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Yuji can’t look at himself in the mirror some days. The two scars under his eyes feel like they could open at any second, revealing that a curse is still deep inside him. On days like these, he always looks at the sink when he brushes his teeth, and always brushes his hair out and throws it in a ponytail. Megumi always comes up behind him and fixes it.
Sometimes he can’t talk about Nanami, or even bear to look at Nobara’s eyepatch and scar. He avoids speaking of his parents. He never, ever talks about them. Only his grandfather.
He can’t go by his old school anymore. Yuji can see his two friends turning into curses whenever he blinks. He remembers how it felt to eat Sukuna’s finger and the sheer panic of having a curse take over. How it felt to be not in control anymore.
Yuji still cries about the people and curses alike he’s had to kill, he still grieves in his sleep. He ends up in the fetal position, folded in on himself and crying. Megumi has had to wake him up so many times from these violent nightmares. Yuji once said he saw Megumi get hurt over and over. Megumi couldn’t do anything but hold him and remind him that he’s here, Megumi’s here, and they’re together.
Megumi still sees Yuji falling over, and over, and over with a deep bloody cavity in his chest, in his nightmares and waking moments. He checks Yuji’s pulse every morning and lays his head on his chest to make sure the beating heart of the man he loves is still pumping.
He can’t remember much from his childhood. He remembers his cartoons, music, his father leaving, Tsumiki helping him with video game levels, his step mother’s death, and Gojo adopting him and his sister. Megumi can’t recall his life before the age of 11 like everyone else can. Or, at least, the parts that don’t haunt him like ghosts.
Megumi’s stress is always worse around Halloween. He’s prone to panic attacks due to his mind surfacing the memories of the deaths, injuries, the confusion, and stress. He always ends up in the same position, slumped against the wall or headboard with his head hanging.
Yuji and Megumi never go into Shibuya. It’s never brought up in discussion about places to go, and they will take the long way around to avoid the stations. They call in sick on October 31st. The events of that day play on a loop in their brains. It’s never ending, but it becomes manageable. Like background noise.
They both went to therapy, twice a week separately and one time a week together. Shoko advised them to after Yuji had a breakdown in front of his class of 2nd years (turns out there’s a group of retired sorcerers who proved mental health aid to current sorcerers). Sometimes the discussions were hard, and sometimes they would hurt, but they were stronger because of it.
Yuji and Megumi couldn’t escape from their traumas and their pasts, but they could make it more manageable for themselves and for each other.