Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Eri’s Rewind quirk works on more than just the cellular level of living organisms,” the doctor tells Satoru, who holds a clinging Eri close to his chest. 

There’s a clock on the wall in the shape of a cat, that has a tail that swings from side to side with each tick of the clock hand. It’s a black and white cat, so it doesn’t look very much like Meow, but Eri stares at it anyway. 

“I figured as much,” Satoru admits, not sounding terribly surprised. Eri looks away from the clock and buries her face into his sweater. It smells like him. It smells like home. “It’s a temporal quirk, isn’t it? Which means it also has the potential to be a spatial quirk as well.”

The doctor nods. His next words come out haltingly; “This is one of the most powerful quirks I’ve ever seen. That it’s only confined to living organisms is merely a matter of time and circumstances. My theory is that, given a long enough incubation period, it could possibly tear apart the fabric of dimensions as we know it.”

Most of this goes way over Eri’s head. She’s small and scared and doesn’t want to deal with any of it. She knows she promised Satoru she’d see a doctor to make sure she’s not sick and stuff, but she still feels wary about the idea of people talking about her— and more specifically, her quirk. The whole thing sounds so terribly scary, even what little of it she understands. But Eri already knew this about herself. 

Her quirk is terrifying. 

Her quirk is a curse. 

But Satoru just gives a thoughtful hum, rubbing her back. “That sounds about right. But like you said, it will take time for it to get that strong. And it’s possible Eri never grows strong enough to manifest it. You said she had some underlying issues from malnutrition, right?” 

He doesn’t sound very scared at all. In fact, he sounds rather droll about the whole matter, as if it’s nothing particularly noteworthy. 

(But of course. Satoru can control the very structure of atomic energy, so why should something like space or time scare him?)

The doctor goes on to talk about her blood sugar levels and iron intake and a bunch of other stuff Eri tunes out, with her head buried in Satoru’s shoulder. Satoru interrupts with probing questions every once in a while, but the topic of her quirk isn’t touched upon again. 

//

Eri’s not sure why she’s remembering that doctor visit with so much clarity, years after it happened. There’s nothing noteworthy to be gleaned from the memory. 

Satoru had sat her down afterwards and done his best to explain what he could about her quirk, in a manner that a six year-old might be able to understand. Eri had a very, very powerful quirk, and because it was so powerful it was very hard to control. He said there was no reason for her to worry about it until she got older, and in the meantime, she should just concentrate on enjoying school and growing at her own pace. 

And she tried. Really, she did. 

She tries not to worry about her quirk, even when they’re all anyone talks about at school, nosey wide-eyed children looking at both her parents and then at her and excitedly wondering what her quirk is. She probably doesn’t help things in that regard, always defaulting to her standard lie whenever she gets anxious about all the probing questions directed at her. Satoru has never minded, though. He’s perfectly happy to claim her as the child he birthed from his own body— and can and will parrot that answer to crowds of reporters whenever he feels like causing chaos. 

She hopes he doesn’t mind now, because she thinks she’s about to have to use it again. 

There are people she’s never really seen before, crowding around her, asking questions in rapid order that wash through her ears like white noise. The air smells different here, somehow. Weirder. Like it’s telling her she’s somewhere else, even though the sky is blue and the sun is shining and the people barraging her with questions are speaking Japanese. 

“Whoa! She dropped out of nowhere! How did she even get here? Was that a cursed technique?!”

“You idiot, did you miss the giant portal that opened up and dropped her here? She didn’t just come out of nowhere!”

“Uh, I don’t know if I would consider it giant.” 

“Salmon, salmon.”

A much calmer voice cuts through all the noise. “Why don’t we just ask her?” 

A giant panda-man on two legs, bigger even than Gang Orca, crouches down in front of her. He has a pleasant smile on his face as he settles closer to her height. “She looks pretty normal to me. I don’t sense any cursed energy coming from her, either… although there is a lot of cursed energy around her.”

“You think someone sent her here, then?” Asks a girl with glasses and a critical expression. “Portals don’t just happen like that.” 

The friendly panda ignores this. “Hi there! My name is Panda. What’s your name?”

Eri backs away slowly, fear mounting in her stomach as she wraps trembling arms around herself. These people don’t seem evil or cruel, but people asking her questions about herself always makes her wary. Even to this day she doesn’t like to speak about herself— and luckily, what with her parents being so famous, she rarely needs to. Most people she encounters already know quite a bit about her without having to ask probing questions. It’s very odd that none of these teenagers (and talking panda) seem to know her on sight. 

“Maybe you’re scaring her, Panda.” Remarks another girl, this time with short, cropped brown hair. 

“Nonsense!” Panda enthuses. “Children love me! Just look at how fluffy I am! Do you want to touch my paw?”

He holds out his paw. 

Eri takes another step back.

The brunette snickers. “Oh yeah, you’re a real hit with the kiddos, huh?”

The giant bear tosses a scowly growl behind his shoulder. “So you think you can do better, Nobara-chan?”

‘Nobara’ reels back with a vague look of disgust. “Hell no. Children are weird.” 

Well, Eri can appreciate the honesty. She approves of it far more than the usual facetious friendliness that gets tossed her way. Everyone is always trying to be nice to her, usually in a bid to curry favor with either Hawks or Satoru. She’s learned to be distrustful of strangers with immediate affability. 

A boy with pink hair elbows his way past the brunette, coming to a halt beside Panda. He gives a jaunty wave, smiling widely. There are strange marks on his cheeks, that look oddly familiar to Eri, even though she’s never seen him before. 

“Hiya! I’m Itadori Yuuji. Sorry about my classmates, they can be a handful sometimes. Do you think you can tell us how you got here? Where are your parents?”

Something about the name twinges in her memory. 

Her eyes widen. “... Yuuji…” 

She knows that name. That’s one of the main character in Cursed Fight, the hit anime written and produced by Satoru. It’s pretty violent, apparently, so Eri’s not allowed to watch it. It’s inescapable though, what with its exponential popularity. Kids at school are constantly gushing about new episodes, and it seems like every store in Japan is having some kind of collaboration with the brand. Eri can’t even walk through a supermarket without seeing the characters emblazoned on various snack packaging. 

She looks up at all the crowd around her, truly taking them in for the first time. They all look vaguely familiar, and they all seem to be wearing the same uniform (with the exception of Panda) as if they’re all students at school. Even the area around them has the vague feel of academia— a track field turned training pitch of some kind. 

The pink-haired boy nods, eagerly. “Yes! That’s me! What about you? Can you tell me your name?”

Eri just stares at him with dawning horror. Itadori Yuuji is a character in Satoru’s show. He’s not real. So why is he in front of Eri, asking for her name? How did Eri even get here? 

She honestly doesn’t even remember. She was upset and overwhelmed, and her classmates had been so pushy about the new season of Satoru’s anime, prodding her for more information even when she swore she didn’t know— (“Hey, hey, is it true Hoshino dies? I heard he gets stabbed!” “Really? No way! He’s so strong!” “Yeah, and how is he in the other seasons if he dies in this one? It’s supposed to be a prequel! Eri-chan, tell us!”) — and she hadn’t been feeling well all day, and  suddenly it had all become too much for her and she’d buried her head in her hands to try to block it all out but she can’t remember what happened next—

“Oof, good going Itadori, I think you just made it worse.” Nobara laughs, meanly. 

Yuuji looks panicked. “I swear I didn’t mean to! Are you okay, kid?!”

Eri looks down and sees she’s gripping her sweater with a fervor that threatens to tear the thread from the fabric. Her heart is beating rabbit-fast in her chest. She’s never really used her quirk before— and the last time she’d accidentally used it, her father had ended up erased from existence. What had she done? Did she erase all her classmates? Did she erase herself? 

“It could possibly tear apart the fabric of dimensions.”

Has Eri destroyed the world? 

“Oh shit, she’s crying, what do I do, I didn’t mean to do that!!”

“No shit, Itadori!” The brunette barks. “Get away from her! Can’t you see you’re scaring her?”

“I think we’re all scaring her.” Remarks the talking panda. 

“Okay, this is stupid.” A new voice cuts in, with a heavy sigh. “We obviously don’t know what’s going on here, and we’re not making it any better by asking. I’m going to call Gojo-sensei.”

“We’re already overwhelming her, and you think calling Satoru is going to make it any better?” The girl with glasses retorts, incredulous.

“Maki-chan is right, Fushiguro-kun,” the Panda pipes in. “Satoru is a man of many talents, but consoling small children is not one of them.”

“And you don’t think I already know that?” Fushiguro counters, deadpan. “But that guy knows more about Jujutsu than any of us. If anyone will know what to do, it’s him.”  

Eri looks up sharply, tears still blurring her vision. 

“S— Satoru?” She echoes, weakly, hope crackling to life in her chest. 

All the teenagers stop arguing amongst themselves to turn to stare at her. “Yeah. Gojo Satoru.” Says Fushiguro, phone in his hand. “Do you know him?”

Gojo Satoru. Of course she knows him. 

Eri nods eagerly. “Yes! He birthed me from his own body!”

The phone slips out of the boy’s hand. He looks like Eri just hit him upside the head with a frying pan. His friends aren’t all that much better. The panda is wheezing on the floor. 

“He what.”

//

“I what now?” Satoru looks visibly confused, even with most of his face covered by a blindfold. 

Eri wants to start crying all over again.

It’s Satoru but it’s not. 

Glasses girl— Maki, someone called her— pinches her nose with a bereaved expression. “Satoru, seriously, if this is your idea of a joke—”

“I don’t even know what’s going on here!” Satoru protests, holding up his hands. He sounds as if he’s telling the truth, which is bad news for Eri. 

Eri has always labored under the impression that Satoru knows everything, and can fix everything. He regularly pulls off feats everyone else in the world considers impossible, and then laughs about it, so Eri has never been disabused of the notion. But this Satoru isn’t her Satoru. He clearly doesn’t even know her. He’s not the same person who tucks Eri into bed every night, who has begrudgingly come to adore Meow even though he pathologically despises all the hair Meow leaves on his person, who tells her it’s okay to call him dad if she wants to, but it’s also okay if she doesn’t want to. (He did, however, insist she call Hawks ‘Mom’ at least once to his face, just to hear him squawk.) Satoru is the best person in the world, he’s her favorite person, he really is her dad even though Eri’s too scared to say it to his face (she’s terrified of jinxing it, of cursing him with her existence in the same way she’d ruined her first father) and he always knows exactly how to make her feel better no matter how upset she is— but this Satoru hasn’t even taken off his blindfold, or even given her a hug. 

This isn’t Satoru at all. 

This is just a stranger with his face. 

The thought that she really is alone here in this strange world makes her cry all over again.

“I told you getting Satoru involved was a stupid idea!” Maki denounces, shoving Satoru away. With his Infinity barrier, it’s not all that successful. “Look, he made her cry even worse than Itadori.”

“I didn’t mean to!” Wails Yuuji, with a dejected expression. 

“I’m still trying to wrap my head around the situation,” says Satoru, arms crossed, rubbing at his chin. “So you said she came out of a portal that didn’t feel like cursed energy— which shouldn’t be possible— right in the middle of campus— that has a barrier against cursed energy— and the only thing she’s said so far is that I birthed her from my own body?”

All the students nod emphatically. 

Satoru laughs. “Well then! This all sounds very impossible. I like it!”

“Are you not going to comment on the fact you were the only person she knew by name, and not only that, but she’s saying you gave birth to her?” The tall boy with the wiry-dark hair asks, in a flat tone that suggests he really doesn’t want to know the answer.

“Yeah, sensei, is there something you want to tell us?” Nobara deadpans. 

“Well, I certainly don’t remember ever doing something like that— and that does seem like something I would probably remember!” Satoru enthuses. 

Nobara stares at him in disbelief. “So you can have babies?”

“Not that I’m aware of, no! But doesn’t that sound exciting?”

He might not be the Satoru Eri remembers, but he certainly has his terrible sense of humor. 

“No, Satoru, it sounds an awful lot like something you really ought to know about yourself.” Maki denies, brow twitching. 

“I think what Satoru is implying here is that many things are made possible with cursed energy, and even he can’t predict what will happen in the future.” Panda interrupts, with a calming hand on Maki’s shoulder. “Just look at me, right? I’m a talking panda made from cursed energy! Who’s to say Satoru can’t make a little girl out of cursed energy?”

Eri rubs at her eyes, only half-paying attention to the conversation over her head. She does, however, notice that the subject of quirks has yet to be brought up. They keep mentioning cursed energy, which isn’t a term Eri hears very often. Actually, aside from classmates chatting about Cursed Fight, the only time she’s ever heard it was in a hushed conversation between her parents that she’d accidentally eavesdropped on. Does that mean she’s really in Satoru’s anime? Does that mean it’s actually a real place? She thought anime were all supposed to be made up! 

“She doesn’t seem to have any cursed energy, but there’s definitely something abnormal to her,” Satoru remarks, thoughtfully. “And while she doesn’t have any cursed energy herself, she’s certainly saturated in my own!”

The students look at him in disbelief. 

“So… she is yours?” Yuuji replies, confused. 

“Not yet! … Probably!” Satoru chirps, brightly.

If anything, his students only look more confused. Aside from the big panda, who makes a noise of intrigue. 

“Oh. I see.” Panda nods sagely. 

“Eh?” Nobara squints at him. “What the hell does that mean?” 

“Tuna,” intones the white-haired kid, from beside Panda. Eri startles at his voice, forgetting he was even there. He hasn’t talked much, and all he’s said so far were types of fish. She would have thought it was some kind of quirk, but no one seems to have any here. 

“Time travel? Seriously?” Maki retorts, nonplussed. 

Satoru claps his hands. “Well, there’s only one way to find out!” 

//

Eri doesn’t like doctors. 

They find that out the hard way. 

She turns tail and books it down the hallway the moment Shouko shows up in a lab coat. One moment she’s hesitantly shuffling between Panda and Yuuji and avoiding everyone’s gazes, and in the next she’s sprinting full speed in the opposite direction. She hasn’t said a word in his presence, so Gojo’s not really sure what to make of it. Actually— she’d taken one look at him and burst into tears, which Gojo is also unsure what to make of. He doesn’t think he’s that traumatizing, but he’s been told rather reliably that he kind of is. Apparently he’s no less traumatizing as a parent as he is a teacher?

Except that doesn’t really seem to be the case. 

The kids split up to try to track her down, but even with their numbers and Yuuji’s inherent athleticism, it’s still Gojo who ends up finding her first. He hadn’t been lying about her cursed energy, or rather, his cursed energy. She’s absolutely drowning in it. Gojo’s not really sure what to make of it, or how precisely she ended up with so much of his latent cursed energy all around her. She had to have been exposed to it almost constantly, and if she’s to be believed, she has been since even before her birth. (Another thing Gojo’s still not sure how to feel about.)

At any rate he uses his own signature to find her, and teleports right in front of her and grabs her by the waist before she can struggle away like she did with Maki. She’s a pretty slippery little thing. But the moment he gets his arms around her she goes limp and doesn’t fight him at all. In fact, she curls up in his arms and hides her face in his neck. 

There’s no way it’s not an ingrained response— some kind of instinctual muscle memory calming her down the moment she’s in his arms. 

She even agrees to see Shouko, so long as he’s holding her while the woman draws her blood. She clings to him like a little koala and doesn’t remove her face from the junction of his shoulder. She doesn’t say a word, either, shaking visibly in his arms. He really has no idea how to feel about it. So maybe she does like him? At the very least, she seems to derive comfort from his presence, which bodes well for his… future parenting endeavors. 

He kicks the kids out of Shouko’s office, figuring their nosey presence is only going to set the little girl more on edge. That, and he’s not all that keen on having all his future (?) dirty laundry aired for the whole peanut gallery. He’s not sure if it's the prevailing quiet that stops the worst of her trembling, or if she’s just tired herself out from all the earlier crying, but she does seem to be less anxious the moment they’re all gone. 

The sudden quiet is nice, but also rather terribly awkward for him. 

She still hasn’t said a single word to him. Everything he’s heard about her has come from his students. They don’t even know her name. And yet she’s in his lap, hiding herself from the world in his arms, like she fully expects him to protect her. Surely it’s not unreasonable to be a bit discomfited by the whole affair? Gojo never interacts with kids. The last time he’d been this close to a little kid, he’d been badgering Megumi for guardianship. And even then, it’s not as if Megumi ever cried and crawled into his lap before— Megumi would probably sock him in the face before he ever went to him for comfort. 

Gojo is very inexperienced in this arena, and it shows. 

He’s sure he’s not fooling anyone, and definitely not this little girl. No wonder she took one look at him and burst into tears. 

The silence suddenly feels oppressive. He can’t just ignore the elephant in the room any longer. 

“So, kid, it’s pretty clear you know my name already. But it’s not very fair that you haven’t told me yours, y’know?” He tries, after a bit of deliberation. 

The girl stirs in his arms, but otherwise doesn’t answer. He glances down at her, pulling off his blindfold. She’s got a strange little horn on the side of her head— one that resonates with an incredible, but entirely foreign, kind of power. Her whole genetic makeup looks strange to his Six Eyes. He’d noticed right away that she has an energy within her that doesn’t register to him as cursed energy, but is also one he’s never seen in any other kind of creature. Yet to his cursed sight and his normal vision, she appears to be a regular human. Well, aside from that horn. 

For a long moment, he thinks she’s not going to answer him. Then she sniffles and says, quietly; “Eri.” 

Her little hands flex against his jacket, like she’s worried he’ll try to pry her off. She’s still trembling ever so slightly— a hard fact to ignore when she’s pressed up against him like this. She cries a lot and shies away from touch. She rarely speaks even when asked questions directly. She ran away from Shouko like her life depended on it and refused to stop running until Gojo himself had to catch her. She’s scared. No, she’s terrified. Gojo feels a bit slow on the uptake for only realizing this now. Of course she’d be terrified. If she really did time travel, then she’s stuck in a place with unfamiliar people and the only person she does recognize is a person who doesn't recognize her at all. 

“Eri-chan, I know you’re scared, but you don’t have to be, okay?” He says, slowly. “You’re safe with me now.”

Shockingly, this seems to work. Her hands uncurl from their death grip on his jacket, and she slowly peels away from his shoulder to stare up at him with big, scarlet eyes. The color is very intriguing to him. Did she get them from her mother? Or wait, isn’t he supposedly the mother in this situation? So… her other father? Who might not even be human, considering her horn and strange energy and outstanding lack of cursed energy? 

Look, Gojo’s just trying to roll with the punches here, and usually he’s pretty damn good at it, but even he is reeling from all these complications. 

Eri is staring at him like she’s somehow only just seeing him. Her eyes well up with tears, again, sending him into a panic. 

“Wait, wait, please don’t cry! I didn’t mean to make you cry!” 

If anything, this just makes it worse. Big, fat tears roll down her cheeks as she sobs against him. 

Gojo has no idea what on earth to do with her. His hands are just kind of hovering around her helplessly, his entire body rigid like he’s got a ticking pipe bomb in his lap and not a small child. In his defense, she certainly seems like a pipe bomb— and he has no idea what keeps setting her off. 

Shouko takes the inopportune moment to walk back into the office. 

“This isn’t my fault.” Gojo says, quickly. 

Shouko blinks at the sobbing girl in his lap, who has once again hidden her face in his shoulder at the doctor’s appearance. “Sure.” She says, easily. She closes the door. “Anyway, congratulations— you are not a father.”

“Yeah I—” He blinks rapidly. “Wait. What?” 

“Or a mother either, for the record.” Shouko shakes her head with a vague look of consternation. “I’m still not sure how that was even supposed to work.”

Gojo stares at her blankly. “... So… She’s not my daughter?”

“Well, I never said that.” Shouko counters, drily. She plops onto the edge of her desk, observing him and Eri with a clinical expression. “She’s clearly pretty attached to you. And then there’s your cursed energy, that lingers all over her. You usually don’t see that in anything other than parents and children, or spouses— but I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that.”

Gojo nods absently. Yes, things like that are glaringly apparent to his Six Eyes— relationships are never hidden from him, even when he’d rather not have known about them. 

Shouko clicks her pen, continuing; “Beyond that, she seems like a perfectly healthy child. A little bit anemic. Oh, and her blood sugar is a bit high, so don’t go plying her with sugar right away. Get a healthy dinner in her, and she should be fine, physically.” 

Gojo blinks some more. “What?”

Shouko sends him an exasperated look, as if he’s being slow on purpose. “If your theory on time travel is true— and there’s no evidence it wouldn’t be— then I think we’ve both concluded she’s your kid, or close enough. You’ll have to feed her eventually, unless you’ve already figured out a way to get her back.”

“I…” 

The thought that this might be anything more than a temporary situation hadn’t even crossed his mind. 

“Wait. What— what am I supposed to do with her?” Gojo asks, voice high with rising hysteria.

He barely knew how to handle Megumi. In point of fact, he did not handle Megumi. Megumi handled himself. So did Tsumiki. What is he supposed to do with a small child?

“I’d recommend feeding her first. And there’s no telling what time travel can do to a human body, but I imagine rest wouldn’t be ill-advised.” Shouko replies, not unkindly. She looks rather sympathetic— but also like she wouldn’t trade places with him even on penalty of death. 

She reaches over to pat his shoulder with a vague note of commiseration. “Don’t worry about it. People have kids all the time. It can’t be that hard, right?”

Gojo chuckles weakly. “Sure. Right. How hard can it be?”

//

He finds out Eri is all of eight years old, and she has very exacting standards for the Satoru-shaped parental figure in her life. 

She expects to have access to his person at all times, and gets visibly upset when she encounters his barrier instead. Infinity is habit at this point, basically autonomous, so it takes concentrated effort on his part to keep it down for her. He can never guess when she reaches out to him to be picked up, so the whole process is quite tiring, but he can’t quite bring himself to just keep it down entirely. 

She also expects him to adequately feed, clothe, and house her— which seems perfectly reasonable for a child to expect from their parent, except Gojo has never been anyone’s parent before, so he’s failing catastrophically. He sends Nobara out on a frantic side quest to procure as much clothing in her size as she can, and then promptly sends Yuuji after her when he realizes he’d just given her carte blanche to use his credit card in Tokyo; there’s no way the girl is going to manage to bring back the mountain of bags she’ll end up with on her own. Then he sends Megumi and Maki to the nearest konbini to acquire whatever toiletries a girl her age is going to need. 

She doesn’t like having Gojo out of her sight. On a related note, she almost always has a hand on him in some capacity. If he’s not carrying her in his arms, she’s clinging to his hand, or grasping the side of his jacket. 

She grows panicked if he’s not in her immediate line of sight, which makes bath time into a curious affair. Luckily she accepted to just have him on the other side of the shower curtain, but she did have very strange ideas about him singing to her. Gojo doesn’t particularly mind this, although it is a rather bewildering concept. He’s got a great singing voice, if he does say so himself, but he’s not entirely sure why anyone would know that when he doesn’t make it a habit to sing. 

She expects him to cut her food for her (she’s not allowed to handle knives on her own yet, apparently), help her dry and comb her hair before bed (with princess braids, whatever the hell that means, he does his best but he’s fairly certain all he did was make a mess), either read her a story or sing her a lullaby before bed (with zero children's books on hand, he just chooses the first song off the top of his head, which had not been even remotely kid appropriate in hindsight), and cuddle her back to sleep when she wakes up in the middle of the night. That last one really sends him reeling. She just shuffles into his room, where he’s lying wide awake in a mild existential panic, collapses on top of him and stubbornly clings to him until he wraps bewildered arms around her. 

And then she falls asleep there. 

And stays asleep there. 

The sun is rising and Gojo hasn’t slept a wink and there’s a kid drooling on his chest he doesn’t know what to do with. 

Eri seems to be a little more social— or perhaps just a little less shell-shocked— come morning, and actually manages to properly answer some of his questions during breakfast. 

Even if some of those answers were not exactly ones he was ready to hear. 

It all starts when she mentions his sister , and he almost hacks up a lung dry-heaving through a poorly timed sip of coffee. 

“Sister?” He croaks out, wiping his mouth. 

Eri doesn’t seem to register anything amiss. She scoops a generous helping of strawberries onto her syrupy waffle— he’s pretty sure Shouko specifically advised him not to give her sugar, but what else was he supposed to do for breakfast?— and nods. “Mm. Aunt Fuyumi.”

Okay. So he has a sister. That’s news to him. 

And apparently a whole gaggle of siblings on top of that. “Who’s the eldest?” He asks, more out of bemusement than anything. He’s pretty sure he’d know if he had a sister. Or any other siblings besides.  

“You. Then Aunt Fuyumi, then Uncle Natsuo, and then Uncle Shouto,” Eri reveals, promptly. 

Gojo is very, very glad he hadn’t taken another sip of coffee. It would have just come back up as violently as his last one. 

“Eri-chan,” he says, slowly. “What exactly do you know about me? Like, can you tell me the name of my parents? My last name?” 

Eri blinks at him owlishly. “I dunno grandpa’s real name.” Okay, so apparently his father is also alive, when Gojo is fairly certain he’s supposed to be about ten years dead already. “Your last name is Todoroki. But you sometimes go by Gojo still.”

Still? Gojo slowly leans back in his chair. 

He blinks rapidly. 

A probable answer to this confusing puzzle comes to mind. After all, there’s a perfectly socially acceptable— perhaps even expected— reason for an adult to change their name. 

“Err— Eri-chan… Do you, uh, have another parent?” He fumbles, awkwardly. 

Eri’s response is immediate. “Yep.”

Gojo… does not know how to feel about that. He’d sort of tabled the possibility after he’d learned Eri was adopted. Apparently she used that ‘birthed from his own body’ excuse whenever she got scared of invasive questions, a tactic he quietly approved of, even though it had scared the absolute shit out of him. But, well, if he had a kid, even an adopted one, surely it was possible he had a significant other as well? 

“Okay. That’s… nice.” He has no idea what else to say to that. 

So, he apparently gets married at some point. 

He changes his name, ends up with a crowd of in-laws, and co-parents an adorable little daughter. He did not expect to ever be emotionally-equipped to handle any of that, but apparently the future is a strange and perplexing place. 

Todoroki, huh? He doesn’t hate it. 

Chapter Text

As it turns out, he doesn’t hate any of it— surprise time-traveling daughter dropping into his lap included. 

He’s still not entirely sure how he feels about it, but he finds, at the very least, he doesn’t actively dislike the thought. A future like that sounds… odd, but hardly unpleasant. And Eri is a very easy child to get attached to. Her open and innocent affection is, in fact, dangerously easy to get attached to. She gives it freely and thoughtlessly, in a way that’s utterly anathema to his existence. No one is ever so casually affectionate with him. With his sledgehammer of a personality and his literally unbreachable barrier, he simply just doesn’t let people get close to him, physically or emotionally. But Eri doesn’t ask for closeness— she demands it. In that simple, effortless way all children do, until life brutally teaches them otherwise. 

It takes some getting used to, but he thinks, not even twenty-four hours after she unceremoniously crashed into his life, he’s actually getting the hang of it. 

“Satoru,” she says, tugging at the hem of his jacket. He hasn’t even had this kid for a full day, but he knows exactly what that tone means. Maybe he’s not so bad at this parenting thing after all.

He grabs her by the armpits and hoists her up onto his hip, where she settles comfortably with her arms wrapped around him. Her soft, silvery hair tickles his nose; she smells like him, if only because he didn’t have the time or foresight to buy her kid’s hair conditioner. It’s so similar in color and texture to his own that he once again has to wonder if she’s really not his kid. The test results were very clear, and Eri herself even said she was lying, but cursed energy is really weird, right? There’s really no telling what it can or can’t do… 

“Where are we going?” She asks curiously, peering out into the world around them with big eyes.

The walk from the house he keeps by the school to the campus itself is not particularly far, or particularly stimulating, but Eri’s looking around at the scenery like she’s never seen trees or traditional buildings before. Come to think on it, he still doesn’t really know where she lives. She said they live in a big house, with a pool and a pond and a cat, but that could really be anywhere. 

“We’re going to the school yard,” he explains. “I’ve got to teach today.” 

And thank god for that. He has no idea what he’d do with her if he got called onto a mission. He’d most likely have to leave her with Shouko, which would probably only permanently scar the both of them. 

“Teach?” Eri blinks her big, garnet eyes at him. “You’re a teacher?” 

It’s Gojo’s turn to blink down at her, even if she can’t see it with the blindfold. “... Am I not a teacher, in the future?”

Eri’s brow furrows, as if the thought of his occupation deeply confuses her. She considers the question with a lot more thoroughness than he thinks it truly warrants. 

“You’re a rockstar.” She decides, causing him to almost trip over his own two feet. 

“A what?” He returns, then shakes his head. 

Why is he expecting an eight year-old to know his career path, anyway? She probably meant that metaphorically, or more likely, knowing his own terrible sense of humor he’d told her that himself as a joke. She doesn’t even know the actual name of her own grandfather. She’s just a kid, she wouldn’t know about adult things like that anyway.

“Ah, nevermind, it’s okay if you don’t know, Eri-chan. Either way, I’m a teacher for now. And a sorcerer. Do you know what that is?”

She shakes her head, which is… a little alarming. Her brow furrows even further, as she answers, tentatively, “…No?” 

Maybe it’s not so shocking, that she has no idea what a Jujutsu sorcerer is. She doesn’t have any cursed energy, after all. 

But Gojo cannot fathom the idea of actually up and leaving the Jujutsu world, even if he daydreams about the prospect regularly. His existence has always been intrinsically tied to Jujutsu, and curses, and the society that created him. A Gojo Satoru that isn’t the strongest Jujutsu sorcerer… the thought just seems impossible. Would he even be Gojo Satoru, without all the trappings of his techniques and his ancient lineage? Just who is he, underneath all that? He doesn’t really know, and it never seemed worth it to tolerate the existential headache it would take to figure it out. 

“Well, at the most basic level, a Jujutsu sorcerer is someone who can see curses.” 

On the subject of that, can Eri see curses? She doesn’t have any cursed energy at all, much like Maki, who uses glasses to be able to see curses. But Eri does have her own kind of energy, that Gojo and the full power of his Six Eyes still can’t figure out. Whatever it is, maybe it allows her to see curses. 

“Jujutsu sorcerers can also have cursed energy, which allows them to use cursed techniques.” 

Something about this explanation sparks recognition in her eyes. “Hollow Purple!” She cries. 

“Yes!” He agrees, with a befuddled smile. Out of all his techniques, why the hell is it the Gojo clan’s hidden— and most violent— ability that she knows by name? “That’s a special cursed technique, exclusive to my family. Do you know what it is, Eri-chan?”

She nods, and says, solemnly, “The purple laser death beam of doom.” 

“... Uh, right.” Well, that’s not exactly an incorrect summation of it. 

“And… Infinity too?” She adds, hesitant. 

At least this time she picked a technique that’s a bit more age appropriate. “Yep, that’s one too!” He grins at her. “That’s the barrier I use to keep things away from me. You’ve felt it before, right?” 

“Mm!” She says, and when he holds out his hand for her, she lines her palms up with his and presses them together. She looks so surprised when their skin touches that he can’t help but chuckle. 

“You’re already inside the barrier with me, so it’s not gonna stop you, because it’s around us both!” He explains. “Pretty cool, huh?” 

Eri nods vehemently. “Suuuper cool.” She agrees, looking thrilled. 

She even reaches up and pats his head in approval, in a way he thinks should feel a bit patronizing, but coming from a cherubic little kid just seems charming and sweet.  

Huh. 

He never really understood the appeal of kids… but he thinks he kinda sees it, now. Megumi had always been such a surly and churlish but totally adorable little brat, forever unimpressed by him and his antics. Tsumiki was always mild and pleasant, but equally standoffish with him. Neither of them had trusted adults, nor wanted any kind of authoritative figures in their life, so he slotted himself into the role of the eccentric and annoying older brother to them. Eri, though, looks at him like he hung the moon and the stars in the sky. She’s impressed by everything he does, from braiding her hair into a terrible mess to cooking her slightly burnt waffles. She’s happy just to be around him, as if his mere presence nearby makes the world a little better. 

That kind of earnest and open joy, freely given in his direction… yeah, he can see how kids can be appealing. 

“What about cremation?” 

Her question pulls him from his thoughts. He turns it over in his head, confused. “Cremation?” 

“Your cremation technique,” she says, patiently, as if she thinks he’s being deliberately slow. 

“Uh, I don’t know what that is.” He replies, bewildered. Is it a technique he comes up with in the future? That’s fascinating. He doesn’t think there’s been a new addition to the Limitless techniques since… well, since the Gojo clan has existed. 

“Oh. Me either really.” Eri returns, crestfallen. 

Whatever it is, from the name alone it probably isn’t very appropriate for little ears anyway. 

Gojo gives her a head pat in return. “That’s fine, I’m sure I’ll learn about it one way or another. And you’ll see lots of other cursed techniques today! Have you ever seen Megumi’s shadow technique?”

“Megumi?” Eri repeats, slowly. 

Gojo freezes. He swallows thickly. “Yeah, Megumi. …Do you know him?” 

And what would it mean, if she didn’t?

Eri is quiet for a long, damning moment. 

Then she mimes something around her head. “The… spiky hair boy? With the shadow animals?”

He breathes out a sigh of relief. “Yeah, those are his shikigami. They might look a little intimidating, but some of them are pretty cute. I think you’ll like them!” 

She apparently knew Yuuji by sight as well, which he also tentatively chooses to take as a good sign. If she doesn’t know much about Jujutsu or its society to begin with, it would make sense she wouldn’t be close to any of his former students. She probably just doesn’t know them well enough to recognize them by name— and he’s sure they must look different as adults. Then again, with how quickly death comes for everyone in this business, maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

Eri, meanwhile, breathes a sigh of relief as she manages to remember the name of the kid Satoru was talking about. That was a close one. She decides to keep her mouth shut and stop asking questions as they make their way to the school buildings. 

This Satoru is… a lot different than the one she knows. 

He’s similar too in a lot of ways, but he’s very obviously not the Satoru who caught her out of the sky that fateful night she’d ran from the Shie Hassaikai. He doesn’t even know who his own siblings are. He definitely doesn’t know who she is, and while she hasn’t brought Hawks up yet, she doubts he’d know him either. He hasn’t mentioned anything about quirks, and he doesn’t even know about his own quirk! He even looks a little strange. Eri’s too small to be a good judge, but she swears he’s taller than usual. And his face is a little off, too. Everything is similar enough that she recognized him immediately, but small details don’t seem to match up. She thinks his ears are a little bigger than she remembers, and his chin is sharper, and even his nose confuses her. The eyes, though, are exactly the same. 

To make matters more confusing, everything he seems to know about comes entirely from the anime Cursed Fight. 

He asked her about Megumi, who she thinks was the boy who called Satoru when she first arrived here. He also happens to be her classmate Kota’s favorite character on the show; Kota even has a backpack with his black and white shadow dogs.  

And he talked about his techniques, which he called cursed techniques. They’re the same ones Eri’s always known, but she’s never heard him refer to them as cursed. When she thinks back on it, she’s not sure if he’s ever called them a quirk either, though. 

As Satoru carts her over to the training grounds, she mulls it all over in her head. 

The familiar boy with pink hair and markings on his cheeks— Yuuji— shouts exuberantly when she and Satoru come into view, waving his hands in the air. The spiky-haired boy, Megumi, is not nearly as effusive in his greeting but does nod their way while he stretches. The other girl, who Eri thinks is called Nobara, grabs Yuuji by the ear and nags him into helping her stretch. Now that Eri knows she’s somehow in Satoru’s anime, it’s a little easier to piece things together. 

Eri isn’t allowed to watch the anime, and she’s never really wanted to, either. 

In fact, she might even go as far as to say she hates it. 

Satoru told her very firmly that it wasn’t age appropriate for her, and he’s never really cared much about stuff like that, which means he was really serious about it this time. But what really had her hesitating was Hawks, who never seemed to like the idea of Satoru making an anime to begin with. When she’d asked him, he’d just sighed and said he understood it was something Satoru had to do, but that he didn’t like seeing how much it hurt him. Eri agreed. She didn’t like seeing Satoru get hurt, either. 

Ever since the anime had come out, Satoru had started getting a really sad look on his face whenever he thought no one was looking. And no matter how many head pats she gave him, he never cheered up for very long. So Eri made a concerted effort never to ask him about it or bring it up, and refused to watch it herself. 

Of course, with its record breaking popularity, it was hard to avoid it entirely. 

All the people in her life were aware and engaged with it on some level, so there really was no escaping it. 

The kids at her school were obsessed with it— the boys especially. They thought all the bloody fights were wicked cool, and the curses were super gross and awesome. Even her best friend Kota wasn’t immune. Megumi was his favorite, but the evil cursed monster Sukuna was a close second. He had one of his icky looking fingers as a keychain on his backpack. Yui’s favorite was the hammer girl, who Eri thinks is the same as this Nobara girl, although she’s yet to see the hammer in question to confirm it. Izuku’s favorites were Yuuji and Yuuta, the two main characters of the first and second season respectively. Fuyumi’s favorite was a girl with glasses, likely the same girl with glasses Eri had met yesterday. Natsuo and Shouto were die hard Panda fans, and meeting a talking Panda in person probably should have clued her in to where she was in the first place. 

Even Hawks had a favorite character, for all that he distanced himself from the show. 

His name was Hoshino Satomi, and up until this moment, Eri had thought she simply had yet to meet him.

He was the most popular character on the show by far, so Eri surely would have recognized him if she’d seen him already.

“You just stay right there, Eri-chan, and yell if you need anything okay?” Satoru tells her, as he plops her down at the bleachers by the edge of the track field. 

“You can’t just leave a kid like that, sensei,” Nobara cuts in, unimpressed. 

“Why not?” Satoru asks, puzzled. 

Nobara sighs. “She’s gonna get bored! At least give her a book or something!” 

“Oh,” Satoru says. Then he pulls his phone out of his pocket, taps around some, then hands it to her. It’s a candy puzzle game that looks shockingly similar to the one Hawks has on his phone. Maybe candy games are just universal to phones, no matter what the world. “Here ya go. Play whatever you want, Eri-chan. It’s fine if it costs money.”

Nobara palms her face. “That is the exact opposite of what you should be telling your kid, sensei!”

Yuuji just laughs. “Sensei’s not a regular mom, he’s a cool mom!”

“He’s an idiot, more like.” Megumi sighs. 

Satoru lunges for the moody boy, hugging him like an octopus even as Megumi tries to fight him off. “Awwh, Megumi-kun, are you jealous? I always told you to buy whatever you wanted too! It’s not my fault you never took me up on the offer!”

“Because I know you’re an idiot!” Megumi kicks him. Predictably, it hits his barrier and his foot gets stuck there. “You’re just asking for someone to take advantage of you!”

Satoru gasps. “Megumi-kun! Are you saying you want to take advantage of your poor, innocent sensei?” 

“Who the fuck is poor or innocent here…” Megumi grouses, brow twitching. 

“Definitely not this guy.” Nobara snorts, thumbing at Satoru. 

“My first years are all so cruel to me,” Satoru sighs, affecting a despondent expression. “I’ll have to thoroughly bully them this training session to make up for it.”

“No! Please! Sensei I’ve been good, promise!” Yuuji pleads, with a horror-struck expression. “Please don’t make me carry Panda around the school again!”

Nobara also quickly shuts up, standing straight. “You’re the best sensei ever.” She intones, solemnly. “Not an idiot at all. And you have really great skin. And I definitely have no desire to be tossed repeatedly into a sand pit again.”

Satoru turns to Megumi. The dark-haired boy just glares up at him.

“You’re the worst and you know it,” Megumi tells him, bluntly. 

“Thirty laps for Megumi-kun!” Satoru cries, pointing at him. Then he swings to his other students. “And you two— go run to the vending machines and back and get me a milk tea. Oh, and a Pocari for Eri-chan!” 

He tosses his wallet at the two, who cheer in delight and hastily make off with his money before he changes his mind. Megumi gets to his feet and starts jogging around the track with a bit of grumbling under his breath.

Eri watches it all with wide, raptured eyes, phone forgotten in her hand.

In the anime Cursed Fight, Hoshino Satomi is a teacher at the magical school the protagonist studies at. He’s an eccentric and dramatic oddball that’s by equal turns brilliant, irreverent and unbearably unknowable. He’s easily the most popular character on the show, appearing in all sorts of merchandise and media specials. Just the other day Eri ate an anpan with his face on the packaging. 

He looks nothing like Satoru, with his wild, tousled dark hair that falls across his face, and he wears these dorky,  thick horn-rimmed magical glasses that turn his naturally sparkly gray eyes into a deep brown. His name is also completely different, where so far everyone’s names and appearances have been the same. 

But there’s no denying it, after seeing Satoru interact with his students. 

Hoshino-sensei isn’t a made up character in a made up anime; he’s a real person, just like all the rest of them are. He’s Satoru. And he’s living in a world Eri thought was fake, and doesn’t know any of the people he’s supposed to. 

Eri buries her face in her knees, suddenly feeling very tired and alone. 

//

Eri looks subdued after his morning practice with the first years, which worries him more than he cares to admit. Hell. He’s known this kid for less than twenty-four hours and is already this attached to her— this does not bode well for him at all. 

He tries all his usual tricks to get her to smile again— or at the very least, break that impassive indifference— but none of the outrageous antics that used to draw a scowl out of Megumi or a quick giggle out of Tsumiki seem to work. Eri just stares up at him with those big doe eyes, as if she sees right through him, into all the broken and brittle parts of himself he always tries to hide. In the end, he gives up with the weird dances and cheerful exclamations, and bewilderingly enough, that seems to do the trick. 

“—Then your favorite has to be Gatoman, right? Or maybe Gabumon? More of a MetalGreymon fan myself but to each their own…” He stops with all the theatrics he’d been making with the little toys that came with her happy meal, putting them down when it becomes clear the little girl isn’t really paying attention to him at all. 

He’d caused a bit of a scene as he whisked them off to the nearest McDonalds for lunch and unanimously deciding to buy as many happy meals as it took to get the full collection of their Digimon toy series. Eri seemed to share the ineffable love of chicken nuggets all small children have, and at first the prospect seemed to cheer her up, but as Gojo continued to bewilder all the patrons around them, she receded more into her shell. In the end, after trying to cheer her up with matching purple sprinkle shakes, he gave it up as a lost cause. She doesn’t seem to like his loud and gregarious persona at all, huh? She’s such a quiet and contained little girl; the exact opposite of him. She must get that from her other… other parent. That Gojo realizes he still doesn’t know anything about. 

Gojo sighs, placing all the digimon in a heap at the end of their table, along with the forgotten shakes. Eri is staring listlessly at her chicken nuggets, prodding her sauce with a fry. 

“Do you want a different sauce, Eri-chan?” He tries, even though he’d already procured her every sauce possible— and made a veritable mess making mystery mashups of them, none of which she liked. 

She shakes her head. 

Regressing back into nonverbal territory too, huh? He really messed up this time. 

“Sorry, Eri-chan,” he sighs, chin in hand as he watches her with a forlorn expression. “You probably wish you’d time traveled to your other parent, I bet.”

Whoever they are, they’re probably the reason Eri’s such a well-behaved and well-rounded kid. If Gojo was left to rear a kid on his own, he can only imagine the trauma and havoc he would wreak on that poor kid’s psyche. They’d probably know all the Digimon evolutions before they knew their letters, and would think candy was an appropriate food group for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 

If Eri had time traveled to them instead of Gojo, she probably wouldn’t be making this face. She’d probably be happy and untroubled and well cared for. She’d probably have socks on that actually matched (Gojo managed to lose one from all three of the pairs that had come in the pack Nobara had gotten) and hair that was actually brushed (last night’s braids had only made a mess) and she’d have been fed a proper meal for lunch that wasn’t fast food, and wouldn’t be making such a sad and despondent expression. 

“Instead you’re just stuck with me,” he laments, “and I’m no good at all.”  

Her head snaps upwards, distant expression breaking. 

“No— Satoru is the best,” Eri denies, with  a vehemence that surprises him. Honestly, he’d sort of figured she’d stopped listening and tuned him out ages ago. 

The best? He’s the strongest, but he’s hardly the best. In fact, if most of the people in his life are to be believed, he’s sort of the worst. 

She climbs out of her chair and crawls right into his lap, uncaring of the fact she’s getting sauce all over both of them. She starts to pat his hair again, turning it into a wet, sugary mess with her sticky hands. Somehow, Gojo can’t find it in himself to care right now. 

“I love Satoru the most,” she says, very simply, like that’s just a fact of life and not something so profound it threatens to knock him right out of his seat. 

“You… you do?” His voice is a little high with disbelief, and maybe even a bit of wistfulness he refuses to acknowledge. 

“Yes, he’s my favorite person in the whole wide world,” she insists, and has since moved on from getting honey sauce in his hair to smearing it on his cheek as she pats his face. “Even when he’s sad.” 

He wonders how in the hell this little kid can see right through him so easily, where full grown adults regularly fail. He smiles tremulously at her. “You think I’m sad, huh?”

She nods. “Satoru gets loud when he’s sad.” She explains. Zing! Direct hit. Damn, this kid doesn’t pull her punches, does she? “I don’t want Satoru to be sad.”

“Is that so? Okay, then! I’ll be happy now, Eri-chan, if that’s what you want.” He almost wants to laugh at himself. If only it was that easy, like flipping a switch. But he definitely doesn’t want Eri to be upset, so he’ll just have to figure out how to pretend. 

Eri just purses her lips at him. “No thanks,” she shoots him down flat, which really almost does have him laughing aloud. 

“No?” He fights off a smile. 

“No, pretending is bad too.” She tells him, imperiously. “Satoru pretends a lot. That’s why he gets so loud when he’s sad. It’s a bad habit of his.”

She sounds like she’s quoting someone else. He can’t help but wonder who it might be. 

“Satoru can be sad if he wants to be sad,” she continues on, with a solemn air. “Eri will sit with him until he feels better.” 

This time, Gojo really can’t contain his laughter. He chuckles, holding her close. “I get it now! A hug from Eri-chan fixes everything, doesn’t it?” 

“The best way to cheer Satoru up is to sit with him very quietly and pet him very softly, like he’s Meow-san,” she explains, dead serious, as his arms freeze around her. “Hugs and kisses are okay. But sometimes Satoru doesn’t like being touched, either. That’s okay too. On those days, Eri  just has to use her words, and sit next to him and tell him about her day.” 

Gojo is no longer laughing. In fact, his cheeks are starting to feel like they might catch on fire. 

“Eri-chan, you… who told you that?” He asks, slowly. There’s no way an eight year-old, no matter how perceptive, would figure all that out on her own. 

Eri seems to debate how to answer. 

“You call him Kei-kun, sometimes,” she admits finally, like a secret. “But everyone else calls him Hawks.”

Him… huh? 

He can’t say he’s terribly surprised. And Hawks… is that a nickname of some kind? Is he American or something? Maybe he’s just really into birds? Hell, the idea of Gojo having any kind of husband at all is so bewildering it all sounds too surreal for him to take any of it seriously. Like he’s peering into someone else’s idyllic life, an entity entirely removed from it.

Whether he can really wrap his head around it or not, the results are undeniable. 

“That guy… he really knows me pretty well, doesn’t he?”

Even the parts Gojo himself can barely acknowledge. Like the days he needs to spend cloaked in his own Infinity, where any foreign touch feels like a knife to his soul. 

Eri blinks up at him. She doesn’t seem to have an answer, but Gojo wasn’t really expecting her to have one. That’s fine. Maybe it’s something he should figure out for himself. 

He glances around the restaurant, empty after the lunch rush, and decides to take an impromptu trip back to his house for a shower and a quick change of clothes before heading back to the school. He can only imagine the ridicule he’d get if he showed up with barbecue sauce all in his hair. He hauls her up by the armpits and swings her onto his hip. Is eight too old for stuff like this? He has no idea, but Eri doesn’t seem to be protesting. 

Gojo peers down at her curiously. He’s relieved to see she seems to be in a better mood than she had earlier, but he still doesn’t know what set her off in the first place. Could it have been the school barriers? She seems to have grown up entirely removed from cursed energy; maybe it was affecting her in a negative manner, and the barrier was clashing with her own unique energy? Gojo still couldn’t make sense of what it was, but either way, Eri had been upset at the school, and now she wasn’t. 

He decides— in a manner that’s either terribly irresponsible or impressively astute— to forego the rest of the school day in favor of Eri’s mental health. 

He grins down at her widely. “Alright, I dunno about you but I’m in desperate need of a shower. What do you say we get changed, then go Disneyland?” 

Eri stares up at him with wide, sparkling eyes. As he suspected, amusement parks are a surefire way to cheer kids up in the past, present, and future. She nods eagerly. 

Then her expression falls. Gojo’s own expression falls, smile fading into panic. “What? What’s wrong? Is that no good either?” 

Eri bites her lip. Then she says, solemnly, “Eri-chan can’t change because Eri-chan doesn’t have underwear to change into.” 

Gojo almost drops her as he goes through a stuttering reboot sequence. He flies through all the purchases Nobara had dropped off earlier. Come to think on it… she’d bought an absurd amount of frilly dresses, hair clips, cutely patterned socks and adorable little shoes, but Gojo doesn’t remember seeing any kind of undergarments…

“Oh,” he says, as he comes to the unfortunate realization that he’s going to have to go out and buy them himself. “Well then. Shopping first. Then shower. Then Disneyland. How about that?”

Eri gives him an approving nod— and headpat— in response. 

It’ll be fine. He’s Gojo Satoru. He’s the strongest. He’s got no reason to be intimidated by a little bit of shopping.

Chapter Text

Megumi has a hard time believing this kid is Gojo’s in any timeline, let alone their own. 

She’s too well-adjusted, is the thing. Not nearly crazy enough. Way too sweet and kind. She actually says please and thank you. She looks enough like him, he can admit, but the horn throws him off. Even swallowed up by a mickey mouse hat, he still can’t forget the reminder of her otherness. Does Gojo seriously have a baby with an alien of some kind? It says a lot that Megumi doesn’t dismiss that out of hand. 

But the real reason Megumi refuses to believe Eri is Gojo’s kid is because he just likes her too damn much. And he dislikes Gojo way too much for this to be possible. 

Oh, he’s grateful for him, that was never in question. He respects the hell out of him. And he thinks he’s been a decent enough teacher and mentor, for all that it was just as much a baptism by fire for him as it was for Megumi. He’ll always be thankful that Gojo was there to stop the Ze’nin clan from taking him and Tsumiki. That he’s still around, watching over Megumi and taking care of Tsumiki’s hospital bills. 

He’s a kind person, but Megumi would never consider him nice. As a child, Megumi would have rather torn off his own hand than gone to Gojo for help. That probably said more about Megumi’s traumas as a child than Gojo’s guardianship, but it was true enough that Megumi was an unruly child and at the time Gojo was just an unruly child himself. He didn’t know how to truly help Megumi, and Megumi could always tell he didn’t really want to, either. Something had forced Gojo to intervene in his life, and it was never altruism. His motives always smelled suspiciously like guilt to Megumi, although he refused to ever confirm it. 

At any rate, Megumi appreciates and acknowledges everything Gojo has done for him, but he would never call them close. 

Even now, closer to an adult than a child, he still has trouble dealing with that guy for more than a few hours at a time. They have their moments, where their jagged edges can almost align in a way that seems familial enough, but eventually his chainsaw of a personality will grate on Megumi’s short temper, and he’ll vow to stay away from him for as long as possible. 

But Eri— Eri he could see himself wanting to spend time with. 

She’s just a kid, but there’s a solemn wisdom to her that almost hurts to see, because it reminds him so much of himself. 

And it reminds him that Gojo had been a kid back then, just like Megumi had. 

Megumi had hated him for inserting himself into Megumi’s life, and had done his best to shove the annoying bastard away, and ignore him whenever he could. Megumi hated that he’d needed Gojo. He hated that he needed anyone at all. 

And Gojo hadn’t deserved that. 

For all his faults, he’d tried his best. But at the time, Megumi simply just couldn’t accept it. 

And if Eri is just like Megumi, yet she manages to be a sweet and goodnatured child as opposed to the sullen brat that Megumi was, then it had always been Megumi that had been the problem, not Gojo. And Megumi is still the problem; Megumi is the reason he and Gojo aren’t close. It’s not Gojo that’s putting up those walls. Eri’s existence proves he’d fold like a house of cards the moment a child reached out to him with open arms. In fact Megumi sees it happen with his own two eyes, when Eri wanders over to him and silently asks to be held in his arms when she gets tired of walking. Gojo doesn’t resist at all. He takes down that impenetrable barrier of his and lets her settle against him. 

Kugisaki elbows him, hard, causing him to look away from that particular scene. 

He turns to scowl at her, only to find she’s scowling back. “What do you have against Eri-chan, huh?” She prods, aggressively. 

“Nothing!” He insists, leaning away from her. 

He has nothing against Eri. She’s a good kid. A great kid, in fact. 

Most kids would be a nightmare at Disneyland, but she’s calm and collected. She waits patiently and without complaint for all the rides, and doesn’t whine about being tired or hungry. She doesn’t mind when Itadori or Kugisaki insist on one ride over another, even if she might have had a preference. She listens to all of Gojo’s directions, and doesn’t try to just run off without telling them. 

Kugisaki squints at him. “Then why do you keep glaring at her?”

“I’m not glaring.” He protests, feeling his ears growing red. “I’m just— staring.”

“Staring.” Kugisaki repeats, unimpressed. 

“It’s a lot to take in, alright?” He defends. More than Kugisaki even knows. He hasn’t mentioned his complicated history with Gojo, and he doesn’t think Gojo has either. 

This seems to work in getting Kugisaki to back off. “Yeah, that’s true. Still can’t believe sensei has a kid. And she’s actually sweet! I would have thought she’d be a total brat.”

It’s nothing Megumi hadn’t already thought himself, yet somehow, hearing it aloud makes him all defensive. He’s such a hypocrite. “Gojo’s not that bad.”

Kugisaki gives him an unimpressed look. 

Feeling even worse, he doubles down. “He’s not.” 

“Right.” She says, shortly. 

They’re distracted by Itadori waving them over towards the front of the long line he and Gojo have been standing in while he and Kugisaki had left to get them snacks. Megumi hands over the cotton candy cloud to Gojo, who enthusiastically goes on to split it with Eri. Kugisaki hands Itadori his milkshake and burger, and to no one’s surprise, Itadori devours both of them in record time. Megumi himself had gotten a similar order, and had barely made a dent in his own milkshake. 

“Oh no,” Itadori says after a moment, sounding pained. “My stomach doesn’t feel good.”

Kugisaki looks at him critically. “... That actually happens to you?”

Her incredulity is well warranted. Itadori was the guy who swallowed Sukuna’s disgusting finger whole, after all. 

Itadori sends a panicked look towards the ride behind them. It’s the teacup ride, and predictably it's filled with kids Eri’s age shrieking at decibels that make Megumi wish he’d brought ear plugs. Gojo actually looks a bit panicked and worried himself, turning towards Itadori.

“Your stomach hurts, Yuuji-kun?” He asks, frowning.

Itadori nods, glum. “Yeah… I think it was the milkshake.” 

Megumi sighs. “Idiot. You can’t ride this thing then. You’ll throw up everywhere.” 

Gojo only frowns further, looking thoughtful. “Hmm… Eri-chan’s not tall enough to ride it herself. What about you, Nobara-chan?” 

Kugisaki looks a little green at the thought. “I’m the same.” 

Itadori tilts his head at Gojo, still clutching his stomach. “Eh? What about you, sensei?” 

Megumi just sighs again, and cuts in before Gojo can respond. “I can ride with her.” 

Itadori and Kugisaki wouldn’t know it, but Gojo is actually bad with stuff like this. Intense spinning is hell on his eyes; he gets bad enough vertigo from them as it is, even if he’ll never admit to it. Megumi supposes its both pride and practicality that keeps him from ever complaining loudly about it as he does every other minor inconvenience in his life. If his enemies ever knew just how badly dizziness could affect him, they’d exploit it endlessly. 

Gojo actually looks a little relieved. “Thanks, Megumi! We’ll wait right here for you!” 

Megumi isn’t exactly fond of these kinds of spinning rides himself, but at the very least, he’s not liable to projectile vomit all over Eri while they’re in the teacups together, so he gets on the ride with her without complaint. 

“Are you strapped in Eri-chan?” He looks over the table, seeing she’s struggling with her seatbelt. He straps her in, before scooting over into the seat next to her. No one else gets in their cup with them, which he chooses to take as a blessing. Less screaming kids that way.

Eri is just as quiet as he is, though, so he imagines they must look like a very odd pair from the outside. He internally prays that Gojo’s not out at the sidelines taking embarrassing videos of them, but he’s not holding his breath on that. 

He glances down at Eri as they’re violently tossed around another cup full of shrieking kids. “Doing okay, Eri-chan?”

She peers up at him with her bright, ruby red eyes. “Mn.”

He was specifically asking about the ride, but as he thinks on it… that question could encompass a lot more than a single teacup ride. 

He’s silent for a moment, before he asks, tentatively, “Are you okay, with Gojo-sensei? He’s not too much for you?” 

This time when Eri looks up at him, she looks a little confused. “Too much?”

“Yeah, you know how he is.” Megumi gives a vague wave of his hand. “He hasn’t been too loud? Hasn’t tried to do anything crazy?”

Eri considers the question. “Well… he’s been a little sad.” She reveals, in a little voice.

Megumi feels a weird swooping in his stomach. Oh. So she knows about that too. About how Gojo can get increasingly loud and manic the more he spirals into a pit of his own silent despair. How it’s almost impossible to get him out of it; how you just have to sit and wait and hope he finds his way back on his own. 

“But he’s okay now?” He asks, a little urgently.

Eri frowns a bit. “I gave him lots of head pats. But sometimes that doesn’t work. I gave him a hug, too, but…”

“But he didn’t want any hugs.” Megumi fills in, nodding. 

Sometimes, Gojo will do everything possible to avoid human touch. He’ll make his personality as loud as possible, as if to fill up all the spaces around him like a barrier of its own. 

“Yeah.” Eri agrees, looking down at the table. 

Megumi stops himself from instinctively looking out of their little teacup and into the crowds around the ride for Gojo; he’s not prone to motion sickness, but even he doesn’t want to push his luck. He saw him plenty earlier. He hadn’t looked like he was on the edge of some kind of unspeakable madness. There had definitely been a bit of underlying anxiety to him, but he’d also been surprised by a time traveling kid. Megumi thought it warranted in this instance. 

Megumi sighs, piecing it all together. “Was it his idea to go to Disneyland for the afternoon, too?”

Eri nods, confirming his suspicions. 

So Gojo is trying very hard to avoid something, and is using them all as convenient distractions. It helps that Eri— and Megumi’s classmates— actually have enjoyed the outing, so Gojo gets to avoid his problems while still feeling like he’s being helpful. Hopefully that’s enough— it usually is— but without knowing what’s caused this sudden mood of his it’s impossible to say. 

“You don’t have to go along with what he wants just because he’s the adult, Eri-chan. You can say no.” 

God knows Megumi never agreed to any of Gojo’s shenanigans. They were always so outlandish and completely disrupted the hard-earned routine that Tsumiki and Megumi had clung to ever since their parents abandoned them. Gojo always meant well, even if he was just using them as distractions for his own problems— offering to take them on ski trips, beach vacations, or sometimes even less chaotic alternatives like skipping school for the afternoon to go to the zoo or the arcade. Most kids would have jumped at the chance to do any of that, but Megumi and Tsumiki had always valued the calm, insular oasis of normalcy they’d made for themselves. And Gojo only ever coming around to constantly disrupt that never worked out well for any of them. 

“I know.” Eri replies. “But it’s fun. I like trying new things. And it’s not so scary, when Satoru’s there.”

Yeah. Eri is definitely a much better and more adjusted kid than Megumi was. 

She’s definitely good for Gojo. And it seems like Gojo is good for her too. 

“Yeah, he’s good for making things less scary, at the very least.” Megumi even smiles a bit as he says this. 

Eri nods readily. “He’s the best at making things less scary. He can even make scary things funny!”

Megumi laughs. “Yeah, not always on purpose though.”

He remembers being very small, probably no older than eight, and also very, very sick. So sick he was actually a little worried that he might never feel better. Even Tsumiki had started to get concerned. And then Gojo had come barreling in with a parade of balloon animals and a clown horn, and Tsumiki had been so bewildered she’d actually shouted at him and shoved him out of the room. It was probably the first and only time she’d raised her voice at Gojo. He’d been too out of it at the time to really understand what was going on, but he did remember being confused by the balloon animals, and why the hell he’d come over with those instead of anything useful, like medicine, that he’d actually been so confounded he’d thought it was funny. He might have even laughed. 

“It’s good you two seem to get along.” He says, after his mirth has left him. “He can be a hard person to be with.”

“He’s not very good at using his words.” Eri notices, startling Megumi into more laughter.

“He’s the worst at using words.” He emphatically concurs. He’s quiet for a moment. “...But he’s the best where it counts.”  

“Mn.” Eri agrees. “The very best.”

//

Kugisaki gives a loud gasp, clutching at Itadori like a wet cat. 

“What? What?” Itadori looks up quickly, from where he’d been hunched over on their shared park bench.

Kugisaki turns to him with wide eyes. “... Fushiguro just laughed.”

Itadori’s eyes grow just as wide. “No way!” He sits up straighter for a better look at the teacup rides. 

Kugisaki points wildly. “There! He did it again! Did you see that?!”

“What? No! I missed it!” Itadori whines. 

Gojo just laughs at both of them, sprawled at the far end of the bench, slurping down his soda. Despite laughing at their antics, privately he’s rather impressed himself. Getting Megumi to laugh is… a pretty impossible endeavor. He should know, he’s been trying for nearly a decade. He shouldn’t be surprised Eri managed it within moments of meeting the older boy. She’s a good kid, and she definitely didn’t get that from him. He supposes he has this Hawks person to thank for that. 

He smiles to himself, although it doesn’t reach his eyes. 

Maybe one day, if he’s very, very lucky, he’ll get the chance to thank him in person. 

But the more he thinks on Eri’s mysterious situation… the more he suspects that’s a very slim chance indeed. 

//

It hasn’t been a full seventy-two hours since Eri has found herself in this strange world, and while she hasn’t fully panicked yet, it was really only a matter of time.

The only reason she hadn’t had a meltdown immediately upon arrival was because a part of her had held unshakeable faith that Satoru would come and find her. Whether she’s in the past like everyone here seems to think, or if she’s actually in a different world entirely, like she thinks, she’d been sure Satoru would find her and save her, just like he always did. 

But Eri is starting to realize that Satoru has been with her the whole time, and he doesn’t even know who she really is. 

He’s a made up character in a made up world, just like all the rest of them, even if his name is different on the show. He can’t come and find her, because she might have accidentally erased him and her entire world from existence. And now that she’s finally alone again as Satoru trains his students, and Disneyland and the random shenanigans of Satoru’s students aren’t around to distract her, the thought hits her in full. 

Once the thought fully forms in her head, she can’t stop the wretched onslaught of tears that overcome her. 

There’s utter pandemonium from the track field, as training comes to a complete halt and three teenagers and a fully grown man run over to flail in hapless panic around her. 

“— wasn’t me this time, I swear it—” Yuuji is squawking loudly.

“And it wasn’t me either!” Satoru protests, voice equally shrill. 

“You two yelling about it isn’t going to help anything!” Nobara shouts, rounding on them.

“Same goes for you,” Megumi points out, far calmer and even-toned than his compatriots. That shuts the other three up quick.

“I’m sorry for bothering everyone.” Eri whispers, into her knees. “I just want to go home.” 

She can’t even really remember what sent her into the fit that caused this rip in dimensions to begin with. But whatever it was, her quirk’s reaction to it has only made everything profoundly worse. 

Can she even go home anymore? Or did she rewind that world until it didn’t even exist anymore? 

“You don’t have to apologize—” Satoru starts, but she’s not listening anymore. 

She starts sobbing all over again, pressing her forehead hard against her knees. “ I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry everyone…”

“Oh man, is she having a psychotic break?” Nobara asks, uneasily. 

Yuuji gasps. “She’s not crazy! She’s just upset!”

“I didn’t say she was crazy, I just said she’s a bit psychotic!”

“... That’s basically the same thing!!”

“Okay, Megumi is right, none of this is helping,” Satoru cuts them off, voice finally serious. His students quiet down immediately. “Why don’t you guys go and train with the second years for now? We’ll catch up to you later.” 

There’s muffled agreement and shuffling as the teenagers depart. Eri doesn’t even really notice, curled up in a ball on the bleachers. Satoru sighs heavily, sitting on the bench beside her. 

“Eri-chan, I know you’re upset, but it’s going to be okay.” An awkward beat of silence passes, before he rests an uncertain hand against her back. After a few moments, the touch turns a bit bolder and more reassuring, and he starts to run his palm between her shoulders. 

Eri sniffles.

Satoru sighs again. “I know you want to go home. I promise, I’m going to do my best to get you back there.” 

“... But what if you can’t?” She asks, in a small voice. 

His broad hand rubs at the base of her neck, warm and solid. “I’m the strongest, Eri-chan. I’ll figure it out.” 

Eri wants to believe him. Satoru has never made her a promise he couldn’t keep. 

(But maybe her Satoru had already learned, the hard way, what promises he can and can’t keep.)

Eri swallows down her tears, choking out, “But w—what if… what if it’s my fault?”

Satoru’s hand stills. 

“What do you mean, Eri-chan?” He asks, slowly. “How could it be your fault?”

She hiccups, hands clenching against her knees. “W—What if my quirk erased everything this time? What if everyone and everything is gone? What if I destroyed the whole world? What if I’m stuck here in this world? Forever?”

“Uh,” Satoru doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation here. He just sounds a bit bemused as he continues, “Eri-chan, I know everything seems terrible and scary right now, but I highly, highly doubt you’re capable of destroying the whole world. That would take… a hell of a lot of energy. I just don’t think a tiny pipsqueak like you has to worry about that.”

Oddly enough, that does serve to calm her down some. 

Satoru is right. Even the doctor said her quirk might never grow into its true potential, because she’s too small and little and her childhood malnourishment might forever stunt her growth. There’s no way she’d be strong enough to rewind the whole world right out of reality itself.

Eri takes a shuddering breath, pulling her face out of her knees to blink watery eyes up at him. “You really think so?” She mumbles, hopefully. 

“I know so. You might have flung yourself through time, but you definitely didn’t destroy the world.” Satoru assures her, looking relieved to see she’s stopped crying. “But… what is all this about a quirk? Is that what you call your powers?”

She reaches a wavering hand up to her horn. It’s not nearly as big as it was before she arrived here— a sure sign that she’d used up almost all her stored quirk energy to get here.  “Yeah…” 

Satoru frowns at her, thoughtful. “But it’s not cursed energy?”

She shakes her head. 

“Then what is it, exactly? Do you think you could try to explain it to me?” 

Eri blinks at him. Explain quirks? She doesn’t really know how to do that. Quirks are just… quirks. She’s lived her whole life with them as a fact of existence, and they haven’t really covered them in class yet, so she’s not even sure where they come from. 

Gojo watches the little girl struggle to find the right words, wondering if it’s even worth the effort of stressing her out like this. 

He really doesn’t think an explanation from an eight year-old is going to be particularly enlightening, but if it can help him figure out how she got here, even a little bit, then it might be useful in figuring out how to get her home. Truth be told, he still doesn’t have the slightest clue how he’s going to make that happen. 

And, as it turns out, he doesn’t have to, either.

Before Eri can answer him he looks up sharply, as an impossibly fast and blazing energy signature rockets towards them. 

The movement does not go unnoticed by Eri, who looks up as well.  

Gojo stands up immediately, tugging off his blindfold and using the hand he still has on Eri’s back to pull her close and envelop her in the safety of his barrier. The monstrous energy grows in his Six Eyes, until it’s finally visible to the naked eye. The energy is unfamiliar and unlike anything he’s ever seen before, a twisted, ghoulish mess of powerful and clashing sources that shouldn’t be able to coexist like they are. The person(?) it belongs to is equally as unfamiliar to him. Or at least, he thinks it's a person. From looks alone, he seems like a regular young man. Probably only a little older than the third-years. 

And evidently someone Eri recognizes. 

“... Izuku-san!” Eri cries in joy, shooting to her feet. 

“Eri-chan,” the green-haired boy says, sounding deeply relieved. And also desperately out of breath. “Oh, thank goodness I found you, I really wasn’t sure this would work…”

Eri moves underneath his palm as if she intends to leap towards the unknown boy, but the fingers Gojo curls around her shoulder stop her in place. She peers up at him in confusion. This stranger’s relief at seeing her— and her ensuing happiness in response— seems genuine enough, but that strange, curse-like energy of his is concerning. 

The boy— Izuku— looks to him as well. If anything, seeing Gojo only causes his relief to grow tenfold. 

“Oh, you found Satoru-san.” He breathes, happily. “Is that how you ended up here in the first place…?”

He seems to really look around then, eyes widening as he takes in the campus. “Oh,” he says again, recognition coloring his voice. “This is…” 

“Izuku-kun, was it?” Gojo calls, drawing the boy’s attention back to him. “Are you a friend of Eri-chan’s?”

“Friend?” Izuku repeats, looking quite perplexed. “E—Eri-chan? I know her very well, but, uh, that is to say… I guess I would be more of your friend?” He looks deeply uncomfortable with the prospect, even though he was the one who admitted it. 

“My friend?” Gojo clarifies, becoming a bit perplexed himself. He doesn’t have friends. Or he doesn’t anymore, after… He cuts that thought off abruptly. Either way, that’s even more suspicious. He can’t really imagine anyone voluntarily calling themselves his friend— not unless they were after something.  “Is that so? Then you must know me very well, huh.” 

The boy, Izuku, glances around at the school and says, wistfully; “Not as well as I would like.”

Gojo blinks rapidly. Then he gives a wide, rakish grin. “My, Izuku-kun, you’re so forward for such a young man~”

Izuku flushes up like a tomato, sputtering incomprehensibly. He scrubs a hand over his face, blush calming as he mutters; “You really haven’t changed at all, have you?” 

Then he straightens up, a determined expression crossing his face. “Satoru-san, I know you don’t know me, and I don’t have much time to explain the situation properly, but I’m not here to hurt her. You can trust me. My only goal here is to return her to you— uh, that is, the other you— safely.” 

“You say I can trust you, hm?” 

He seems earnest enough, but Gojo’s still too out of his depth to truly feel comfortable with all of this. He knows far too little about the situation; how Eri came to be here, what her strange powers have to do with it, who or what this boy is, and how he managed to find her… 

All he knows for certain is that Eri is his. And he’ll protect her at all costs— even with his life, if it comes to that.

He won’t just trust anyone with her safety, and certainly not someone he doesn’t even know (yet).

“Prove it.” He says, voice steely. 

A frustrated expression twists across Izuku’s face. His hands curl into fists at his sides as he starts to mutter furiously under his breath. It’s so fast and convoluted even Gojo can’t make out most of it, but he does parse out, hundred and twenty seconds left, and I can’t just use a Star Wars quote, and weirdly, I don’t think a No Scrubs song will cut it either. Not very much of that made any sense.

Izuku seems to struggle internally with himself. His face is turning a very strange color, somewhere between the sickly pale of anxiety and the riotous red of pure embarrassment. 

Then finally— and bewilderingly— he blurts out, in a stuttering voice;

“Y— You were always my one and only…” The mortification overtakes the nervousness as Izuku’s face does an incredible approximation of a tomato.

Gojo blinks rapidly. “Uh, kid, I’m flattered, but if you’re too young for me right now— then you’re absolute jailbait for my other self.”

“That’s not—!!” The poor kid wails, steam wafting out of his ears. He ducks his head into a gloved hand. He sucks in a sharp breath. 

“Thank you for everything,” Izuku continues, and his tone is distant and distorted, as if these words are crossing through an unfathomable void. “And I’m sorry.” 

Gojo suddenly feels very cold, a haunted look crossing his face as he recognizes those words with wretched familiarity. 

(It’s just that in this world, I couldn’t truly be happy from the bottom of my heart.)

“You said that to someone, once,” Izuku rushes to say, expression growing forlorn. “And you told me yourself, that everyone inevitably has to say these words in their life. Thank you, and, I’m sorry … you told me it never gets any easier, no matter how many times you have to say them.”     

Gojo stares at him with endless eyes and inextinguishable regrets. 

Then he looks away, sighing deeply. 

“You really do know me pretty well, it seems.” He says, defeated. “If I trusted you with those words, I suppose there’s no reason not to trust you now.” 

Izuku smiles, but it seems Gojo’s old words have left their mark on both of them, because it doesn’t reach his eyes.  

The green-haired boy gives a deep, respectful bow, head hanging low. “Satoru-san. Please, entrust your daughter to me. I won’t let you down.” 

Gojo stares down at him, feeling his resolve crumble. Really now, what is he even waiting for? To be honest, he knew he could trust this kid, from the moment Eri looked at him with such effusive joy. Repeating the words he said to Suguru had just been confirmation of what he already knew. 

Maybe a part of him just isn’t ready to let this little girl go, after she so abruptly turned his life around. 

(But it’s not fair to keep her here, just because he’s lonely.) 

“Ah, Izuku-kun…” He chuckles, but masks it as a cough into his fist. “Are you here to bring her home, or ask for her hand in marriage?” 

Izuku sputters spectacularly, flailing upright so fast he stumbles backwards. “D— Definitely the former!!” He wheezes. 

Gojo claps his hands. “Well, that’s a relief to hear! I suppose I’ll be leaving her in your care, then.” 

Izuku mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like, his sense of humor is as bad as ever, but nonetheless strides forward with a resolute expression. This time when Eri lurches forward, he doesn’t move to stop her. But he can’t stop his fingers from tangling in her hair one last time before she leaves him. 

When he glances back at Izuku, he sees his gesture didn’t go unnoticed. He forces a smile onto his face, for Eri’s sake. “Bye Eri-chan! I’m sure I’ll see you again very soon, okay?” 

“Okay,” Eri replies, with one last look back at him. For the first time since he’d met the girl, she shows him a smile. It’s small and barely there, but it makes his heart twist up nonetheless. “Bye bye.”  

Izuku’s gaze hasn’t once left him, his features clouded with a complicated expression. He continues to hold Gojo’s eyes, even as he holds his hands out for Eri to take. “Thank you,” he says, solemnly, and Gojo sees the rest of it written clear as day in his eyes. 

And I’m sorry. 

He doesn’t need to hear it, anyway. He already knows. 

He’s not going to be seeing Eri ever again.  

//

“Eh, sensei? You’re alone?” Yuuji is the first to notice him, sitting up from where Panda had just sent him sprawling into the grass. “Where’s Eri-chan?”

“Yo!” Gojo raises his hand in greeting. With his blindfold firmly in place and an inscrutable smile fixed on his lips, it’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking. 

He sticks his hands in his pockets as he hops over the low fence, striding forward. “Eri-chan went home.” He says, simply.

“Home?” Nobara parrots, blankly. “Wait, like, back to the future?” 

Yuuji snickers as she says this.

“Not the movie!” Nobara retorts. “Ugh! You know what I mean!”

“I do.” Gojo assures her. “And yes, you’re right. She went back to where she came from.”

Megumi and Maki both look towards him curiously. “How’d you manage that so quickly?” Maki asks, sounding begrudgingly impressed. 

“Oh, it had nothing to do with me at all!” He replies in a cheery voice, clapping his hands. “Turns out the situation managed to resolve itself without me! Isn’t that nice for a change?” 

“Oh, yes,” Panda agrees, genially. “I was worried it would be the prelude to something disastrous like last year! Well, that’s good for Eri-chan. I’m sure she’s happy to be home.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Yuuji concedes, although he still looks a bit glum. “Still, I really wanted to ask her a bunch of questions! Say, sensei, did you get to hear anything about the future? Oh! Did she say anything about Fushiguro? Is he married? Does he have a girlfriend?”

“Nevermind Fushiguro! What about me!” Nobara cries foul. “He better not have gotten married before me!” 

Gojo laughs, spreading his hands out in front of him as he placates them. “I’m afraid she didn’t tell me anything of the sort! She didn’t say much about the future at all, in fact, which is probably for the best.” 

She told me enough, and yet— it doesn’t feel like enough. It’s never going to be enough. 

“Awh. It kinda feels like we barely got to meet her at all!” Yuuji complains.

“Have some patience, Itadori.” Megumi sighs. “You’ll meet her— in the future.” 

Then he pauses suddenly, as if just realizing that he’s said this to the kid with an execution date hanging over his head. But Yuuji only sends his friend a blinding, pleased grin. “That’s true, Fushiguro! It’s something for me to look forward to, for sure. Isn’t that right, sensei?”

Gojo smiles. With his blindfold on, it looks as real as any other one. 

“Who can really say what the future will bring, Yuuji-kun,” he replies, but the tone is all wrong. It’s not upbeat and mysterious at all, too hollow to be anything but wistful and full of regret. The students all turn to him, Megumi’s eyes sharp as ever as he tries to scrutinize him from beneath his blindfold. 

Well. That won’t do it all. He fakes a dramatic sigh, holding his hands across his heart. “There’s really no telling what can happen! In fact, we might be meeting Eri much sooner than we thought! I might already be pregnant with her right now!” 

“Sensei?!” Yuuji gasps, springing upright.

Nobara knuckles her classmate back onto the ground. “Sensei, don’t say things like that, this kid is dense enough to believe you!” 

Gojo laughs uproariously. “Sorry, Nobara-chan! Yuuji-kun just makes it so easy sometimes.” 

And it’s much easier to tease his gullible student than think about the reality that awaits him at home, and the reality that isn’t going to be awaiting him in the future. He supposes he’ll just have to donate all the clothes and toys they’d gotten at Disneyland yesterday— he’s never going to need them again.

What if I destroyed the whole world?

She never talked about time— just worlds. They all were the ones who jumped to that conclusion. But now, wherever Izuku and Eri came from, he’s fairly certain it wasn’t the future. Some alternate dimension’s future, most likely, but certainly not their own. 

“Gojo,” Megumi’s voice pulls him from his thoughts. He sounds oddly serious, staring at him with a flat expression. “I’m hungry.”

Gojo tilts his head. “Okay? You want me to order something for you guys?”

“No, take me to lunch. I want somen.”

“Ehh?!” Both Nobara and Yuuji protest this immediately. 

“What about ramen?” Yuuji whines. 

“No!” Nobara cuts him off. “I only want udon!” 

Megumi watches him with a heavy gaze, unyielding in the face of his classmate’s protests.

Oh, so it’s like that, huh?  

Gojo bites back a smile. This brat… he can never just outright say he’s worried and he cares, can he? Well, that suits Gojo just fine. He’s no good at feelings either. “Sure, somen it is.” He agrees, obligingly, to Yuuji and Nobara’s dismay. 

Predictably they decide to eat out with their upperclassmen instead, leaving Megumi alone with Gojo, just as this moody little brat intended. 

“You don’t really think we’ll ever see her again, do you,” Megumi says, as they walk off campus together. 

“Time travel is theoretically possible,” he says instead of answering, head tilted up to the sky. “... But not likely, in this instance.”

Not after what he saw of Izuku’s technique. He couldn’t tell you exactly how he did it, but that was definitely space he was summarily ripping apart, and time was only a small facet of that. 

“Pretty sure she was from a different world entirely,” he adds, after a beat. “So my bet is some kind of parallel, alternate timeline.”

“World?” Megumi repeats, frowning. “Wait, why does that mean it has to be an alternate timeline, then? Couldn’t she just be an alien? If curses exist, why can’t aliens?”

Gojo opens his mouth to respond, then shuts it with a snap. 

Huh. 

Well, who the hell knows. He’s out here contemplating alternate universes— why the hell couldn’t she be a time-traveling alien instead? She even had a cute little Urusei Yatsura horn to prove the theory.  

He chuckles. “Who knows, really? Maybe you’re right.” Then he turns a mischievous look Megumi’s way. “Say— you wanna make a bet on it?” 

Megumi gives him a narrow-eyed glare. He looks like he’s about to refuse, but something stays his tongue. He rolls his shoulders, and gives it uncharacteristically genuine thought, considering how he usually flat out rejects all of Gojo’s attempts at mischief. 

“Fine,” he says at length, to Gojo’s utter delight. He has a small, sly smirk on his face as he adds; “If I win, you have to wear a fake belly and convince Itadori you’re about to go into labor.”

Gojo is almost too stunned to reply. Then he howls in laughter. Poor Yuuji. He’s probably been fooled by this kid’s sulky face and thinks he’s just the silent and brooding type, when Megumi is, in fact, a total troll beneath that gloomy exterior. 

“You’ve got a deal!” Gojo bumps their shoulders together, grinning widely. “Hmm… now what should I make you do if I win? Having you steal Nobara’s skirt and wear it for a week would be pretty funny, but I’ve already done that…”

Megumi squawks in protest, but doesn’t shy away from the contact. 

Maybe he should learn a thing or two from his students, and have a little bit of optimism for once. He really doesn’t know enough about Eri’s situation to guess what really happened, but why does that automatically mean he has to jump to the worst conclusion? Maybe they’ll meet again in the future. Maybe it’s okay to hope for that, and to look forward to the day they meet again.

He said it himself, after all— who can really say what the future will bring?