Work Text:
“Choose your hell.” These are the peculiar words Gojo uses on that placid afternoon outside the crematorium.
Yuji’s grandfather is dead, there’s a murderer whispering in his ear, and the choice is easy.
He’s seen enough by then to know full well what he’s signing up for. The brutality and thanklessness of the job, all of it was laid bare that night on the school rooftop. Fushiguro’s blood-streaked face still floats like an apparition in his mind. Really, what kind of people send a 15-year-old to face off against a pair of shrieking, spitting monsters?
But to the jujutsu sorcerers, Fushiguro isn’t a kid and neither is Yuji. The instant he steps foot on Jujutsu High’s campus he senses this. He’s a tool. Something to be molded, whittled down to his most essential parts. And the rest of him? The rest of him is just scrap. In this equation there’s no room for weakness or childish mistakes.
In the shadowy, parallel world that is jujutsu society, it has always been this way. This is possibly the only thing of value Yuji learns in Foundational Texts, a first-year class that on paper appears to be taught by Gojo, though even Yuji knows he doesn’t have the patience for literature. Texts turns out to be a one-hour respite between grueling training sessions, a time for the three of them to take refuge in the dusty quiet of the library and half-heartedly pick through the required reading on their own. Ancient scrolls, treatises, codes of law, works of philosophy: each one echoes the same austere principles. Words like ‘honor’ and ‘sacrifice’ and ‘duty’ mark nearly every page.
“A sorcerer’s honor is won through blood,” Yuji reads from a 14th-century manuscript with dramatic flourish, puffing out his chest, and the other two roll their eyes at him. (It doesn’t work now, though sometimes, if he tries his hardest to make a fool of himself, he can coax a begrudging chuckle out of Fushiguro). They sit cross-legged on the dark lacquered floor of the library. Kugisaki has abandoned her assignment entirely in favor of filing her nails, while Fushiguro flips glumly through an encyclopedia of curses, only pausing to glance over the gruesome illustrations.
They treat this part of their studies with disdain, but before long, almost without being aware of it himself, Yuji begins to live by the mantras in earnest. He learns to dig his nails into the tender skin beneath his wrists to keep from crying out when he’s injured. He learns to soldier through every sort of failure his body threatens him with, to wield a cursed tool with a broken arm, to ignore the blood slicking his skin and the flicker of black at the edges of his sight. To give himself over to the fight entirely.
Fushiguro and Kugisaki have their own ways of coping with the demands of this new life. Kugisaki, with her bravado and brash anger, takes a perverse kind of pride in her scars. And Fushiguro—well, who knows what private solace he turns to when he grows quiet and sullen. What kind of anchor does he cling to? Yuji watches them and learns their tells. But they don’t talk about these kinds of things.
This is the hell they chose, isn’t it?
It’s true what the jujutsu philosophers say about pain, Yuji muses as he spars with Kugisaki one evening in a candlelit training room that smells like damp and death. The school has just acquired a powerful new cursed tool, an ebony staff with twirling vines and frolicing beasts carved into its gleaming surface. Kugisaki insists on being the first to try it out, and tonight Yuji is her unlucky dance partner. She’s already thrashed him on the shin, and with each step he takes the hurt blooms, grows sharper and more insistent. He imagines a delicate crack in the bone ripping open like a faultline. Pain rings through his body like discordant bells until his focus narrows and all he can think is win, win to make it stop. Kugisaki grins at him, her lip curling wolfishly. He sees blood staining her teeth and he knows she’s riding the same high. It’s true what they say about pain: with skill, it can be harnessed.
But why suffer needlessly? Sukuna drawls from his throne.
I’m going to suffer no matter what. “Might as well,” he grunts through gritted teeth, ducking under the staff as it comes swinging for his skull. “Get something out of it.” He manages to grab hold of the cursed tool, and with an excruciating kick to her torso, wrenches it out of Kugisaki’s hands and sends her slamming against the wall. Right then his leg finally gives out with a sickening crack. He limps to Ieiri’s office and Sukuna laughs and laughs and laughs all the way there.
He thought he was strong because he can forget his own mortality, because he can aim his fists at anything and everything without a second thought, because he’s had his heart ripped out of his body, for god’s sake. And then he watches dumbly as Junpei bloats and contorts before him, stands uselessly by as the life slips out of him, and he realizes that this—well, this is another matter entirely.
“Itadori. You okay?”
Yuji falters when Fushiguro finds him alone for the first time since his resurrection. He comes close to telling him the truth, all of it, but then he remembers the unspoken set of rules that binds the three of them. What do the philosophers say again? Weakness is a scourge. Pain is a weapon. He’s not even sure why Fushiguro’s asking in the first place.
He forces an unconvincing smile and brushes away the question. But Fushiguro is persistent, keeps those dark eyes trained on him for what feels like ages. When he looks at him like that, Yuji has the reckless urge to ignore everything the higher-ups have taught them and admit what has been true since the very beginning: that he is weak.
Instead, he lies. Of course he’s alright. “Okay, then,” Fushiguro answers warily, and Yuji lets out a breath when he finally releases him from his gaze.
Fushiguro is right to be skeptical. The truth? The truth is, the night after the incident he’s awakened by a crushing weight bearing down on his limbs. At the foot of his bed a hulking shadow stands watching him. He recognizes it—him—by his silhouette. Junpei. His mouth chokes on empty air. He cannot look away. Something flashes in the moonlight and he sees that Junpei is crying like he did in his last moments. He might be there for minutes, hours—Yuji can’t be sure.
The mad chaos of the exchange event wipes his mind clean for a while. Soon, though, Junpei resumes his visits. Is it revenge, Yuji wonders? His punishment for being so utterly powerless while Mahito brought him down with one flick of his wrist? Junpei never utters a word to indicate his intentions, though, just stands hunched before Yuji, his misshapen shadow pooling over the blankets.
He keeps quiet. He lets the rhythm of school pull him along. He focuses on rules and routine. And every night, when he can’t delay it any further, he returns with dread to his room, climbs into bed, and waits for Junpei to come. If this is his punishment, he accepts it with as much grace as he can muster.
Once, he had precise control over the cursed energy that emanates from him. Now it flares out one moment and sputters and fails the next, like a lighter on its last legs. The worst is when sometimes, for a split second, he’s sure that he’s lost his hold on it entirely.
“You know, I was hoping to see more improvement from you this semester, Yuji,” Gojo remarks lightly one day, cocking his head. He says this in front of the others, who are tactful enough to pretend as though they don’t hear.
So he trains harder, longer, more recklessly. Yet the more he pushes himself, the more his body, in some sort of cruel protest, refuses to cooperate any further. Sometimes he’s too much of a coward to give into sleep at all, and spends the entire night swinging at imaginary enemies or aimlessly wandering the far reaches of the school grounds.
One morning he wakes to the vivid blue of dawn pressed up against the window and thinks, deliriously, that he’s lost at sea. How else to explain the eerie cast of the room, its gentle see-saw sway? Or is it his brain that’s rocking back and forth within his skull? The mass of sheets around him is soaked with sweat and he’d like nothing more than to plunge himself into that mountain spring that Panda showed him, but he pulls on his uniform instead. Today a renowned alumna of Jujutsu High is returning from abroad, and the principal has planned a formal welcome for her.
Outside, fog spools between the trees like wisps of cotton. The others are already lined up in the central courtyard that bisects campus. They look like little toy soldiers with their hands clasped behind their backs. As he moves to take his place across from Fushiguro, he finds that his brain seems to be drifting behind his body. The early morning light imbues everything with a strange sense of unreality.
“Wow, you look like shit,” Kugisaki whispers from beside him. He opens his mouth to respond but can’t find a suitable comeback, and then a limousine glides to a stop at the gate and they all straighten and fall quiet.
Principal Yaga greets the sorceress and introduces the rest of them with a dismissive wave of his hand. As soon as he’s ushered her away to her room, Yuji ducks around the side of a nearby classroom, slumps against one of its columns and sinks to the ground. He tugs at the hood of his uniform, sighing when the cool air rushes up against his feverish skin. A scuffing noise sounds from ahead. Lifting his head to see who it is suddenly seems like an insurmountable feat.
“What’s going on?”
He doesn’t answer—he just needs a moment to collect himself. But Fushiguro is already drawing close, too close, and for a surreal moment Yuji is sure he’s about to strike him. Instead he crouches down and peers at him so intently it feels as if his skin is itching. When he presses the back of his hand to his forehead, Yuji can only blink dazedly.
“You can’t go to class like this,” Fushiguro says. “Come on. I’ll tell the principal you’re ill.”
At the sound of those words, Yuji forces himself to his feet, rolling his shoulders as if he can throw off the fatigue like a heavy coat. But the ground feels unsteady and it’s rushing up to meet him and Fushiguro’s hands have darted out to catch him by the shoulders.
“No,” Yuji says. “Don’t tell him that. Tell him...tell him…” He waits for an excuse that never arrives. A vision comes to him of Principal Yaga glaring down at him from behind his sunglasses and reciting some archaic jujutsu regulation about getting sick without permission. The punishment: another execution. Two executions—could that be possible, for people who really screw up?
Fushiguro’s fingers are digging into the thick wool of his jacket. He’s saying something that sounds urgent. Little droplets of dew have collected in his hair, and they glimmer at Yuji like spider eyes. Each frenzied beat of his heart seems to send another unbearable wave of heat melting over him.
“Hey. Listen to me!” Fushiguro is getting impatient. With effort, Yuji pulls himself back to the present. “They can’t fault you for this. It’s out of your control.”
“Everything is under our control, in the end,” Yuji mumbles.
“Huh? What are you going on about?” Something about Fushiguro’s matter-of-fact tone cuts through the haze clogging his thoughts, and the absurdity of the situation begins to take shape. Even sorcerers must get sick sometimes, he decides. So he stops fighting and lets Fushiguro drape an arm over his shoulders and lead him back to the dormitory.
Once the door clicks shut softly and they’re enclosed in the safety of his room, his hand flies to the button at his collar. His sweaty fingers fumble helplessly until Fushiguro pushes them aside with an impatient sigh.
“Here.” Fushiguro unfastens the jacket and slips it off his form, then starts on the rumpled shirt beneath it. Yuji is too exhausted to feel any sort of shame, just sits slackly at the edge of the bed while Fushiguro’s sure hands efficiently strip the rest of his clothing away.
Each brief point of contact Fushiguro’s fingers make with his wrists, his collarbones, the backs of his knees—it’s almost more than he can bear. He thinks about what it might feel like to press himself flush against the broad plane of his chest. It would draw the heat right out of him like poison, he’s sure of it.
For now, all he can do is collapse onto the mattress and kick away the covers.
Fushiguro sets a glass of water on the nightstand. “You’ll be alright while I’m gone?” It takes all of Yuji’s strength not to throw away his pride then and there and plead with him to stay. He nods.
“I’ll be back.” Fushiguro takes a few steps toward the door, then pauses and sends Yuji with a warning glance. “Don’t get out of bed. Try to sleep. If not for yourself, then for me.”
For him? Fushiguro must know in that gloomy head of his that Yuji would do almost anything for him. He’s not sure how to feel about this revelation. But, dutifully, he closes his eyes and waits for the telltale signs of Junpei’s arrival: the nauseating rush, the sensation that his limbs are coated in iron. But they never come. In fact, when he wakes hours later, he has the uncanny impression that he’s emerged from a deep, dreamless void, almost like that brief moment he spent hovering between life and death. It’s disorienting.
Fushiguro has drawn the desk chair up to his bed. When Yuji shrugs away the blankets that have been tucked practically up to his chin, he looks over and clears his throat. “You were shivering.”
Yuji suddenly notices the goosebumps peppering his shoulders. “Thanks,” he says, his voice creaking like a rusty hinge. He takes the steaming bowl of broth that Fushiguro presses into his hands, watching the murky surface contemplatively. His appetite has vanished but he senses from Fushiguro’s glare that a threat is imminent and makes a show of swallowing a few spoonfuls.
“Kugisaki asked after you,” Fushiguro says. “Class is quiet without your constant questions.”
“And the principal?” He sets the bowl on the nightstand.
“Let you off the hook for the next few days.”
“I’ll be fine by tomorrow,” Yuji says weakly. He knows it’s a promise he can’t keep, but he needs Fushiguro to know that this is just a temporary lapse. He’s been enough of a burden already.
Fushiguro narrows his eyes. “Pushing yourself past your limits isn’t noble, you know. It’s just stupid.” Yuji watches as he flexes his hand, then curls it into a tight fist. “And selfish,” he says more softly. “You ever think about how I feel, seeing you like this?”
“It’s what they expect of me. I chose this life, didn’t I?” He had meant to sound resolute, but the words sound like those of a child, desperate for reassurance.
A sharp burst of mirthless laughter escapes Fushiguro, then extinguishes itself just as suddenly. When he looks at him, Yuji is surprised to see pity in his eyes, plain as day. He reaches out to brush his hand against his cheek and Yuji feels like his heart has been wrenched out all over again. “Hell of a choice you had.”