uh… Now and then, help each other out or… something.” How empowering.

“Times up,” Gojo declares, stealing back the microphone… thing… that Kakashi saw them playing with earlier.

“Hey! Gojo, you little—”

“Now, let the sister school exchange event,” a pause for dramatic flourish because it’s Gojo, “begin!”

The bodies in the trees below scatter with those words as the children fan out through the grasses. Kakashi’s watch is primarily on the Tokyo students because, well, Yuuji is among them, so they’re his main focus. The Kyoto students are starting the game off elsewhere. Kakashi can feel their presence even from so far away, noting that his sensory range has expanded over time.

The pair over the speaker can still be heard bickering and Kakashi sighs. The ones overseeing the event are watching from monitors in the same room where they’d been arguing earlier. Technology in this world is a difficult thing for Kakashi to grasp but he’s managed to get by through observation alone. Some of the things he’s come across are no different from his own world, but others are new. Like cars, which he hates.

The goal here is to exorcise the grade-B cursed spirit that was released onto the grounds. There are smaller, weaker curses flitting about, but the big one is the target. Kakashi needs to make sure he doesn’t drop his cloak or let his control slip because there’s a very good chance that these kids, young as they may be, will put two and two together the moment that he does.

What a pain.

Kakashi follows behind Yuuji’s group in the trees, listening to Maki as she explains that the cursed spirit they’re after will be moving around, making it extra hard to find, so they’ll have some scouting to do.

Moments after the game begins, they encounter the first cursed spirit: a weak, spidery thing with bone-like legs that end in human hands. Kakashi’s lip curls, its flesh-like body reminding him of his own roots and that, beneath this fabricated shell of a body, he may be just as grotesque.

They don’t get the chance to act. A big, muscled fellow from the Kyoto school leaps out of the brush and shoves the cursed spirit away with the force of his movement, as though it were just in the way. He’s… Tōdō, was it? He’s a student that looks nothing of his age and, had Kakashi not known better, he would think this man a full-grown adult.

Yuuji knees the man in the face and the rest of his team scatter like ants. Kakashi huffs, trying not to laugh, because it’s such a Yuuji thing to do.

They split up into two squads to scout: one led by Panda (the panda’s name is… a bit on-the-nose) and the other by Megumi, the gloomy-looking kid who reminds Kakashi of someone. Kakashi considers following one of the other groups, curious to see where they’ll go, but there’s a fight brewing here with his favourite student that he doesn’t want to miss. Kakashi sits on a branch, his legs dangling over the side and his chin in his hands.

The kids vault off of one another and skid across the grass, this determined look on their faces. Ah, he thinks, they planned this match-up from the start. Kakashi wonders why. According to Gojo, this Tōdō fellow is a ‘big fish’ but Kakashi doesn’t have much experience with jujutsu sorcerers. He doesn’t know what to expect.

The first throw of Tōdō’s fist obliterates the cursed spirit that swung back onto the field and sends Yuuji flying through the air, which makes Kakashi sigh because, come on, Yuuji, apply what you know. If he kneaded chakra, he could have rooted himself in place and ducked, fortified his guard to take the hit or caught himself on a limb of the trees he just crashed through.

Well, chakra theory is still new to Yuuji. This sort of manipulation hasn’t become muscle memory yet.

Yuuji slams against a tree and coughs, air escaping his lungs as he slides to the ground. He’s staring at his hand like he’s surprised it’s still there, wheezing for breath. Kakashi tilts his head. The opponent is quite the hard-hitter. He’s reminded of Gai, almost. Not quite. Gai’s technique was a lot more refined, but the brute strength of both men is refreshing in a world of cursed energy or chakra.

Sometimes, a one-on-one spar is very satisfying.

Yuuji hasn’t even gotten up yet and Tōdō’s slamming his foot into Yuuji’s face. Again and again, pink hair stained red with blood as the bark behind the boy splinters and bends.

Kakashi knows better than to call the fight. He’s sparred with the boy too many times to think Yuuji’s out, even as the kid’s body lies limp on the grass and his feral thoughts tell him to tear apart this man who’s brought harm to his person. Yuuji, if nothing else, can take a hit.

So when Tōdō starts away, thinking their match over, it’s no shock that Yuuji picks himself up off the forest floor with a shout, “You think you can just pound away at my head like that?!”

Yeah, Yuuji will be just fine.

Satoru’s kicking back and watching the show, his feet propped up and his arms behind his head, yawning and earning more of Iori’s ire. It’s fun riling her up. Right now, though, Gojo has things to consider.

So far, the kids are starting their fights. Opponents have found one another, insults are being hurled and it’s all fun and games. One cursed spirit is down for the count, thanks to Aoi Tōdō, and from the movements he’s seeing, Satoru can piece together both sides’ plans. No doubt, that old coot Gakuganji has put a hit on Yuuji and the Kyoto students are out for blood, but Aoi’s never been the type to care about orders like that. In other words: he’s going rogue. Knowing Maki and Panda, they’re setting Yuuji up against him because Yuuji’s hardy and can take a pretty good beating—that way the rest of them can focus on staying alive to complete the objective.

Overall, not bad. A bit predictable but hey, if it isn’t broken then why fix it?

What Satoru’s really curious about right now is what his ‘cousin’ is up to. With that cloak in place, Satoru can only find Kakashi if he looks with the Six Eyes unobstructed—it’s that hard to tell. Honestly, how did Kakashi come up with something like that? Is it another magic ninja trick? Oh, he bets that it is.

Satoru doesn’t care that everyone’s watching him giggle to himself. Super-powered ninjas will never not be funny.

On the monitor, one of the Kyoto students, Miwa, falls to the forest floor. She’s sound asleep. Her phone is left in the grass by her hand. It looks like Toge’s doing, which doesn’t surprise Satoru. Cursed speech is a powerful asset to have and he’s sure the kids have thought of a few different ways to utilize it here. Case in point: Toge just knocked out one of Kyoto’s students without even a fight.

Iori stands from her seat beside his, stretching her arms. “I’m heading out real quick.” To Satoru’s raised eyebrow, she adds, “I can’t leave her out there with cursed spirits running around, can I?”

“Oh.” She rolls her eyes at him, but in his defence, the kids have a chaperone. Kakashi’s out there right now, most likely monitoring Yuuji, and could easily fetch Miwa if they sent word to him. 

“That’s true,” Principle Gakuganji hums, a smile on his hollowed-out husk of a face. He’s thinking about something unpleasant, isn’t he? Something like hurting one of Satoru’s kids. “I’m worried about Miwa. Go to her.”

The old man seems to think that everything is going according to plan. Well, can’t have that, can they?

Satoru throws his arms behind his head and leans back in his chair. “Now hang on a minute. We gave the kiddies a chaperone, so why not use him?”

“What, you’re going to send the kid to get her?”

“Bingo!”

Knowing Kakashi, he’s sticking to Yuuji like glue, hanging onto whatever off-handed comments Satoru’s made over the past twenty-four hours to avoid breaking their vow. But Yuuji can handle himself well enough for some playground squabbles, even if the old coot sitting at death’s door across the room has put a target on his head. With the strength of Kakashi’s cloak, it’s better to have him survey the area and see just what else might be out there.

It’s too peaceful.

Well, Gojo was right. The Kyoto kids are after Yuuji’s head. It started partway through Yuuji and Tōdō’s exchange, the other students flocking to them with plan and intent, and all Kakashi could do was watch from the sidelines and not interfere. It was Tōdō, of all people, who threatened his peers to keep the sanctity of their duel. There’s something admirable about that. When he thinks of it, Kakashi’s reminded of Gai. Strange, isn’t it?

He misses that man.

Right now, Yuuji is in no danger. Somehow and for some reason, their battle has turned into a lecture and with each blow exchanged, Yuuji seems to be learning. Kakashi may as well be watching an academy spar. The bite is still there beneath the words of advice Tōdō offers, but the killing intent is gone.

Something vibrates against his leg and he tenses up, only now remembering the device he was given before he set out on this misadventure. He digs into his pocket and fishes out the cell phone, a rectangular device made of metal and glass that marks yet another adjustment he’s had to make in his new life. Kakashi sighs, thinking back to Gojo’s lessons on how to use this thing, and answers the call.

Before he can utter so much as a courteous, “Hello,” he’s greeted by an obnoxious voice loud against his ear.

“Cousin!” Gojo exclaims. Kakashi pulls the phone away, certain he’d feel the stirrings of a headache were he human, and sighs. Gojo must not be alone. “How are the kiddies?”

“Fine,” Kakashi answers. He puts some distance between himself and the fight below. Now wouldn’t be a good time to be noticed. “You were right. The Kyoto students have it out for Yuuji.”

“Yeah, yeah, old news.” Sage, but he hates this man sometimes. “Listen: I have an errand for you to run. Think you’re up for it?”

“But Yuuji—”

“Will be fine on his own for a few minutes. C’mon, put some faith into him, Kashi. He’s not helpless.”

Kakashi knows that. He’s been helping with the boy’s training, too, perhaps more so than Gojo (definitely more than Gojo) and he knows what Yuuji can do. But this was the mission assigned to him.

“One of the students fell asleep in the forest. Miwa—short girl, sword, ring any bells?” Kakashi knew. He memorized the names, faces and scents of all the students when they met. It was standard practice in his previous life. “It’s dangerous to leave her out there alone with cursed spirits running amok. Mind fetching her for us?”

Wow. A request from Gojo, not an order? Perish the thought. “On it.”

“Oh, and keep an eye out for suspicious activity, ‘kay? Bye now!”

The call ends and Kakashi stares sourly at his phone before shoving it back into his pocket. He checks on Yuuji one last time, unsure of what, exactly, the two kids are doing down there (he stops questioning it) and body flickers through the trees. Kamui would be another viable solution, but he needs to catch the girl’s scent to know where to go.

Kakashi finds her in a bed of grass and leaves. There’s a small clearing, her scent billowing out into the air, and he kneels by her side, checking her over. No injuries. He smells the fading traces of other students, but they’re long gone by now.

And he smells something else, too.

Kakashi gathers the girl onto his back and steps into Kamui and out into the room he was in earlier, the one where the principals had their debate. They’re gone now to the monitoring room, wherever that is, and it’s quiet here. Carefully, he sets Miwa against the wall, her hair tangled with debris from the forest floor, and slips back through his portal just as quickly.

It’s while crossing into the deep, black abyss that dread tugs at his chest. He stares out at the pillars of stone, endless across this shared infinity, and breathes through the moment. It’s okay, he tells himself. It’s okay.

No one will die today.

Kakashi finds the forest again, the grass beneath his feet.

Right now, nothing brings him more relief than knowing that Obito is safe at home.

Chapter Text

There’s something new in the forest.

Kakashi stands on the soil and grass of the event grounds, Kamui stitching closed at his back, and the world shifts one millimetre to the left. This place isn’t as he left it, even if it’s quiet and vacated. The sun is bright above, soft white clouds painting a peaceful picture, and it sits wrong in his gut.

The first thing he does is close his eyes and sense the world around him for as far as he can reach. He feels the blades of grass at his feet to the trees bundled tightly together in this claustrophobic space, and further until he feels the sparks of cursed energy that mark the students. He doesn’t know them well enough to tell them apart yet, their signatures fresh in his mind and so much harder to pick out than chakra was as a human. Yūji’s is the only one he can distinguish, still vibrant and strong. Some of the others have faded a bit but none have burned out, meaning they must have lost their matchups and drained their reserves. Nothing strikes him as odd…

One flickers.

Kakashi’s senses don’t work like a map, pinpointing exactly where in the world the cursed energy is located, so he can’t slip through Kamui to find them. All he can do is feel the pull of what direction they’re in like a compass finding north. He follows it. Soon enough, he finds the decapitated corpse of another curse as it breaks apart into remnants. Freshly killed. Whether a student or an unknown did it, they can’t be far.

The ground quivers beneath a distant force, smoke rising from the trees, and the signature he’s following matches the trajectory.

Something is happening. But that’s not news to anyone, is it?

Satoru watches as all the talismans on the wall light up like very red, very angry fireworks. The flames leave behind nothing but the charred husks of what was once there and, hm, that’s weird. All at once?

Looks like their hunch was right.

“The game’s over?” Iori asks. “And they all burned red?”

“That’s odd. My crows didn’t see anything,” Mei Mei says from the row behind them, her interest piqued for the first time since the match started.

Satoru leans forward, bringing his hands together as he considers this. “I’d love to say Great Teacher Gojō’s students exorcised them all, but…”

“The charms will burn red from unregistered cursed energy,” Yaga finishes for him.

“You think it’s an outsider?”

“Does this mean Master Tengen’s barrier is malfunctioning?”

Gakuganji, that old bat, is as stone-faced as ever. “Outsider or not, something unexpected is happening all the same.”

Unexpected? Please. They talked about this. Satoru had to sit there and play nice with the man who put a hit on his precious student just to get a leg up on whatever ‘unforeseen entities’ might take advantage of their gathering today. He had to sit and smile and play the politics game just to get Kakashi in that forest to monitor. (Granted, he maybe could have tried harder—making everyone mad is impossibly fun.) It’s fine, though. It’s all worth it now. 

Kakashi’s good at feeling out a room. Maybe extending that to the event grounds is a stretch, but if Kakashi’s senses don’t lead him to the cause, his nose should. Assignments like this are the kid’s bread and butter.

Principal Yaga takes immediate control of the situation and delegates, no surprise there. He’ll go to Tengan; Mei will locate the students with her crows; and Satoru will go with Gakuganji to protect the kiddies. It’s sound enough, though Yaga’s clearly forgotten their field agent. Satoru pulls out his phone while the others shuffle through the monitoring room. Kakashi doesn’t answer his call. Hm. Perhaps he’s already in the middle of something. Isn’t that great? Satoru’s foresight paid off.

With a sigh, Satoru shoves his phone back into his pocket and twists around to face that old coot from the Kyoto branch, clapping his hands together. “Come on, Gramps! Time for a walk! You just finished your lunch, didn’t you?” Because he’s Satoru Gojō, and he’ll never miss a chance to be a bastard.

The stone-faced silence he’s met with is worth it.

When Kakashi finds the kids, they’re running from a tree.

Maybe that’s simplifying things too much. The thing they're mad-dashing away from is plant-like, but it bends and twists in a way that natural tree bark can’t, curving around the corners of the compound. Cursed techniques can do pretty interesting things. It reminds him of Tenzō’s Mokuton, but this feels more volatile, as though it has a life of its own. Tenzō’s jutsu had more structure to it, more rigidity, more rules. But those very same rules bent to allow countless applications both inside and outside of combat.

Kakashi hasn’t studied much about cursed techniques in this world. It feels more natural to bend his energy to his will, to knead it into chakra and apply his skills as a shinobi to this new place he inhabits. But at moments like these, there’s regret.

The students down below are Megumi Fushiguro, Toge Inumaki and Noritoshi Kamo—two from Tokyo, one from Kyoto. They must have been caught in the attack during a matchup. Another vein of plant-like beams bursts through the compound’s front gates, blocking their exit.

It no longer matters if he’s discovered.

Obito would be useful here. His mastery of Katon would set this intruder ablaze. But Kakashi remembers a name he once had, something after Friend Killer that stuck around for as many years as he can recall: Copy-nin.

He keeps his cloak up for now, switching through hand seals as he puts himself between the students and the immediate threat, fire building in his lungs. When he breathes, it bursts forth across the wood and draws a path to its source. A noise splits the air, tearing at his ears in a way that reminds him so strongly of the curses he executed under Gojō’s command. He only needs to see this thing to know it’s one of them. But the strange thing is that, at least to his senses, this curse doesn’t feel like a curse. It’s able to mask its presence like he is, masquerading as a face in a crowd, its cursed energy no different from the students’ to Kakashi’s senses. If they lose track of it now, Kakashi won’t be able to reliably track it. 

Kakashi isn’t thinking about that. Right now, his blood is boiling, his instincts itching for a fight. This opponent is nothing like the fodder he absorbed before. If he takes this one, it may be enough for him to evolve again all on its own.

Kakashi locates the main body, a tall, pale figure with black markings across their skin, branches sprouting from their head in place of eyes.

Before Kakashi can act, a veil drops around them. The sky blackens with its walls, sinking like ink over glass, and he’s somewhere else—a mountain, a cursed womb, a place belonging to his history. He hates feeling trapped.

“Why is there a cursed spirit at the school?” one of the students asks, staring at the same body Kakashi is. Kamo, isn’t it? “And who dropped this veil?”

“Probably the sorcerer working with that cursed spirit,” Megumi says.

“You know something?”

Megumi frowns, his eyes scanning the grounds for something that isn’t there. “I think it’s the special grade that attacked Gojō a while ago. Its appearance matches the report.” He fishes a cell phone out of his pocket and starts dialing. “My concern right now is where that fire came from. I don’t sense anything, and I don’t know of any cursed techniques that behave in that way. Something else is here.”

“Bonito flakes,” Toge nods.

Kakashi doesn’t want to make this worse for them, but right now, their comfort isn’t his priority. The cursed spirit can’t see him, either. His cloak is holding strong for now, but that won’t always be the case; if he loses control, even for a moment, one small crack in his cursed energy suppression will bring the whole ruse crashing down on him. Kakashi isn’t the same man he was as a human; his temper flickers and wanes like an open flame, a product of his nature as a curse, and he’s slipped up on more than one occasion. It’s not a matter of if, but when. Before then, he needs to eliminate this threat.

The last thing he needs is the kids figuring out what he is and thinking him an enemy while there’s real danger afoot.

“Our opponent might use a domain,” Megumi says, holding the phone up to his ear, “and we don’t know what else is out here. Let’s retreat and join up with Gojō—”

The curse is there faster than a body-flicker, and one quick jab is all it needs to shatter the phone into a mangled heap of glass shards and metal. The kids jump back, all the while that one, Toge, pulls down the collar over his mouth.

“Don’t move.”

Toge’s words hold power. The special-grade freezes in place, lending the other students time to put more distance between themselves and the threat. Whirls of blood spin in the air as one of the others unleashes their technique, but the blades they form are too weak to break the curse’s skin.

When Megumi’s attack fails, too, Kakashi once more puts himself between them. The unknown is regenerating, but there are still marks across its body from the burns it took. He keeps his Sharingan active and ducks in, Chidori sparking to life across his arm, and thrusts it forward. He feels it again, the warmth of blood, bones breaking and tissue giving beneath the blade of his jutsu. When he blinks away the memory, he sees instead the gore of his attack deconstructing the left side of the curse’s chest.

That horrible, ear-bleeding scream. It makes him want to throw up.

Until now, the curse must have assumed one of the students cast the flames, as Kakashi’s curse signature is still masked. Now, it knows. So do the kids.

While the special-grade writhes on the ground, the hole made by Chidori slowly stitching closed, the students duck into one of the school buildings, doubtlessly hoping the cover will help them lose it. This isn’t an opponent they can hope to match on their own. The best thing for them is to get out of its range until backup arrives. Even Toge’s cursed speech isn’t enough to stop it.

The curse launches across the compounds, and Kakashi tracks their movements with his Sharingan. He body-flickers to their side, another Katon forming at his fingertips, and grabs their arm. The whole thing goes up like a funeral pyre. That sound breaks across the air again—their scream, their pain. It rattles him down to his bones. Every time he hears it, he thinks of the time before, when instinct fuelled his actions and his memories were still locked away.

They shake Kakashi off, and he lands several feet away, skidding across a stone walkway, watching the burns already healing on their skin. Going at it like this is meaningless if he exhausts his cursed energy before the special-grade does. If he’s relentless enough, he might be able to beat its regeneration, but that would take time that they don’t have.

If Megumi’s right, there’s at least one other enemy out there. Kakashi senses more cursed energy signatures in the area with the passing minutes, and he’s sure not all of them belong to the staff. They need to deal with this here and now before someone gets hurt.

No one dies today.

The curse gives up on the children and turns, their roots breaking across the ground to fortify the walls and prevent escape. Now, their focus is on Kakashi, and the wound Chidori left behind is not fully healed.

“I see that the sorcerers are not the only opponents I face now,” they say. “You have my attention.”

Good. All that matters is that the children are safe.

Well, this isn’t good.

Satoru presses his hand to the dome of a veil that is very much rejecting him, all the while everyone else has gone on ahead. It takes a lot of skill to craft something like this, and the culprit must either be very scared of Satoru (understandable) or keenly aware of what it is he can do.

Alright, then. Two can play that game. They’ll get the veil down one way or another. It’s not like his loss makes the rest of the sorcerers here today useless. The teachers, even the kids, are all capable in their own right. It begs the question of why, though.

Satoru can’t help but think of the unregistered special grades they’ve been wary of, wondering if they’re at the heart of this little interruption. That volcano-head he played with before was tough, sure, but it wouldn’t have been able to play big games with a veil like this.

They’ve suspected that a sorcerer is with the special grades, and this fancy veil is all the proof Satoru needs to bump that theory to the top of his conspiracy board. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time. Curses and sorcerers working together isn’t a daily occurrence, but c’mon, even Kakashi would have trouble making something like this.

He thinks of Suguru, and he’s not sure why.

“Well,” he says, stretching his arms, “time to get rid of this thing.”

Kakashi doesn’t remember when he last faced an opponent like this, but the foreboding in his gut reminds him of the same fear he felt standing across Orochimaru. What finds him now isn’t fear, though.

It’s thrilling.

Their clash wreaks havoc on the compound, stone and wood piled into heaps in their wake. Kakashi won’t be able to keep up the cloak forever, expending cursed energy like he is, and the moment it drops, this match will be a lot less one-sided. Even without sensing him, this curse’s technique is wide-ranged and full-bodied enough to land blows on him, plants and wood jutting out of the surrounding ground. He falls back, retreating to the forest, leaving a trail so that the curse will follow him, but it doesn’t take the bait. All it takes is a brief pause in their exchange for it to turn its attention on the fleeing kids.

Kakashi sucks in a breath, damns himself thrice over, and drops the cloak.

Something horrible has infiltrated Jujutsu High. All at once, the students stop, frozen by the rolling current of cursed energy that burst to life in the forest.

Megumi, Toge and Kamo are heading for the edge of the veil when they feel it suck up the surrounding air, and they look back. It’s not the special-grade—Megumi still senses that behind them in the school grounds.

“What is that?” Kamo asks, the outrage muted in his voice. “It can’t be the sorcerer it’s working with, can it?”

“Not sure,” he says. “Let’s stay focused. Going back there wouldn’t do any good for anyone. We don’t know if the teachers have taken action yet, so our priority is finding them and getting backup.”

He says it, but it leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

What’s taking Gojō so long?

The special-grade takes the bait. The students must have noticed, too; all their signatures stopped when he released his cursed energy, and now some are drawing in while others fan out towards the edge of the veil. If he wants to go unnoticed, he’ll have to finish this before they make it here. He’s noticed that the special-grade’s eye trees are a weak point, easy to break and slow to recover, and he might have a way to use that.

Roots upturn the earth, closing in on him, and he breathes in. Cursed energy kneads into chakra in his gut, and air bubbles like magma, heat building up in his core. The curse’s main body fast approaches, lured away from the school, and he waits. Just a little longer, a few more seconds. He can see it now, drawing close.

Kakashi body-flickers to the curse and breathes out, unleashing the fire burning hot in his chest, and the spirit’s eye trees go up like a match. It burns from the inside out, the plants it conjured breaking apart into fragments of energy. He retreats out of range as the fire burns and the cursed spirit flails, clawing at its face.

This may not be enough. It’s hard to tell without experience to fall back on. But his reserves have taken a hit, and he’s getting tired. The blows that thing landed on him still ache after regenerating, and yet more of his cursed energy is put towards his recovery. When he puts the cloak back up and suppresses his signature, he can’t tell how complete it is.

Below, on the trees, some students arrive. Maki and Panda skid to a halt, the blaze reflecting off Maki’s glasses.

“What the hell is going on?”

The fire suffocates, plumes of grey rising up from the curse’s eyes like a smoke signal, and it’s not enough.

Satoru floats along the air, the Six Eyes unobstructed, as he holds out a hand to the veil. Cursed energy flickers and dies, a spike so strong that everyone must feel it, and it doesn’t take a genius to tell what’s going on.

Kakashi, that idiot.

It doesn’t matter. This veil is going down, and Satoru will handle it.

But as he concentrates his attack, the Six Eyes notices something—a man with no presence, like empty air, occupying the space left of him. Satoru turns. Cursed energy punctures the barrier and the hole grows, the distorted colours of the veil fading away.

The man looks at him, a face ridged with scar tissue, and their eyes meet.

Red and spinning.

Then, he’s gone.

Kakashi braces himself for a second round, already churning more fire in his stomach while the special-grade recovers from the internal damage wreaking havoc on them. It’s not regenerating as fast, most of its reserves exhausted. All he has to do is push on a little further.

But if he does that again, he won’t be able to mask himself. And the kids are here.

Maki and Panda are already exhausted, having fought other students before, and when Yūji and Tōdō break through the treeline, it reassures him. They have numbers and this thing is weak; the kids will be okay.

The curse spirit says something, but Kakashi isn’t listening. They switch gears, focusing on the children instead, don’t you dare—

Their head is gone.

Kakashi stares, the forest unnaturally still, as his mind catches up to him. Where—how—

It’s familiar. He’s seen this before.

Not long ago, he noticed the talismans on the walls of their room in the Gojō estate were missing. He doesn’t remember doing it, but a memory beyond his years nags at him, and his Sharingan burns.

The special-grade struggles to grow its head back, remnants lifting off of it like specks of dust in the air as it stumbles and sways. Kakashi keeps in front of the children as they brace themselves and fans out his senses, feeling for another cursed energy signature, but there’s nothing.

Something tingles across his senses and he falls back, shoving Maki and Panda to the ground. The land gracelessly as Maki tries to shove the unseen entity overtop of them away, and then she stops.

The force that decimates the forest can belong to no one but Satoru Gojō. Only inches from their feet, a blast of energy Kakashi is intimately familiar with carves out a path through the trees. It’s too destructive to tell whether the curse has been exorcised or not. The world is quiet, the barrier is gone, and Kakashi tries to feel out the special-grade’s signature, but nothing remains.

He feels something else, though. Something that he always feels, closer than it should be and so very hard to recognize.

Yūji’s gasp is all that’s needed for him to realize that his cloak is down. He’s still suppressing his cursed energy, thank the sage, but they see him kneeling between the students, one hand on each of their shoulders from where he pinned them down to keep them out of Hollow Purple’s range.

“Kakashi-sensei, was that you?!”

Please, Yūji, shut up.

In the air above the school grounds, Gojō hangs there like gravity doesn’t apply to him, the Six Eyes unobstructed as he stares across the forest at something beyond Kakashi’s vantage point. There’s something else out there.

Kakashi gets up and offers Maki and Panda a hand. Neither trust him, even as he helps them to their feet, but they’ll address that in time. The kids are worse for wear, but they’re not badly hurt. That’s enough.

Yūji waves his arms at the floating pain-in-the-ass. “Gojō-sensei, over here! I think Kakashi-sensei’s hurt!”

Is he?

Kakashi looks down at himself, bringing his hands up to his face, and he doesn’t see anything… But something feels off at the same time, like a piece of him is missing. The edges of his vision are blurry and dark, and his body feels feather-light, as though he’ll blow away in the slightest breeze.

This must be what chakra exhaustion feels like in this world. He’ll make a note of it.

Mahito loves when things go according to plan.

With Hanami’s group keeping the sorcerers occupied, there’s no back-up to call for when he infiltrates the store room holding Jujutsu High’s collection of cursed objects. He sidesteps the mutilated corpses of the attendants he found there, waltzing through the hall with a jump to his step. The barrier might be down, but all the sorcerers in this part of the school grounds have been handled, and his presence has gone unnoticed by the big hitters playing with the rest of their men. They’ve got this in the bag—six of Sukuna’s fingers and three Death Paintings.

He expects another attendant when he opens the shutter and, sure enough, there’s someone else inside, sitting cross-legged on a crate of cursed tools, one arm draped over his knee while the other props up his head. Red eyes cut through the dank air, three black tomoe spinning in each. This one has a technique Mahito’s never seen before.

Stranger than that is this man’s lack of presence. It’s like he’s nothing but air.

“You’re with the others,” the man says, gravelly and low. “The special grade and those sorcerers.”

Mahito would love to sit here and monologue, but he has places to be and cursed objects to pilfer. He blitzes across the storage room, palm out, and imagines the way he’ll twist this man’s soul. But he never makes contact, passing through like there’s nothing there.

But the man grabs his hand, and something is wrong.

“You’ve had your fun.”

Their eyes meet and he can’t move.

“Now, let me have mine.”

Chapter Text

The fall of the curtain signals the beginning of the end, and the start of a new chapter. Enter: Satoru Gojō.

The barrier’s visual effect falls quickly, and the opaque blackness fades, revealing the world within its walls. Lucky for Satoru, this puts the kiddies right in his line of sight. Megumi and Toge are close by, one of the Kyoto students in tow. Knowing Megumi, he must’ve been trying to reach Gojō. Or any teacher, for that matter. Giving the people above them a rundown of what’s happening is a good call. For all the kids know, the school hasn’t made a move yet.

“Let’s see, where to begin…”

Beyond that group, he can see the others scattered about. Some of the kids are roughed up, but none require immediate attention and no one is wandering around alone. Good on them, sticking together. He’ll round them up once the threats have been dealt with. So far, the Six Eyes has revealed the locations of two unidentified sorcerers and a very familiar cursed spirit.

Two cursed spirits, actually. But who’s counting?

The plant-based special-grade is in the trees with some of the kids and a certain Gojō clan heir, but he’s not needed at the moment. It’s burning from the inside out, flames licking its face from within its eye sockets, and it’ll hollow out into a husk soon enough. This is Kakashi’s doing, isn’t it?

Nice work, Kid. Next time, maybe don’t give me a heart attack doing it, eh?

They’ll have a talk about the power spike Kakashi let drop when they’re home. No sense embarrassing the little guy in front of all his new friends.

There’s a chance the curse might still heal, but its cursed energy is weak right now, and the kids there—Maki, Panda, Yūji and Aoi—should be able to hold their own for now. Especially Yūji. The kid’s on a whole other level than before, no doubt thanks to his run-in with the Kyoto branch’s top student. Of course, Aoi would be a great match for him. Look at that cursed energy!

The special-grade isn’t neutralized, but he shouldn’t have to worry. The kids are doing a fine job, and Kakashi’s putting himself between them and the threat. Outside that match-up, one of the unidentified sorcerers looks ready to square-off with some of the girls. But the moment the curtain’s gone, he turns tail and runs. Annoying, but not a priority. It doesn’t feel like that one’s a big player.

Gakuganji’s not looking so hot, though, and his fight isn’t over yet. As much as he dislikes the guy, Satoru won’t let the old bat die on his watch. That’d just be mean.

“In that case, let’s start with…” Satoru teleports over to the stone steps, where Gakuganji’s battle is underway, and lands behind the intruder. “You.”

The sorcerer turns around, swinging his weapon in a frenzy. Satoru will end this quickly.

“Don’t kill him!” Gakuganji yells.

A short burst of cursed energy cuts into the intruder’s arms and legs, crushing them until he’s a mangle of blood and skin, but still very much alive. Please, as though Satoru would kill him.

“We’ve got a lot of questions we need to ask this guy. Don’t let him die on us.” Satoru grins, rudely pointing his finger Gakuganji’s way. “Go on. Treat him.”

You can’t get information out of a dead man, after all.

With one sorcerer incapacitated and the other having found a means of escape, the special-grade is back at the top of his priorities. This one’s adept at running; he’s seen that first-hand. But as the Six-Eyes shows it to him, there’s something off about it.

Its head is missing.

Did Kakashi use his Sharingan, like with the talismans the other day? No, Kakashi’s just as confused as everyone else. Satoru has a hunch, considering his run-in with the red-eyed wonder in the airspace above the curtain, but he’ll leave his conspiracies for later.

Hollow Purple might be excessive to use against a more-than-half-dead special-grade, but nuking it is a better alternative to letting it run. That thing runs and heals, and it’ll only come back stronger. As much faith as he has in his kids, he doesn’t want them fighting more than they need to. They might be on their way to becoming full-blooded sorcerers, but they’re still students learning their craft, and Satoru will make sure he gets to see them graduate safely. They shouldn’t be up against opponents like this. Not yet.

The curse is closer to his students than what he’s comfortable with, but Kakashi will recognize Satoru’s cursed energy and keep them safe. Aoi should feel it, too.

“Guess I can play a little rough.”

Satoru’s hands come together, and he concentrates his cursed energy into a single point to fire up Blue, then activates his reversal with Red, and overlaps them. When Amplification and Reversal collide, they form Hollow Purple. He takes aim as the special-grade recovers enough to flee, and releases.

The path of destruction left behind is a bit grandiose, but he’s always had a flare for the dramatic. From the stone torii gates unfortunate enough to be in front of him to well beyond the target, all matter breaks apart with the force of Purple’s imaginary mass. The earth underfoot rumbles and dust clouds plume overhead, washing the forest in a grey haze. When it settles, a new crevice divides the school grounds.

“Yay! Everything’s settled!” he cheers as, behind him, the mangled sorcerer screams and cries. Gakuganji’s too busy getting mad about that to pay him any mind. But that’s just swell. “Or not.”

Satoru keeps his blindfold off for now. The intruders are neutralized, yes, and everyone is accounted for, sure. But unease hangs in the air, and there’s one more person he needs to find.

He decides that the skies are his new friend and takes another bird's-eye look at the makeover he gave their land. Well, worse has been had. The Elders will get over it. Looks like the kids made it safely, as expected. It looks like Kakashi threw himself at two of them to keep them far enough off-path, but there’s a big margin between Hollow Purple’s trajectory and the kids. Satoru was mindful of them, thank you.

“Gojō-sensei, over here!” Yūji calls, waving big, dramatic signals Satoru’s way like he’s directing traffic. “I think Kakashi-sensei is hurt!”

C’mon, Yūji, you know better than to call him that.

Hurt?

Satoru lands in the clearing where the fight happened and scans Kakashi with the Six Eyes. Well, everything seems to be in order. The kid still has a lot of cursed energy, but there’s no life in his eyes. He looks tired. The Sharingan is siphoning cursed energy like nobody’s business, and Satoru can see the way it’s eating at his stores, but Kakashi hasn’t turned it off yet. The energy he has is sizable, but compared to the levels Kakashi had before this, it’s barely half.

It occurs to Satoru that this cursed spirit, always an exception to every rule, may not have access to all of his reserves. His fights have never been long, and the techniques he uses are rarely this demanding. On the day Kakashi evolved, he fought primarily with his tantō, which isn’t really a weapon at all. It’s more like a ball of cursed energy condensed and manifested into a solid object, like a cursed tool but without being infused into an ordinary object. Because of that, its cursed energy cost is fixed and, no matter how much Kakashi uses it, it won’t drain him. Fighting off dozens or hundreds of low-grade curses like that isn’t comparable to what Kakashi displayed today.

The kids are watching him. They’re still tense, even if they don’t show it. Of course, they are. Today never should have ended up like this.

He smiles to reassure them and keeps his thoughts to himself. If the great Satoru Gojō isn’t worried, then everything will turn out fine. Despite how much backtalk he gets on a daily basis, he knows his kids think like that. If nothing else, he can serve as their pillar of support. They need it.

“How’re we doing out here? Everybody in one piece?”

“We’re fine,” Maki assures, exchanging glances with Panda. “It was mostly over by the time we got here. What’s going on, Gojō?”

As much as he’d love to give her some insight, he’s still puzzling that together, himself.

“Gojō-sensei,” Yūji calls again, all up in Satoru’s face with his flailing and concerns, “he’s really not looking so good.” Then, “Was the cursed spirit exorcised?”

“Probably.”

“Only probably?”

“Anything’s possible, Yūji. The world is a magical place.” And he won’t lie where he’s not certain. One of the drawbacks of Hollow Purple is how destructive it is. With a blast range so big, it’s hard to know for certain what got hit and what didn’t. There isn’t much left behind after something takes a hit, so even if it’s not found in the debris, it’s a toss-up whether the target was destroyed or escaped. “Check yourselves over for a sec. Make sure everything feels normal while I give my cousin a look-over and let me know if you need treatment.”

Satoru turns back to Kakashi and ducks down to catch a glimpse of his face. The boy’s hunched like a wilted flower as he blinks rapidly and shakes his head, looking like he’s not all there. Yeah, okay, he’s running on empty, even if the Six Eyes says otherwise. Satoru grips Kakashi’s shoulders and gives them a squeeze. “Kashi,” he calls, “are you listening? I need you to turn off your Sharingan, okay?”

Kakashi makes a noise halfway between affirmation and confusion, but the red is still there. Then, Kakashi’s falling against him, all his strength sapped away.

“Easy. Don’t hurt yourself. Yūji, gimme a hand.”

Yūji crouches in the grass, and they finagle Kakashi onto his back. Soon, their little curse buddy’s arms are dangling limply over Yūji’s shoulders, his face buried in pink hair. “Is he gonna be okay?” Yūji asks.

“He’s fine, but he’s a bit useless at the moment. Keep him safe for me.”

“Will do!”

Satoru rounds on the others as they check their wounds. He’d like to walk them back, but something more pressing is tugging at his senses. “If you’re all okay, head east and join up with Megumi’s group. Iori and the others should be a little further out,” he says. “I don’t think this needs to be said, but we’re calling off today’s event. I know, I know, it sucks. But we’ll make it up to you later.”

They’re not sure about this, but he’d like them out of here for now. Aoi’s on board, at least, and Yūji probably just wants to get Kakashi somewhere safe. He sees them off as they shrink into the distance, and turns around.

There’s one last thing to deal with.

Yūji shifts the weight on his back when Kakashi starts leaning to one side, worried his buddy’s gonna fall over. They’re heading east, per Gojō’s orders, and everyone is quiet.

It’s been a long day.

“Say, Yūji…” Panda looks back at him, stealing glances at the teenager hanging over his shoulders.

“Yeah?” Oh no, they’re gonna ask more questions, aren’t they? Yūji did mess up there at the end.

“You know Kakashi, don’t you?”

“You’re keeping things from us,” Maki chimes in, scowling as she falls back to walk in line with him. “You and Gojō both. And I’ve got to say, I’m not a fan.”

Even Tōdō, who’s at the lead, glances back at him. Which, like, shouldn’t mean anything to Yūji because they literally met today. But for some reason, Tōdō keeps calling him his brother, and talking about their long friendship… And like, it’s confusing. That’s not normal, right? But Yūji’s kind of been thrown into a lot of weird situations lately, and now everything weird seems normal, and he doesn’t know how to judge anything anymore. So that’s his current predicament.

“Well, not that I blame you,” Maki says, crossing her arms as she faces forward again. “We’re not exactly close. I just hope you know what sort of secrets you’re keeping.”

Yūji stares down as he walks, Kakashi’s legs hanging there in his periphery. Their shoes are all scuffed up and muddied, their pants are torn. They’re all just tired. “Yeah. Me, too.”

A few things happened when Satoru tore down the curtain and spotted a familiar red.

The boy waiting next to him was like air. It was different from the twin curses’ usual cursed energy suppression. They call it a cloak. It’s a nifty trick, but there are a few holes in it. With the Six Eyes unobstructed, Satoru is still able to measure Kakashi’s cursed energy while cloaked. Obito’s isn’t quite as good, so even with the blindfold, Satoru can pick him up a bit.

That back there was something else. It was a total lack of presence. Satoru was so unaware of Obito that he didn’t even know how long the kid was waiting there.

At first, he didn’t understand why Obito was there. The kid was supposed to be back at the estate, but honestly, Satoru knows better than to trust a curse to keep their word (even if that curse happens to have grown on him like a weed). This was always a possibility. Satoru thought Obito might not have known that he could bypass the curtain, but he didn’t try. Didn’t even move toward it. The veil could have been keeping him out like it was Satoru… except that no one should know about Obito, much less how to craft a barrier to keep him out. And excluding entry to two specific people is harder to manage than one.

But when their eyes met, he thought Obito may have intended to break the barrier, too. So, when Satoru took care of it, he moved on. In that case, he must have figured out what the curtain was restricting—the entry of Satoru Gojō. 

But the thing that stood out most was Obito, himself.

Obito looked Kakashi’s age. Somewhere around there, anyway. It’s hard to be sure. The first red flag was that he evolved in the short time they’ve been gone. How many curses did he exorcise? At least as many as Kakashi, give or take. But Obito didn’t have a guide. He didn’t have someone to put up a curtain, round up a bunch of low-level curses, and initiate a free-for-all. And sure, Obito was on his own for a while after birth. When they finally found the kid, he was hunkered up in an abandoned building, gravitating to places where curses tend to gather. He knew how to find them.

Which means he was hunting them. He went out of his way to evolve.

Obito’s signature is easier to pinpoint now that Satoru’s mapped it out, even with its vacant presence. Now that he can sense it, it’s a volatile thing, flickering and waving like a curse that’s only just taking shape. Obito isn’t putting the same effort into suppressing his cursed energy as he was before. It’s coming from one of the numerous buildings on the school grounds, most of which are decoys to keep intruders from locating Jujutsu High’s cursed object storage room. The strength of Tengan’s barrier is unrivalled. He's able to switch the location of the storage room from one building to the next daily, which keeps the relics safe. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more secure set-up.

Realistically, it doesn't make sense for a few rogue sorcerers and a special-grade to break into the school just to pick off a few kids, even if one of those kids houses the king of curses. The risk-to-reward ratio is way off. 

But if all this fanfare were just a diversion, well. Things add up nicely, don't they?

Because of all their failsafes, the intruders shouldn’t have been able to locate the storage room. But there is one easily overlooked workaround for their current defences: if something trackable is inside the storage room, the storage room can be tracked. Pretty simple, right?

 Satoru stands outside one of the buildings, his eyes finding the malformed corpse of one of the attendants. The body's appearance lines up with another curse's handiwork, painting a grim picture in his head, and the Six Eyes shows him the shape of the cursed energy inside. It’s a messy, unnatural thing, but it's calming down with the passing seconds.

Well, he's found the right place.

Stepping through the open door and around yet another corpse, Satoru keeps judgement off his face. The man sitting atop crates of cursed tools is not the boy Satoru expects him to be. He's grown up, older now than he was when the curtain fell. Ridged scar tissue decorates his right cheek and bleached skin peeks out from beneath a high-brimmed collar. The hand that holds in it a sealed finger of Sukuna is white, unnaturally so, and stark against the rest of the curse’s sunkissed skin. A single red eye catches him within its gaze.

At his feet sits a discarded orange mask with a single eye hole.

Obito is someone entirely new right now.

“You're late.”

Satoru exhales, easing the tension in his shoulders. Obito’s special-grade status is more important than their history right now, and his top priority is the safety of the six fingers in the school’s possession. Obito can't be allowed to eat them, and he’s sure the kid he knows wouldn't. But that kid isn't here.

“I had some business to take care of outside,” he says, nodding to the body sprawled and mangled by the door. “I don't suppose this is your handiwork. Bit too crude for that. Where is he?”

Obito looks down, as though he's only just now registered the hunk of transmuted flesh. “Ah, that.”

“Yeah, that.”

Obito turns the finger in his hand like he's inspecting the seals on it. “I handled it.” Nothing frustrates Satoru Gojō more than when his own words are thrown back at him. “I’m not a picky eater, but even for me, that one tasted foul.”

“You ate him?”

The curse snorts. “I'm not in a position to pass up free cursed energy.” He tosses the finger and it sails through the air, landing in Satoru’s palm. Sukuna’s fingers aren't his goal.

Obito’s form is unstable. The right half of his body is blurry and wrong, the cursed energy frenzied beneath the surface. As he slips off the crate and onto solid ground, his steps echoing off the walls, the scars and white skin disappear. His left eye opens, and like this, he’s so achingly familiar.

“How’s my other half? He looked like he’d been through it.”

Satoru keeps tight hold of the finger, one hand in his pocket as he shifts his weight. The hostility oozing off of Obito is dissipating with the passing seconds, so similar to when Kakashi evolved. His body will regulate in time, and that's when Satoru will see his true nature.

“Kashi’s fine, he just overdid it a bit. What about you? This,” he gestures to all of Obito, “is new.”

“New, huh?” Obito stares at his hands for a long while. “That's one way of looking at it.”

Obito’s not oblivious to the tension brewing between them. He knows that he's somewhere he shouldn't be, that Satoru’s not happy right now and that his next actions will determine how this plays out. But he turns around, staring across the room at the cursed objects and tools stored carefully around them. Satoru can no longer see his face.

“That finger had a seal that led the curse to it,” Obito says. “You’d do well to take better care of your valuables, Gojō.”

“Noted.” He won’t quip right now. It’s not the time, and this one really is on them. When that finger was recovered, the team that put it in storage should have taken a closer look at it. If they had, all of this could have been avoided. They practically left the door open for any passing thieves. “Mind if I quiz you a bit?”

“You’ll run your mouth anyway, so what does it matter?”

“How did you know to come here?”

Obito looks over his shoulder, a sliver of red cutting through the dark, but it’s momentary. His eyes linger over the dozens of sealed cursed tools, his fingers running across them absently, as though he intends to take. “I felt Kakashi’s stress,” he says. “Then, I followed my eyes.”

The curse’s hand falls away and he turns, the weapons hanging on the wall no longer holding a space in his head. He walks past Satoru to the remains of the attendants, pressing his palms into their flesh, already cooling in the open air.

“Let’s see, now…”

The bodies bubble. Their skin ripples across the structures beneath and twist, then pull back. It’s slow and painful, the way that they shrink, the colours that fade and burst across them. But when Obito stands, they look human again.

The sun casts a harsh silhouette against the curse from the door, like a mass of shadow against the light.

“Keep him safe, Gojō. If something happens to him, our pact is void. Remember that.”

Obito steps forward and disappears, as though slipping between the pages of a book, the white light consuming him until all that remains are the bodies left behind.

Satoru recognizes these men now, not that he knows them well. They work for the school, and for Tengen. Why did Obito do it? Why bother—and how? Did he absorb the special-grade’s cursed technique when he devoured it, or is this something else?

What does it matter?

It’s a mercy for their families, at least. To mourn their losses with the bodies they’re remembered as, and not the monstrosities they became.

Still.

He hopes that when they go home, Obito is waiting there.

Before meeting up with the teacher from the other school, they pass by the dorms.

Er… what’s left of them.

They take the time to mourn their rooms before moving on. Yūji doesn’t really know how half the building ended up as collateral in the fight, but when he looks around, he sees that a lot of other buildings have been hit, too… And the landscaping didn’t escape.

Nothing is as bad as the fallout from Gojō’s big invisible ball of doom and destruction, though.

Oh no, his posters! They’re ruined!

Well, it’s not like Yūji had many other things to lose, so it’s fine, he supposes… He has a room at Gojō’s place now, anyway. But what about the other guys?

As they stand there, sighing their disappointment, he feels the approach of familiar cursed energy. Yūji lifts his head and cranes it around, then shifts the dead weight on his back to wave wildly with one of his hands. “Hey, Megumi! You doing okay, bud?”

Megumi looks exhausted and a bit annoyed, but that’s just Megumi for you.

They reconvene on the school grounds and do a head count. Everyone seems okay. They saw the broom girl earlier, too, who’s been flying around doing a body count and said everyone’s still breathing. All in all, everything seems okay.

Well, not the school. The school is very not okay. But, like, when do they ever use the classrooms, anyway?

By the time all the check-ups are done and things have calmed down, Yūji’s lowering Kakashi onto one of the infirmary beds. This place made it out unscathed, fortunately, and there’s a really laid-back doctor lady here who Yūji vaguely remembers from that time he didn’t die. Shoko, right?

“Alright, let’s see here,” she says, tying up her hair, and—oh. Oh, no, that’d be bad, right? If she scanned Kakashi’s body? Because he’s a curse, and he’s pretending not to be, and if she finds out then the whole school’s gonna turn around and exorcise him.

“Actually—”

“He’s fine,” Megumi says, sitting on the bed next to Kakashi’s, his legs draped over the side. “Gojō already gave him a look-over before we got here.”

But Megumi wasn’t there when…

“He used a lot of cursed energy, I guess.”

Shoko stares for a long time, head tilted as she meets Megumi’s eyes, then shrugs. “Suit yourself. I’m grabbing a smoke.”

They don’t say anything as she digs a pack of cigarettes out of the top drawer of the desk at the front of the room. She fishes around her pocket for a lighter, heads out the door, and some of the tension dissolves around them.

Some, not all.

Yūji’s whole body relaxes and he pulls up a chair to sit by his friends’ bedsides, keeping an eye on Kakashi. It’s true that Gojō did look him over, and he did say that Kakashi would be alright, but… It’s kinda scary still, okay? Kakashi’s a special-grade curse, not a human, so he doesn’t have to worry about getting sick or old… but that doesn’t make him invincible.

“Yūji,” Megumi calls, and Yūji looks up. His face is hard, jaw set and hands gripping tight to the thin hospital mattress below him. “I covered for you, but no more secrets. Fill me in on what it is you and Gojō have been up to.”

Yūji sits back-straight and looks absolutely anywhere but at Megumi. “Huh? Oh, well, I uh… did some training with Nanamin for a while. And then Gojō-sensei taught me how to put cursed energy into my punches. And—”

“Cut the crap and don’t play stupid.” Megumi leans forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands interlocked between them. He nods to Kakashi. “What’s this guy’s story?”

“He’s Gojō’s—”

“I know Gojō’s relatives,” Megumi says, “and he isn’t one of them.”

This is bad. Really bad. Yūji doesn’t like lying, least of all to a friend, and Megumi helped them both out just then. But he also knows how sorcerers view cursed spirits, and he remembers how long it took for Gojō to warm up to Kakashi and Obito, even while living under the same roof. If he gets those two killed, he’ll never forgive himself.

But it’s not fair to assume Megumi will be like that, too. He hasn’t had a chance to decide how he feels, and he’s not Gojō, or Nanami, or any of the other jujutsu sorcerers who’ve been at this job for decades. They’re both students, and Megumi’s not the judgemental type, and…

Yūji scrubs both hands over his face to snap himself out of this dangerous path he’s treading, but it doesn’t work. “Alright, okay, fine! But it stays between us, right?”

Megumi’s lips twitch. “Yeah, sure. Lay it on me.”

Seeing as they’re surrounded by jujutsu sorcerers beyond every wall of this infirmary, he needs to be careful about this. He leans conspiratorially close, gesturing for Megumi to do the same, and holds a hand up to his mouth. No going back now. He’s gonna do it. He’ll do it, and everything will be fine because Megumi’s a good guy and so, he whispers, “He’s a cursed spirit.”

Megumi visibly pales. Eyes blown wide, he stares at Kakashi like a gun’s being held up to his head. But the issue isn’t Megumi.

It’s Nobara.

There are two entrances to the infirmary, one on either side. Shoko left from the right. Anticipating that she might return, Yūji blocked his lips with one hand so that, if she came back, she couldn’t read his lips.

But he was visible from the left.

And Nobara was on the other side, looking in through the window.

The door slides open with a forceful screech. Nobara pushes inside, her hammer tightly held at her side and lip curled. “What,” she breathes, “did you just say?”

Yūji Itadori has royally fucked up.

Chapter Text

Time lost its meaning years or centuries ago, when the world was smaller and the sea was endless, and no one knew what came after the horizon. On a night too cold under stars too bright, with a campfire forged by his own hands, he reached up for the moon in wonder if he could touch it. But his fist closed on air, and no power in the mortal realm would bring him closer.

To him, it was a rainbow.

He grew up being tucked in by fresh horrors as war followed him to sleep. It had gone on so long that he wondered if it would ever end, or if this was their life, now and forever, until the sun burnt out and the stars fell from the sky. Every day was the same. If it wasn’t the same, it was worse. They either woke up together or fewer, each mission taking from them another face and name, remembered solely on a carved out monument erected by their leaders.

The ones who started the war lived. That, he learned, was power.

They were thoughts that found him only in the night, when the world was too slow and quiet to crush him.

His people were few and fewer still as the days went on. They were all the light in the world, a warm patch in a sheet of ice, and he knew that the war found them in their dreams, too. So, he swallowed it down. For their sake, he left those words in his sleeping bag, where they could find him again under the moon.

To him, she was the sun in the spring and the summer breeze. Snow melted with her smile and flowers bloomed with her laugh. When the weather was good, when it was bad, when the sun shone and the rain fell, and whether the sky above was stars or storms, every moment shined. Because of her, he didn’t care. Because of her, it did not matter if time flowed or stopped, if they fought forever or for a moment. She was the centre of the world, and only with her, it was okay to be happy.

She was a medic. Her touch brought life to a wasteland, and second chances to soldiers. Every word she spoke was healing, and every tear she cried vaster than the ocean. She liked books, and knitting. Her favourite colour was purple. She loved the rain but hated being wet.

When she woke up, it was for a better future. For days without war and pain. She fought today to protect tomorrow, because that was fair, and that was right.

They were children. They were child soldiers. But if they fought, and if they won, no one else would have to be. She truly believed in that.

And he believed in her.

But only the dead see the end of war.

Waking up after death was no different from reaching the Pure Lands and being pulled back down to Earth, but he was glad. He thought there might be more to his story than another name on a rock and corpse in the grass. If he was strong, he could change things. If he became Hokage, no more children would be suited up for war. It was Rin’s dream, one that she gave him, and it kept him company in the dark of the cave.

Time was meaningless, and months passed. Every step he took was preceded by a hundred falls as his body refused to listen. His leg was gone, and so was his arm, and the prosthetics broke beneath his weight. Whenever the foreign cells fell apart across the floor, when tears stung his eyes and he wanted to stop, he would remember his Sharingan. It was gone from its socket, living on with a promise to see the world. He would remember that, and he would get up.

People were waiting for him. Someone missed him. If he died there, they would mourn. They had mourned enough.

But time was meaningless, and he was too late.

Her name was Rin. She was a medic. Her favourite colour was purple, and she liked knitting and books.

Everything made sense when he was a child. If he did his best, he would become strong. If he became strong, he could protect people. If he protected people, he wouldn’t lose them. The war took his parents before he knew their faces, and it tried to end his story before it began. But if he was strong, if he followed the rules and tried his best. If he did that, it would be okay.

In his arms, he held the weight of the world, a body colder than night. The ground flooded with the aftermath of his rampage, and in the pools at his feet, the moon reflected red. He reached down to touch it, but the surface rippled and the illusion warped.

Ah. I get it. This world is no good like this.

No matter how hard they fought, there would be another war. Peace was temporary and nothing lasts forever. There would be more child soldiers. More people would die. And the memorial stone would always have space for another name.

He needed to fix it. He needed to save them. Time meant nothing, and even if it took his whole life, he would make Rin's dream a reality.

Rin told him once that if he loved the present, he could make peace with the past. But he hated today more than yesterday, and he would hate tomorrow even more, because there was no future with her in it.

When she died, he mourned her, but also the person he was with her. The version of him who she called a friend.

For him, it was a circle.

He was a cog in the world’s timepiece, and the days that fell behind him were the same as the ones ahead. If he looked back, a trail of bodies fell in his wake. If he looked forward, he was alone. But the moon hung in the sky, and one day, he would grasp it, even if that meant bathing in the remains of the dead.

If he stood still, it would end. Nothing lasts forever, and the sun doesn’t rise for everyone. The world was flawed like this. He could fix it. He could fix it.

He would fix it.

The red moon hung in the sky, and he pried a beast from the belly of a woman who once meant something. Her scream rang in his ears like cicadas in summer as the weight of her burden crushed beneath its feet the village she adored. It hurt to see her like that, but he remained strong. It was only temporary.

They would meet again in the new world.

It was an opportunity, one taken by his teacher. Minato didn’t understand, and the burn of his Rasengan was almost as painful as the defeat that followed it. Failure was crushing. It never occurred to him that the ones standing opposite him would be his own people. This was for them, a world where they could sleep peacefully, where the sounds of war were only an echo of their past. A world without pain or loss. Why didn’t they see it? It was so clear, the future they’d all been waiting for. Rin’s future.

On that night, he grasped at the moon, and it broke apart beneath his fingertips.

When he was alone, his hand would trace the lines of history on his face. Left of that, his fingers would press against an empty socket, and he would remember a promise, warm and new. Time was meaningless, and that day circled his mind like yesterday, a fresh hell that opened after sundown. His eye was kept safe by someone he could trust to protect it. They weren’t friends. He didn’t know what they were. That boy grew into a man, and that man was a permanent fixture beside the stone that honoured their dead.

Kakashi was everything he wasn’t—talented and skilful, with a future full of promise. He held the world in his hands, if only he would grasp it. At night, that man—that boy—heaved his memories into the kitchen sink. He scrubbed at his hands to remove their history, the feel of wet and warm, a fast-cooling body wrapped around his arm. A medic hanging there, who liked knitting and purple and books, who dreamed of a future too big for her.

It was too big a burden, too crushing a weight.

Theirs was a world small and divided, where power turned feuds into corpses. They were nations at war with no grasp of what lay beyond the vast open sea. No amount of peace would heal the scars in their hearts and on their bodies, and nothing they could do would fill the hole left behind by those who weren’t with them.

If it was like this, he would change it. Because he hated this world and hated himself, all the ways it failed him and every day that he failed it.

Rin’s dream was a mirage he could not grasp with an end he could not reach, one that he would chase until his dying days. Because time no longer mattered, and food had no taste. The nights were too long and the days too hot. Sleep was another chance for the past to find him, and closing his eye brought him one moment closer to death.

He missed her voice and her name, the healing glow of her chakra. He missed their days together and their short-lived team, the one where they fought and bickered, when the days were long and a year lasted a lifetime.

Those days were gone, left behind by the tragedy of war. And if he tried to reach them, his fist closed on air.

To him, it was a rainbow.

The hand he sees is white and smooth, lacking the age lines of its pair. He flexes boneless fingers one at a time and waits for the moment one curls unnaturally, all those years of practice too far behind him.

How long has it been, he wonders. How many days and years and centuries?

This world is louder than the drums of war. He stands in an alley between buildings too tall, lined with broken-down boxes and dumpsters that reek to the Pure Lands. Before him, the curse he killed breaks apart into remnants. He reaches out, catching them against the white of his hand, feeling miniscule power soak in through his skin. How long has he been at this for, exactly? Has he caught up?

The memories buzzing in his head are like an old friend, but they blur and bend too seamlessly to pull apart. Every day was the same or worse as time carried on and bodies fell to the promise of his future. Part of him hated knowing that the war raging in his mind was no better than the one that took Rin from him. At night, when the mask came off and the boy behind it was free, he would stare at the blood on his hands and wish them well.

Just a little longer. I’ll save you soon.

The blaring of horns draws his eyes to the traffic jam beyond the mouth of the alleyway. Humans are always in such a rush to go nowhere. 

“All those years of planning, and for what? Is this the future you’ve brought me?” he asks. “The strongest warriors are patience and time, and you’ve made a mockery of them, I see.”

He sighs, and his body sags with it. The sky is blue, and the weather is fine, and he’s not as disappointed as he should be. This may not be the world he dreamed of, but it’s fresh and new, and he’s yet to see all it has to offer.

Beneath the bustle of city streets, a new voice catches his ear. Behind him, between bags of waste and abandoned bottles, a body, small and thin, sinks to the ground. It’s balled up, cold and alone, grease-covered fur bristling beneath his stare. He leans in, tilts his head, and catches its sole eye with his. It’s young and abandoned, left to die out here with nothing to shelter it but a cardboard box, the white of its chest stained red-brown.

When he crouches, it hisses. He rests his head on his hand, watching it spit and snarl like a wildcat. It can’t be old enough to be on its own.

“You’ve been forgotten,” he says. “It seems this world is just as harsh as the last.”

If Rin were here, she would fix it. Her touch gave second chances, the warmth of her healing a constant in his mind. But his years outmatch hers, and the history written on this soul no longer carries her idyllic hope.

I held on for as long as I could, Rin. But I’m weak.

He wonders how many lives burn out in these concrete caves.

When Kakashi grew, he gained the knowledge to change and the power to be seen. No longer was he a slave to the past, and the red eye that marked their history was only an afterthought.

Obito brings his hands together and weaves cursed energy into chakra. He carries it across his body where it bubbles beneath his skin, lying in wait as his hands come together, released in a seal. When he looks down at himself, his arms match. Sun-kissed skin, lined with age, still young but no longer small.

“Ah, ah.” He grabs his throat, testing his voice, the low rasp foreign to him. “Let’s see, then. If I’ve caught up to you.”

Obito steps out onto the sidewalk and squints, blocking the sun from his eyes. It’s too bright out here in the light, too warm against his skin. The traffic jam continues to agitate his nerves, loud and louder still, and he walks without a goal in mind. A human bumps his shoulder and they both turn. Their eyes meet.

“Watch it, would ya?”

“Sorry,” he says automatically, trapped in the heat of the stranger’s glare.

He’s been seen.

Obito laughs, running his hand through his hair. “I see. So this is it.”

In the glass of the storefront to his right, he’s reflected. A boy, young and broken, with lines of history across his face.

Time is meaningless, and Obito is eighteen years old.

From high up, this place is beautiful. Buildings unlike any he’s seen before reach for the Pure Lands like pillars of sand. Beyond them stands a mountain, tall and proud behind a haze of blue. Obito has only spent time in places like these, with sharp edges and hard stone. But beyond this city exists a forest not unlike the one he called home. He longs for it in a way he didn’t before. All those years spent in the dark caverns of the Mountains’ Graveyard feel so far away.

He steps forward and slips off the side of the building and through space. Kamui opens up to birdsong and grass, the smell of forest and late nights around a campfire. It reminds him of his team. As he walks along a path, ignored by hikers, he thinks of Kushina. Her terrible food, and the way her lip curled when they fought. That woman was like a demon, with breath hot as fire and a hug that could crush a bear. She’s gone now, he supposes. He didn’t witness her funeral, stuck in a cave with the zetsu as his arm broke apart beneath his teacher’s Rasengan. Healing was difficult then, when he was sixteen, not yet one with this monstrous form he was gifted. It was long before the years of ripping that dead weight off and discarding it on the battlefield at his earliest convenience.

Obito sits on a rock and watches the clouds. They float along peacefully, and he smiles, wondering how it feels to just exist.

On the path, an old couple trudges forth with backpacks and hiking sticks. The husband offers a hand to his wife, and she smiles at him as he guides her over a sharp incline. It’s quiet here. They see him, and they smile, and he nods back.

While he waits here, many humans pass him on their journey up. One woman offers him a bottle of water, her hair pulled back in a ponytail that’s too tight. He lets her arm hang there, unsure what he, as a cursed spirit with no need for water, should do.

“Come on, Kid,” she urges, shaking the bottle. “It’s too hot out here to be contrary. Swallow the angst and keep hydrated, alright?”

She shoves it into his hands, cool to the touch, and smiles at him.

“Rest up and come meet us at the top when you’re ready. The view is breathtaking this time of year.”

Obito turns the bottle in his hand, looking at the script on its label, a language he doesn’t quite recognize. There’s a little picture of a mountain behind the text. Everything has pictures in this world. He sees them in the city, vibrant colours decorating walls and street corners. When the stars come out and the sun goes over the horizon, the whole world lights up. Humans have conquered the night. Theirs is a world of light and art.

“Hey, are you alright?” A man kneels at his side, his muscles toned and skin slick with sweat. “Did you slip? How’s your ankle?”

Obito stares at this human in his brimmed hat, skin warmed with the heat of the sun. “I’m fine,” he says.

“You’re sure?”

“Perfectly.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to grill you. It’s a hard trail, and I’ve seen a lot of falls this year. Just wanted to make sure you were okay.” The man smiles like those who came before and claps Obito on the shoulder. “If you’re up for it, keep going. It’ll be worth it, I promise.”

Obito doesn’t understand the humans’ love for this mountain. He’s seen so many sights with Kamui that they’ve lost their meaning. When the man leaves, he gets up and stretches. If he dispels the henge, he won’t have to worry about interruptions, but it’s taken so long to learn it that he’s hesitant. Instead, he starts moving, following the path up. Kamui would get him there in a breath, but he misses the sounds and textures of the forest, and soaking them up does wonders for his mood.

Hemlock and cypress trees climb over one another, their roots snaking over blankets of moss in thick tendrils. They ebb and wane like a petrified sea, as though floating on the surface of a lake or in a bed of lava. It differs from the forests he knows, but he likes that about it. This is something new, not yet another phantom of his past.

By foot, the journey takes hours. If he started at the base of the mountain, he may have been here all day. Obito does not have muscles to burn or tendons to tear. He doesn’t feel exhaustion from physical labour like this. But all those humans who passed him by aren’t so fortunate. They feel the burn and the pull, the tear and the ache. Yet there they are, smiling, sweat-soaked, and eager. There’s no mission objective marking their goal, no army to fight or enemy to crush. Walking this path will not bring about a better tomorrow. But they do so anyway. And to those who fall behind, they offer help.

The summit is in the clouds. He stares through them at a sprawling forest and vast city, the expanse of which he can’t fathom with his eyes alone. Crowds of people gather here, resting and exhausted. This is only the first half of their climb, and they’ll begin their descent after soaking in the sights.

It doesn’t seem worth it.

“Hey, you made it.”

On the ground, legs sprawled out in front of her, is a woman with her hair pulled back. She grins, waves him over, and chastises him for his still-full water bottle when he sits down. To stop the nagging, he unseals the cap and throws his head back, chugging down half of it to make her happy. It’s warm now with the summer heat, not as refreshing as it might have been. But he likes the feeling of water against his throat.

The woman lets out a big breath, her elbows on her knees. The rest of her group is a little ways away, taking pictures against the dramatic backdrop. Is that why humans do this? Seems a bit dramatic, but who is he to judge?

“Isn’t it great?”

Obito sprawls out his legs in the grass and leans back, propping himself up with arms as he looks out at the ocean of trees flowing down the summit. “It’s okay, I guess.”

“Only okay ? Ugh, men.”

“I thought I was a kid.”

She rolls her eyes. “Well, it’s better at sunset. It’s supposed to rain this evening, or else I would have taken one of the longer trails.”

“There are longer trails?”

“Ten hours, give or take.”

“ Why ?”

The woman shrugs, drinking from another bottle she had in her backpack. “It’s fun. People like a challenge, and it’s good exercise,” she says. “First time?”

“Kinda.”

“I can tell.”

It annoys him, but he doesn’t know why.

Some of the crowds disperse, but she and her group linger. Obito remains, watching the immovable scenery beneath them. He hasn’t seen much art in his life, but this landscape belongs in a painting all the same, and he has nowhere to be.

Distantly, he feels his other half, ever-present like a ghost in his head. They must be at the school still, participating in the Goodwill event. All day, he’s been in his own head, the constraints and conditions of this world forgotten. When the pool of memories recedes, he thinks of the people this new future brought him. There aren’t many faces, and he’s unsure where they stand now, this new body bringing with it baggage that they won’t accept.

When he looks back, a trail of bodies follows him up the mountain.

When he looks forward, the sky is endless behind the clouds.

“What’s your name, Kid?”

“Well, it’s not ‘Kid’.”

“Keep giving me sass, and it will be.”

Obito grabs the robes over his chest, and the ache beneath them dulls. Guilt is an old friend in a new form, and it’s probably best if it follows him in this life, too. This pain is human, more so than the pain that found him with Rin’s loss, and it’s proof that his name is still his.

“Obito,” he confesses, relieved that it doesn’t feel like a lie.

“Come back here in two weeks, Obito. Go hiking with us. We’ll show you the sunset.” She nudges his sandaled foot. “But maybe rethink your hiking gear.”

He picks at his clothes and looks at the hikers. Humans don’t wear this sort of thing anymore, but it’s what’s comfortable for him, even if he sticks out like a sore thumb. Change is a slow-rolling current, and he’s scared to get swept away. It’ll take time. That meaningless, unending thing that follows him even now.

If he wants to love the present, he needs to accept the past.

Obito doesn’t know if this life is a gift or a curse, or if the sins of his days as a human will be the new demons tucked away in his sleeping bag. He doesn’t know how to act when he meets Kakashi, what to say or where to start, or if his story is more than a name on a rock and a corpse in the grass.

Change is on the horizon, and soon enough, he’ll find out.

Foreign stress rolls through his body like an oncoming storm, and he looks toward the distant flicker of Kakashi’s presence. It’s time to move; he’s needed elsewhere. But as he stands up, he looks down at the woman yawning in the grass.

“I have to go,” he says. “Two weeks, right?”

She grins. “That’s right.”

“Oh, um. Your name. What is it?”

She gathers herself up off the ground and brushes grass and dirt off her shorts. Her group waves her over, and she hollers up at them. Then, she offers Obito her hand. “Rin.”

There’s a girl who likes knitting and books. Her favourite colour is purple. Snow melts with her smile and flowers bloom with her laugh. Her hand is soft and warm, clammy from the summer heat, and she has the grip of someone twice her size.

With his own hands, he grips the moon.

“That’s a beautiful name.”

Chapter Text

Yūji doesn’t really know where to go from here.

Behind him rests Kakashi, who’s a pretty cool guy, for a cursed spirit. And in front of him stand his classmates, Megumi and Nobara, who are giving him very different but equally disapproving looks. He’s put himself between them because Nobara looks a little trigger-happy. Which isn’t good. So, um.

“Yūji what the hell, ” Nobara spits as she takes a threatening step forward. “You brought a cursed spirit into our—”

Megumi’s hand wraps around her mouth, and he pulls her down onto the bed next to him. The door at the front of the room opens, and Shoko makes her return, staring at the three of them as she shoves her smokes into her pocket.

“You three up to something?”

Yūji and Megumi furiously shake their heads.

Shoko shrugs and returns to her seat. “Well, if you’re all set, take your chat elsewhere. This is an infirmary, not a cafeteria. Let the kid sleep.”

They’re kicked out. They find themselves in the courtyard, Yūji on a bench and the other two on the raised stone planter of one of the trees. The second years are off giving their reports to the principals, and the teachers must be securing the perimeter still, so they’re out here alone. No word from Gojō yet.

Yūji feels like a war criminal in an interrogation room.

“Mind explaining what this is all about?” Megumi asks. “Because, to be honest, I can’t make sense of it.”

“What are you and Gojō thinking?! What made you think bringing your pet curse to Jujutsu High was okay?”

“He’s not a pet,” Yūji defends. Distinctly, he recalls Satoru using that very same terminology once or twice in the past. But they don’t know that. “He’s my friend. I know it’s weird, but he’s a good guy, honest.”

Nobara hangs her head and pinches her brow. “He’s not a person, Yūji. Look: I know this is still kinda new to you, but cursed spirits aren’t like us. Even if he looks human, he’s an amalgamation of negative energy. That’s all. And even if he wasn’t, you brought him to the school. ”

She sounds like Gojō did back then, at the start of all this.

Megumi is quiet as he hunches forward, elbows on his knees and eyes on Yūji. He listens to Nobara’s rant, but more than that, he’s thinking, smoothing his thumbs together absently. “How did you find him? Let’s start there.”

It’s an in. He’s willing to listen.

Yūji absently shifts his legs, thinking back to that day. It feels like it was years ago, now. But really, it hasn’t been that long. “Okay, so there were a pair of cursed wombs forming—”

“Pair?” Nobara echoes. “What do you mean, pair? There’s another one of those things wandering around?!”

“They’re not things,” he mutters when he knows not to. “They’re people. Or… they were.”

“Yūji, they’re not —”

“Are you gonna let me tell the story, or not?” He waits for another interruption, and Nobara starts, but Megumi gives her a nudge and she swallows down her protests. “So, there were a pair of cursed-wombs forming, and they were special-grade. The higher-ups wanted them taken care of before the curses inside were fully formed, and they sent Gojō-sensei to take care of one and Nanamin to take care of the other. I was training with Nanamin, so I got to go along.”

Megumi leans forward, elbows on his knees and fingers intertwined. “I went on that assignment, too,” he confesses. “Gojō brought me along. But to be honest, he didn’t let me inside the veil. I don’t think he realized how big a threat it was until he got there, and he worried about the safety of the windows.”

Nobara looks between them, miserable and annoyed. “So, what, everyone knows about this but me? Was I seriously the only person left out?”

“Nah.” Megumi shrugs. “I went along, but Gojō kinda forgot about me after he went inside. Few hours later, one of the windows told me he’d taken care of it, and I hitched a ride back into town with them. I just assumed that was that and went to bed.”

“Oh, yeah, that was probably my fault,” Yūji says, rubbing the back of his neck. “The one in Kyoto kidnapped me, so I think Gojō-sensei was a bit worried.”

They stare at him, and he realizes this isn’t the best thing to say to prove his case. While he tries to think up a defence on Obito’s behalf, he sees Nobara’s trust in him wilt. If he’s not careful, not only will she want Kakashi and Obito exorcised, but she’ll never give him the benefit of the doubt ever again.

“He was confused,” Yūji defends before Nobara lectures him again. “He remembered being human, but when he woke up, everyone was calling him a curse. He didn’t even know what that meant, and he only took me ‘cause he wanted answers. But he never attacked, even when Nanamin went after him. Honest.”

The pair look between each other, exchanging opinions with only their eyes, and Yūji feels a bit left out. It’s like he’s acting as the cursed spirits’ lawyer, trying to defend his client to a judge who’s doubling as a prosecutor. 

“Curses have existed for a long time, Yūji,” Megumi says gently, as though breaking some unknown truth. “Even if he were centuries old, he should still know about them. To become a curse, himself, he would have had a lot of cursed energy as a human, meaning he would have been able to see them.”

Yūji doesn’t know anything about that. Or maybe he’s heard something about it before? Either way, he can’t bring himself to believe Obito was lying to him back then. The kid who found him that day was open, honest, and confused. There was no reason for him to hide, or lie, and Yūji never felt threatened or unsafe.

“I trust him,” he says, summing it all up. “I trust both of them.”

“But they’re curses,” Nobara mutters, leaning forward with her hands curled around the lip of the stone. “There’s a good possibility they’re just playing along to survive. Even if they can speak, or seem like they feel something, it’s all an illusion.”

“Well, what if it’s not?” Yūji tries instead.

“It is,” she sighs. “That’s just how curses are, Yūji. I feel like we’re talking in circles.”

Correcting her is pointless because, as far as any of them know, she could be right—should be, even, as that’s exactly what Gojō told him at the start of this. He needs to take a different approach. “Alright, okay, um. Let’s start with: what happens when a human becomes a curse?”

Megumi drops his head into his hand, eyeing Yūji. He seems to know where this is going. “They become a vengeful cursed spirit,” he answers simply. “Their soul is corrupted, and they attain the same instincts and desires of the rest of their kind. To that end, they can’t be considered human anymore.”

Yeah, okay, so it’s about what Yūji expects. He hasn’t given much thought to it before, seeing as the only ones he’s met have been, well. Different. To him, his curse buddies are little more than humans without physical bodies… But he remembers the moment Obito lost it at dinner one day, for just a brief second, and how Yūji doubted his resolve.

But Obito was apologetic afterwards. He regretted it. If he were just another curse, he shouldn’t have reacted like that, right?

“Hypothetically,” Yūji prefaces, already seeing Nobara scowl, “ hypothetically, what if there was a vengeful cursed spirit who could suppress their instincts? Like… what if they felt human enough to control themself?”

“That’s not—”

“Hypothetically!” he insists again, but louder.

The yard goes silent. One of the teachers walks by and nods at them, and they awkwardly keep their mouths shut until she’s gone. This is a really shitty place to be having this conversation. Not that there’s anywhere suitable they could go. Yūji really should have kept his mouth shut, but he hates lying to friends, and if anyone’s going to believe him, it’s them, right?

Right?

He wishes Gojō was here. When he says something, people tend to take him seriously, at least where it counts.

“They would operate similarly to cursed users, I imagine,” Megumi settles on. “Their bodies would be different, of course… But functionally, they’d be the same. Something like that.”

Yūji’s whole face lights up, and Nobara groans.

“Look what you’ve gone and done,” she chastises, waving an arm to gesture at him.. “Now he has ideas. ”

Megumi sighs. He doesn’t derail the conversation, though, and continues on undisturbed. “You’re saying that they’re controllable, or that they’ve decided to cooperate, at least. I’m not sure if it’s wise to believe that… But when I fought that unregistered special-grade with Inumaki and Kamo, something else was there. It was attacking the enemy, but none of us could see it. Considering how things turned out… I assume it was your friend.”

Oh, right! Yūji forgot about that whole thing. He grins, feeling like he hasn’t dug himself into a hole he can’t get out of, and scoots forward a bit on the bench. “Oh, yeah, right! Gojō-sensei had him watch over the event. I guess he thought something weird might happen. I saw him fighting the special-grade off all by himself—and then he got Maki and Panda out of the way when Gojō did that big void attack thing—”

“Focus.”

“Right, yeah, sorry.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Anyway, I dunno, just give him a chance? Please? Gojō-sensei didn’t trust him, either… but now he does. That’s gotta mean something, right?”

Once again, his classmates look between one another, and he’s not sure if he’s convinced them.

What a pain in the ass.

After doing a bit more damage control, making his report (skimming a little on the details), and assuring the safety of the rest of the staff, Satoru is finally ready to call it a day. Fortunately, apart from the guards the patch-faced curse got a hold of, nobody died today. The kids are all safe, and the bodies are being retrieved. All in all, this could have gone a lot worse. They should be happy, and he would be!

But Obito’s situation is a new thorn in his side.

Satoru finds Kakashi still asleep in the infirmary and stands over him, hands in his pockets, as he scans the still-high levels of cursed energy in the kid’s body. By all rights, Kakashi shouldn’t be this exhausted. There’s plenty still left in him, and his injuries have all burned away. This guy always has to be dramatic, huh?

Satoru wonders what vacations look like. He’s starting to understand Kento’s retirement plan.

Still. This kid went toe-to-toe against that special-grade, all while minding the safety of the students. He’s impressive, sure enough, and his loyalty is iron-clad. If the other one were the same then, well. There’d be a lot less to worry about.

This was the first time Obito referred to Kakashi as his ‘other half’. They’ve called one another brothers, and friends. So many other things. But this is the first time Obito’s acknowledged their relationship as two halves of the same curse.

Shoko rolls back in her chair and leans around the curtain obscuring her view of the beds, a pack of smokes discarded atop the desk she’s sitting at. “You’ve got a lot of balls bringing a curse to the school, Gojō.”

Satoru tilts his head back, catching her eyes, and then looks down at Kakashi. “I like playing dangerously. Makes the game more exciting.”

He’s not surprised she figured it out, nor is he worried about her saying anything. Shoko comes to her own conclusions and does what she wants, and it isn’t like jujutsu sorcerers never team up with curses, anyway. There are plenty of shikigami under the control of their peers, there are curses sealed in tools and weapons, and rogue sorcerers team up with them when they share a common interest. Today, one of those rare partnerships wrought destruction across the whole damn school.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Shoko says, her tone as flat and disinterested as it always is. This is the same woman who talked casually with Suguru after he went rogue all those years ago, after all.

“Please. When am I not in control?”

“More often than you think, evidently.”

Her honesty is as biting as ever, and he appreciates it.

Satoru sits down on the bed next to Kakashi’s and crosses his legs, wondering where to go from here. The dorms are in a sorry state, and the students will need a temporary residence while construction goes on. Some of them have family homes nearby, so that shouldn’t be too much of an issue, and Megumi can move back in for a little while if need be. Nobara’s from the countryside, though… That poses a problem. There’s the issue of what to do with Obito, but Satoru doesn’t have much of a say in that, anyway, as their binding vow isn’t very limiting. ‘Wait and see’ is the best he can do. They need to find out who those sorcerers were, and whose command they’re operating under—how big this whole situation goes. Volcano-head wasn’t present, but he’s part of the same group, seeing as the nature curse hung around him, so there’s at least one other unregistered special-grade to work with, and…

Satoru sighs. Already, he feels the elders bearing down on him with all their woes.

“Hey, Shoko?” He nods to his little curse buddy. “This doesn’t leave the room.”

Shoko leans her arm over the back of the chair and raises an eyebrow, an easy smile on her lips. “It left the room half an hour ago, Gojō.”

“What?”

“Itadori isn't good at keeping his mouth shut, if you hadn’t guessed.”

Oh, come on.

Satoru groans, swipes a hand across his face, and gets up. He plucks the cursed spirit off the bed, slings the dead weight onto his back, and dutifully goes in search of the next pain in the ass he has to deal with.

Satoru finds the first-years in the courtyard, sitting around with conflicting expressions as Yūji animatedly tries to sell them on a pyramid scheme. Great, good, fantastic. Hopefully, the grave Yūji’s dug himself is less than six feet deep.

Before long, Satoru’s there with them, setting Kakashi down on the bench next to Yūji while he leans across the back. The boy slides, his dead weight coming to rest against his friend’s shoulder, and his presence unsettles the two sitting on the stone planter. Well, if there was any doubt before, it’s gone. They know what Kakashi is.

Thanks, Yūji.

“Gojō-sensei,” Yūji greets, switching focus between his teacher and his curse buddy. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, Yūji.” Satoru watches the other two curiously, smiling as he waves his hand. “Good, looks like you’re all in one piece. Any aches or pains? Shoko’s free right now if you need treatment.”

“We’re fine,” Megumi answers. His voice is clipped, and oh boy, he’s not happy. The kid’s always had a look to him that feels slightly angry, but his temper doesn’t actually flare often. He’s easily annoyed, but doesn’t lose his cool at any old provocation. Well, he did have a bit of a violent streak in middle school. Puberty makes monsters out of everyone, and Megumi is no exception. But he’s mellowed out in recent years. “I think you owe us an explanation, Gojō.”

Yeah, he probably does. This is hardly the place or time, though, and they have other matters to settle. Satoru scratches head, and instead turns to Nobara. “Say, how do you feel about taking a train home?”

Nobara frowns. “Not happening.”

Satoru sighs. Every student he takes on is a little stubborn. They have to be if they want to make it in this field, but it only makes his job harder. “Well, the dorms are gone, so you don’t have a place to sleep. You can talk it out with Principal Yaga, or you can take one of the rooms at the Gojō estate. Up to you.” He turns back to Megumi. “I’m assuming you’re fine with a trip home. You’ll be bunking with curses, though. Both of you.”

While they deal with their moral dilemmas, Satoru peeks out from beneath the blindfold at Kakashi, analyzing the cursed energy in his body. Even unconscious, he has some control over it, else he’d be drawing every sorcerer in the vicinity like a beacon. There’s been no change in his state, and he probably won’t wake up until later tonight, or perhaps tomorrow morning.

Nobara drops her chin onto her hand, eyeing him. “You really trust that thing? Both of you?”

“Of course!” Yūji supplies readily.

Satoru hesitates. The kids watch him, expecting the same resolute answer. But the world is a complicated, muddy place, and today has reminded him that even his closest allies can leave overnight. When he was younger, that never felt possible, nor did he really care. He was the strongest, and even on his own, he could handle it.

Then Haibara was dead, and Suguru was gone, and he understood what it was he lacked.

“I want to,” he says. “The world is different now, and things need to change. We can’t hold onto the same archaic beliefs our ancestors gave us and hope they’re right. Life isn’t that simple. There’s an exception to every rule.”

The kids fall quiet, the cicadas are loud, and the sun hangs low over the horizon. It’s getting late, everyone’s tired, no one has eaten, and there’s a curse sleeping next to Yūji.

Satoru pushes off the bench and claps his hands. “So! Dinner. Any requests?”

Returning to the Gojō estate, they find it empty. That’s no good, but there’s nothing Satoru can do about it. When Kakashi’s up and alive again, they can probably track Obito down, or… Well, if he breaks the binding vow, they’ll know one way or the other. It might be best to leave him alone for a bit, at least until he comes to terms with whatever memories are facing him now. Kakashi was a mess for a while, but he’s calmed down.

Satoru sets Kakashi down on the futon and pulls the sheets up to his neck. Cursed spirits can’t really feel cold, can they? Not as well as humans can. But he’s caught the kids sleeping like this before, so it’s just as well. He’ll humour them.

From down the hall, there’s a chorus of voices. If he looks through the wall, he can see the three sets of cursed energy milling about in the main room. The estate gets more crowded by the day. When he fought a silver-haired wolf child in the mountains however-long ago, Satoru didn’t think it would end in accidental child acquisition, but here they all are. Well, there are plenty of empty rooms, and at least if they’re nearby, he can monitor things.

“Suppose I’ll have to catch you up when you’re less tired, eh, Kashi?”

It’s probably fine. Kakashi likes kids or something.

That seal stuff he was working on with Obito… What happens to it now? Do they abandon it? Well, it was a long-shot to start. Pretty convenient that some random newborn curse knows ancient sealing techniques that even Gojō isn’t aware of, right?

“We got delivery. Don’t sleep in too late, or the kids’ll eat it all.”

He sighs. What is he doing right now?

Satoru slides the door shut when he leaves, stretches, and greets his students at the chabudai. “Alright! Stuff your faces, then pick out your rooms. Before you ask: the cursed spirits are staying in the one right down the hall next to mine. Stop worrying about it.”

General noises of affirmation are all that greet him. He forgot how rude this bunch can be.

“Hey, Gojō-sensei?”

“Yes, Yūji?”

“Where’s Obito I haven’t seen him.”

Satoru sits down on an empty floor cushion and picks at side dishes. Beyond the open shōji screen, he sees a fully intact bridge standing proud in the courtyard, free of splintered wood and debris.

“Out,” he says, and leaves it at that.

Chapter Text

The world is a too-loud mess of sound as he stirs, the plush surface beneath him like a bed of needles at his back. He groans, hating that the shift of the sheet is painful against his skin, and even the clothes that are a physical part of him hurt.

Kakashi thought he left chakra exhaustion behind in his old life. As a curse, his whole body is a mass of energy, and implying he has a lack of it is absurd. Did he overuse the Sharingan? Is that still a risk? Most likely, seeing the state he’s in. All this time, he thought that, since he and Obito were the same, his bedridden post-mission trips were behind him.

He groans, covers his eyes with his hands, then opens them to the ceiling. It’s a familiar sight. Somehow, he’s back at Gojō’s estate, resting on his futon, tucked nice and snug beneath a blanket. The fight must be over. Vaguely, he recalls Gojō wiping out the cursed spirit that infiltrated the school and wonders if the other intruders were picked off, as well.

The kids are safe, aren’t they? They should be.

He’s so hungry and tired. Beneath the surface, his instincts stir, urging him to feed and replenish. They’re harder to ignore while weak like this, and he makes a mental note not to skip any meals going forward. It’s strange how easily influenced he is. When he’s training, eating, and sleeping—doing all those things that humans do—he’s better in control of himself. Those mundane tasks ground him, and sometimes, he starts to wonder if he really is the human Kakashi, and not just the curse. But then, when his body thrums with the excitement of battle, or when he’s stressed and desperate, the truth of what he is comes to find him.

Kakashi is a curse. That’s all he’ll ever be. Laying here, feeling all those instincts coiling within, he understands that.

“Back in the land of the living, I see.”

He doesn’t recognize that voice. It’s not Gojō, and it’s too deep to be Yūji. Nanami speaks with a different cadence. But his moment of panic lasts only long enough for instinct to quell him, and he shudders out a breath, feeling a calming presence in the room.

Obito is here. He doesn’t sound like himself anymore. The voice is calmer, more certain, and Kakashi’s heart aches to know that the friend he’s long missed is someone else now. More than anything, it sounds tired.

He doesn’t want to look.

As the seconds pass, Kakashi parses Obito’s scent. It’s harsh against his nose, earthy and strong like wood smoke. It reminds him of a forest fire. But underlying it are the same markers Kakashi is familiar with, and there’s comfort in that.

When his nerves settle, Kakashi sits up. He hisses against the aches in his body, that familiar chakra exhaustion pain that he hates so much, and his body shakes with the effort. This is ridiculous. He doesn’t have muscles to warrant the ache, and his body isn’t entirely physical. There’s no reason for this.

As seconds pass, he settles himself, and soon notices the dark figure in the corner. Obito is older, as he feared. He’s surpassed Kakashi in age, now a full-grown adult, sitting there nonchalantly with his head in his hand and his legs crossed. Dark purple robes fall across his form, hiding the figure beneath them. He’s everything Kakashi would expect of an older Obito, down to the twin Sharingan eyes and the sun-kissed skin, the shape of his jaw and the calmness of his face. But Kakashi knows this couldn’t have been the way he looked as a human. He should have scars, at least, and one of his eyes belongs to Kakashi. The image he makes now is a product of his own alteration, just as Kakashi’s receded Sharingan is.

Obito smiles at him, and he tenses. Something in his brain tells him it’s wrong—that this Obito wouldn’t smile like that.

“How’re you feeling?” his old friend asks. Already, he’s not as loud as he was as a child.

“Like shit,” he states bluntly, refusing to move. “Everything hurts.”

“I’d expect nothing less from Kakashi ‘Chakra Exhaustion’ Hatake.”

“What?”

Obito waves off the question. He scoots closer until he’s by Kakashi’s side, and this close up, it’s easy to see the disparity between their ages. Looks like Kakashi’s been left behind this time. There’s no telling whether they’ll meet on even ground again. But right now, he understands how Obito felt, and what must have driven him to become what he is. Remaining stuck while your other half moves forward is a miserable, lonely feeling. Obito knows things that he doesn’t, and it scares him.

Despite that, Obito’s hand is gentle as it wraps around his own, holding firm. “I’ll give you a bit of cursed energy,” he says. “Knead it into chakra with the rest of your reserves, and it should help. When you’re in less pain, we’ll get you fed. You’re looking a little feral.”

“Am I?”

Obito looks over his shoulder at the door. Beyond it, he can hear voices, but it’s hard to distinguish words as they talk over each other. They’re not as loud and clear as Gojō can be, either. “Don’t let the kids see you like this. It’ll spook them.”

What does ‘like this’ mean? How does he look right now?

“Kids?” he asks instead.

Obito frowns. He seems to be listening in on the conversation down the hall, able to catch words that Kakashi’s missing. It’s strange how they both have the enhanced senses of the Hatake clan now, but it’s no weirder than them both having the Sharingan. “Seems Gojō’s picked up a couple of strays. I wouldn’t worry. But they’re wary of us.”

“Understood.”

It’s awkward between them in a way it’s never been before. This is more than the tension from the night Kakashi evolved, and it’s entirely on Kakashi’s end of things. Obito feels like a stranger. He’s calm and relaxed—quiet, even, in a way his teammate never could be. But he’s not hostile, and Kakashi would venture to say that he’s actually rather personable.

Through the silence, cursed energy pulses through their connected palms, and Kakashi steadily works it into chakra.

“Obito,” he calls, drawing red eyes to him.

“Yeah?”

“This isn’t what you look like, is it?”

Obito hesitates. He stares down at his right hand, the one still feeding energy into Kakashi. “It’s not,” he admits, “but I’d like to leave the past where it is.”

“You won’t show me, then.”

Obito smiles, but it’s a sad, tired thing. “One day, maybe. Not tonight.”

Kakashi accepts it and sighs. They stay there for a while, trying to undo his exhaustion. Eventually, it no longer feels like he’s sitting on a bed of needles. He regains enough mobility to shift around and get comfortable. They both sit with their backs against the wall, their futons pulled up next to each other as Obito keeps up with the flow of cursed energy between them. It’s a painfully slow process, and something tells Kakashi that if they were to speed it up, it would hurt. Cursed energy isn’t meant to be shared like this.

If Obito wants to forget the past, then there’s no point in Kakashi questioning where he was during their later years, or why he never returned to the village. Obito might not be ready to share that. Perhaps in a few days, or weeks, when things have calmed down… He’s not sure.

Instead, he asks, “Do you think we were human?”

Obito watches him curiously. “You don’t?”

“I’m not sure,” he confesses. “I don’t know if I became this when I died, or if I just have my human counterpart’s memories. Sometimes, I feel like someone else.”

It’s something he never thought to share before. He didn’t want to worry Obito, the boy he wanted to protect. But that boy is gone, and in his place is… something else.

Obito hums, scratching his chest absently as he stares at the door on the far wall. “Do you want to be the human Kakashi?” he asks, no answer there to meet him. Kakashi isn’t sure. “Personally, I don’t care. Either way, that world is gone, and we have this one instead. If I’m a curse, and I’ve always been a curse, so be it.”

Kakashi sighs. Well, that’s one way of looking at it. Regardless of the answer, their situation doesn’t change, nor does his resolve to hold tight to his humanity. Even if it happens that he’s never lived before now, he would still choose where he is over where he could be, hunting and killing like the special-grade who attacked the school. In another life, in a world where these human memories don’t cling to him, he could have been the one hurting those kids. The knowledge sits wrong in his stomach, and he feels sick.

To combat his nausea, he closes his eyes and focuses on his pathways, and the way volatile cursed energy weaves into chakra. Even without Obito’s help, there’s still a lot of cursed energy in his body, but he can’t seem to control it as easily as he did the reserves that he emptied, like it’s blocked off by a wall. What Obito feeds into him is easily malleable, though, and he feels the shift of agitated energy as it morphs into something calm.

With so much energy in his body, Kakashi shouldn’t feel the exhaustion he is. But, curiously, he had almost no chakra when he woke up. It’d all been used in the attack, and it didn’t replenish while he slept because, with this body, the creation of chakra isn’t automatic. He has to consciously mould it because a curse’s body only produces cursed energy. So, quite technically, he is exhausted of chakra, even if his body isn’t empty. Is that why he feels like this?

When he was born from the cursed womb, Kakashi didn’t know how to make chakra. He fought solely with cursed energy, channeling it through his Sharingan and hardening it into the blade that would be his tantō. But then, he came to understand how he could create chakra, even in the state he was in now. As chakra, he could be more creative with applications of his energy. It was refined, so it didn’t burn out as quickly, and he could recreate jutsu from the human Kakashi’s memories. Somewhere along the way, his body acclimated to that. It’s used to having chakra circulating through it, and he hasn’t used pure cursed energy for anything more than the creation of his tantō in a long time.

This isn’t chakra exhaustion, is it? It’s withdrawal. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for him, the results are the same, and Obito seems to already know how to mitigate it.

Kakashi opens his eyes and steals a glance at the other curse. He can’t feel how much cursed energy Obito has anymore, or how much has been worked into chakra. The cloak Obito uses now has surpassed Kakashi’s, and even with their hands touching and the passage of energy between them, that knowledge is completely closed off. It’s like he doesn’t have a presence.

Red eyes find him, and he hurriedly looks away, staring at the far wall of their shared residence. Being caught staring is embarrassing, for some reason, and deeply uncomfortable. More and more, he’s coming to understand the boy he already misses—the little brat who was all smiles and optimism. After he evolved, he caught Obito staring at him, too, unnerved by the sudden change. Kakashi wanted so much for their friendship to remain the same, even after fresh horrors came to find him, and it couldn’t. They tried, and they tried, but Obito felt so left behind that he decided to become what he is now. Because of this, that boy is gone.

Kakashi wants to mourn him, even while feeling the warmth of his hand.

“I knew you’d be like this,” Obito says in a sigh, dropping his chin onto his palm. “I left that special-grade for you to eat, but Gojō must have gotten to it first.” He clicks his tongue, as though genuinely annoyed, but his voice is still calm and quiet.

Kakashi thinks back to his last conscious moments before he woke up here, and the way his opponent’s head lopped off in the blink of an eye. “That was you?”

Obito watches him and looks away just as quickly. It’s like he can read Kakashi’s every thought, parse each moment of uncertainty, and step away before a crack becomes a chasm. “If I knew it’d go to waste, I would have eaten their cursed energy, myself.”

Kakashi dreads the thought of seeing an Obito even further ahead than this. He doesn’t like how easily this man thinks of consuming, either. The younger Obito was a shinobi, and had felt the weight of bodies against the bladed edge of his kunai, but never liked it. This one may not, either… But it’s hard to say. He sees exorcism as a means to an end, where his younger self used to teach card games to cursed spirits. Something in him has shifted.

His hold is gentle yet firm, as though if he lets go of Kakashi’s hand, Kakashi will no longer be here.

“I didn’t mean to leave you behind,” Obito says, jolting Kakashi from his thoughts. “I only wanted us on equal ground. This wasn’t my intention.”

“I know.”

“Yeah?”

Kakashi nods. He can see a thin layer of stress beneath Obito’s calm, like a plucked violin string, and understands. Something unexpected happened. Obito arrived at the school, presumably because he sensed Kakashi’s stress or weakness, and there must have been another curse. Kakashi hadn’t sensed any, but he would have been too preoccupied to tell. Perhaps, before consuming that curse, Obito’s body was at the same point in time as Kakashi’s.

Time passes quietly as they breathe with fake lungs, the muted voices from down the hall their only background. Obito isn’t the only one that’s changed since they were born here. Kakashi has changed, too, and so has the world. This room was once an empty prison cell, covered wall-to-wall in talismans that they couldn’t touch. Then, it had a futon, just the one. One, and then two. There’s a bookshelf now that’s waiting to be filled, a table and a lamp, a console by the door. They have a small dresser, too, but don’t have clothes to wear, and that’s a bit sad.

Wishing time would stop is a waste of energy. Even if they don’t notice it, everything shifts and turns with the passing hours, and to fight it would be insanity. Gojō, the man who once referred to them as objects, not people, knelt before Kakashi to make sure he was okay.

Kakashi smothers down the uncertainty of the man seated next to him and wants to believe that, even though he’s different, this is still Obito.

There’s food on the air. He sniffs it, parsing the scents, trying to find out what it is.

“Think you could eat now?” Obito asks, and their hands part. “If I give too much too fast, it might overload you. Let’s take a break.”

Kakashi nods. Chakra exhaustion—withdrawal—still hangs over him like a leaden weight, but he’s not in pain anymore. He should, for brief intervals, be able to at least lift his arms to feed himself. “What’s for dinner?”

“Looks like Gojō ordered food,” he says. It’s not an entirely foreign concept, as there were one or two delivery services in Konoha, but Tokyo is a much larger place. Kakashi wonders how it works. “Hot pot, I think, and some side dishes.”

“You think?”

The man shrugs.

“Obito,” he warns, but he’s too weak for it to hold any weight, “do they know you’re here?”

Obito pauses for a moment. “How good is my cloak?”

“If not for our connection, I wouldn’t be able to sense you.”

“Then no, they don’t.”

Kakashi settles him under a look. It makes sense now why his newly-evolved other half isn’t being kept beneath Gojō’s watchful eye. If Gojō knew about Obito’s new form, and that he was present in the estate, he’d want him nearby until he determined how Obito’s new memories affected him.

“I decided it was best to keep my distance for a bit,” Obito confesses, as though explaining his bad behaviour to a parent. “I saw him when my instincts flared and had an uncomfortable thought, so I’ve been waiting for it to pass.”

“What thought?”

“I wondered if I could absorb cursed energy from humans.”

Kakashi shudders out a breath and curls his fingers around his sheets. It’s a dangerous path to follow. But as someone who shares the same instincts, Kakashi can see how a freshly-evolved curse would come to that, new energy thrumming through his veins, compelled to seek out and consume. Gojō wouldn’t be an easy opponent if Obito were to act on that compulsion, no matter how much stronger he may or may not be. But other humans, like the ones down the hall, wouldn’t be an issue. Removing himself from the situation is a good call.

Kakashi eases the tension in his shoulders and stares at the curse. Despite Kakashi’s obvious unease, Obito is being honest with him, at least about this.

“Thank you,” Kakashi says, “for not lying to me about that.”

Obito looks away, facing the wall. He’s impossible to read now, but over time, Kakashi hopes to map out his expressions until he finds the familiarity of his old friend. “You deserve to know.”

“How do you feel now?”

“Calm,” Obito sighs. “My instincts spiked when I ate a special-grade, but things have levelled out now. I’m okay.”

Well, that’s a relief. It’s the same as what happened to Kakashi, then, which makes it a pattern. If they absorb more in the future, they’ll be prepared. While Kakashi didn’t find such a nasty thought in his head when he aged up, he still felt a spike of bloodlust, and Obito’s gone further than he has. It’s possible that next time, it’ll be worse.

He doesn’t like thinking about it.

“What about you?”

“Hm?”

“You don’t look quite right,” Obito says. “How are your thoughts?”

Kakashi reaches up with a shaking arm to run fingers through his hair. He’s been focused on Obito since he woke up, so he hasn’t noticed, but the itch of violence is still there beneath the surface. Obito’s cursed energy quelled him for a while, but now that it’s gone, the urge to consume is buzzing in his head again.

“Not great,” he admits quietly, “but I’m in control. I won’t hurt anyone.”

Obito nods, and his shoulders ease, too. Isn’t that strange? Kakashi’s so wary of him, something deep inside telling him that this man is dangerous, that he’s no longer the bright boy he once was, fighting with the instincts that find comfort in his presence. But Obito’s relieved that he’s okay. That he’s not a threat, that he can still think for himself.

Kakashi feels like a monster, and it has nothing to do with being a cursed spirit.

Satoru yawns and stretches, his stomach full and some of the gloom of their very long, way-too-dramatic day no longer weighing on their shoulders. The kids haven’t picked out their rooms yet, and have just been chatting while they eat. Usually, Satoru would expect a spread like this to be devoured in ten minutes flat, but everyone’s a little too tired to stuff their faces, and even if no one’s that hurt (except Yūji, because it’s Yūji), they’re all spent.

He looks down the hall from his floor cushion, watching the flicker of cursed energy from the room at the far end. Kakashi is either stirring or awake, but hasn’t moved. Once the kiddies have their fill, if there’s still no change, Satoru will bring some leftovers to the room to see if he’s up for a meal. It won’t be much, but eating does replenish his cursed buddy’s reserves, so it might help out with his exhaustion. Even asleep, Kakashi looked like he’d been through it, and Satoru feels for him. Sort of. It reminds him of how sleep deprived he’d been when the cursed spirits first made his estate their home.

He leans on the table, watching his students. Nobara’s on her phone, Yūji’s still eating, and Megumi is giving Satoru a lot of very pointed looks. Judgy little brat. This place used to be so empty and quiet. Now, look at it.

“Hey, Gojō,” Nobara calls, pointing a finger at him. “You better not expect us to sleep on the floor.”

Ah, crap. He forgot that the curses took his futons until Yūji mentioned it just now. Well, if Obito’s not around, maybe he can get away with only buying one. “C’mon, what do you take me for? You’ll have somewhere to sleep, I promise.”

It’s too late to go to the shops. He’s never tested the teleportation with his Six Eyes so far, but maybe he can find his way overseas somehow, in another time zone. Leaving them alone for that long with the curse they’re scared of might be a bad move, though. Oh, right… The dorms are a big pile of rubble now, but the kids’ beds might have survived. He could just hop over there, and…

Looking outside, it’s raining. Even if he gets them back, they’ll be soaked through, and there’s no cleaning and drying a pair of mattresses before bed tonight. He taps his fingers on the table, thinking of who he could bug. Shoko and Mei Mei aren’t the types to have people over (and even if Mei Mei had a futon to spare, she’d charge him an arm and a leg to borrow it). Kento keeps to himself, too, but tends to be overly prepared for every situation… Maybe he might. Principle Yaga? He could work, right? Does he have friends?

Even past sunset, Satoru’s day drags on.

“Is he still sleeping?” Megumi asks, leaning on the table.

Satoru’s eyes find the curse signature as it sways in place. “He’s up. But I think he’s too tired to move.”

The idle chatter of the room falls quiet with his words, and the kids look at him.

“This can’t be safe,” Nobara insists. “We’re his natural enemy. He’s gonna attack in our sleep or something.”

“He won’t,” Yūji declares with the utmost confidence. “He’s been staying here for a while, and we’ve been fine. We make breakfast in the morning.”

As though cooking breakfast has anything to do with the issue at hand.

“Look,” Satoru calls, “if you want, I can drop you off somewhere else. I understand why you’re worried, and today’s been tough on all of you. Yūji and I have stayed with Kakashi long enough that he doesn’t bother us, but to you, he’s a stranger. I get it, and I won’t fault you for being worried.”

They stare at him like he has three heads, and he’s too over it to care.

“You’re uncharacteristically thoughtful today,” Megumi says, sipping at his tea. “What’s going on with you?”

Satoru groans and waves the question away. There’s just been a lot going on, and he can’t seem to inject the same level of energy into their interactions as he usually would. Honestly, he always worries about the kids, and wants them to feel safe. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t be so adamant about breaking the cycle the elders have created, or championing for change. He wants these things because he wants for a better future, so that the injustices of the past don’t repeat themselves.

Usually, though, he won’t say as much.

Minutes pass, and no one takes him up on his offer. They go back to chatting idly, Yūji and Megumi hovering over Nobara’s shoulders, watching some video on her phone. They can’t be all that worried if they’re still willing to sleep here. Which means the issue of the futons is still up in the air. Great. There goes his only out.

As the kids lounge around, the food mostly forgotten, something buzzes along his senses. The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, and he peeks out from beneath his blindfold, spotting flecks of cursed energy gathering above the table. Before he can get his students away, a gloved hand breaches the open air. The further into reality it comes, the more he can see of the purple sleeve covering its arm. Satoru draws cursed energy through his body, ready to act, until he sees the hand stealing things off the table.

Food.

He eases up, and recognizes the clothes it wears. By the time the kids notice and Nobara shrieks a foul-mouth curse, Satoru’s taking long strides down the hall, flinging open the door to the cursed spirits’ room just in time to see the hand pull through with the pot of sukiyaki. Two pairs of eyes find him, and Satoru stamps down the unease bubbling up in his chest.

Even with the blindfold off, the Six Eyes can’t sense Obito.

The red-eyed curse raises a hand and waves. “Yo.”

Satoru is going to break this man’s face across the floor. How long has he been here? How many minutes—hours—has he been sitting in this room while the rest of them were oblivious to it all? And to show up after their last parting with that stupid fucking greeting—

“Hey,” Satoru returns, wiggling his fingers. The worst part of it all is that he can’t bring himself to feel the bloodlust he once did for these little bastards. He’s not even mad. “Could’ve said ‘hello’ if you dropped in.”

Obito rubs the back of his neck, and his eyes fall to his other half. “I wanted to check on Kakashi.”

No surprise there. Those two are inseparable. While standing there, with the kids hurrying down the hall after him, Satoru wonders why he assumed Obito wouldn’t come back.

Yūji peeks around Satoru’s shoulder and smiles. “Oh, Obito, hey! You’re back.”

Once again, Obito waves.

The kids are crowding around, trying to understand what they just saw, and the situation’s a bit too complicated at the moment to give any answers. Satoru turns on them with an easy smile. “Go pick your rooms and wash up. I have something to discuss with my pet curses.”

They eye him but listen. As they walk off, before he shuts the door, he hears Nobara mutter, “See, Yūji? Pet curses. I called it.”

The door clicks shut, the room falls quiet, and when Satoru turns back around, he sees Obito setting a plate on Kakashi’s lap, curling the younger boy’s fingers around a set of chopsticks. He’s calm and gentle as he moves, plating the stolen food as though feeding a sick little brother, nothing of the quiet nightmare that greeted Satoru in the storage room.

Kakashi’s the one who looks minutes away from snapping. There’s something feral in his eyes as he stares back at Satoru that screams foul intentions. Part of it might have to do with the Six Eyes. The curses don’t like it when he walks around with them unobscured (which, rude). So, when he decides neither curse is going to try anything, he lowers the blindfold back down. But Kakashi’s face still looks off, like the kid he knows isn’t the one piloting that body.

“He’s okay,” Obito assures. “He’s weak, so he’s fighting with his instincts at the moment. But nothing’s gonna happen.”

Satoru frowns. The tone Obito takes is different from the dark one filled with warning from before. Hell, he even looks relaxed, as though nothing in the world matters, and all he cares about is this moment, here and now.

Kakashi pulls down his mask until it settles around his neck, and the way his fingers tremble is pitiful. If he attacked right now, even the kids could take him. The only danger in the room is Obito, as Satoru can’t read his level of threat. He never expected the one with the weakest control to be able to mask his cursed energy output from even the Six Eyes.

“Did the kids see me?” Kakashi asks. His voice is raspy, like he’s getting over a bad cold.

“Nah.” Obito offers him more food, and only starts picking at his own plate when Kakashi gives him a look. “They were more focused on me than you.”

“Oh, good.”

Kakashi doesn’t want to scare them. Cute.

Satoru scratches his head, the adrenaline gone from his body, and gives up. He walks further into the room, dropping to sit cross-legged next to the curses’ futons. They eat slowly, as though nothing at all has changed. Maybe it hasn’t. Satoru could be looking into this too much, or maybe Obito’s lack of presence has him on edge. The visual change is a lot more dramatic with Obito’s evolution than it was with Kakashi’s, though the clothes aren’t much different. He still looks out of place with the world, like some guy out of a historical fantasy, with his high-collared mantle and white-purple obi-and-belt combo. But, well, it’s not as strange as Kakashi’s black and grey armour, like some child soldier fresh from war.

Back in the storage room, he was cloaked in black and red.

He and Obito may be close to the same physical age now. That’s a weird thought. Just yesterday, Obito was a fourteen-year-old brat with a lot of heart. Now, adulthood seems to have crushed him. Growing up is great, isn’t it?

Their eyes meet through the blindfold, and they stare each other down. Satoru hasn’t forgotten his warning. Obito’s cooperation is dependent on Kakashi’s safety.

You know what? That’s fair. All they have in this world is each other.

“Sorry,” Obito says, and it sounds like it’s pulled out of him by force. This apology is a result of Kakashi’s half-dead glare, isn’t it? He’s playing nice because his other half is willing him to. “I must’ve startled the kids.”

“With the hand thing? Yeah. Kinda. Mind sharing with the class?”

“It’s Kamui,” Kakashi answers for him, setting the chopsticks down. Despite his weak arms, his appetite is ravenous, and he’s cleared his plate. But now that he’s eaten, the nasty look in his eyes has faded somewhat. “We can pass our bodies through it in sections.”

Ah, right, they have that pocket dimension thing to work with. That’s not a new skill, just a different utilization.

As Obito finishes his meal and Kakashi settles back under the sheets, things almost feel normal. There are questions in the air, and Obito’s motivations are only known to him, but this isn’t as dreadful as it felt earlier today.

When Satoru found Obito at the school, all he could see was Suguru.

None of this does anything to fix the futon situation, though, and he has one more headache to deal with before he can sleep.

Yūji and his classmates sit on the floor of one of the empty rooms down the hall. Apparently, this was Megumi’s room before he moved into the dorms. There’s nothing left here, since he brought all of his worldly possessions to the school when he started attending at the start of the year… and now all that stuff is buried beneath planks of wood and broken foundation. Aww, man. That’s sad.

Nobara leans in conspiratorially, and the boys follow her lead. “Hey, so, what the fuck?” she asks quietly. “That hand trick was from one of the cursed spirits, right? The big guy.”

“Obito,” Yūji supplies helpfully. Now that he thinks about it… Obito was bigger when they saw him just now. For a second, Yūji was dumbfounded, staring at the full-grown adult in place of his little buddy. But he remembers when this happened to Kakashi, and knows that they’re just growing up or whatever, so he’s not too worried. Obito doesn’t seem any more dangerous now than he did when they first met. A bit stiff and uncomfortable, but nothing to worry over. No matter what he looks like or how old he gets, even if he’s a grandpa, he’s still Obito. 

Yūji’s friend.

“Oh, great. You named that one, too.”

“He named himself!” Why is he getting a sense of déjà vu?

Both his classmates hush him, as though the cursed spirits are listening in, and he pouts.

“So, yeah. That guy. What was that? He can teleport, or something?”

Yūji rubs the back of his neck. “It’s part of his cursed technique. I think he calls it Kamui. The portal opens up to a pocket dimension, and he can turn it into a tunnel, so he can enter from one place and exit somewhere else.”

Megumi frowns. “So you’re saying that no matter where his target is, he’ll find them. That right?”

“When you put it like that, it sounds freaky,” he grumbles. “But he honestly just uses it like a storage closet. We shared cup ramen in there and stuff.”

Surprising no one, they give him a skeptical look, and he accepts it. They probably won’t start trusting him until they start trusting Kakashi and Obito, and it’s anyone’s guess how long that’ll take.

For a few minutes, they go back and forth, at first talking about the cursed spirits bunking in the other room, then about the group that attacked the school earlier, their training, and finally, where they’re going to sleep. Gojō only had two futons to start with. The first, which used to belong to Megumi, is Yūji’s now. He’s fine with giving it up for the night, though. There’s a kotatsu in one of the sitting rooms, and he wouldn’t mind sleeping under that. The weather is still warm, so he probably won’t need to turn it on, and there are spare pillows in the hall closet. The second is Kakashi’s, and as much as Kakashi is likely to give it up if prompted, he’s not well, and they shouldn’t ask. When Obito started staying here, Gojō said he wouldn’t be getting a third… then came home with one soon after and tossed it into the room when no one was around. Obito might give it up for the night. Sometimes, he rolls onto the floor in his sleep, anyway. Yūji will go into their room to wake them up some mornings to find Kakashi cocooned tightly under the sheets, and Obito splayed out in the middle of the room with nothing but his blanket.

As Yūji goes to voice this, the door flings open, and their heads snap up to find Gojō on the other side, all smiles as he waves at them.

“Hey,” he greets. “Megumi, lemme borrow your phone.”

Megumi frowns, his hand absently hovering over his pocket. “Why? Did you break yours or something?”

“Nah.” Despite his complaints, Megumi digs it out and hands it over, glaring as he does so. Gojō unlocks it, and a dark figure peeks out from behind the door frame. The moment Obito is in view, Gojō throws his thumb over his shoulder, gesturing at him rudely. “It’s for this guy.”

Obito looms behind Gojō, staring down at the screen with a frown as Gojō taps against it. It’s not the first time he’s seen a phone before, but any time Yūji brings out his own, he’s found both curses watching him, unsure of what it is. It’s probably hard to understand because they were alive so long ago and the technology of today is unrecognizable. Kakashi’s really bad in cars, too. It’s his biggest weakness.

Nobara makes a face as the phone is handed off to Obito. “What does a cursed spirit need with a phone?”

Obito looks at her, and his classmates tense, but he doesn’t remark.

Ignoring them, Gojō pulls out his own phone and calls Megumi’s, reaching across to accept the call. Then he presses something else, and Obito’s eyes change. But from where he sits, Yūji can’t really see what they’re doing. So, curious as he is, he gets up and pokes his head in. It’s… a video call? Why? They’re right next to each other.

Four solid minutes pass while Gojō explains, in painstaking detail, how the call works, what buttons to tap, and what he expects going forward.

“You’re being dramatic,” Obito says. “I’m not gonna kill your students in the ten minutes you’re gone, Gojō. I have better ways to waste my time.”

Yūji looks nervously at his friends. That phrasing is terrible, like Obito’s trying to make himself out to be an enemy. Do better, Obito!

“Really? That’s great. I’m glad you have hobbies.” Gojō smiles, all sharp lines and thinly veiled threats. “But we’re doing my thing.”

Apparently, Gojō’s going out to buy futons. Where could he go this late at night? Well, Yūji’s not sure, but he must have a plan. The problem is that Megumi and Nobara are nervous around Obito, and Gojō’s a bit uncertain about his new form, too, so he doesn’t want to leave them alone together unsupervised. The logical thing would be to take Obito along… but Obito doesn’t want to leave Kakashi alone. So, the solution they’ve come to is to do a video call while Gojō’s out. That way, he can keep an eye on everyone.

“Play nice, kids!”

With that, Gojō leaves and everything gets a little more tense. Obito hovers in the doorway, clearly unwelcome, and no one says a word to each other. The call is ongoing, and the video feed on Gojō’s end flickers as he uses his cursed technique. Obito looks down the hall, to the room where Kakashi’s (probably) sleeping, and it couldn’t be more obvious how much he wants to go back in. Instead, as per Gojō’s instructions, he roots himself there.

Night one, and already the mood in the estate is oppressive. It hasn’t been like this since Kakashi first came to live here, and even then, it wasn’t as bad. If they’re going to spend days or weeks together like this, they’ll suffocate.

Yūji’s not going to let that happen. He smiles to diffuse the negative emotions stirring in the room, hooks his hands around Obito’s arm, and pulls him out of the hall. Obito lets himself be dragged, confused as he tries to keep his face in frame for the ever-watchful Gojō on call, and soon the two of them are sitting in the centre of the room.

This is either a recipe for disaster, or the push they need to move forward.

While he walks the aisles of a dark store, Satoru periodically checks his phone. Sure enough, Obito’s scowl is there in the shaky camera footage as Megumi’s phone is placed on the floor, and he can see Yuujji’s sleeve poking out of one corner. Maybe the whole situation is silly. No, he doesn’t think Obito’s going to kill the kids while he steps out. And honestly? If he decided to, there’s a possibility Satoru wouldn’t be able to make it back on time to save them. Obito’s a wild card; there’s no telling how strong he is now, how fast he can be, or what he can do. But, well. The kids need comfort, and at least this way, he can keep track of what’s going on at the house.

Seeing this old man in a young curse’s body trying to work modern tech is hilarious, too.

Obito huffs, the sound echoing quietly from the phone speakers. He sounds put upon in a way only Kakashi has before. “What a waste of time. Look, Gojō. I’m not doing anything, see?”

Satoru looks down to see two gloved hands waving in front of the camera.

“Sorry about him. Gojō can be a bit of a character.” Oh, wow, Megumi’s the first to reach out? That’s a surprise. Or, hm… maybe not. The boy’s always been unpredictable in the weirdest moments. The whole reason Yūji’s alive right now (and half the reason he ate his very first finger) is because of Megumi's decisions all those months ago. Satoru’s so proud.

Now, what aisle are the futons down…

“Yeah, I know. He hasn’t stopped being a character for one moment since I got here.”

“Sounds about right.”

Yūji leans in, and his shadowed face covers half the screen. “Where is he, anyway? It's so dark… is he breaking and entering?!”

Well. When he did this before and the elders found out, they called it armed robbery. As bearer of the Six Eyes, he can't ever really be considered unarmed. But still, the label’s unfair; Satoru leaves money behind for the things he steals, so it's not really robbery, either. Breaking and entering? Honestly, that sounds a lot more accurate.

He turns off his camera because it feels wrong to have video evidence of this particular escapade.

“Aw, man! I think he heard me!”

Anyone with ears could hear you, Yūji.

Ah, futons—there they are. Satoru shoves his phone into his pocket, hooks one under each arm, and heads for the front counter. Once there, he checks the prices on their tags, rips them off, and digs out his wallet. Satoru leaves twice the amount by the register, as an apology for the trouble. Really, he's too nice.

“Does the phone weird you out?” Yūji asks. “You keep glaring at it.”

“I'm just not used to this stuff. We didn't have it when I was human.”

“Just how old a spirit are you?” Nobara’s dipping her toes in, eh? That's a surprise.

“Older than the world, let's say.”

“Bullshit.”

It must be nice to have a whole pocket dimension at your fingertips. If Satoru had access to one, he could just shove the futons in there and take them out when he got home. Alas, even now, there are limits to what he can do.

He checks his phone one more time before he leaves, and all four are in frame now. Aww, lookit them go, forging new bonds. None of them like each other, but it's a start.

“What kinda curse are you, anyway?” Nobara asks. “You just look like a guy.”

“He's a fox!” Yūji supplies helpfully.

“No I'm not, shut up.”

“What kind of fox? Something like a shikigami?” Of course, Megumi would take an interest in that.

“No, but in the cursed womb, he—”

“I'm not.”

“—was a black fox. Then when he hatched—”

“It wasn’t an egg, Yūji.”

“—I guess he took on his human form or something.”

Cursed energy ripples through the air, and Satoru vaults across Tokyo in the blink of an eye. Using Blue like this isn't as efficient as something like Kamui would be, but it gets the job done. Shortly after, he's standing in the entryway to Megumi’s room, and the kids don't notice him. They all need to work on their cursed energy detection. But for a moment, with both futons tucked under one arm, Satoru waits.

Nobara ignores Yūji’s rambling, her arms crossed. “So? C’mon, what kinda curse are you?”

Obito, unlike the kids, knows he's here. The call ends, and red eyes meet blue, with only the thin veil of the blindfold there between them.

“I don't know,” he says. “But I'm sure we’ll find out.”

Everyone has a place to sleep, threats have been neutralized, damage control has been initiated, and all of jujutsu society quivers beneath today’s scare. But at least, in the comfort of this estate, his kids are warm and safe, and finally, they can rest.

What a long fucking day.

Chapter Text

The room is filled with his own scent and another, and as he opens his eyes, Kakashi’s aching body pleads with him not to move. He sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face, ignoring the voice in his head that demands he lay down and die here. He is a curse, he reminds himself, and death is not so easy to find. Even if he gave up and no longer moved, the hunger would come again, and his instincts would grow. The urge to act would be an all-consuming thing, and eventually, he would lose himself.

Despite what his nose tells him, he’s alone. Obito is off somewhere, no longer hovering over him, but his scent is lingering, and their bond promises that he’s not too far away.

Kakashi sits up, adjusting to the dull pain in each of his limbs, and numbly reminds himself that this is chakra withdrawal, not exhaustion; he doesn’t need to stay bedridden if he doesn’t want to. Scenting the air yet again, he parses the markers of the kids now staying with them: Megumi and Nobara. In the end, despite his best efforts, he wasn’t able to hide himself entirely. He wonders what gave him away. Was it the brief moment he dropped his cloak? Or did it have to do with the stuff he doesn’t remember—the time after Gojō knelt before him, requesting that he deactivate his Sharingan?

Searching thoughts of yesterday, he decides it doesn’t matter. Either way, they know what he is, and their approval could be the difference between quietly living out their days here and being hunted down by sorcerers.

He’ll make a big breakfast, he decides. As a bribe.

Usually, Yūji comes to wake him up. It started when the talismans were still in place, and they kept the routine going even after, purely out of habit. But the clock on the wall tells him that it’s barely dawn, and that he has another hour before the boy will be stumbling his way inside. Kakashi’s tired of sitting around, waiting for his chakra to replenish.

He stands. His body hates him for it. There’s a voice in his head that finds Obito’s idea of seeking cursed energy from humans appealing, and it reminds him that there’s a three-course meal down the hall. Kakashi does not eat the children, nor does he siphon any cursed energy from them. But the fact that he thinks of this at all is a good reminder that he’s not quite himself at the moment.

Food, his rational brain insists, and he slips out of his room. Down the hall, there are take-away containers, disposable chopsticks, plates, and bowls left forgotten on the table. With a sigh, Kakashi collects their trash and disposes of it. He piles the dirty dishes in the sink for a soak, lamenting that he or Yūji will have to do them later, and drags his world-weary self to the fridge. Electricity hums as he takes note of their supplies. It’s fully stocked, but even so, there are now six mouths to feed instead of four. He doesn’t know Megumi or Nobara’s preferences, or if they have dietary restrictions…

What a pain.

As he thinks up a meal plan and pulls ingredients off the shelves, his arms start to shake. Recovering won’t be an overnight thing, apparently, and he can only imagine the state he would be in if Obito hadn’t fed him cursed energy last night. Lamenting that this will be his life for up to a week, he places a pot in the empty sink compartment and fills it with water. But he realizes too late that his weakened arms can no longer lift it. Kakashi stands there, leaning over the counter, all his weight supported by his arms, and glares at it.

A hand passes in front of him, wraps around the handle of the pot, and pulls it free. His eyes follow it, then go up, settling on his twin curse’s red-eyed stare.

“A bit soon for that, don’t ya think?”

Kakashi sighs, his shoulders sloping, and says nothing as Obito sets the pot atop one of the burners on the stove.

“You could have left meal prep for Yūji,” Obito says, rolling up and tying back his sleeves. The gloves he wore last night are gone, revealing nothing but skin.

Kakashi’s legs are telling him to stop moving, so he takes a break on one of the chairs. “There are more mouths to feed, and Yūji’s still learning. I don’t want to overwhelm him.”

“Yet you think cooking in your state is a better alternative.”

He glares at the man, then looks away to hide his shame. Nothing pained his human self more than being stuck in a hospital bed with nothing to do and no one to talk to. Though his memories of chakra exhaustion are sparse, and he thinks the bulk of it didn’t happen until he was a little older, a little more passionate, perhaps even more careless, he feels like he’s getting close to those years. The aftermath of overdoing it on missions is there in his mind, hazy though it may be.

Obito takes one look at the ingredients pulled from the fridge, and it seems like he can parse the exact meal plan Kakashi thought up. “You could’ve just made onigiri or something.”

“They’re students,” he defends, “and they expended a lot of energy yesterday. They should eat well.”

“You never did.”

Kakashi frowns, staring at Obito’s back. Despite his complaints, Obito is moving across the kitchen, continuing the task that his other half had started. In recent memories, Kakashi found himself relying on food pills and rations bars. He would wake up, open the cupboard over the sink, and throw one back. Then again at lunch. Dinner. Sometimes, he would forget to even do that much.

But when they knew each other, Kakashi would diligently cook for himself. His father taught him long ago, when he was small and the world was less bleak, and Kakashi would spend his evenings standing on a chair at the stove, or cutting up vegetables at the counter. He would grill fish and boil soup, and sometimes, there was room at his table for more than just himself.

Kakashi only stopped cooking after Obito was gone.

He wants to grow. He wants to catch up. Whatever memories Obito has, Kakashi wants them, too.

Red eyes find him again, and he meets them evenly.

Obito turns back to the counter. There’s a saucepan on the stove, the water in the pot is almost to a boil, and everything is cut up neatly. While things cook, he places more food on the table in front of Kakashi.

“Onigiri,” Obito demands. “Make yourself useful.”

Kakashi listens, if only because he feels a bit useless at the moment. At least he can stay seated. Obito’s already prepped the rice, and shaping the onigiri is a mindless task that fills the empty seconds between them.

He doesn’t expect Obito to be as cooperative as he is. Memories he can’t know urge him to tread with caution, warring with instincts that find safety in his other half.

“How old are you now?” Kakashi asks. It’s an innocent enough question, and even if Obito would rather the past stay buried, he should give it a pass.

“Not sure,” Obito answers easily as he checks the stove. “Twenty-four, maybe? I stopped keeping track.”

“Do you remember how you died?”

“Not yet.”

Obito made it to adulthood. Kakashi did, too, he thinks. But whether they died in battle or of old age, he can’t be sure. Were they together when they died? Did they reunite later in life?

Did Obito come back?

They fall quiet. Sounds fill the kitchen, the dim sunrise greets them from the windows. When Kakashi finishes with the onigiri, he finds yet more rice and nori presented to him, alongside more fillings. The vegetables are cut into strips… Sushi rolls?

Ah. Obito’s looking to make foods that the kids can easily pull from the fridge so that lunch won’t be an issue.

Halfway through cutting the first roll, a boy comes stumbling in, yawning as he blinks back sleep. Yūji stares at them, scratching his back beneath his shirt, and takes stock of the kitchen.

“Morning,” he greets with a second yawn, automatically going to wash his hands at the sink. Yūji stares at the dishes for a while and then, without much thought, finds the sponge and starts washing. “How are you feeling, Kakashi-sensei? Still tired?”

“A bit,” he confesses, pulling yet another strip of nori in front of him. “It’s nothing I haven’t felt before. I’ll be fine.”

Yūji looks over his shoulder and smiles. “Good! You had us worried, even Gojō-sensei.”

Kakashi doubts that. Gojō might have warmed up to him over their time together, but he would never worry about a curse. If Kakashi were exorcised, there would be one less problem on Satoru Gojō’s plate. Instead of giving those thoughts a voice, he smiles back from behind his mask, and says nothing.

What he likes most about Yūji is his ability to adapt. As he piles last night’s dishes into the drying rack, and as Obito flits absently about the kitchen, he makes the idle chat that Kakashi’s failed at initiating since last night. Obito carries himself differently now. His voice is deep and gravelly, and his cloak is effortlessly iron-clad. He doesn’t want to talk about the past, is hiding his natural appearance, and everything about him has turned on its head. Obito is an enigma, but to Yūji, he’s just a friend. Kakashi wishes he could carry that same warmth.

Then he sees a boy crushed under rocks, feels Rin’s blood cooling around his arm, and the raw terror of the nine-tailed beast as it crushes their home beneath its feet. And suddenly, he doesn’t know what to believe.

Minato-sensei and Kushina left behind a son. Kakashi met him once, shortly after the fox took from them. He was small and pink, with the lungs of a boy three times his size, and scars on his cheeks from the kyūbi’s corrosive chakra. Kakashi stared down at that little thing, and resented it for making Kushina weak, for straining the seal with its birth and giving the fox an opportunity to ruin them. He stood there, and cried, and wondered what would happen if he reached into his pouch, and—

A hand found his finger, gripped tightly with feeble strength. The babe’s lungs drew loud, quivering breaths, and the crying stopped. Kakashi’s knees hit the floor, his strength gone, and he knelt there with the boy for all the hours to come, watching the faces he made, and hearing his coos.

His name was Naruto.

Kakashi wonders why he remembers this now, while Yūji shares stories of the cursed spirits they fought during the exchange. He tilts his head, catching the boy’s bright-eyed stare.

It nags at him.

The rest of the household wakes up by the time breakfast is ready. Kakashi stands on unsteady legs to store the sushi rolls away for later this afternoon, and feels a spike of rage when Obito lifts the platter from his hands. They watch one another, waiting for something, and when it doesn’t come, Obito turns around and completes the task himself.

It’s been a long time since Kakashi felt genuine anger toward Obito. He doesn’t think they’ve had a real, rage-filled fight since coming to this world.

Since Kannabi Bridge, really.

He takes a breath, and smothers it down. This isn’t me, he insists, and tries desperately to channel the human Kakashi who he longs to become.

It’s no surprise the kids are uneasy sharing a table with cursed spirits. They hover in the doorway to the kitchen, stiff-backed and uncertain as they look between Kakashi and Obito like they hadn’t expected to find them in there.

When they don’t move to sit, Kakashi supposes he should say something. “Good morning,” he greets awkwardly, bowing his head with the rusty manners bestowed upon him by his father. “I apologise for yesterday. My goal was to protect you, but I suppose I overdid it.”

Megumi and Nobara exchange a look.

“And thank you,” Kakashi continues, lifting his head, “for keeping this a secret.”

They could have gone to the elders Gojō has mentioned. They could have shared what they found out with another teacher from the school, or Principal Yaga, or any number of sorcerers in the time it took for Kakashi to wake up. But even though their nerves are practically tangible on their faces, and even when he can see they have weapons on hand, they still chose to sleep here at night.

Obito and Kakashi are not being hunted, even though they should be.

Megumi shifts, hiding some of his unease behind a blank face. “I don’t trust you,” he says bluntly. “But I’ve known Gojō long enough to trust his instincts. He’s a lousy teacher and a questionable mentor, but his intuition is second to none.”

Kakashi tilts his head, acknowledging the boy. Something he likes about Gojō is that no one can seem to compliment him without first insulting him.

“I believe him when he says there’s something different about the two of you,” and his eyes find Obito, “so I’ll hold off my judgment for now. Don’t make me regret it.”

Megumi reminds him of someone from beyond his years. There’s no name or face, only a feeling, and Kakashi wishes so desperately that he could fully draw upon those memories he has yet to unlock.

Nobara has a heavy scowl on her face, staring between the occupants of the room, then looks away. Begrudgingly, she asks, “What’s for breakfast?”

She’s trying, even though she doesn’t have to. Even though she doesn’t want to, so clear in the way the words force themselves between her teeth.

The kitchen table only seats four, so they gather at the chabudai in the sitting room instead. Kakashi is cast aside yet again as Obito and Yūji ferry the various dishes from one room to the next, and feels useless. He stares at his hands, the gloves that he wears and the armour he’s housed in, the henge he placed on himself long since faded. ANBU was one of those things he never chose, a duty thrust upon him because Konoha saw him as an asset. Minato-sensei said it would be good for him, that it would help pry him away from Rin’s grave and the blood on his hands, the failure in his heart, I broke my promise. But he knew even before he was given out-of-village missions that his teacher’s words were lip service. Kakashi was useful and strong. He was adept at battle from a life bathed in it, with his father’s senses and his own stubborn pride, taught to hold a blade before he even learned to read. A product of his lineage, fine-tuned for shinobi life. Konoha could not let go of someone like that.

Kakashi is an asset. He’s not used to being looked down upon like this. Though he knows why they’re doing it, and can feel the weakness in his limbs clearly enough, the anger won’t leave his head.

To make himself useful, he rises from the chabudai to fetch Gojō from down the hall. His feet take him to the closed door and stop, his hand hovering inches from the wood, yet to knock. He’s only ever entered Gojō’s room to drag Obito out, not that he’s been warned against it. It feels like a barrier he shouldn’t cross.

He knocks.

No answer.

He knocks louder.

Nothing.

Kakashi frowns, sensing the cursed energy cloying beyond the door. Gojō is there, but unresponsive. He’s certainly not dead. Down the hall, the kids chat. Tension is loosening, even with Obito there, and Kakashi wonders if he might be the one who really makes them nervous. But he doesn’t know why.

Don’t think about it.

He can’t help it.

I want to forget this feeling.

But he can’t.

Kakashi slides open the bedroom door with more force than intended and locates Gojō atop the bed, one foot half hanging over the side, two arms wrapped around a pillow, the Six Eyes buried in it. He expected that Gojō’s room would be filled with useless knick knacks, bright and annoying and messy, with clothes on the floor and too many things shoved into too few corners. He thought the closet would be stuffed full of clothes, that there would be a stash of sugary sweets on the nightstand. Instead, the room is almost bare, utilitarian in a way that speaks to Kakashi. The closet door is partly open to reveal neatly hung clothes, there’s a squat bookcase of graphic novels beneath the window, and some foreign technologies that Kakashi isn’t familiar with. His floor is bare, his walls too, and it doesn’t quite fit with the big personality Kakashi’s gotten to know so closely.

With one last glance down the hall, toward the steadily-growing voices of his roommates, Kakashi steps inside. He lingers by the bed, staring down at the unmoving body twisted in the sheets, and isn’t sure if it’s safe to try to rouse Gojō in the same way he would Yūji. Gojō’s a lot more lethal, after all, and for all that he’s world-worn, Kakashi doesn’t want to be exorcised.

Later. Not now.

He leans back as far as he can and nudges the body with his toes.

“Gojō,” he calls flatly, “come eat.”

More silence. Even the annoying one is ignoring him now.

Kakashi takes a seat on the side of the bed, facing out at the room, and sighs. He looks at his hands, picking at his nails and the blood he sees there, the stains left behind by Rin that he can never wash clean. Hunger thrums through him, playing him like a violin, and if he were to let up for just one moment, someone would get hurt.

Kakashi is not well.

Chakra turns over in his core, kneaded from his abundance of cursed energy. He focuses on that, and keeps his hands to himself.

It would be so easy, the urge sings, melodic in its temptation. One second, maybe two. You’ll sate your hunger, and he doesn’t have to die. Surely he can spare the cursed energy to keep you fed.

He folds his hands together and focuses on that pattern in his gut, cursed energy to chakra. When that’s not enough, he works the chakra further, weaving his lightning affinity into it.

Chidori sparks at his fingertips.

Kakashi stares, watching the blood slide down his arm.

He closes his eyes and squeezes his fist, reminding himself that he is older than his years, and the moment that haunts him is endlessly far.

“The food’s getting cold,” he tries next as he runs his hands over his face, his promise to Obito circling his head, protect her for me. “Obito cooked by himself today. I’m… maa, not very useful at the moment, I suppose.”

The room is silent, but beyond it, people are talking. Yet Kakashi is here, with his contractor, useless and worthless and tired.

Something about today has triggered this misery, and he can’t let go. It’s like the day he evolved, when his name became Hound, a faceless soldier lurking in the dark underbelly of his village. When he sees those kids, he thinks of the childhood he never had, those years that war took from him. He worries that this place isn’t as peaceful as he first thought, that even now, after years or decades or centuries, in a world two steps left of his own, children are forced to grow up too fast.

He wonders if they have ANBU, and if Yūji will one day be forced to kill a child. Dread looms in him as he remembers those lives he took ‘for the sake of the village’, that village that spat on his father’s loyalty.

Hunger gnaws at him.

“Say, Gojō?” he asks, drawing his hands between his legs. “How fast could you exorcise me if I lost my wits?”

Behind him, fabric shifts. He listens as his keeper rolls onto his side, then his back, kicking off the blankets over his legs. The Six Eyes settle on the back of Kakashi’s head. He can feel their gaze, goosebumps spreading across his skin. “That all depends on you.”

Satoru Gojō is a bastard who has been awake this whole time.

“Are you going to lose it?”

Kakashi doesn’t look back, unwilling to meet those unsettling eyes when his head is such a mess. “No,” he assures. “But I’m hungry.”

Gojō shifts again, groaning, the sound muffled behind his hands as he swipes them over his face. “You’re such a pain. Go eat, then, jeez. I think I deserve a few extra hours in bed after yesterday. I was hoping if I ignored you long enough, you’d go away.”

Kakashi hesitates. Cautiously, he adds, “I don’t mean like that.”

A thread of silence passes between them, and Gojō finally sits up, stretching his arms to the ceiling. Something cracks in his shoulder, and he lets out a grunt. “You mean for cursed energy, right?”

Kakashi scratches his arm. He sees it again, the blood on his hand that only he knows of, whispers crawling along the back of his skull, Friend Killer Kakashi.

Why he’s confiding in someone he was half sure he hated, he doesn’t know.

Gojō kicks him off the bed. He catches himself before he lands, turning around to glare at his assailant. “Shut up and go stuff yourself with breakfast. You can recover with food, yeah?”

“I think so.”

“Then do that. Stop wasting time here, and haul your ass into the sitting room.”

Gojō’s giving orders again. It’s been a while since the last, as he’d taken to wording his commands like suggestions, giving Kakashi an out if there was something he didn’t want to do. Automatically, he listens, heading to the door before he risks triggering their binding vow.

“And Kashi?”

Kakashi pauses halfway into the hall, and looks back. The man resting on the bed has a deep frown on his face, out of place when most of his memories of Gojō are of easy smiles and thinly-veiled threats.

“If you ever feel like you're about to lose control, come find me. That’s an order.”

Kakashi lingers there for a moment longer, and nods. “Understood.”

They eat. Gojō drags himself into the room ten minutes later, his confident smile back in place, teasing remarks soon to follow. Kakashi doesn’t speak at the breakfast table unless spoken to. He eats what he can stomach, and kneads chakra at a steady rate, the pulse of it beneath his skin a comfort.

Gojō’s order is a comfort, too, there in his head like a long-term mission objective. As the minutes pass, he leans on the table and listens to the children’s words, daring to engage.

Hound always liked orders.

Kakashi is different, and not just in his admissions of hunger cravings, or that slightly-feral look he’s had in his eyes since last night. In fact, Satoru’s pleased that his little curse buddy would confide in him with these issues when, for so long, he held his cards close to his chest. 

Satoru is sprawled out on the engawa. The ground is wet from last night’s rain, Yūji is practicing those silly hand gestures Kakashi taught him before the Goodwill Event, animatedly explaining to Megumi that it’s fucking ninjutsu, of all things. And Nobara is currently holed up in her new bedroom, endlessly scrolling on her phone. As he turns his head, he finds the first cursed spirit meditating at the far end of the courtyard, exactly where he’s been for three hours now, and Obito is—

A tap on the shoulder.

Directly behind him.

Satoru leans back on his arms and meets Obito’s gaze. He isn’t used to the change yet, and when he looks at this guy, he sees the way the shadows danced across his skin as he evolved in the storage room, the deep grooves of scar tissue texturing the right half of his face. The real Obito is a mangled canvas of his history, one that he chose to hide, and Satoru wanders about that.

“Yo,” he greets with a wave, “what’s up?”

Obito wordlessly nods to the hall, then leaves. Cheeky brat, thinking he can order the great Satoru Gojō around.

Satoru casts his eyes across the courtyard once more. Yūji’s trying to explain how it works, what chakra is, but he can’t get the words out well enough, and chooses to walk on top of the pond right beside the newly-constructed bridge to demonstrate. It is kind of impressive that he can do that, seeing as it has nothing to do with a cursed technique. But Megumi has no idea what he’s saying or how to replicate it.

Across the field, Kakashi opens a single red eye to watch them. The right one, the one that was only ever red after he was first born from the cursed womb. It’s been like that on and off since he woke up yesterday, but he doesn’t seem consciously aware of it. He hasn’t used Kamui or been aggressive, so Satoru’s keeping to himself, waiting to see if it’ll become a thing down the road. Right now, it looks like he wants to intervene with Yūji’s tragic ninja lesson, and properly explain to Megumi all the things Yūji is failing to.

But he doesn’t. He sits there, on one of the large rocks by the garden, and keeps to himself, just as he has since breakfast.

Satoru gets up and reluctantly follows the other cursed spirit down the hall, into his own bedroom, which is all sorts of rude. It gives him an idea on what Obito wants to see him about, though, since there’s only one reason they’ve gone there in the past.

When he pokes his head in, Obito is burning the previous seal work they had tucked away behind the closet door. Flames erupt from his hand like it’s just another Tuesday, and it only takes seconds for the papers he holds to fall into ash on the floorboards. Weeks of work, gone.

Satoru points at the pile, and says, “You’re cleaning that up.”

Obito snorts, then walks over to grab the small folding table from behind the door, and takes a seat in the middle of the room. “Come on. We have things to discuss.”

He doesn’t like how bossy this guy got overnight. It doesn’t sound like Obito is even trying to give orders, but he comes off like he’s used to being followed and listened to.

Satoru shuts the door and takes a seat across the table, resting his elbows on it. Something shudders in the room, and as he peels back the edge of his blindfold, he sees the air shimmer. There’s a talisman stuck by the door, one written in the foreign language of Obito’s other seal work, containing this strange plume of cursed energy to the bedroom.

“It’s a noise-cancelling seal,” Obito declares, reading Satoru like a book. “It only works on sealed rooms, so when the door opens next, it’ll break. I’d rather keep our conversation private, if it’s all the same to you.”

Obito’s picked up some new tricks.

“Well?” Satoru props up his head on his hand. “What’s up? Got some new threats you want to use on me, or are we being civil this time?”

The curse pulls paper and ink out of thin air, his red eyes spinning lazily—another convenient use of his pocket dimension, no doubt. He has a heavy scowl as he taps the thin stack on the table, straightening the edges of each sheet. “I was civil last time,” he defends weakly. “It was a reminder, not a threat. You put my other half in danger, Gojō. Look at him.”

Against his better judgment, Satoru casts his eyes toward the courtyard. Through the walls, the Six Eyes show him the other curse, still seated on that rock, unmoving as he meditates.

“I’m perfectly willing to uphold my end of the vow for as long as Kakashi is safe. But if he’s exorcised, I’ll go my own path, whatever I decide that to be.” With a flick of his wrist, a brush appears next, and he removes the lid from the ink pot. “And if he’s pushed over the edge, far enough that I can’t reach him, our vow will be the least of your worries.”

Satoru snaps his fingers. “So, you are here to make threats. Gotcha.”

Obito glares.

With an easy smile, he looks back at the kids across the estate, Yūji’s animated movements as he talks and the irritated shift of Megumi’s body as he tries to understand. As calm as he looks, Obito’s upset about his friend’s condition, too, and is just as on edge. Everyone can feel something’s not quite right with Kakashi, even the kids who only know him in passing. There’s something jittery in his cursed energy, and though it’s slowly simmering down, it looks like it might linger for a while. They’ll have to watch him.

“Have a little faith in me,” Satoru says. “I don’t want to see the kid hurt either, y’know. But the world’s a scary place, and unless you want to lock Kashi away in a sealed room somewhere, danger is gonna happen. You’re cursed spirits. Even if you don’t intend it, your very nature will attract more of the same. Remember how we found you in that abandoned building?”

His lips pressed into a scowl, Obito nods.

“Do you know why you went there?” He waits a moment, and it looks like Obito might answer, but doesn’t. “Curses gravitate to places with elevated cursed energy. They swarm. I’ll bet those swarms are what you used to bulk up and evolve, right? Well, that’s likely to happen again.”

The cursed spirit isn’t convinced as he dips his brush in ink and draws careful, practiced patterns on the first page. His strokes are neat and orderly in a way his younger self’s were not, as though he’s done this all one thousand times.

“You’re here because you’re gravitating to Kakashi,” Satoru says to add context to his claim. He points toward the courtyard, the still body on the rock that Obito can’t see. “And Kashi’s here because he’s keeping our vow, and I told him to stay close. Were it not for that, both of you would be drawn back to those swarms sooner or later, and danger would be all around you. You see what I’m getting at? Curses will feed off other curses, like you did with that patch-faced one. So even if we never met, you’d still be at risk.”

Obito is listening, but doesn’t comment, too focused on carefully etching the sigils of that foreign tongue that looks like no language Satoru has ever seen before.

“But some people like to say there’s strength in numbers,” he adds with a shrug, and Obito looks up. “So instead of threatening your allies, maybe try to be a little less hostile. The kids and I? We’re not your enemies.”

Obito’s hand pauses, and he sets his brush aside as the ink dries, glossy and wet beneath the light from the window. He pushes the paper toward the center of the table, giving him enough space to prop up his arms. “I know.”

Satoru snorts. “Oh, well, good. Glad we had this talk. Anyway.” He nods to the paper. “What’s the real reason we snuck off? What am I looking at?”

“A jinchūriki seal,” Obito says. “A proper one. My younger self didn’t remember fuinjutsu as well as he thought. I hadn’t learned it at that age. For now, I intend to transcribe what I know, and use that as a basis for Yūji’s seal design.” A pause, brief as his eyes find Satoru. “If that’s still on the table.”

Satoru tilts his head, plucking the corner of the page between his fingers to get a better look. True enough, this design is a hell of a lot more intricate than the ones Obito made before he evolved. His penmanship is sharp and precise, and the trigrams aren’t organized like they were in the others.

Obito is aware of how cautious Satoru is of him now, and the straining trust between them. Not that Satoru ever tried to hide it, of course. But despite that, he’s still here, asking permission to carry on with their plan.

“It might be. We’ll see.”

“I’ll need to know more about Sukuna to move forward with this. I might need to do a proper scan of Yūji’s body, too.”

“Give me a reason to trust you first,” Satoru says, setting the paper down. “Prove your intentions, and then we’ll talk. Let’s put a pin in this project until then.”

“Fine.”

What a cheery morning. It kind of feels like everyone in the estate is a grain of sand falling through an hourglass. Satoru claps his hands, effectively ending the conversation, and smiles. “Alright! We’re done here?”

“Not quite.”

Ugh. There’s always something with these curses. Working with them is worse than trying to sway the elders after saying something they don’t like (which is every time).

Obito folds his hands together, fingers interlocked, and demands, “Let Kakashi evolve.”

Satoru laughs in his face. Yeah, sure, okay. Sitting right across from him is a curse who is hiding his scars, making threats, and has proven to have the hunger drive of any other of his kind. Obito is cryptic in a way he wasn’t as a child, hard to predict, and Satoru is only just starting to suss him out, but he should repeat the whole thing with the other curse? “We’re not doing that.” Even Satoru Gojō, World’s Strongest, has his limits.

Obito doesn’t get mad, there’s no flare of cursed energy or spike of rage. The only sign of his displeasure is a small furrow in his brow. “This is his rock-bottom,” he says, calm and composed as he casts his eyes to the talisman on the wall, the air still shimmering with a thin spread of cursed energy. “Right now, he’s stuck at the worst point in his life, and until he evolves, that won’t change.”

He thinks of the boy sitting on his bed this morning, listless and tired, something prickly beneath his skin.

“It’s affecting his control,” Obito continues. “We didn’t notice before because he was in good physical shape, but now that he’s unstable, he’s struggling. Let him feed. If he catches up to me, he should have the mental fortitude to handle himself if this happens again.”

Satoru taps absently at the table, casting his gaze yet again to the lone body on the rock. Kakashi has moved now, raising his head as though searching for something, and slips off his perch to cross the courtyard. At first, it looks like he might finally be giving the kids that lesson he so clearly wanted to before, but he continues past them and hops onto the engawa.

It makes sense. It was only after he evolved that Kakashi started having those waking nightmares, scrubbing his hands raw in the sink. But Obito is still a wildcard, one who seems to have a sharp tongue, and though Satoru would love to comply if he’s telling the truth, he just can’t know that.

Obito proved his level of threat when he made himself invisible to the Six Eyes.

“I’m not saying now,” Obito insists. “When he’s doing better, after he stabilizes. Otherwise, he might attack.”

Satoru hears the words that go unsaid: think it over, but don’t wait too long.

The door slides open, and the cursed energy in the air breaks apart into remnants. They look up to see Kakashi staring down at them, his eyes red and spinning, completely unlike how he usually presents himself, and for a moment, he looks angry.

Then he finds Obito, and his anger spikes as he stomps into the room, grabbing his other half by the collar. Oh, this’ll be good.

Kakashi yanks Obito by the front of his shirt and asks, with venom on his tongue, “Where are you?”

Satoru arches a brow, curiosity piqued. The stoic calm on Obito’s face bleeds away with the passing seconds, and something else shines through—the familiarity of the boy they lost.

“Out,” Obito says, his voice a low growl.

“Why?” Kakashi presses. His hand is shaking, too weak to fully convey his rage. “You know they’re wary of us. We can’t be making them anxious, Obito. How do you think this looks?”

Obito grabs his counterpart’s hand and pries it free of his shirt. Even now, when he’s so clearly irritated, he’s gentle, as though one wrong move will shatter Kakashi like glass. “They wouldn’t have known if you kept your mouth shut.”

“Do you hear yourself?” Then, ever so slightly, Kakashi’s control wanes, and a flicker of cursed energy lights up Satoru’s senses. Yeah, okay, Obito isn’t lying about his control; it’s definitely worse. “Deceiving them won’t build their trust in us.”

Satoru watches the exchange, head in his hand, as their voices get a little louder and the threats a little deeper. This isn't the bickering of the two kids from before as they fought over cup ramen. But the longer it continues, the more it devolves into that. Kakashi’s sharp words peel back the fresh layers added to Obito by his evolution, revealing the child at his core. If Satoru hazards a guess, it seems like the real Obito has left the estate, and the one with them now is an… imposter? Illusion? No, a double—Kakashi says something about a shadow clone.

So, what, ninjas can just clone themselves now? Is that part of the lore? He's starting to think the curses are just taking the piss.

Kakashi nods at Satoru, all attention on Obito, and demands, “Apologise.”

This really does feel like a playground squabble.

Obito glares at him. “I'm not apologizing when I've done nothing wrong. I have every right to leave the damn estate if I want to. Unlike you, I wasn't stupid enough to sell my freedom—”

They both go quiet. Satoru rubs the back of his neck, feeling like he really shouldn't be present for this. Obito is right; there's no binding vow that demands he stay at the compound, and they never asked him to, either. Though, yeah, maybe wandering off without telling someone is a pretty bad move when everyone is on a hair trigger. It's not a good look.

“I just needed some fresh air,” Obito says, scrubbing a hand over his face. He sounds tired. When he gets no reply, he glances up at Kakashi, and asks, “Are you hungry?”

Kakashi’s anger dies with those words. He sighs, runs a hand through his hair, and says, “I’ll get lunch.”

Things have gone a bit differently than planned. That’s not anything new, of course. He’s lived enough years and re-written fate enough times that it’s become mundane, and knows how easy it is to veer off course.

The problem is Mahito. Mahito, who is not here, who no one has seen since he slipped into the cursed object storage room, and therefore has not returned with the death paintings or Sukuna’s fingers. This is, of course, a problem, since their raid on the school was crafted specifically to retrieve those objects under Tengen’s protection. It means failure, it means setback, it means a thorn in Kenjaku’s side.

Hanami survived. They were so weak, so close to breaking apart that they could not move, but they hid in a crevice at the edge of Satoru Gojō’s garish destruction, and waited until Jugo could scout the area to retrieve them.

Apparently, there are new variables at play.

A white-haired curse disguised as a member of the Gojō clan, and—

Something else.

Beyond the city, there’s a popular hiking spot. It has hundreds of trails across an eclipsing mountain range, and it’s always busy in the warmer months. At the base of the nearest mountain are the entry gates to a parking lot, several wooden benches, a little picnic area, and a park. Families gather in the afternoons, their chatter like the incessant drone of insects. On the back of one of the benches sits a black-haired man in purple robes, a white obi tying them closed, his open-toed sandals on the seat of the bench. His eyes are red, flickering from the people to the road to the trees. No one notices him.

Kenjaku does.

He approaches from behind, leaning his arms on the back of the bench, right beside the stranger’s dark form. “What a lovely day,” he greets cheerily, feeling an eerie familiarity to this man’s curse energy, the way it thrums through his body a remnant of a certain curse. “Blue skies, nice breeze. The perfect conditions for an outing, I’d say.”

The man—curse, he should say, because he is the furthest thing from human—ignores Kenjaku’s words as though he’s little more than air. Now, that’s not very nice, is it?

“I suppose you’re not here for a hike. Is there something out here that I’m missing?”

“Shut your mouth,” the curse says, flat and unaffected as cursed energy ripples through the air. Suddenly, he’s holding a paper bag. He dips one gloved hand inside, and pulls out a dango skewer. “You reek of death. I can’t stand it.”

Kenjaku raises his arms peaceably, the curl of a smile on his lips. “I’m sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do. Let’s say it comes with the territory.”

The curse pops the dango into his mouth and eats in a mimicry of a human meal. Sometimes, they get like that, playing fantasies of their old lives and pretending they aren’t something else entirely. It’s always fascinated Kenjaku, the way they ignore everything around them for a fantasy of the past. But curses exist beyond the confines of time, and the years that pass mean nothing to them.

Kenjaku is like that, too.

“I’d really like to have a chat with you,” he continues, watching as parents assist their children onto the playground equipment, couples resting in the shade of trees, dappled light shining through the leaves. “You remind me of a friend, you see, and I’ve been missing him lately. Perhaps you’ve seen him around.”

Finally, those red eyes turn to him. Three tomoe encircle each pupil, weaving and twisting, merging into a pinwheel. When they stare, the prickle on the back of his neck is akin to the same feeling one gets from existing beneath the Six Eyes. This, in all his years and centuries, is new. He’s never seen this before, not from a curse or a sorcerer, and oh, how fascinating it is, to be beholden by such a strange curiosity. Nothing would give him more pleasure than prying those eyes free of their host, and picking them apart.

The curse sets down the paper bag. He pulls off a glove, one finger at a time, and it breaks apart into fragments of energy, leaving behind a pale hand. “Maybe,” he says, and reaches out. “Want to meet him?”

Kenjaku leans back and away before the curse can catch him with that hand, then further out of range. Oh, well, that’s interesting. Instinct tells him that he doesn’t want to come into contact with that hand. It would destroy his current vessel, something says, and that would be unfortunate when it took so long to find. This body is perfect. It’s exactly what he needs to go forward with his plans, and he won’t lose it now.

This is strange. He can infer from context that this curse did, indeed, consume Mahito. There’s a spark to his cursed energy that feels similar, strong enough to have guided Kenjaku all this way to meet him. Something tells him that this man can alter the shape of one’s soul, just as Mahito could. But that isn’t possible.

And yet, he’s convinced.

This man has Mahito’s cursed technique.

Clicking his tongue, the curse pulls his hand back and returns to his snack. “Guess not.”

Kenjaku maintains distance, instead taking a seat on the far side of the bench, calm as he watches the world move around them. This is a stand-alone curse who interfered with their plan. It doesn’t make sense for him to be on the side of the jujutsu sorcerers or working for Tengen, and yet, why else would he have devoured Mahito? Why protect the death paintings, why not take Sukuna’s fingers for himself? None of it makes sense.

He needs information. If he learns about this curse, he can manipulate it. There is no person or spirit out there that cannot be swayed: this is his universal truth, realized after endless decades walking this earth. “You seem to be quite the young curse,” he fishes, his eyes sliding over to his company. “I wondered who had bested Mahito. At first, I assumed he was exorcised by Satoru Gojō, but now that I’ve seen you, it makes sense. New curses are quite ravenous. To you, he would have been a buffet.”

The curse nods absently, as though agreeing. Then, “I look young to you, do I? Interesting.”

Oh, what’s this? Is he an old curse, after all? Kenjaku tilts his head, watching, trying to line up his appearance with any of the countless curses he’s known over his lifetimes, but can’t find a match.

Tossing his empty skewer into the paper bag, the curse looks down at Kenjaku. “I know your face now,” he says, “I know your scent. I can smell the rot all the way from inside that corpse you’re wearing. Remember that, and be grateful for the human whose body you stole, because it’s the only reason you’re still breathing.”

The curse rises, his sandals sinking into the grass and mud. Then, without any warning, his cursed energy disappears. It’s gone, hidden, as though the man standing before Kenjaku now is nothing but a mirage. He can mask his cursed energy somehow, so impossibly well that he’s lost to the air, his presence less than even the residuals of the dead.

“This is a warning: interfere with my people again, and see where it gets you.”

Then, he’s gone, vanished from the world like a phantom. Kenjaku sits there, on that bench, staring at the forgotten paper bag left beside him.

Ah, I see, he thinks. He was hunting, and I fell right into his trap.

Interesting.

Down the hall, through the dark, the tap is running. Moonlight casts bars across the floor in the sitting room, but the space between here and there is like an impenetrable ink. Short breaths, quiet sobs, small noises that turn stress into panic. He steps forward, following his ears through the sitting room, past the chabudai, and into the kitchen.

Kakashi stands at the sink, frantically scrubbing his hands. The smell of salt hangs in the open air.

Rin again.

He stands behind the boy, still a teenager, left behind and far too young to shoulder all those thoughts in his head. It’s been a lifetime, maybe more, and yet to him, it’s as clear as yesterday.

“Kakashi,” he calls, and watches his other half flinch. Slowly, the Sharingan’s red glow turns to greet him, reflecting off the tears streaking his old friend’s face. “Come to bed.”

“I—” His voice is shaking, water from his hands dripping onto the tiles. “I can’t.”

Obito looks down at the boy’s rubbed-raw fingers, and remembers that hollowness as his own. He sees with the Sharingan’s perfect clarity the moment Kakashi took her from them. With a sigh, he pulls out one of the chairs at the kitchen table and drags it over to the sink, where he sits before the boy and carefully grabs hold of thin, pale wrists, searching them. Kakashi waits, expecting something. “Your hands will never be clean,” he says. Kakashi tries to wrench them back, but Obito holds firm, and their eyes meet. “But neither will mine.”

Gojō watches them from the sitting room. Obito watches back. He turns off the tap and towel-dries the flushed hands of his other half, gently guiding him back to the bedroom. Eventually, Kakashi sleeps. Obito does not. He returns to the sitting room, staring down the Six Eyes without the fear that once consumed him.

“Let him feed,” he demands once more.

He spends the night tucked into his futon, watching for more ghosts of the pasts, staring at the hands that took Rin, and knowing it wasn’t their fault.

But in grief, regret festers.