Work Text:
When Maki wakes up, the world ends.
The events in Shibuya come in shattered fragments, with each one bringing a new bout of pain that feels akin to burns scorching across her skin. Her vision swims and breathing is hard, her throat is wound shut. A groan escapes her lips and it hurts to move, her fingers twitching at her sides in the bed she lay in.
“Maki… you’re awake.”
It’s not the voice she expects to hear. She blinks several times before finding Mai at her beside, bruises and cuts on her cheek, her hair in disarray, and her uniform tattered. Maki tries to move, but her arms feel like iron weights that are being pulled to the core of the earth. It’s then she sees it, the scars that wind up angrily up her forearms.
“You shouldn’t move too much, you’re still recovering.”
“What… happened?” Maki says slowly, coughing twice and her chest heaves. Mai moves to lift a glass of water from the bedside table up to her lips, and Maki drinks slow, the smoke in her lungs dousing away. Maki nods in thanks and Mai sets the cup back down. Maki speaks again, “I remember Megumi flying out the window, then Nanami and the geezer going up in flames. Is everyone okay?”
Mai purses her lips and Maki doesn’t like the way it looks. It makes the dread sink low in her stomach, threatening to swallow her whole.
“Mai…” Maki pleads.
Mai meets her eyes then and there’s a sort of grief swimming there, a sort of sympathy that doesn’t suit her little sister at all. Mai opens her mouth, closes it, and takes a deep breath.
“Maki, I’m sorry, I-” she sighs a heavy breath. “Kugisaki… she didn’t make it.”
Maki doesn’t hear it the first time, as if Mai had spoken through the depths of an abyssal ocean, muffled and muted. Maki feels like she’s drowning. She croaks, “What did you just say?”
It couldn’t be true. Nobara was - is strong. She can see her clearly, bright, grinning and yelling loudly about something that only makes Maki smile. She can hear the call of her name in a tone so loving, and light, it always sends her heart into a frenzy she tries desperately to ignore. But Kugisaki Nobara is strong, as she is wild, and crawls and makes a home right in Maki’s heart.
She loves her, and she’s strong. There’s no way that she could be-
“Maki, she’s gone. Shoko-san tried but-”
The feeling tears at her heart and there are tears in Maki’s eyes before she feels them. Her fists clench weakly on the sheet that covers her, and the pain is radiating in her limbs, but nothing worse than this. Nothing could be worse than this. The sight of Nobara’s grin after telling her a ridiculous joke passes behind her eyelids.
“Take me to her.”
Mai blinks at her surprised, not at all expecting the words. “Maki, you can’t-”
Maki makes a frantic, pained move to pull the sheets off her. Her scarred feet touch the tile floor and she grits her teeth as she rises. Mai is there to support her, slinging an arm around her own shoulders. Maki slumps against her and Mai can see the tears in her eyes that she refuses to let fall, not until she knows for sure.
Maki shakily whispers, “Please, Mai.”
Mai swallows the lump in her throat and nods, though she knows the Maki she sees now will fall apart. Her sister was about to break in front of her, and it brings a certain guilt that creaks in her bones as she guides her along. Maki walks with steadier steps the more they take, but Mai knows it won’t last long.
In the infirmary, the doors open to a grim sight, heads hanging low beneath the white lights above. Upon the entrance, Yuuji and Megumi turn, and their expressions shatter like glass at the sight of Maki clinging to Mai for support, branded across her arms beneath her shirt, and her calves beneath her pants. Her hair is loose and her glasses are gone, and it takes one look to know that her hope is too.
She knows.
Yuuji and Megumi block her path, but not to stop her. Yuuji immediately bows in front of her, his shoulders rigid, and Maki can see the bruises on his face and the tear stains that have barely dried. His voice comes out broken, quivering, a fractured young boy that can barely stand to look at Maki in the eyes.
“Maki-san, I’m so sorry. I tried, I-” Yuuji sobs, and his entire body shakes. Megumi puts a small hand on his back, willing him to continue. “She saved my life and I couldn’t save her! I’m so sorry!”
Maki’s throat tightens with every word and she can do nothing but pass her hand once through his hair. He chokes on a breath that turns into another sob, and Maki says nothing more. Maki lets Mai go and they part for her. Her steps are weaker and weaker the closer she gets to the metal table, and she sees a sight that would haunt her for the rest of her days.
Nobara is there, and the left side of her face is bandaged and bloody. Her cheeks are ashen like snow, lips pale and dried, and her fingers are dirty and knuckles are cracked. Maki can’t help but feel like gravity has pulled her down, and her scarred hand curves over Nobara’s cheeks. The warmth is long gone, the warmth that used to bloom rosy blushes paired with light giggles, the warmth she could feel on her lips in the morning when they would wake. It’s ice cold and Maki chokes over the burn in her throat.
The orange hair she loves blurs behind her tears, and the sound she lets out must be deafening because she can feel hands on her back trying to hold her together as she sinks on her knees. Nobara’s fingertips are tight in her hand, icy tendrils pressed to her forehead as she begs.
Maki-san, get a hold of yourself!
“Don’t go… don’t go…” she cries, her lip biting into her lip that it tears and bleeds. Nobara doesn’t respond, and she never would. The sound of her voice is already fading, leaving Maki to grasp at empty air. “You can’t leave, you can’t leave me alone. Please, please, please-”
Sis, I’m so sorry.
“You can’t die!”
The sobs take the rest of her breath and she’s shaking, not able to hold herself upright. One of her hands is in her hair, clutching at it so roughly to feel anything but the way her heart twists in its cage. She then tears at her own shirt, the burns protesting at the clawing motion, but it hurts. It hurts, it hurts, I can’t do this, I can’t-
Firm arms wrap around her but Maki thinks that it’s never been colder.
The world ends, and winter comes to stay.
Maki doesn’t remember how many days have passed. Mornings aren’t nearly as bright even as the sun taunts her overhead. The world plays a joke that tugs on her severed heart strings because it’s sunny at the funeral. Nobara lays in a bed of roses and it feels wrong to bury her this way, to bury her in the earth as if there were anything in the world that could hold Nobara down. Maki feels Mai clutch at her hand and Maki holds it in a vice grip. Her other hand is tucked in her pocket, fingernails digging crescents in her palms that bleed, and it feels like nothing.
She can hear Nobara’s grandmother wailing on the edge of the crowd, and Maki hangs her head low. She shouldn’t be burying her granddaughter, not like this.
It’s numb and it’s a nightmare, and it takes everything in her to not pull Nobara’s body away from the casket. To not cling to her for life, for a life that seems so fucking pointless now. She would rather be cursed, to live mindlessly if it meant she wouldn’t feel this way ever again. A twisting kind of pain that drives into every nerve, a constant lump in her throat that she can barely breathe through.
Maki doesn’t speak for a long time, they rarely see her come out of her room. If she does train, it’s at night in the seclusion of the dojo, and if they hear her cries echo off the walls, they say nothing about it.
She has nightmares, ones that leave her tossing all the sheets off the bed, and sweat soaking through her shirt. Her eyes pop open, and a soundless scream leaves her throat as she jolts up from her bed, hand outstretched at the image of Nobara that she almost had. She rubs furiously at the tears on her face that never go away, and curses beneath her breath.
“Damn it.”
It hurts to breathe, a constant pressure on her chest as a reminder of what she had lost. A hole left untouched, a void that grows with each passing day and the further Nobara goes away. Maki sighs into her hands, then runs her fingers exasperatedly through her hair, and sinks her head low into her knees.
She sniffles and reaches for her glasses, deciding there’s no way she will get back to sleep like this. When she slips on the glasses, she chokes at the immediate sight at the foot of her bed.
There’s a curse in her room.
It’s dark but she can see it clearly, the towering pitch black outline of a curse that looks like a human in nature, save for the glinting fangs and bare muscled body that gleams like steel. The tendrils that sprout from its head are orange, and only one eye on the right side of its face peeks at her. Scars of roses twirl up its arms, up to its neck, and over the left side of her face where an eye is missing.
On instinct, Maki reaches for her bedside table for a knife, sweaty palms grasping its handle. She freezes when she hears it speak.
“Maki-saaaaaan.”
Her face visibly pales and she looks back, her head whipping around. But there’s nothing there, the moon shining on the empty spot where the curse once stood. Maki starts breathing hard, and she clutches the front of her shirt to calm herself. It’s impossible but she knows, it wasn’t a mistake. The voice that once fulfilled her dreams that now haunts her nightmares echoed just seconds before.
“Nobara…?”
Maki goes on her first mission in months, and she insists to Gojo that she go alone. She can’t see the expression behind his blindfold, but she imagines that it’s a worrying one. She sighs, holding her weapon’s case a little tighter to her back. There’s a pastel pink bear charm on the zipper, a memento.
Now you can take a part of me on all your missions, Maki-san!
Maki speaks, “I won’t do anything stupid.”
Gojo relents and shrugs his shoulders. “Just be careful, alright?”
Maki doesn’t say anything as she turns for the escort car. It’s too much to bear, the way everyone looks at her as if she’s on the verge of breaking. In truth, she still was. But after that night, there was something she needed to confirm for herself.
In the backseat of the car, she can feel Ijichi’s eyes on her in the rear view mirror but she ignores it. She caresses the bear plush between her fingertips as she waits to arrive. Later, they come to a stop and Maki steps out of the car. It’s a grade one mission, something she always wanted to achieve and face. It feels bittersweet to come this far, feeling so empty.
After meeting Nobara, her dreams changed. Tearing down the Zenin clan and becoming a Grade 1 Sorcerer was just a bonus, in comparison. With Nobara, she felt like she could achieve even more than that, and be loved and accepted all at once. Having Nobara was her miracle.
Let’s tear down the Zenin clan, Maki-san! I’ll teach them not to mess with you!
She bids her goodbyes to Ijichi and walks into the curtain he creates. When the veil drops down completely, the monstrosity appears. After Shibuya, it barely speaks to the level of suffering she endured. Even as it stands tall, bloodthirsty with its treacherous grin, and mangled form, she doesn’t flinch. Her grip tightens on her spear and she launches forward with a deadly swing, and clips its arm. The curse screeches in pain and tries to jump at her. Maki ducks under its strike, putting space between her and the curse, and on the spot where it lands, she throws three kunais off her belt in bolting speed, each one landing into its back.
A feeling she’s never felt overwhelms her, blanketing her in an eerie warmth that reminds her of summer. On a whim, she stays where she is and makes no move to attack. The curse whirls around with a crazed look on its face and charges at her once again.
Maki doesn’t move, leaving herself wide open. Instead, she raises her hand and snaps her fingers, hearing the click echo beside her, along with another voice. A voice she thought she’d never hear again.
“Straw Doll Technique.” The kunais on the back of the curse begin to glow in a mixture of cursed energy. Maki stares at the spirit with a blank expression, watching the realization dawn on its face until a bittersweet smile breaks across her lips. “Hairpin.”
In a burst of darkness and light that illuminates the entire space of the veil, the kunais explode and the screech of the curse echoes through the courtyard, withering away into nothingness. As soon as it disappears completely, Maki sinks onto her hands and knees. Her hands grasp at the gravel below, fingernails digging into the dirt. She feels a gentle touch on her jaw and Maki looks up, and the sight is frightening, but it looks like her and sounds like her when it speaks.
“Maki-saaaan,” it calls, and it sounds sweet. Maki feels a tear stream down her face. “I love you.”
Then she remembers the first time Nobara spoke those words, and Maki can see the sun around her face, with gold streaks in her hair and stars in her eyes. The morning rises and she can hear the birds chirping in the windows, Nobara safe in her arms and warm beneath the blankets. I love you, Maki-san. I want to stay with you forever.
Maki hears her own words echo, even while staring at the curse, slack-jawed. Me too.
Maki reaches a hand out and her fingertips brush its face where the roses end. It’s surprisingly warm even though she knows this isn’t right. But for the first time in months, she smiles.
“I love you too, Nobara. Thanks for helping me,” Maki whispers and Nobara smiles, in a grin that’s so similar to her own it makes Maki’s heart ache.
She knows exactly what this is, no matter how much she loves her. It’s a curse through and through.
Maki slowly rises to her feet and dusts off her hands. She goes to tuck her spear back in its case and Nobara peeks over her shoulder, her eye focused on the bear that gets pulled along the zipper as Maki closes the bag.
She sounds happy when she speaks, “Daaate?”
Maki knows it’s wrong, but she doesn’t care. She shoulders her bag and looks towards Nobara, a small smile on her face. She nods and takes her hand, and squeezes her fingertips.
“Yeah, we can go on one,” she reassures.
The curse laughs brightly and disappears, but Maki knows she’s hovering at her back, with that cheesy grin on her face that she adores.
When Maki returns to the tech school, her friends are there to greet her, trying to play off as running their errands when in truth they were waiting for her. It’s Yuuta who sees her first and he freezes, immediately recognizing the situation. Maki doesn’t tremble and she stares back at all her friends, who have taken defensive stances at the sight of her.
She wants to laugh when she sees Yuuta’s dumbfounded look. She can feel the looming pressure on her back, and to her, it’s the warmest she’s felt in months. To them, it probably is a horrifying sight, a cursed spirit at her back that hovers in darkness.
“Maki-san, there’s a curse-” Yuuji begins.
Maki cuts her gaze to him, and it makes him pause at how steely it looks. “I know.”
She sees the cursed energy glow around his fists and Megumi moves his hands to form a sign to summon a shadow, and before she can say a word, Nobara reacts in a flare. From behind her, cursed energy radiates like a dark sun and her shadow expands to towering heights - the rose scars glowing a crimson red and her one eye glinting with rage.
“You won’t hurt, Maki-saaaan!” she seethes, and the cursed energy only rises and rises.
Yuuji’s eyes widen and his jaw drops along with Megumi’s. “K-Kugisaki?”
Maki takes a deep breath and turns, her hands placing a gentle touch on Nobara’s jaw. “Nobara, it’s fine. I’m okay.”
Nobara peers at her, and Maki wonders if she imagines the sadness she sees in her eye. “Maki-san… okay?”
She’s far from it. It hurts to lie to her like this, even in death. She wants to scream, to break and have Nobara take her to where she is. This cursed spirit is her, she knows that, and she knows it’s her fault. But she decided she really was weak, she wasn’t strong enough to live without her. Forgive me.
She lies, “Yeah, I’m okay. Calm down.”
Nobara accepts her answer and dissipates, not without a breeze that passes through Maki’s hair, as though she were playing with it like she used to. Maki sighs and turns to her friends whose arms have fallen limply at their sides. Yuuta walks forward first and Maki knows the look on his face.
“Maki-san… you know what this is,” he says carefully.
Maki nods, “I do.”
“So you have to let her go, free her and-”
“That’s rich coming from you, Yuuta,” Maki cuts in icily, crossing her arms indignantly over her chest. Yuuta winces and Maki softens, only slightly for being so harsh. Her head bows just slightly. “I know it’s my fault, Yuuta. It’s my fault, I did this because I can’t lose her, I just-” the sob makes her voice break and the line of her shoulders begins to tremble. “I love her and I can’t let her go.”
The tears stream hotly down her cheeks and she bites her lip to hold back the whimpers. It was insane, to want to be cursed just so she could hold onto any semblance of what she lost. To desire to be cursed if it meant she can hear her voice in an empty world, if she could hear the sound of her name on her lips again.
She feels Yuuta’s hand on her shoulder and through her tears, she looks up at him. His smile is kind when he squeezes it.
“We can be cursed together then,” Yuuta says. “You’re stronger than me, Maki-san.”
Her chest feels tight and there’s a wobble in her knees that she hides. She feels a ghostly touch on her hands that presses into her palm and slots between her fingers. Maki closes her eyes and Nobara is looking at her, tugging her hand along all around Tokyo, and Maki watches her blush when she tells her how pretty she is. She opens her eyes and the laugh echoes from deep within her heart.
She smiles weakly. “No, not really.”
Maki achieves her goal. Head of Clan, Zenin Maki, Special Grade Sorcerer.
She can’t say that it was all due to her own prowess, more so the fact that with Nobara as her curse, she was able to ascend to new heights. Nobara’s cursed energy courses through her veins and in combination with her heavenly restriction, there wasn’t a cursed spirit or sorcerer that could stand in their way.
She recalls a specific encounter with a special grade spirit, with the likeness of the flower cursed spirit, Hanami, that they fought so many years ago. Nobara is by her side in an instant with a taunting grin on her face that makes Maki snort.
“Maki-saaaan.”
Maki turns her head to face the curse, the one that doesn’t look quite like her, but has always been enough. “Yeah, Nobara?”
She makes a move to crack her knuckles and points menacingly at the cursed spirit ahead. “For your sake, let’s win!”
Even in death and drifting in the world of curses, she’s still ridiculous. Maki smiles and lets out a small chuckle. The shadow of Nobara towers over her from her back and Maki twirls her spear at her side, striking it downwards to ready herself. “Don’t say stuff like that.”
Day by day, she’s well aware that most of the things in her life she couldn’t achieve without her. But it’s been years since Nobara died, and Maki wonders if it’s time. She makes her way towards the sliding doors of the council room and one of her attendants calls after her.
“Clan Leader, where are you going?”
Maki rubs the back of her neck and sighs, then tucks her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “I’m going on a date.”
The attendants stare at her back, confused, but no one dares to question it.
The cemetery is the same as Maki remembers, and she greets a gravestone with a bouquet of flowers in hand. She sits cross legged in the grass, the sun shining on her face. For a moment, she takes off her glasses and tucks them away in her pocket, then places the flowers on the grave. A breeze blows by and Maki sighs.
She heard once that love was the greatest curse of all. No matter the reservations she faced with Nobara hovering over her the way she does, Maki thinks it’s all a lie. Nobara may be a cursed spirit but she is everything but those mindless monsters. She’s still kind (if only to her), a bit of a punk, and just as loud and dazzling as the day they met.
Another breeze passes and Maki breathes again, sending her grief with it. It still remains after all these years, but time has only made her learn to live with it. It never lightens, it never gets easier - Nobara is simply a part of her shadow, that pushes and pulls on her heart.
“Thank you,” she says into empty air.
The wind passes through the grass in waves of an emerald ocean around her. Without her glasses, she sees her and Maki’s smile is wide, though the tears are falling fast.
“Maki-san.”
Nobara is in front of her, in one of Maki’s sweaters that she always stole. It’s yellow like a dandelion field to match the smile on her face. Maki looks at her, her orange hair like silk and both eyes staring at her with unbridled love as she stands before her. She’s just as she remembers her and loves her, with a serene look on her face that Maki adores. Maki’s voice comes out breathlessly, watery. “Hey, you.”
In all her likeness, Nobara tackles Maki in a hug and Maki lets out a choked sob because she can feel her. Her arms are solid around her neck as Nobara holds her tight and her hair is soft between her fingertips, the scent of spring lingering. Maki embraces her fully, and laughs along with the giggles in her ear.
Nobara pulls away slightly and looks at her, and Maki just falls that much more in love. “Looks like you’re ready.”
Maki’s hand comes up to caress her cheeks and they tremble. More tears spill and she can feel Nobara’s fingertips brush them away. Nobara always let her be weak when she needed to be, and she sinks into that feeling once more. “Do you have to go?”
“I’ll always be with you. Thank you for letting me protect you all of these years. We sure kicked ass, huh?”
Maki laughs through her quiet cries and nods.
“I believe in you, Maki-san,” Nobara says softly. “I’m not going, I’ll just be waiting for you.”
“I love you,” Maki blurts out. Something she wanted to tell her before it was too late for her to hear. It stings endlessly, to watch her go again. But Nobara is smiling at her and she swallows the lump in her throat, to try and be brave.
“I love you too, Maki-san. It’s okay.”
Nobara ghosts a kiss over her lips and Maki holds her desperately. She can feel the outline of Nobara fading and she does her best to breathe, to not fall apart before her. Nobara deserves more than living her life as a curse, even if it was by her side. She’d do anything if it meant she would keep smiling like this.
Maki feels a pointed jab in her shoulder by one of Nobara’s fingers and the girl has a serious look on her face. “I’m going to be really mad if you join me too fast, got it?”
It’s Nobara’s turn to mirror Maki’s tears.
Maki picks up her hand that’s dissipating into the sunlight and brushes a kiss on the back of her knuckles. She lets Nobara see her smile before she goes. “Yeah, I know.”
Nobara fades into the heaven’s rays where she belongs and sends a wink before she disappears. “See you later.”
The roses dance freely on the grave. Maki looks up to the sky, her eyes gleaming like treasured gold as one tear falls underneath the clouds.
“See you.”