'For

real

real, ' the boy says with a crazed edge to his voice, scraping against the tension in the air like the flat side of a knife. 'You look like new. Guess I didn 't kill you hard enough. '

Dread gnashes Toji 's stomach and retches acid into his guts, eating away at his insides. 'Oh? That was you tryin ' to kill me? ' he taunts. 'Felt like a tap on the chest from a puppy. '

'Ha! ' the kid barks out a laugh and props himself casually against the now-empty door frame. 'Well, you know what they say. If at first you don 't succeed, try, try again. '

'I got a better idea, ' Toji shoots back. 'How about I paint the walls with your intestines? I 've been meanin ' to redecorate the place. '

The brat flares, flashing him a smile that 's all teeth and no joy. 'So that 's how you wanna play this? '

Hell no. 'Wouldn 't have it any other way, ' Toji replies instead. 'How did you find me? '

'Actually, you ran into a friend of mine, ' the kid begins. 'Real pretty lady, not that she 's my type. Long silver hair, maybe you remember. She 's kinda strong, so when she told me someone totally kicked her ass, I just had to be nosy, y 'know? She told me it was a man with no cursed energy and a scar on the right side of his mouth, and I thought to myself-- ' His face twists into a manic expression, pupils blown wide behind his dark glasses. '--

'Hey! I know that guy! '

'

Fuck,

Toji should 've been more careful. He

knew

taking jobs against sorcerers would land him in hot water someday, he just didn 't have the luxury of refusing them. He kinda remembers that fight -- the lady 's technique had something to do with crows, he thinks. Nothing to write home about. 'Oh yeah, that, ' Toji drawls. 'Wasn 't much of a fight. '

But the boy just laughs again. 'To be honest, it surprised me a little to hear you were alive and kickin '. Say, you get any help from someone? '

He

really

doesn 't want to get Yuki in trouble, but it seems like the kid already knows. 'The hell are you talking about? All it took was a couple of band-aids. '

'Pfft. Nice try! ' the brat snorts. 'But if you 're gonna lie, at least make it

sorta

believable. ' He shifts his weight, and the warm yellow lights from Toji 's apartment flash across his lenses like a crack of thunder. 'Maybe I 'll have a little chat with your wifey later. '

Toji 's throat goes totally dry. 'You leave her outta this. '

'Aww, how sweet! ' he mocks, clasping a hand to his chest as if he actually had a heart in that empty cavity beneath his ribcage. 'But too bad. It 's not like you 're gonna be around to stop me. '

Toji narrows his eyes. 'Why don 't we take this outside? '

'Funny. I was just thinking the same thing. '

The kid leaps to the railing and backflips off the platform with an unnecessary twist, because of course he 's a goddamn showoff. Toji follows, but not before darting back to grab the weapon Yuki gave him -- and withdrawing the special grade katana he gave Maki out of her closet.

Sorry, Maki.

He wonders if the brat knows about her. Christ, it 's lucky she 's at Yuuji 's tonight for a sleepover. Toji glares down at the kid on the snow below; he remembers his name now.

Satoru Gojo.

Fucking asshole.

Toji soars off the metal and thuds to the ground a few meters in front of him. It 's almost poetic, with Gojo in all black; Toji, in all white. His long sleeves do little to block out the cold, but most of the shivers are for an entirely different reason. He barely had time to slip on his combat boots before he left the apartment. His laces hang untied in the damp snow.

Gojo doesn 't pay much attention to the bag in Toji 's hand -- rather, his eyes flick up to the katana slung over his back.

'What 's that? ' he asks.

God, Toji doesn 't even fucking know. 'The last thing you 're ever gonna see, that 's what, ' he says instead. 'Besides me, of course. '

Gojo 's eye twitches. 'You know, everything was fine before you came around, ' he grouses, dropping his air of amusement for a moment. 'You 're the reason everything started spiralling with him. Hope you 're happy about that, I guess. At least I got one good thing out of the whole mess. ' He pauses, as if reconsidering. 'Well, two. '

Toji can 't even remember what he did to ruin this kid 's life, but he can 't bring himself to regret it in the slightest. 'Yeah, I 'm fuckin ' thrilled, ' he replies.

Gojo sighs, the smirk returning to his face. 'Not to mention you corrupted my other friend. You really had to get her to fix you up too, huh? She 's my former classmate. ' He shakes his head with a bitter laugh. 'I wouldn 't have thought she 'd do that to me. '

It can 't be Yuki he means. Too much of an age difference for them to have been classmates, and she told Toji she 's been keeping her distance from him. He must mean that tired-looking doctor; Toji doesn 't even know her name. 'Oh right, her, ' he sneers. 'She was real handsy, y 'know. '

Gojo lets out a single harsh laugh. 'You 're really determined to make me lose everyone, aren 't ya? '

Toji doesn 't have a fucking clue what he 's talking about and he doesn 't want to find out. All he knows is that there 's a roiling resentment scorching his chest so hot he feels like he could cough up fireballs, and he just can 't stop himself. 'What can I say? You deserve it. '

Gojo 's expression falters. 'They 're not yours anymore, ' he declares, and there 's something almost like desperation in his voice. 'I 'm not gonna let you take them away from me. '

Who the hell is he referring to? Whatever, it doesn 't even matter. 'I 'll do what I want. '

Gojo cracks his back and stretches like a cat ready to pounce. 'Sorry, but I 'm gonna have to send you back to hell. '

'Yeah, no can do. How about you take my place? ' Toji says, striking a ready stance. 'Say hello to the devil for me. '

'The devil?! ' Gojo cackles, visibly trembling with anticipation. 'I 'm lookin ' at him

right now. '

Toji grits his teeth. He can almost taste the unrestrained energy running through his veins by now. 'Enough talk. '

Gojo rips the sunglasses off his face and tosses them haphazardly into the snow. 'Let 's dance, old man. '

Toji smirks. 'Takes two to tango. '

In the same moment Toji blasts off the snow towards his target, Gojo flicks up a hand with a simple gesture and mutters something under his breath, then a thick veil of blackness drips across the night sky like a bottle of ink spilled into the atmosphere. It seeps into the midnight in oozing globs, hissing against the freezing temperatures with a heavy fog. The curtain repaints the dimly flickering stars into pristine condition, and Toji gets the distinct feeling of being trapped in the lion 's den. He jerks a hand behind his back to unsheath the katana, but Gojo doesn 't give him the chance to do it.

There 's a crash, a blur of motion, then a swell of phosphorescent crimson bludgeons his chest and hurtles him backwards. The speed of the blow clubs him into a nearby tree which splinters upon impact, thousands of tiny wooden shards scattering beneath him and sticking into the back of his shirt in shallow holes. Toji 's back on his feet in a millionth of a second, yet even that supernatural speed is just barely enough to dodge another deadly wave of energy Gojo sends in his direction, his white hair blowing back to expose his forehead as the ethereum trembles.

Cursed Technique Reversal: Red.

His mind doesn 't tell him so much as his muscles, the feeling torched into his fibers like an iron-hot brand. A repulsive force, inverting the energy in the air and turning it inside out until it can no longer withstand its own pressure. A short distance away, Gojo hangs suspended in the air like a puppet snipping its strings, a hollow and detached expression slipped across his soft features. He begins to form another hand sign, but now it 's Toji 's turn to not let him finish. He reaches into the bag Yuki gave him and grips the weapon with his fist, cold and rusted iron links digging into his palm.

It 's a chain. Toji flings the hooked end out of the bag and watches it sail across the landscape, mysteriously lengthening beyond its original size as the far end of the metal flies away from him.

Huh. That 's convenient.

He can 't aim it at Gojo himself, he 's too fast -- so instead Toji hooks it on the gutter of his apartment complex and swings himself around like a trapeze artist, letting the momentum of his unholy strength carry him towards the sorcerer in the sky. The flimsy material of the drain pipe warps under his weight so just before it gives out, Toji unclasps the chain with an explosive downward force to hurl himself towards his opponent. He only catches the flicker of trepidation across Gojo 's face from the corners of his eyes as he drives into his side with his heels, knocking the brat from his rightful place among the clouds.

At first, it

seemed

like a hit. Gojo spins around and rights himself to remain airborne as Toji plummets back towards the snow, crunching the delicate flakes beneath his feet until they compact into solid blocks of ice. But Gojo 's clothing isn 't displaced, nor does he seem to be in any pain; instead, his lips twist into an arrogant grin as he looks down on Toji with a derisive chuckle.

'Right, you never got a chance to really see this, huh? ' he says breathlessly, cerulean eyes colder than the frigid winter around them. 'This is the true difference between the two of us:

Limitless.

Honestly, it 's a little sad that our tiebreaker match will end like this because you can 't even

touch

me. '

Tiebreaker match? Toji didn 't know there was another one. Gojo likely meant it as an insult, but it 's almost comforting to know that some version of himself was able to defeat this kid. It imbues him with a surge of confidence that starts at the base of his core and pulses throughout every cell in his body, just long enough for him to scoff and shake off the way the brat is looking at him like an ant before a dragon.

'We 'll see about that! '

Toji grasps the chain again and gyrates it around himself in a blinding cage while Gojo draws back to blast him with another shot of Red. Gojo launches the charge of energy at the same moment that Toji smacks the snow with the links in a powdery flush to dodge it, and the split second Gojo takes to recover from using his technique is more than enough time for Toji to throw the chain up and around the Infinity surrounding the sorcerer 's elbow like a lasso and launch himself upwards, echoes of starlight trailing behind him in his savage wake.

The reverse pressure of Limitless rejecting his intrusion rockets Toji between the pinpricks of light puncturing the velvety sky. The brat looks up at him with some combination of confusion and awe as Toji throws his arms behind his head, a wild and wolfish grin overtaking his face and splitting the scar across his lips. When Gojo tries to change direction to avoid the impact, Toji wraps the chain around him again and drags him back to the marred earth alongside him, both of them colliding with the ice in a grinding bitter cold.

Toji yanks on the chain to pull the kid close and punch him in the chest but he 's stopped by Limitless again. His momentary frustration gives Gojo the chance to wriggle free of the chain and roundhouse kick him in the ribs with a blow fortified by raging and potent cursed energy, and Toji feels two of his ribs fracture against the sheer force of it. He whams into the riverbank and iced-over rocks crunch like frozen corpses under his weight. Toji staggers back to his feet and resumes his stance with bold determination.

Gojo is glaring at him, half annoyed and half amused. Molten magma swirls in Toji 's chest like a volcano ready to erupt and drown a city, and all he can think of as he surges towards the sorcerer again is Maki.

He 's not gonna let Gojo leave her without a father, not

again.

He 's not fighting to save himself this time.

He 's fighting to save his

daughter.

Toji gets it now. Those wild stories about average mothers lifting up a truck to save her toddler trapped beneath, tales of a teenage brother diving without hesitation into deadly whitewater rapids to rescue his drowning sister. Feats that should be impossible,

are

impossible. But when it 's

family

at stake, nothing so petty as human limits stand a fucking chance. So Toji rises, draws up from beneath, and pulls on the feeling with all his might the way he would if he had nothing left but needed more anyway.

He unsheathes the katana and casts its ivory scabbard into the snow behind him. Gojo looks at the blade as if he thinks the whole thing is funny and doesn 't even bother dodging this time, instead smirking at Toji as he prepares to strike.

'Seriously, this again? I already said you 'll never be able to get through-- '

But then, Toji brings down the blade, and Limitless shatters into infinite pieces. Gojo can only watch in abject horror as Toji severs his left arm clean off his shoulder, blood gushing off the amputated joint in nauseating spurts.

'What? '

he breathes, and Toji can 't tell if he even registers the crippling pain over the shock of losing his limb in the first place. His arm hits the ground with a sickening thud and before Gojo can react, Toji picks it up and hurls it into the Arakawa, and it distracts Gojo just long enough for Toji to impale the katana brutally into his chest.

The stab just barely misses his heart, so Toji slots it further into him and grinds it against his ribcage with the dreadful scrape of blade against bone. Gojo gasps and hacks out a rush of blood from his gaping mouth, drenching his neck and jawline with viscous crimson. He lacerates his remaining hand into a mangled mess in a desperate attempt to claw the blade from his chest, but Toji is unrelenting. Clots of red drip from the crystalline blade with the glory of death in revolting waterfalls.

When Toji finally yanks the katana out of his body, he doesn 't give the brat a moment to rest. He slashes across his chest and the arteries on Gojo 's collarbone spew thin sprays of blood as Toji stomps on his ankle, snapping it with a nasty crack. Toji drives a steel-toed boot directly into his sternum and knocks all the breath from his mutilated lungs, sending him tumbling across the snow in a boneless heap, staining the pure white snow with the color of violence.

Honestly, it 's poetic irony; hearing Gojo 's wet coughs into the ice while missing the same limb he robbed Toji of during their fight, his chest almost equally butchered and gouged out as what he once did to him.

He wonders just how much he looked back then like Gojo does now. Their places are reversed, Toji standing tall above his crumpled body.

Toji supposes he has a few moments to spare, so in them he decides to survey the katana. Just how was it able to cut through Limitless? He knows he felt an arcane surge of

something,

as if the blade itself was responding directly to the strength of his convictions. But what had he desired? He wanted to win, sure, but what he wanted far, far more was the ability to protect his daughter; to keep her safe, to be her guardian, to have enough strength such that no force in the world could possibly hurt her, and all of a sudden Toji understands.

A blade forged to kill is one thing. But nothing could be more powerful than a sword made to

protect.

Gojo is still writhing on the ground, pristine white locks dripping vibrant vermillion. Toji saunters over to him and raises the katana above his head, ready to bring it down on him. He sure looks like he 's registering the pain now, and there are tears tracing down his cheeks Toji doesn 't think he even knows are there. At the last moment Gojo raises a hand and a flashing neon glow throws Toji off his feet, Gojo 's knees buckling weakly as he pushes back to a standing position.

He hacks out something halfway between a sputter and a chuckle, a few splats of red mottling the space at his feet.

'You 're a

monster! '

Gojo cackles with a wide grin, and Toji can 't tell if he 's actually thrilled over the challenge or just delirious from the pain. 'But you 're not gettin ' rid of me that easy! '

'Music to my ears, ' Toji says with an equally unhinged smile as he wipes the blade clean against his white shirt, staining his clothing with the brat 's dirty blood. 'Cuz I 'm just gettin ' started! '

Gojo 's ankle creaks back into place and he inhales a deep breath that becomes smoother as he draws in more air, and Toji can only assume he 's performing some sort of emergency triage on himself. Gojo springs up again with an aerial salto to return to the safety of the skies.

Back in the air, the kid raises the hand he has left. 'Cursed Technique Lapse Maximum Cursed Energy Output:

Blue! '

Beside him swirls an orb of luminescent cobalt, trawling the clouds into misty spirals that compress into a cyclone. Soon, even the air itself is caught in the unforgiving vortex with the inescapable pull of a black hole, the wintertime itself dragged mercilessly into his event horizon. Gojo hovers dead-center in the eye of the storm, violent zephyrs whipping his white hair that beams brighter than the snow below, its strands sticking to his temples from ice, blood, tears, maybe all the above. Soon, the gravitational pull becomes so strong that it draws condensation from the heavy clouds, and hail pours down like a carpet of bullets that flood the wreckage left in the aftermath of their battle.

It 's then Toji decides the brat officially isn 't human. No living, breathing person could ever

create a snowstorm.

Even as the snow below him turns to slush from the force of Gojo 's technique, Toji 's feet stay rooted firmly upon the ground. Ice plummets down like daggers from the dynamo, so Toji dodges each volley with nimble reflexes. Toji 's trying to steer him away from the residences, because he 's got an elderly neighbor who makes apple pies Maki and Yuuji both love -- but Gojo is the embodiment of mindless destruction. He hurls down outbursts of cursed energy with no regard for his surroundings, razing rocks and trees by the riverbank into pulverized ash. A window shatters, one that belongs to a teenage boy not much younger than Gojo himself.

He wonders how much of the brat is even mentally here right now, as he teeters in the air with his hand digging into his bloodied and empty shoulder, almost as if to check that there 's really nothing there anymore. His eyes are dull and glazed over; there 's virtually no expression on his face as blood leaks from the space below his heart onto his tattered clothing.

His white lashes flutter weakly as another crackle of Red slams into Toji 's stomach, then he snaps back to reality.

'Hey! Remember this one?! ' Gojo shouts, flicking his hand out in front of him as hysteria returns to his face. 'Hollow Technique:

Purple! '

'Fuck! ' Toji twists on his ankles to dodge but the deluge of energy is too fast for him to fully avoid it. The technique carves out a chunk of his back -- not enough to be fatal, but enough to drench his shirt in a bloodbath, painful heat searing across his nerve endings like a blast furnace. Gojo prepares to repeat the technique, so Toji sprints back towards the center of the landscape.

Oh, no you don 't!

He lunges towards the chain he threw aside and wraps it around the brat 's ankle, dragging him out of the atmosphere and bashing him against the bridge crossing the river. It collapses on top of him and buries him beneath the wreckage, icy waves swallowing him whole while concrete cracks the disjointed slabs of ice coating the surface of the water. Gojo 's only submerged for a few seconds before jetting out from the rubble, using the chain against Toji as he pulls them together.

'Chain of a Thousand Miles, huh? ' Gojo pants, half-frozen water plastering his hair against his face. 'Thought I broke this thing. '

Toji flings him back across the river, throwing the chain aside and jabbing at himself with his thumb. 'Yeah, you thought you broke

this

thing too, ' he cackles. 'Doesn 't seem like you 've got all that great of a track record! '

Gojo soars towards him and tries to hit him point-blank with another Hollow Purple, this time aiming straight between his eyes. Toji bends his back and cleaves the katana into the soft flesh of the boy 's right hip, gashing out a gruesome line down to his knee. The kid can 't hold back a cry of anguish and just barely has the strength to kick Toji away before crashing against the ground. Toji can practically taste sweet victory on his tongue until his gut churns with something almost like premonition.

This uneasiness...

It 's just a hint of a feeling, nothing he can name. It creeps up from the sealed-off chasms of his brain and whispers doubt into his muscles, pressing against the dark memories locked inside him like poking on a bruise. The warm blood on his back tickles his skin as if trying to give him a warning, a reminder -- of

what,

Toji couldn 't say.

No...everything 's okay.

Toji 's winning, isn 't he?

Isn't he?

Gojo devastated him last time, but not today. The level of Toji 's might now versus then isn 't so small as an order of magnitude, it 's on a cosmic scale. Toji 's always been superhuman, but

human

doesn 't cut it anymore. He 's some sort of

being

, he supposes. If Gojo is the god of heavens, maybe Toji is the king of hell. They cancel each other out, shackle one another to this ugly and mortal earth by their own antipathy.

Then Gojo rises back to his feet and forms a simple sign with his remaining hand, and Toji can 't help the awful feeling that history is about to repeat itself.

'Domain Expansion:

Unlimited Void. '

And all at once, everything whites out. The landscape falls silent around him as he slips into nothingness, first by a blinding light then into a celestial kaleidoscope of imaginary colors. His whole body goes numb as he 's dragged across a vast cosmic wasteland, into the empty expanse of the great beyond. He can 't tell if he 's at the edge of the world or the center of the universe -- all he knows is that this is the beginning of the end. It is a place of unfinished fates and half-written destinies, filled with the words of the dead and those still to be born, sounding like every voice he has yet to hear.

Ancient gods whisper old wisdom that stops just short of enlightenment, speaking of joyful tragedy and beautiful horrors; it forms a near-complete puzzle of intricate tessellations in natural harmony, containing as many pieces as grains of sand on a shoreline with only a single one missing. It fills his brain with contradictions until he 's spinning at the speed of light while at a dead stop, blazing with the heat of a sun at absolute zero. It is a sacred and unholy place, as Toji stands face to face with the hollow eye of eternity, boring through his soul into his past, present, and future.

All Toji can move are the pupils of his eyes, so he glances up as the brat exhales a shaky breath in front of him.

'You know, I really gotta thank you, ' Gojo says with a contented sigh. 'It was because of you that I learned Reverse Cursed Technique last time, and here we are again. I 've only done this once before, and it totally sucked. I 'd say this is a lot better, don 't you think? ' The kid looks up at him with a deceptively tender smile and places his hand gently over Toji 's heart. 'To show my gratitude, I 'll make sure to give you a proper funeral this time. '

If Toji could move at all, he would kick himself.

Fuck, what have I done?

The longer he remains, the more he feels the madness melting away his consciousness, draining him of his life force. He can feel his trapped memories rattling the bars of their cages like hostages on a sinking ship, begging for freedom, desperate not to drown alongside him.

Something is pulling away at him now. Toji knows what dying feels like, and it is this. He lets his dark lashes flutter shut, his body rapidly growing cold. Images flicker across his mind in his final moments, and he swears he can almost feel a tiny hand grab a hold of one of his pant legs, sitting beside him on the floor of the old warehouse.

'My creepy cousin thinks you shouldn 't have lost, '

Maki is saying, and Toji looks on in a distant, detached manner as he watches himself wave her off.

'Yeah, well your cousin is wrong, '

his image replies.

'Honestly? I had it coming. I think I was supposed to die. '

Maki is silent for a moment before shaking her head, pulling him closer.

'No, '

she counters.

'You weren 't. '

He reaches out for her but she slips just through his fingertips, only for him to find her infant form cradled in his arms in the dim lights of the hospital. She sniffles softly against his chest so he wraps the blanket around her tighter, unsure of how to convey just how much he adores her, that from this moment on she 's his entire world, that no matter what he 'll do anything to protect her.

A little hand peeks out from under the cotton and clasps onto his finger, and instantly Toji knows there is nothing he wouldn 't sacrifice for this.

'Toji, you 're spacing out again. '

When Toji first found out he had a daughter, he was terrified. Now, he loves her so much he can barely breathe.

'What should we name our baby? '

Toji opens his eyes, heavy-lidded as he meets Gojo 's gaze. He draws in a deep breath.

'Maki. '

And like crunching granite or breaking bone, something cracks open, breaking the shackles the sorcerer has on his body. He surges off the bottomless well of infinity, soars towards the cloudy confines of the universe, and shatters through the walls of Unlimited Void and back onto the snow outside.

It 's another moment before Gojo fully collapses his domain and follows, but he does so with some twisted mix of frustration, confusion, and fear stamped across his face. Expanding his domain must 've burned through his energy because his wounds are weeping blood again, and he 's panting like a dog trapped in a hot car. Toji internally curses himself when he doesn 't have the strength to stop the brat from fishing his arm out of the river and reattaching it with a sickening squelch, twisting the amputated limb like a broken doll fixed by a careless child.

'Asshole, ' Gojo exhales with a deranged look, wriggling his fingers with unshrouded relief. 'This is totally gonna scar. '

Toji rips off the top seam of his shirt to reveal the stitches around his own shoulder, frayed threads crosshatching above the healed wound. 'Great, we can match! '

Gojo tears towards him again and the ground splits below him in an icy chasm as he grabs a hold of Toji 's shirt and drags them both to the river. The kid plunges him into the Arakawa in some desperate last-ditch attempt to drown him, and even in the murky water he can see the crazed look in Gojo 's eyes as he bashes Toji against the mossy rocks of the riverbed. Blood thrums in Toji 's head against the biting cold, but the frigid temperature wakes him up enough to knock the kid off of him and clear out of the water, Toji bolting after him to slam him back into the snow that breaks around them in a flurry of sparkles and icy glitter.

They continue to exchange blows, but there almost isn 't any point to it. They 're both leagues below their prime, breaths raspy and aberrant, as they pull up energy neither of them possess anymore, making muscles move that shouldn 't just because they refuse to

lose

to each other

,

not

again.

The smell of carnage reeks in the air. The winter landscape looks like a hallowed battleground, and there isn 't a single thing in Toji 's line of sight that isn 't broken -- himself and Gojo included.

It 's not even a question of one or the other.

Neither

of them is going to make it out of this alive. Toji doesn 't know how, but they 're evenly matched;

too

evenly so. If one of them dies, he 'll take the other down with him. They 're going to kill each other here if one of them doesn 't throw in the towel, and he 'd be willing to bet anything he owns that Gojo would sooner die than concede. Toji snarls with frustration as a similar resentment builds inside him, until he hears his own voice from the last time they fought echo in his ears.

'I thought I had set aside such petty pride. '

Toji blinks. He 's right; why would his own self-affirmation even matter? How could he leave his daughter without a father for something so worthless as satisfying his spiteful sense of pride? To be proud of neither himself nor others -- he chose that path, didn 't he?

This time, he will

not

deviate from his true self. He can 't remember what his original last words were, but he knows he won 't be choosing any new ones for a long,

long

time.

Maybe it was always going to come down to this. Gojo 's still trying to claw him past the rainbow bridge and through gilded gates across the river styx, and Toji 's swinging his sword like the grim reaper 's scythe when someone 's time has come. It 's a series of infuriating narrow misses and the gap closes just a little more each time. It 's an astral tragedy, when heaven and hell collide, trapping them both in purgatory, just the two of them, for all eternity.

Toji can 't afford eternity. Maki will wake up in the morning. Maki will wake up, and she 'll come

home.

And Toji is Maki 's home.

Time to end this.

'Enough! '

Toji thunders, wrenching the fabric of the brat 's ruined collar into an iron grasp. 'I 'm not gonna let you kill me again and make me leave my kid behind! '

Gojo pauses. There 's a flicker of confusion across his face, but it 's gone as quickly as it came. 'Don 't worry, ' he says with a condescending little laugh, 'I 'll figure something out. '

Toji flares. 'Like hell you will! You really think I 'd let my last act be entrusting the safety of my child to

you?! '

And with that, Gojo 's feral expression utterly collapses, and the fight goes out of him all at once.

In that moment, he doesn't look like a special grade sorcerer, like the one who blew a hole through Toji 's side and ended his life, like the most powerful being on the planet to exist, maybe ever. He doesn 't look like a near-god walking, like an archangel in the flesh, like a divine being perched in an ivory tower looking down upon the earth below.

He looks like he 's about to cry.

'...Huh? ' he says in a small voice. 'What 'd you just say? '

Toji shoves him backwards. 'If you ever have kids, you 'll understand. '

Gojo winces. 'I

do

have kids! ' he blurts out, though he looks like he regrets it as soon as he says it. Nevertheless, he continues, 'I 'd burn the world to the ground for them. So I understand. '

'That so? ' Toji scoffs. 'And you 'd be fine with leavin ' them behind? You must 've realized it, Six-Eyes. This was a one-way trip. You weren 't gonna make it outta here alive. '

'I-I would 've, ' he stammers in response, but he doesn 't even look like he 's convinced himself of that, let alone Toji.

Yeah,

right.

'Sure, have fun lyin ' to yourself, I guess. How about I rip your heart out while you 're mullin ' it over? '

Surprisingly, the brat actually takes a step back at that, though Toji 's not sure he even realizes that he did it. He pointlessly straightens his wrecked collar, a useless gesture in some feeble attempt to steady himself. He clears his throat, wiping a thin trail of congealed blood off his mouth with the back of his hand. 'So...we 've

both

got kids we don 't wanna leave behind. '

Toji gulps. 'Guess so. '

There 's an awkward silence that drags on for at least half a minute, each of them swaying on their feet as their bodies both slowly start to register the grievous injuries covering them from head to toe. Toji 's not sure when or if he 'll ever be able to lay on his back again, and his own stitches itch terribly just from

looking

at the sloppy seam between Gojo 's torso and his reattached arm, crusted over with ice and oozing with mud and grime.

'So you had another kid, ' Gojo finally says.

Toji quirks a brow into his messy fringe. 'The hell do you mean

another?

I 've only got one. '

Gojo narrows his eyes. 'Huh? '

Wow, seriously? 'Yeah, and it took fuckin ' forever to find my kid after we fought. Thanks for wiping my memories when you blew a hole through my side, by the way. Been a real hassle to piece things together since then. '

Gojo 's jaw drops. 'Wait, do you even

remember

me?! '

'Well, vaguely, ' Toji replies, and that 's really quite the understatement but he doesn 't want to give Gojo the satisfaction. 'Don 't get your panties in a twist, there isn 't much I

do

remember. You have any idea how much it sucked to not even know that I have a daughter? '

'You think you have-- ' Gojo holds up a hand as if to slow down their conversation that for some god-forsaken reason, seems to be hitting him like a runaway train. '--a

daughter?! '

'Uh, yes? ' Toji wavers. 'The hell is that look for? '

Gojo shakes his head. 'What 's her name? '

'Maki, ' Toji answers slowly.

'Maki? '

Gojo repeats. 'Your child...is

Maki

Zen 'in? '

'That 's what I just said, idiot, ' Toji grouses. 'Why? '

Gojo exhales with something strangely like relief, the tension slipping out of his wounded shoulders. 'N-nothing. It 's just that my son is-- ' Gojo cuts himself off with a breathless laugh. 'Y 'know what? Never mind. '

Toji cocks his head. 'Oh? So you 've got a son? '

'Yeah, a boy and a girl, actually, ' Gojo says, and there 's something totally undefinable in his expression.

Toji snorts. 'Knocked up some poor lady, huh? Guess you seem like the heartbreaker type. '

'Nah. ' Gojo chuckles to himself, like he 's laughing at a joke only he knows the punchline to. 'They 're

adopted. '

Huh, that 's interesting. He really didn 't strike Toji as the type of person to do something like that. Besides, the brat 's gotta be what, nineteen? Man, kids these days and their...kids, apparently.

More silence follows. Toji lets out a ragged breath; Gojo folds his arms, or rather, he

tries

to. His reattached one still barely seems responsive and instead falls limp at his side. 'Anyways, what have you been up to since we last ran into each other? ' the brat asks, as if they 're old friends casually catching up rather than mortal enemies who were trying to kill each other not even five minutes ago.

There isn 't a single cell in his body that wants to actually have a conversation with this asshole, so Toji just shrugs. 'Y 'know, the usual. '

'The usual? ' Gojo repeats with an irritating smirk. God, Toji wants to sock him in his stupid face so fucking bad. 'How would you know what

'the usual '

even is if you have amnesia? '

Toji scowls at him. 'Oi, respect your elders. '

Gojo gives him a crooked smile. 'But I don 't respect you. '

Toji just barely resists the urge to scrub his hands over his face in exhaustion, only held back by the literal exhaustion in his body weighing him down. 'Yeah, right back at ya. '

Gojo pauses for a moment. 'So you really don 't remember

anything

from before we fought? '

Toji heaves a sigh. If they 're not going to kill each other anymore, why is this jackass still

bothering

him? 'Not really, no. '

The kid perks up. 'What 's your day job? '

Toji frowns. 'Don 't worry about it. '

To his credit, he does

not

seem worried about it. Rather, Toji can practically see a lightbulb go off in that empty head of his, and he can tell Gojo 's just had a real shitty idea.

'Work with me. '

Whatever Toji was expecting, it sure as hell wasn 't

that.

'Fucking--

what?! '

'Yeah, work with me! ' Gojo says excitedly, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet like a broken jack-in-the-box. 'Ever since my old partner left, the higher-ups have been saying I need someone to keep me in check, but everyone is too weak and useless. No one else can even

touch

me, ' he says with a manic expression, and he 's entirely too giddy when he adds, 'You cut off my

arm. '

Toji prods at his bloody bicep. 'And I 'll do it again, if you don 't back the hell off of me. '

But Gojo just tips his head back and cackles. 'C 'mon! It 'll be fun! '

'Are you out of your fucking mind?! '

The brat stares off into the distance in consideration for a moment before turning back to Toji. 'Yeah. '

Well, at least he 's self-aware. 'Sorry kid, but you 're gonna have to find someone else. There 's no way in hell I 'd ever voluntarily spend my time with such a cocky, annoying, infuriating-- '

'Whatever you 're making now, I bet the higher-ups will pay you a hundred times over. '

'Done. '