Chapter Text
Yuji dies.
No fanfare, no grand showdown, just gone. One moment he’s smiling at Gojo-sensei, relieved that—after all the bad things—he managed to do this one thing right, and then Yuji ceases to exist.
Gone.
Erased from the world.
A dream without substance.
Peace.
And then Yuji is flailing awake, exhaling around a mouthful of blood that won’t come. Something pulls at him, left and right, and up and down, bone grinding and splitting and rearranging with vertigo inducing intensity.
Endlessly.
Until the sky splits open, a ripple along the event horizon, and the void spits him out like an infection it seeks to purge.
Air rushes into Yuji’s lungs, feels like death the way it makes his chest burn, night too bright against his moon-wide eyes, and a reedy cry escapes his throat while he lies there. In the dark. Damp grass tickling his cheeks. Looking up at millions of stars dotted across the sky like spilt sugar.
This is wrong, Yuji thinks.
He should be—
Dead.
Over.
Instead, cool air chases goosebumps up his bare arms, and Sukuna’s presence is only a dull whisper in the back of his mind.
What is happening?
Yuji blinks and the scenery shifts, night sky vanishing behind a pale face and hair darker than the void between the stars.
The face swims closer, cold fingers pressing gingerly to the underside of his jaw before retreating.
“Can you hear me?”
Yuji blinks. Stares. Searches for Sukuna’s vitriolic comments and finds only silence, echoing through his head like the inside of a grave.
“Yes,” he rasps, wincing around the raw feeling in his throat. He’s woken up like this before. Shaking, disoriented, jaw aching from having something shoved down his throat again.
He tries to move his body—arms, legs, anything— and panics when nothing responds. Everything feels distant and floaty, like getting knocked on the head, and yet there’s this persistent sense of wrong inside him that makes tears well up and blur his eyesight.
Sukuna’s silence splinters and digs like shards of glass into his mind.
“No need to cry.” The person above him says, sounding as empty as Yuji feels, and slides a large hand under his shoulder to prop him up into a sitting position. “You’re safe now.”
Laughter bubbles from his throat, the tears coming faster when his vision tilts and the starry sky vanishes from his line of sight.
It‘s funny, because being here means Yuji isn’t safe. Being here means that something went wrong. Being heremeans that so is Sukuna.
And Yuji can’t do it again. He can‘t.
He promised it would be over.
Yuji‘s hiccuped laughter turns into choked sobs, but he doesn’t care that he must make a pathetic picture. Or that he still can’t move his body right, or turn his head to see who‘s keeping him propped up; human or curse.
“Don’t make me eat any more,” he babbles, because that’s the reason he’s here again, right? To consume and assimilate. To suffer beneath Sukuna’s wrath like a butterfly caught in a net. “Please. Don’t make me- don’t make me-“
The person keeping him upright goes still, the arm bracing him like a band of steel that could force him to tilt his head back and shove more fingers down his throat. And Yuji knows that he could fight. He’s conscious. And if he tries hard enough he can feel the tingle of his limbs as nerves reconnect to brain and nervous system.
He could fight.
He won’t fight.
Please. Gojo-sensei promised it would be over.
Like it’s that easy. Like the taste of soap and something old and ancient isn’t trapped to the roof of his mouth.
Anger trickles into the concoction of despair and resignation. It makes Yuji grit his teeth around a strained sob.
Did he lose time again? Is that why he‘s here? Did find another finger? They must have, and the more that can be destroyed, the better. It’s the only thing Yuji does right. The only thing that will soothe the ache of all the lives Sukuna has already ended with Yuji’s own hands.
His fingers curl, cold dirt digging into his nails, becoming stuck, trembling and weak.
“How many are left?” He mumbles, fighting through the fog in his head, urging his body to respond faster. He can’t just lie around if it’s not over yet. “How many..?”
The person—curse?—stranger, doesn’t respond, only keeps him propped up silently, and hysteria bubbles up behind his teeth like the blood he was promised.
Is this the aftermath? Or is this the before? Are they trying to decide what to do with him? Shouldn’t that be obvious?
Where is Gojo-sensei?
“You’ll wait for me to fall asleep again,” Yuji mumbles, blinking his eyes around the leaden weight of exhaustion. “That’s what you all do, that’s all- please, please don’t make me eat another-”
He chokes on the despair of it, on the cold air rushing down his throat, the gravity of existence.
Gojo-sensei is smiling. Yuji can’t see his eyes, but Gojo-sensei is smiling, and everything is going to be alright. He promised it wouldn’t hurt. Which is funny, because nothing could ever hurt as much as Nanami and Kugisaki-
Something warm brushes his back, and Yuji stiffens instinctively until he recognizes the scratch of fabric, light and unobtrusive but jarringly warm, jarringly real. But what strikes him most of all is the absence of blood and smoke. How the fabric—coat?—feels gently worn, smelling faintly of sweat and soap. The latter of which is almost familiar.
It’s comforting.
It’s wrong.
“Don’t,” he slurs, trying and failing to lift his arm and brush the fabric off, “Don’t. I know what’s going to happen, I know… don’t-”
Don’t show me comfort I can no longer have.
The stranger still doesn’t say anything, but the silence becomes heavier. Charged with something he can’t name but feels like a whirlpool spiraling into existence in the middle of the ocean.
But the coat remains around his shoulders, and the hand between his shoulder blades keeps him sat upright. Not cruel, not yet. Just a steady presence that keeps quiet while Yuji whimpers and shakes, watching him. Assessing him. Thinking, probably, of where to cut so it won’t be messy.
But it’s all wrong because Gojo-sensei promised. He promised he’d be there for Yuji, with Yuji. That he wouldn’t be alone. But in his place, there’s a stranger, holding Yuji up with deceptive gentleness. A stranger that draped their coat around him like a peace offering, or the facsimile of empathy towards a vessel that doesn’t qualify as human.
But the crux of the matter remains, which is that Gojo-sensei isn’t here. And Yuji is cold, and exhausted, and the stranger’s coat is warm with the imprint of another body, course in places where a tear had been lovingly patched. Achingly mundane in a way few things are these days. But instead of comforting it just underscores the blaring sense of wrongness. The lack of Sukuna’s scathing remarks.
“Shouldn’t waste this on me,” he mumbles, referencing the coat even while he catches himself curling up in this pocket of warmth as much as he’s able. “Shouldn’t waste it. ‘S gonna be messy.”
Killing someone usually is.
“Messy,” the stranger echoes, low and inflectionless, like he hasn’t decided what to make of him yet. Voice laced with something that sounds almost resentful.
It makes Yuji’s throat close all over, the cold air turning to ice in his lungs as he tries to get his body to obey and move, move away from this person, crawl if must be, because Gojo-sensei promised he wouldn’t be alone. But his limbs still won’t obey, and Yuji is stuck gasping his despair into the night, the rustle of wind between the trees almost like laughter. Like Sukuna’s shrill cackling. Like Mahito’s lilting taunts. Like the sound of flesh bubbling and rearranging-
The hand on his back shifts slightly, back and forth, and Yuji chokes around a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, shivering like roadkill in the mockery of comfort the coat provides.
He manages to make his eyes focus, briefly, on something other than the sky or the trees. Manages to catch another glimpse of the stranger’s face, cast in deep shadows by the soft light of the moon. Pale, sharp, vaguely familiar in a way he cannot pinpoint, in a way that ultimately doesn’t matter.
Sukuna is still quiet, at least. Suspiciously so. He hopes that means the stranger isn’t a curse. Or a curse user.
It’s not reassuring, exactly. But any sorcerers wouldn’t risk shoving fingers down Yuji’s throat without the proper precautions at least—a stayed execution for however long it takes for Gojo-sensei to come back, then? Is this what this is? Did it fail? Do they have to try again-?
“-e you?”
Yuji blinks, eyes drifting back to the sky involuntarily.
He almost misses the tail end of the question, realizes too late the stranger is talking. To Yuji? Or himself?
He shivers harder, wishing the stranger would allow him to lie back down on the ground. To let the earth seep into him until it remembers to anchor him in place. Until someone familiar comes back to make the hurt go away. To send him back into that peaceful slumber.
Until he forgets what grave wax and death taste like.
The coat is drawn closed around his shoulders and a steady hand zips it up until the bite of cold air against his throat fades, the stranger’s eyes flicking briefly to Yuji’s and away again.
And then the hand retreats just as quickly, almost like the person is afraid Yuji’s curse will infect him if he touches him too much, or with too much care. Or maybe this is just another way of restraining him.
The coat—jacket?—is too big on him. Almost like Gojo-sensei’s. It feels strangely similar as well. Perhaps the stranger is from Jujutsu High?
His head droops a little, tears stinging the corners of his eyes.
“I didn’t mean to wake up,” an apology exhaled between chattering teeth, “I swear.”
The words hang in the air for a moment, heavy and raw, and then the stranger makes a soft sound in the back of his throat.
“That’s not something you get to decide,” he says, firm but not unkind.
Right. Yuji never gets to decide, not since the day on the roof where he experienced what curses taste like for the very first time.
But at least the stranger isn’t cruel about it.
At least the stranger doesn’t take advantage of Gojo-sensei’s absence.
At least the stranger allowed him some warmth, if only for a short while.
Even though he deserves none of it.
Yuji blinks around the flashes of blood on Nanami’s collar, the content smile on Nobara’s face, the echo-image of Megumi in the rubble. The white noise left in the wake of immeasurable destruction.
“I shouldn’t be here,” Yuji croaks, unsure if he’s apologizing or pleading. Or trying to warn the stranger. “I’m not supposed to- don’t touch me. I kill everything I touch.”
The stranger says nothing, but the hand on Yuji’s back twitches. An intake of breath that’s released forcefully, like biting down on something harsh and ugly.
“No.” Final. Resolute. Like he’s come to a conclusion Yuji isn’t privy to. “You’re not a sorcerer,” the stranger continues. Not a question, or an insult. Not even suspicious, only faintly accusatory. And even that’s softened by confusion. “What…?”
He breaks off, and Yuji is glad for it because he doesn’t have a satisfactory answer either.
Everything is wrong. He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know who’s allowed to know what, or who this person who hasn’t hurt him yet is, or if it even matters.
Yuji wants to lie down.
Yuji wants to go back to sleep.
But he’s not allowed to, so instead he curls in on himself a little more, blanketed by the coat that’s too large on him, the second hand warmth seeping into his bones, trying to comfort himself with the half-familiar scent of soap and wood and sweat.
The stranger exhales, the wind through the forest quiets, and for a moment it feels like he’s being reassessed; balanced on an invisible scale with uncertain standards.
Yuji’s eyes fall closed.
Whatever the stranger decides is out of his hands one way or another, limbs still tingling und largely unresponsive.
And he’s so very tired.
And the stranger’s hand on his back is warm.
The ground shifts, vanishes.
Then Yuji is floating. Carried like a ship gently bobbing in the middle of the ocean, cocooned in a stranger’s coat, held more gently than anyone else ever had.
He thinks, abstractly, that this is what dying should have felt like.
Warm.
Peaceful.
Painless.
Don’t worry, it’s not gonna hurt.
“What the hell happened to you?” the stranger asks softly.
But Yuji is already asleep.