Chapter Text
It's a sweltering July morning and they're training for the student event against Kyoto when the sky darkens to a putrid grey-black, a mottled color so profuse with decay that it raises the hairs on the back of Suguru's neck.
If it's a technique, he's never seen anything like it. If it's something else, that's one more variable he can't use as a foothold to understand what's going on.
The change comes on too fast to be a genuine weather event. There's also the fact that he's never seen bad weather muddy the atmosphere with the colors of torn, rotting flesh before.
And that's not to mention all of his senses are screaming at him to prepare for incoming, unavoidable danger. It's a full body sensation he trusts the way one would hunger cues, a feeling that sinks him into a loose stance as he begins to consciously control his breathing.
"That doesn't look good," he murmurs.
His eyes flicker over to Satoru, who is already looking in his direction with an expression that is pure observation and cool as mountain water. Searing blue eyes catch at his over the rim of circular glasses and hold for a beat. Then they both lift up their faces for another look as conditions worsen.
The sky continues to bruise into a deep purple-black that trap them in a strange, titanic shadow. The heat everyone has been complaining about is sucked out in a chilling rush of northern winds.
In Suguru's periphery, spiky white hair whips wildly in the cold, sudden winds. They sweep across the grounds with such force even his bun threatens to come undone, though he's thoroughly uninterested in fixing it when chances are this is just the beginning to a very, very long afternoon.
"What in the flying fuck—," Satoru snaps before he is cut off by a deafening sound like a bomb exploding.
It shakes through the earth below them, creating a multitude of tiny fissures that leak a viscous, grey steam. The sky shivers above as lightning writhes like maggots across a heavy film of clouds and thunder swallows them in another deafening roar, bigger this time as the trees near their practice field shiver along a usually placid treeline.
Suguru's chest vibrates when the noise physically hits them and he hears Satoru widen his stance, tense toes digging rocks into the dirt beneath them.
The metallic hum of cursed energy rises like smoke from behind them. First and third year students have come closer to their corner of the field. Sorcerers' fizzling blue cursed energy is familiar to him. It signifies to him that allies are ready and waiting and steeling themselves. There are comrades at his back.
When nothing happens—no flying knives or body parts or otherworldly snarling—Suguru closes his eyes to breathe deeply through an open-mouthed inhale.
His palette is much more refined than others' and can usually feed him information that might give him a better understanding of just what the hell is going on.
He tastes presence then, a humid heaviness—like it's trying to shove him onto his knees—and scents on his tongue an entirely opaque sour-sweetness that reminds him of pomegranate syrup. Even a little can coat the mouth and completely overtake it.
Another open-mouthed inhale brings a subtler presence to the forefront. Beneath the concrete-thick oppressiveness is something a little less crushing. Rosewater steam, faint and warm and welcoming, and pooling blood and something herbaceous.
When Yaga appears, he's unsurprised. His face set into grim statuesque lines, and he's flanked by three cursed puppets crocheted into bears.
Their teacher has spent the last year teaching them, above all, to work well under pressure. He spends so much of class time reminding all of them, and especially Satoru, to slow down and think. To understand that even when you think you have a situation under control, your confidence can quickly turn to foolhardy arrogance.
He's not sure he's ever seen the man panic. Which is why the tightness around their Yaga's mouth is not encouraging.
Yaga says evenly, "First years, inside the school now. Second and third years, move out in the direction of impact. Your orders are to surround the area. Do not engage unless I tell you to," and then when only quiet greets him, "What are you waiting for?"
Nanami and Haibara disappear quickly in a mad dash of snatched track jackets and weapons, making quick work of disappearing under the expectant gaze of Yaga standing still and tall before them.
Suguru takes his hands out of his pockets and glances over to Shoko, who is finally putting out her cigarette and meets his eyes with an irritated look on her face as if to say 'jeeze, it's always something, isn't it.'
Next to him, Satoru huffs out a laugh and comments with an annoying amount of snide cheer, "Just when things were getting boring! It's not my birthday, is it?"
"Satoru," he grits out, annoyed, "Take this seriously."
"Touchy, touchy, Suguru," is his teasing answer as they take off towards the treeline.
They run with single-minded focus into the vast forest surrounding their school grounds. Ancient trees rise up around them, offering the cover of their foliage like a comforting throw. It's disconcerting and reminds Suguru of his dreams lately, how they all feature places once familiar and comforting made uncanny and sinisiter.
It takes a solid fifteen minutes of sprinting before they're close enough to see a large crater that has decimated several trees upon impact. It's smaller than he had imagined and the area is filled with no killing intent he can detect despite the pomegranate scent-taste lingering menacingly.
Visibility within the crater is low. It billows plumes of white smoke that appear to cling to a curled form before they rise around his and Satoru's faces to create a fog. Suguru realizes what's down there is far smaller than the monstrous curse or curse user he was expecting.
They surround the crater and, naturally, Satoru gets closer to it than any of them. Suguru follows right behind him. He knows Satoru noticed it, too—something terribly human-shaped, with a soft filthy face and hunched shoulders and scuffed red sneakers.
"Interesting," comes Satoru's assessment, "No barrier at all. I'd expected something, what with the dramatic entrance. Why collide into the earth like a meteor and spare no time for basic protection upon landing? Hmm, need to get closer."
Yaga's voice snaps like a whip in retort as five more cursed corpses spill out soundlessly from the trees and come to gather at his feet, "Goddamnit! On my order, Satoru. I'll approach. You and Suguru fan around the perimeter. We don't know what we'll find and we don't know what it'll do just yet."
The smoke around them pools like a miasma, causing a several students to cough.
Suguru catches Yaga's eye with a flick of his and asks, "May I?" while gesturing to the fog surrounding them.
At Yaga's nod, Suguru brings the fingers of his right hand together and then deliberately peels his thumb away from the other four. Like prizing open a locked door.
The dark portal opens behind him and nothing exits it but for the single movement of yuki-onna's ghostly hand handing him a large, metal fan. Three times bigger than it should be, metallic and sharp as the devil. Useful.
He takes the fan from the curse and starts forward, the portal glued to his back as he raises the fan and spreads it in one graceful movement. Gathering breath, his exhale leads his hand in a cutting swipe across the air, calling upon a chilling wind that parts and swallows every visible coil of smoke, leaving in its wake the sound of shivering, far-off bells.
He hands the fan back, task completed, but allows his portal to remain available for more summoning.
Everyone's eyes adjust quickly and Suguru's tense gaze falls on that curled up body, laid like a roasted pig at a banquet, in the center of the crater. Pink fluffy hair catches his eyes first, then the young man's face marked by fresh wounds, and then his unsalvageable torn up clothes. There's blood spilling from long deep cuts and outright holes in his body, revealed where the fabric has frayed and rent.
Before Satoru can say something ridiculous, Suguru turns to Yaga in question.
Their teacher strides over to the hole in the ground, hesitating at the perfectly circular lip of it, before bending his knees and jumping to slide down the side of it. Yaga touches a palm to boy's chest and they can see it clearly rising and falling.
"Any threat you're detecting, Satoru?" Yaga asks, lifting a hand now covered in filth and carnage.
Satoru approaches then and his movements tug Suguru along like it's muscle memory. Soon they and, a bit farther back, everyone else is crowding around to catch a glimpse of the sleeping form that caused the entire sky to open up.
Blue eyes that move like the tides watch over the rim of his glasses and scan their new arrival. He gives a short, huffing chuckle.
"Oh, definitely. This boy's body is strange. Interesting. I think he's holding something within—a vessel, then, with that immense cursed energy trying to suffocate us is both intertwined and separate from him. Somehow, he's suppressing it, despite the fact that their cursed energy is bleeding into each other. He's integrated...say, Yaga, should we kill him? Before he wakes up?"
Yaga sighs and snaps his head to the left, groaning tiredly at the snap of popping bones. He sounds entirely over all of this shit. Suguru experiences a moment of fondness for the man who has tried so hard to teach them more than strength, a brief reprieve from how rotten his head has felt lately.
“Probably," comes the answer.
No one says anything when Yaga bends and hefts the boy into his arms. No one says a word as Yaga leaps from the crater, clearly taking care not to jostle his passenger too much.
The return trip from the forest takes very little time and it's when they're on campus that yet again the situation turns itself on its head.
The boy awakens.
It's a surprise when he wakes up. Suguru would have guessed it would take days if not weeks for the boy to recover and open his eyes. Turns out, all it takes is a stroll through campus in the arms of their soon-to-be principal.
The worst part is he comes awake stifling a scream, his hands cleanching to fists that coat themselves in crackling blue cursed energy before sputtering out. A few pained moans make their way out between gritted teeth and Suguru can see better now, has a clearer view of the boy's ruined fingertips, the absolutely battered face, the hunks of skin ripped from his torso and shoulders. His strong neck is purple and blue, sheathed completely in bruises.
It's a wonder he's alive.
Yaga's hold shifts a bit, tightening on the boy, restricting his movements, ready to subdue. Suguru knows how Yaga works, in layers of containment where he can address details one at a time. The first detail, best dealt with by Yaga, is by design in the cradle of his arms.
All at once, the boy stills. His eyes blink open, revealing amber pupils filled with wariness, but the expectation of a battle shrinks to nill when his gaze catches on Yaga.
"Ya-ga," he coughs through a broken-sounding throat, sounding shocked, "Sen-sei. How—?"
When he coughs again, globs of blood eject from the back of his throat, wetting his bottom lip all the way down his neck and soaking his red hoodie. Wet, squelching heaves hint at internal bleeding.
Suguru is used to gore, by now. He's accustomed to the worst ways people can die. Can vividly recall the burning flesh of curse victims, how he has witnessed impalings and nails through the eyes of the weak and torn guts draped over tree branches like wind chimes. Still, he hopes the boy stops talking. How is he even awake?
"Go-jo...sen-sei," the boy determinedly chokes, squinching shut his eyes and wincing when a barely knit wound over his eye break open and dyes the white of his left eye a welling red.
Yaga stares back at the boy clinging to consciousness. The boy knows the names of people who have never met him.
"Oi," Satoru's voice sounds behind the shoulder the boy's head leans against, "You looking for me?"
Suguru watches as the boy's face lights up like it's fucking Christmas, like he's attending a surprise party especially for him, when he registers the aloof, arrogant drawl of the Gojo clan's heir. The boy stares at Satoru with the sort of relief you feel when you've been searching for a keepsake for hours and find it just when you've decided to give up.
Satoru stares back.
The boy lets out an ugly, painful laugh and simply says in two struggling syllables, "Goo-d."
He passes out again.
He doesn't get back up.
-*-
Yuuji's not in the state of mind for time traveling, if that's even what this is. Part of him considers a scenario where he's in a coma and his inflamed brain has transported him into: an odd endless dream that begins with the agony of white-hot lightning and hard ground and ends with the de-aged and deceased characters of his normal life.
Being held by Yaga registers, a notably alive Yaga sporting a crewcut and a shocking lack of sunglasses, who holds him to both restrain and steady. Asking where Gojo-sensei is registers, croaking out of him helplessly.
A younger version of his teacher had greeted him with all the sharp aloofness of a stranger, an unfamiliar petulance and a very familiar curiosity playing around his mouth.
He doesn't remember much after that.
He doesn't want to remember anything, but refuses to give himself an out. His body has committed atrocities that had ruined hundreds of lives and there is no escape he will seek for the hard truth of it. Yuuji has had to continue living as best as he can, following Fushiguro with a single-minded focus as they search for his sister in the endless battles of the Culling Games.
He considers that he may be in a coma, worried that his mind finally fractured too hard and without his permission, but he knows there is no version of himself that would willingly run from those lost lives weighing on his heart. Knows that he is incapable of turning the other cheek.
He remembers Gojo-sensei telling him that he would eventually have Sukuna's techniques etched into his body and soul, that he'd wield them himself one day in his own way, but this is the legacy he has been forcefully gifted.
The first thing Sukuna ever gave me, he thinks in the direction of his teacher sealed terrifyingly away in the dark, was all this blood on his hands.
Yuuji's eyes slit open, stare unseeing at the familiar ceiling of the Tokyo school's medical bay. Fluorescent lights hit his retinas and he groans.
"Waking up now, huh?" comes Shoko's smooth voice, a balm to his feverish thoughts.
Her calm voice grounds him, but also reminds him of the amount of pain his body is in. Just as quickly, he accepts it as his due and takes stock. All fingers and toes intact and his skin feels raw but untorn in a testament to the power of a refined reversed cursed technique.
Shoko is dressed in a dark blue school uniform and ankle boots, cloaked in a pristine lab coat with a cigarette tucked behind her ear.
Either unaware or unconcerned with his gaping, the doctor-in-training pulls a ball-point pen from her breast pocket and writes something down on a clipboard that comes out of seemingly nowhere.
"Call me Shoko," she intones and gets closer to his bedside as she visually inspects him, "I've spent the 36 hours repairing you anyway. Formalities don't really fit the situation."
"So this isn't a coma," Yuuji confirms quietly.
The reply comes quick.
"No, you are very much awake. What's your name?"
"Yuuji Itadori."
"Got it," she says, scribbling more across the clipboard at a breakneck speed.
His name sounds the same it's always sounded in her mouth. Soft, vague, and thoughtful. It's Shoko who had offered the most comfort in the early days of understanding what Mahito was, making sure to tell him that the transfigured humans were already so far past gone that ending their lives was simply a form of mercy.
In both the present and the past, she has shown him kindness.
"Thanks, for healing me," he says, looking now at his hands and feeling the urge to scrape them against concrete until his skin splits, and he admits, "But I was hoping I was wrong. I was really hoping I was wrong. There are things I need to get back to."
"I think they'll have to wait. Itadori—I'm going to call in Yaga-sensei now that you're up. More will probably join. I don't know what's going to happen, so just tell the truth, okay?"
Yuuji's mood plummets as Sukuna's vindictive laughter fills his head from somewhere deep within him. The truth is what will kill him. Every time. The truth is what makes him a stain on other peoples' lives.
He nods in her direction, sitting up with some effort and staring at his lap. An unknown amount of time passes and Yuuji listens to Shoko's receding footsteps, watches her boots hit tile and hears a door shut softly. He's left with the birds outside and the unsettling feeling of being in a place that doesn't recognize him—a place he wants to go back to, but it's wrong.
It's all wrong.
"—tadori?" calls a low voice. Yaga's.
He lifts his gaze to the foot of hid bed and meets Yaga's eyes, a sight he really isn't accustomed to. Behind him Gojo (who he supposes isn't his teacher anymore) and Suguru Geto (in his own body, no stitches to be found).
"Sorry about that," he answers and then swallows. Steels himself and keeps going, "You wanted to talk to me?"
He doesn't mean to be looking at Gojo when he says it, but it can't be helped. To see him young, healthy, and alive is comparable to no other relief he's ever experienced. This is what it feels like, he thinks, to drink someone in. He's broad—his hair is wild, white as bone—and his hands are huge just like he remembers. His expression is strong and his eyes make direct contact with Yuuji's.
Gojo doesn't move from his place behind Yaga, but he looks down his nose at Yuji, says arrogantly, "So you know me? That's where I wanna start."
Yuuji feels a smile cross his face and he knows he's positively helpless to stop it.
Yaga frowns harder.
Geto stays cool and placid, but watches him with the slightest bit of apprehension.
Gojo's eyebrows kick up, surprised.
"Yes! How could I not? You're the reason I'm alive," Yuuji admits and decides there's no way out but through.
The surprised reactions that greet his statement are completely understandable.
Shoko finds her way back into the room from what must be an office space, slotting into place with Yaga and her cohort as seamlessly as he used to with Fushiguro, Kugisaki, and Gojo.
His next breath comes fast as his heart beats hard in his chest.
It isn't his death he's worried about. Everyday is a new day for the sentence hanging over him to come to its natural conclusion. He doesn't mind it anymore, thinks of it like a pillow he will eventually lay his head down on. That doesn't make sharing the true parts of himself any easier.
"I think maybe I should start over," he corrects himself and tries again, "I'm Yuuji Itadori. First year student at Jujutsu High under the instruction of Gojo-sensei. Or was. I'm either in a coma, fighting someone, or I've traveled to the past. It's 2018 where I am."
A soft laugh sounds and Shoko insists, "It's not a coma, seriously."
Geto finally joins the conversation to ask, "Do you know how you got here?"
"What do you mean fighting someone? You think this could be part of someone's cursed technique?" Gojo interrupts Yuuji before he can answer.
Yaga gives a disapproving face when Gojo disappears from behind him and reappears at Yuuji's beside for a closer look.
Yuuji, who hasn't grinned since Halloween months ago, remembers in an instant how infectious his teacher is. He's like a dog with a bone when he's interested in something. Other students complain about his ridiculous antics, but he's never minded them. They distract from the unrelenting rottenness around them. They make light on the dark path carrying all of them further into chaos.
He’s missed it.
He says, "I don't know, but it’s a possibility. There's no telling what someone's technique is. I try not to pretend I can come close to predicting all of them. My group and I were fighting when something hit me in the back of the head out of nowhere. Then it felt like I was being wrenched apart. There was a storm, I think, because I remember lightning. Then Yaga-sensei was carrying me. Now I'm...here."
His eyes leave Gojo as his smile fades and he looks at Geto. Out of everyone he's met again so far, Yuuji sees the difference between jujutsu sorcerer Suguru Geto and thousand-year-old scheming Kenjaku with a clarity that almost shocks him. Geto's face is vulnerably smooth, expression unnaturally calm, and his physicality is both unassuming and calculating in every little movement.
Quiet, but nothing close to meek.
Yuuji, displaced by time, knows bodies regardless of where he is. The boy in front of him is nothing like Kenjaku, whose cruelty is as impersonal and whimsical as Sukuna's, his eyes like a predator watching every other living thing in front of him like he's watching ants struggle at his feet.
There's a purposeful stillness to Geto that Yuuji would normally find comforting, but all he can think of is witnessing an ugly crowing brain laughing in Geto's body, dulling Geto's purple eyes, and killing with Geto's hands. Taunting all of them while holding that fucking cube.
Uncomfortable as he is to face the form that sealed Gojo-sensei, he feels a few different kinds of grief when he looks at the other teenager and none of them include hatred or blame.
Yuuji catches Geto's eyes and explains, "In my time, everything is different. Tokyo fell on Halloween night a few months ago for me. The whole population knows about cursed energy now and curses are openly roaming Japan. Tengen's last standing border surrounds the nation. Nothing can get out and nothing can get in. It's a free-for-all right now between reincarnated sorcerers, jujutsu sorcerers, curse users, and curses. We've been fighting for over three months, hoping to find a way to stop what's happening."
Whatever anyone expects to come out of his mouth, that is apparently not it.
"Shit," curses Yaga vehemently.
"There's something else you should know," Yuuji cuts in before the conversation can turn again, before he loses the momentum of ugliness he has going, "I'm the vessel of Ryomen Sukuna. Hundreds of people died by my hand the night Tokyo fell. The council has had an execution date hanging over me since I joined the school. You need to know this about me."
"Why?" Yaga asks, his hawk eyes growing darker by the second.
"Because," is the flat reply, "You'll need to decide what you want to do with me."
Yaga reacts by running a palm down his face. Despite his covered eyes, he raises a hand for silence when Gojo's mouth opens to speak. Gojo pauses, annoyed, and then swings his stare back to Yuuji, who merely looks at him calmly while ice feels like it might as well be running through his veins. It sinks to the bone, whenever he takes in the full weight of the massacre. When he thinks about what he is now, it sinks like a knife in his back.
He wishes it would sink deeper.
Yuuji has thought a lot about what he would say to Gojo-sensei if he were to be unsealed and they found an opportunity to talk. Someone who protected him, who apologized sincerely for interrupting his grandfather's cremation, someone who kept trying to make him strong enough to make it in their world.
There's a bitter sweetness splintering him as Yaga takes his time to think.
A couple of minutes pass. A few more.
The air conditioning kicks on the medical bay. Yuuji again hears Shoko's pen scratching across the legal pad clipped to her clipboard.
Geto eventually looks out the window, lost in thought, though Yuuji notices his right hand's fingers poised carefully, touching at the fingertips as if he's pinching them together. No, he's definitely paying attention.
Gojo's eyes drill into the side of his head.
Yuuji fights not to look at him because he's waiting for judgement and he's spoken about an atrocity he personally committed and he can't look at Gojo right now. Not this one.
"Did it happen because you wanted it to?" Yaga asks finally.
"No. But I was weak," he snaps back.
"Were you able to take back control?" he asks.
"Yes," Yuuji grits out.
"Itadori, plainly, what happened?"
"I—look, I don't exactly know. I wasn't awake when we switched. It was—it was that day that I keep telling you about. I fought someone and I lost—fell unconscious outside a subway restroom. While I was out, I was fed eleven fingers. I have a memory of Sukuna talking to the special grade that did it. They wanted to use Sukuna to let curses become dominant over humans and they wanted to overcome my ability to suppress him. Then I watched—he made me watch—what he did. What I did. With these hands."
Yuuji has often imagined what he might say if he were talking to Gojo-sensei after his unsealing, how he might begin to explain his desire for atonement or, if that's off the table, death. He's thought about that a lot. It never sounds good in his head.
It didn’t sound good just now either.
So why aren't they killing him? Fuck. Why don't they ever kill him?
Eventually, Yaga asks, "And your ability to control Sukuna?"
"Gojo-sensei said I'm able to supress him with more than just my body, if that means anything to you. When we first met, he had me switch over to Sukuna for ten seconds. When he got to 10, I switched back."
Geto and Shoko scowl heavily and in tandem whip their heads over to Gojo, who appears to be buffing his nails on his shirt before blowing on them casually.
"This crazy, good-for-nothing fool," Shoko chuckles, regaining her humor and shaking her head at him, "You're lucky it worked."
"So you just thought you'd be able to subdue Ryomen Sukuna, Satoru? If things got out of control? You're exactly right, Shoko, he is good for nothing."
"Stop right there!" Satoru yells back, pointing his finger at them, "Gojo-sensei totally knew he could handle it, didn't he, Yuuji?"
"Yes!" Yuuji answers at once, his face back in wide smile.
"See," Gojo says, gesturing over to Yuuji with his hands like Yuuji is the next contestent to a beauty pageant, and sniggers, "Mah, if I had to guess, Yuuji, am I literally keeping you alive, present tense? Did I pull some strings with the higher-ups to postpone your immediate execution? You did say I saved you and I've never seen those bastards at the top stay their hand once in my life."
"Yeah," Yuuji says with too much sincerity, "Gojo is too smart for them."
"Not going to call me sensei?" is the droll response.
"Tell me one thing you've taught me," Yuuji hits back quickly, suddenly queasy despite his playfulness.
He fights the sinking nausea in his stomach. The terror descends quickly. Nobody here knows him.
Fuck.
Nobody knows how bad it's going to get and how many screaming shredded human bodies it took to bloody the streets of Shibuya and no one can fathom the months of pushing his body to fight constantly or how much he wishes Kenjaku had never possessed his mother or Geto and how worried Megumi is going to feel when he can't find Yuuji and how much he wants to know if he's dying today for planning purposes mostly and his desperate hope that someone will end it all and tie rocks to the bottoms of his feet and push him overboard and into the ocean and despite that—despite how alone and exhausted he feels after months of carnage and how grateful, how absurdly fucking grateful, he feels to see Gojo alive—despite everything—Gojo can somehow loosen him up into thinking maybe it's just another shitty Tuesday for Jujutsu High students and this is just one more invigorating shift in the wind.
Sensei or not. It's Satoru Gojo. It seems every version of him contains the fundamentals that set Yuuji just a little bit at ease.
It’s not Gojo’s fault he doesn’t really trust the feeling of being relaxed anymore.
"Itadori," Yaga says, resolute, catching his attention, "If you were to stay here, would you want to keep doing this?"
"Man, you're always like this," Yuuji complains as he scrubs a rough hand through his pink hair and then turns serious, "Well, honestly, I'm probably not anything more than a cog in the grand scheme of things. But I'll keep killing curses—for as long as I can. That's my role in this. And if I get to live for longer, that's what I'll do."
"I can work with that," Yaga says.
-*-
Yaga does, in fact, work with that. He informs Yuuji the next day how things are going to be: Yuuji is going to ingest the fingers and then lay down and die when he's done. It’s the same deal from before. He’s expected to take years, decades even, to find them all. They've all been floating around for a thousand years.
He doesn't think it's the worst deal. He'll get to eradicate Sukuna from the world, one which tears too easily beneath his dismantling claws and firebrand arrows. He'll get to erase that threat from the earth.
That's enough.
Yaga tells him a few other things as well: he'll join as a first year student and resume his training as soon as he recovers. He'll be required to submit himself to the council for interviews if summoned to do so. His biggest priority outside from carrying out missions will be recovering the fingers. It’s basically his last situation tied up in a neat little bow, without the stress of dying same-day.
He suspects that there is plenty he doesn't understand regarding the council's vote in favor of his continued survival, but Yaga isn't inclined to explain and he doesn't ask.
Now that he's started sleeping, he hasn't stopped. He slips in and out of sleep for days. Somewhere in that time he's provided a bedroom in a completely different area of the massive campus than he is used to.
He doesn't have any visitors outside of Shoko and, surprisingly, Yaga.
Yaga brings his knitting with him and Yuuji lays propped up on a few pillows. They talk about food, mostly. Food and cursed energy theory because Yaga doesn't want Yuuji to accustom himself to idleness.
Yaga informs him that his dorm houses the biggest kitchen on the entire campus. Fully kitted out, with hanging pots and pans that hang over a new, industrial stove. Yuuji is welcomes to use it, Yaga tells him between careful knots, whenever he has free time.
Yaga also tells him the other students have been informed of his presence. He tells him they'll first be figuring out where Yuuji is on the power scale, so appropriately ranked missions can come his way.
But all that's coming up.
Shoko said he's on the fast-track to being mission ready and said she'd probably be able to clear him in the next week.
The kitchen is calling his name.
-*-
Toji Fushiguro is dead.
Suguru lies awake in his bed, reminding himself of this supposedly comforting fact that instead leaves him feeling hollow and restless, laying flat underneath a thin bed sheet staring up at his ceiling fan. It moves in slow circles and offers nothing but a background noise that's long since lost the ability to calm him.
Breathe, he thinks with forced calm. There’s no Sorcerer Killer on the loose. Satoru killed him, after nearly dying himself. But nothing helps. Nothing ever helps. That day still sticks in the corner of his jaw like a pebble he can’t dig out and the more he tries, the more his thoughts bleed this infuriating panic.
It’s annoying. It’s horrific. Watching Satoru get stabbed through the chest wasn’t something that he was ever going to forget. Fushiguro's physical strength and agility was unforgettable, his heavenly restriction as pronounced as it was transcendent of human limitations.
No cursed energy to speak of. But he’d set them up and systematically tired them out and pounced on them with the alacrity of a hungry monster.
Monkey is what Toji had called himself, mockingly, in comparison to sorcerers. Standing over Suguru’s bleeding body. A monkey, he'd taunted, who didn't have any need for guilt at having murdered a little girl and the only best friend he's ever had. Hell, that monster had been tickled pink by Geto's raw fury.
By his weakness.
And even in the aftermath when all is said and done and Riko remains are secured within a tomb beneath campus—Suguru even now possesses no such luxury of desensitization, no ability to feel any form of indifference, and doesn’t that feel like absolute fucking shit? Doesn't that feel like someone has flayed him alive every time he leaves campus alone to grind away at the ineffectual machine that is curse exorcism?
There's nothing to give him the good days back.
Every time Shoko so much as invites him for coffee and cigarettes, nausea rises in his stomach as he thinks about what she might say looking at him with her full attention as they attempt to catch up. He doesn't exactly avoid her, but he neatly sidesteps her invitations whenever possible.
Satoru seeks him out between every mission he's sent on, arrogant and electric as ever with a mind that never stops churning, but he finds it much harder to match that energy. He finds it impossible to meet him in the middle and grin over the harshness of their careers.
Taking everything with a grain of salt is beyond him, these days. Nothing mild resides within his chest. It's all a miasma of self-recrimination and searing resentment and the agonizing fear that nothing he does will ever matter and no one he loves is bound to survive.
Meanwhile Satoru grows stronger daily, mentally and physically. Works at his craft with a focus he hasn’t had at any point during their tenure as students at Jujutsu High. And he’s succeeding, which Suguru knows is just part of his birthright.
There’s a grief on Satoru’s face sometimes, as though he is remembering Riko. He understands better than most that the system they work within is rotten to its core, ravenous for the blood of its own soldiers. Rotted and built on the bodies of the strongest people in the country who vertibly lay down belly up waiting patiently for the knife that finally takes away their lives.
And for whom are they making these sacrifices no one will ever make for them in return?
The answer to that question becomes more complicated every time he asks it.
Suguru is well aware of how unfair it is to think that he alone bears the weight of that final mission they went on together, but fairness is no longer something Suguru feels prepared to deal in. Fairness would be Riko living a long and happy life, would be Satoru not having to learn reversed cursed technique at 17 to survive the mauling Fushiguro had given him, would be Suguru not having to swallow the filth that inhabits their world in order to nourish the merciful ignorance of a weak population, so delicate that the sight of a curse would result in more cursed energy output.
Sorcerers die all the time.
He's known that since he started attending, has been told that over and over by Yaga. He's already a special grade sorcerer putting his life on the line as he confronts serious threats. But now he lives with the truth of it, a toothsome ugly knowledge latched forever to his ankles, that he will die as he lives: a well-paid but ultimately disposable weapon.
Almost, he thinks angrily as his fingernails sink into his palms, a pet.
His room is stifling.
Suguru stands up and tries to control his breathing, calm it into something measured, and digs through his dresser for a clean white t-shirt. Once he shoves it over his head, he makes for the door.
His hair is a bit stringy. His face oily, unwashed. It’s been hard to take care of himself lately. It’s been hard to eat, and to sleep, and to talk to anyone.
The day they found Itadori was the last time he felt close to his friends and it had been through necessity, though he is thankful for the brief reprieve from the suffocation of his new normal. It doesn’t change the fact that Shoko stays in the medical unit, fully transitioned into her post-graduation role, and Satoru picks up missions on a weekly basis and is sent all over Japan.
Suguru picks up plenty of his own missions and all of them result in the same rinse, wash, repeat, of fighting curses and consuming them.
It's getting old fast.
The hallway is a better place for his spilling thoughts, enough room that he doesn’t have to remind himself to breathe evenly again.
Nighttime never seems to work out for him anymore. He’s just thankful no one is awake in his building to witness his growing instability. He’s self-aware enough to know something has knocked his head loose and that he is, in so many ways, alarming company.
The calm-headedness of the last few years, the calculating consideration Suguru has come to recognize in himself—neither of those things seem to fit him anymore.
He walks softly, a waxing moon his hallway companion shedding light across his path, as the kitchen gets closer and closer. A cup of tea that he won’t drink any of is the next step in this little dance of his that’s become so familiar.
It’s funny, he thinks, how it feels like there is a new person in his body forging new habits. The him of before would be sleeping well and looking forward to breakfast the next morning, interested in the world around him and the details of his days.
As he continues his trek, he's surprised to find a delicious smell curling around his nose as he finally turns down another long hallway that leads straight to his sad little tea bags in the pantry and his sad little tea cup hanging near the sink in the dorm kitchen.
It’s smells like a revelation: like hot soothing broth chock full of umami, of sizzling white fish, of fluffy rice. Home smells of home cooking, like when Suguru was a child and his parents weren’t so wary of his abilities. Unconsciously, he closes his eyes to get a better sniff and feels his long-dormant belly give a subdued growl.
There’s a moment where he considers turning right back around and returning to his too-small bed in his too-small dorm room, but he simply can’t do it. He cannot return to the place that holds all his nightmares and nausea.
He is not one of the strongest. Not anymore. He does not think that the title means anything good—sees now how it is a burden, an indication that he can take a beating longer than anyone else.
His steps grow more pronounced, more performative, so that the person in the kitchen knows someone else is out and about.
He thinks he knows who might be in it anyway and has no intention of surprising Itadori.
Suguru lifts an arm to pull back the fabric separating the kitchen from the hallway and enters knowing that Itadori is a stranger who isn’t going to know and judge and analyze the ways Suguru isn’t acting like himself.
Itadori’s back is to him, back perfectly straight, his hair a soft burnished shade of pink in the low lights of the kitchen. His face turns minutely towards him and Suguru catches the faint curve of a smile and the puckered edge of the scar between his eyes.
“Hi,” Itadori says simply, and then he turns back to various pots and pans on the stove top, long cooking chopsticks held in his hand like second nature.
He doesn’t quite know what to expect from Itadori, who has been resting the last five or so days since they found him on campus grounds. Shoko has told him in passing that the other boy has been sleeping hard and growing exponentially stronger by the day. He’s going to be a monster like you two, Shoko had told him with a vague smile.
Suguru responds with a soft sound of acknowledgement, unwilling to completely ignore him, and begins his routine by moving towards the pantry for his usual oolong tea. Even if he doesn't drink it, the smell of it does something for him.
Itadori respectfully keeps to himself, careful not to stare at Suguru or try to force him into conversation. His movements in Suguru’s periphery are smooth and graceful, his form both uncomplicated and domestic.
On an exhausted whim, he offers quietly and without looking in Itadori's direction, “Tea?”
Itadori cocks his head to the side and thinks a moment, before answering, “Sure.”
In a few minutes, Suguru has committed the mortal sin of warming up their water in the microwave and shoving tea bags in them. If Itadori wants a proper tea ceremony, well, he can attend to it himself. The other boy simply thanks him, though, and takes a boiling hot sip immediately before letting out a huge happy sigh.
They sip at their tea standing up and feet apart. Itadori has to pay attention to one of the pans, which contains sizzling white fish that starts to pop when it's finally finished. Itadori turns the burner off and then turns back to Suguru, having clearly made up his mind about something.
Itadori asks, tentative, kind, “Would you want to try some of this? I can never figure out how to cook for only one person and I always end up making more than I can eat by myself.”
And that’s how they end up at a small study table in the open concept dining room connected to the dorm’s kitchen. It puts them in closer proximity than Suguru anticipated when he agreed and despite not feeling a real sense of curiosity about much of anything, he is compelled to look at Itadori as the boy somewhat childishly shoves a huge bite of rice into his mouth.
Itadori’s eyes flick over and catch Suguru’s, grinning through the mouthful, and Suguru—well, Suguru takes the opportunity to take him in.
Sukuna Ryomen’s vessel is compelling. The unscarred parts of his face look soft as down, but the scars put a warm feeling in Suguru's stomach. Here is someone intimately touched by this life, someone who has bled for it over and over. Who is not unscathed.
“Sorry,” Itadori says sheepishly at his own lack of manners, smiling a little as he goes on to say, “Rations can’t compare to real cooking.”
Suguru finds himself taking a sip of his tea before spooning the simple broth soup Itadori has made into his mouth. It’s a thin, steaming loveliness from the moment it touches his tongue to the gentle trail it forges down his throat. He’s been having problems coughing down most anything these last few months and the miracle of getting something down both surprises and softens him.
Lately, all he tastes are curses on his tongue no matter what he’s eating. Something like quiet relief touches the darkness surrounding him, a little ripple that makes it easier to try for conversation.
“Thank you,” he says after a few minutes of tentative eating, and as an afterthought, “It’s been a long time since I had a meal this good.”
Itadori laughs. It sounds a little broken.
He says, “Me too. I’ve dreamt about cooking in a fully stocked kitchen for months.”
Suguru can imagine. If Itadori traveled from a bleak future, one where Japan has fallen to various malicious factions, he probably hasn’t had time to take part in normalcy often. There is something Suguru cannot stop thinking about, though, a piece of Itadori that he has carried with him in the days since he spoke to them all in the infirmary. He isn’t sure he should bring it up.
“I bet,” Suguru replies instead, taking another bite.
Itadori pushes a strong, square palm over his scalp, expression somewhere between a sweet smile and an attempt to hide the blank, bled-dry look from his eyes. There’s a baseline of anguish in him that calls to Suguru.
Amidst the even-keeled emotions of everyone at Jujutsu High, here is someone who cannot pretend to be untouched by the cage of their world.
Itadori is halfway through his own meal, a fast eater, and he rises to spoon more soup into his bowl. As he turns off the burner for the soup and turns to return to the table, he swallows nervously.
Seated, he offers, “If you ever find yourself up late and hungry, I’m happy to feed you. I wouldn’t mind the company.”
Lonely. The boy is lonely.
He’s not offering because Suguru’s different and wrong, or because Suguru’s weak and can’t move past an event that Satoru took to like jumping smoothly over a hurdle. He's looking for company.
Suguru responds, halfway through his tea and at the bottom of his soup bowl, "I’ll keep that in mind.”
Itadori doesn’t leave when he’s done with his meal, evidently having been raised with manners enough to stay seated while Suguru picks through his. He’d thought for sure a noncommittal response would cut their potential friendship off at the knees—part of him had hoped it would—but Itadori doesn’t react with any sense of entitlement to his time or company.
The smell-taste of Itadori’s power is comforting, the rose steam scent of it wispy and light on his tongue and in his nose, as he merely leans back in his seat and gives Suguru the full force of his brown-gold gaze. It takes him aback, a bit, how someone as gentle as the boy across from him has such an intensity in his eyes.
Satoru always says you’ve got to be a little bit nuts to be a sorcerer and for the first time since they met, Suguru sees it in Itadori—that direct, unwavering eye contact, a steadiness in the way he looks over Suguru down to the last detail.
Just when he seems ready to comment on Suguru, whose nerves are already prickling knowing the bags under his eyes have bags, he pivots.
"I was hoping I could ask you a question...what do you know about vessels?"
"Are you not one?” is Suguru’s bemused, wry reply.
"To tell you the truth, everything I know has come from doing it. It's all been baptism by fire. Gojo-sensei mentioned vessels before a couple times and it always sounded like they were just a part of the society. But there was never enough time to learn more."
Suguru sips on his tea, considering what he knows on the topic.
"A vessel is not like a bowl, made to be filled. The body must meet certain conditions to house more than one soul and the likelihood a person is born with all of them is incredibly low. One in a million may be born over the course of several centuries. How much autonomy the vessel has once actively hosting another tends to be varied and individual and highly dependent on their relationship with their, well, let's call it passenger. The other thing about a vessel is that it makes transmigration into another host body possible, sort of like a perfect tunnel for a soul to travel to another resting place. Outside of that, not much is known about vessels and their capabilities. You might have more luck talking to Shoko."
"Ah, I see. Thank you. Any information is helpful,” Itadori says, his eyes wide as jewels, having hung onto Suguru’s every word.
"Your passenger is not providing much intel?” Suguru can’t help but ask, his own interest in little known topics of their world rearing its head.
After all, is he ever going to get to hear from a primary source concerning vessels?
Itadori scoffs, bitter.
"Who, Sukuna? Not at all. He wouldn't help me if his life depended on it. We aren't exactly friends. Sometimes I think—"
Suguru remains silent, merely watching the other boy whose expression condenses into something self-inflicted and angry. Suguru’s eyes widen as he realizes the degree of vulnerability with which Itadori is willing to speak to him.
"Sometimes I think I was made to bear witness,” the boy tells him in a hushed tone.
The silence rises again around them, broken only by little sips of tea from both of them and Suguru’s spoon gathering rice from his bowl.
Suguru wasn’t going to bring it up. He wasn’t going to press. But he’s not thinking of his own grief or his own impotence in trying to avenge Satoru or Riko against Fushiguro.
His instincts have been lulled by Itadori’s rosewater aura, his stomach soothed by the simple food made by his hand, and the black pit of emotion in his chest silenced by the vessel’s fascinating, relatable hopelessness.
He swallows rice and takes another sip of tea before he begins, “Itadori, you said something before. I’d like to ask you about it.”
“Uh, sure,” is his response.
“You said you think you’re a cog in a machine…what did you mean by that?”
“Oh,” Itadori nods strangely, blinks his large tawny eyes and turns his head to the side so that Suguru spies the strong angle of his jawline. His brows knit together and he takes a deep breath. Releases it. Struggles with something Suguru cannot see. When Itadori faces him again, it’s with a tightness in his face that speaks to restrained grief.
“I meant…I have so little control. It feels like I can’t change anything no matter how hard I try. People just keep dying. All that’s left is to do what I can do, no matter how insignificant, until it’s my turn,” he explains plainly.
His turn to die, he means, thinks Suguru.
Itadori, Suguru is finding, says everything he feels with a flat honesty that grants him glimpses of vulnerability and strength in turns.
When they say goodnight to each other minutes later, Suguru wonders if they will talk again sometime before banishing the thought. He’s gotten used to the idea of being alone by now and it’s not like anything will change. No use having empty desires.
He should know better by now.