Work Text:
There were two times in your life that made you regret meeting Itadori Yuji.
Itadori was such a warm and illuminating light to your existence from the moment you met him. The simple figure of his always candid smile could set your skin on fire, leaving you with a saccharine taste on your tongue that had no logical origin. His ever present kid-in-a-candy-store laugh danced through your ears like the ethereal chime of fairy bells, echoing within the silence of your mind even when you found yourself alone.
You two had clicked instantaneously when Megumi had introduced you, much to the dark themed boys chagrin. It was as if two pieces of a puzzle you both didn’t know needed to be solved fell into place, finding yourselves fitting effortlessly into the free time of each other lives.
Your personalities worked in tandem, annoyingly so to anyone else in the vicinity as you both seemed to feed into each other’s most exaggerated and loud qualities.
You both would convulse in laughter until everything hurt or one of you dropped to the floor and the eyes around you would roll.
You both would tumble around wrestling no matter the setting and when it was obvious not one of you was going to give, those watching would have to step in, fearing the possibility of more property damage.
You both would turn towards each other with devilish grins, no words actually spoken as if your eyes meeting was conversation enough, and everyone would run because god knows what dumbass telepathic plan the disastrous dynamic duo had thought up this time.
The bond was raw, spontaneous and downright comfortable. A connection which you never knew you needed until you met him.
The two of you weren’t dating but you and the entire universe knew that was exactly where your relationship was headed. It was by no means a secret how disgustingly into each other you were. You were in the cute and blushing sweet spot of first love while greedily eating up everything you could possibly learn about one another.
At that point, the idea of your relationship with that puppy of a boy becoming regrettable was the last thing you would find yourself thinking.
But you held no qualms with regretting ever meeting the blindfolded tree who had the empathic range of a literal toenail.
You had been on an overseas mission with said apathetic twig when it had happened.
Gojo’s favor for you had grown rapidly and without complaint from any other party. No one had a mental capacity sufficient enough to handle him as well as you could, all more than happy to dub you his resident student chaperone.
Although you were a first year like your closest friend and classmates, you were labeled a second grade sorcerer who was only inches from becoming a semi-first grade. Your abilities almost put you on par with Todo Aoi, having landed a good few hits on the uniquely motivated boy before. You could even (and had) beat Maki in a sparring match a handful of times. Another purpose for your constant presence with your teacher; your undeniable strength.
A few days into the mission you were working with Gojo, it was impossible for you—who had been around him even more routinely than Megumi—to miss his facial expression changing just a hair when he’d read a specific text on his phone. It was made plainly obvious something important happened when he made you both burn rubber, practically sprinting full marathon style through the rest of your responsibilities. You had assumed whatever made his naturally carefree and irksome expression fall even just the slightest was pushing him to get home as soon as you could.
Not that he told you what the reason was and not that he'd answer truthfully if you asked.
When you arrived back at Jujutsu Tech, your oh-so-sweet Sensei had literally dropped you off on the sidewalk outside of one of the school buildings and disappeared before you even hit the pavement.
You grumbled loudly, cursing the empty space your teacher left behind as you picked yourself off of the dirty concrete and dusted off any dirt and dust from your civilian clothing.
A familiar but uncharacteristically small and surprised voice spoke your name from in front of you, officially ripping you away from the previously compiled list of 101 Ways to Wring Gojo Satoru’s Neck you were running through in your head.
“Oh, Megs! Nobara-bara!” You cheered, ecstatic to see familiar people who weren’t white haired, blindfolded or sweet stealers.
With an exaggerated skip in your step you made your way towards the stairs your friends sat on, head twisting from side-to-side in search of the missing link. “Where’s Yuji? I got you all some souvenirs! Actual souvenirs, not the half eaten shit Gojo brings back.” You lifted up the bag in your hand, shaking it playfully.
It was atypically silent before your view landed on them once more. Shock was evident on Nobara’s face—wide eyes and mouth parted—before she looked towards Megumi, making you quirk your head to the side. But then Megumi’s eyebrows pulled in and his hair shadowed over his eyes. You stopped your approach.
Oh, he’s mad mad.
“Gojo…” it came out as more of a growl and your eyebrows raised at the continuous peculiarity you were witnessing. “He didn’t tell you?”
A snort resounded in an attempt to diffuse whatever situation was causing the stir of negativity. “When does that man ever remember to tell anyone anything? So, what is it the tree didn’t tell me?”
The two looked towards each other followed by a simultaneous and silent drop of heads.
Before you could question what the fuck was so captivating about the floor, another familiar voice appeared from behind, startling you into a little jump. “Oi, Megumi! Is this a wake or something? What’s up with those looks?”
“Maki! Makiiii!” You twisted your neck a bit more to notice Panda and Inumaki hiding behind the cement slab you were kindly deposited next to moments before. “Do you really not know why they are acting like this?! One of the new first year students actually died yesterday!”
The bag of souvenirs dropped with a crinkling thud before your head whipped back around towards Megumi and Nobara, both of which continued to refuse meeting your eyes. Their active avoidance spoke volumes and everything around you seemed to come to an abrupt halt as your mind began to connect dots while concurrently refusing to believe the conclusion.
Your heartbeat grew deafening in your ears.
Words were leaving the mouths of the second years but you couldn’t hear a sound.
The brim of your vision began to blur.
Soon everything was obscured.
Your throat began to tighten involuntarily.
You couldn’t breathe.
The tips of your fingers began to tingle. Then your toes. Then your lips.
Everything converged into numbness.
No.
Yuji had to be in the cafeteria stuffing his cheeks like a chipmunk or watching that anime I practically forced him to start last week but he ended up seriously enjoying or… Or… No. He has to be somewhere.
Anywhere.
The silence you fell into brought the first year's previous evasion to a halt, finally looking at you in full. You were eerily expressionless, something entirely uncommon towards your known character. No one could see what was happening inside of your thoughts as you stood completely mute, void of any clues as to your state of mind.
Your name was on the tip of Megumi’s tongue but was cut short as every pair of eyes were captured by the unexpected rampage of cursed energy that exploded from within you, knees buckling into the ground. A crater formed beneath the uncontrolled force, concrete cracking down the sidewalk towards all who were present. The face you wore was still frightfully empty, the only sign of feeling now being the overflowing force surrounding your toppled form and the quiet tears that began to rain down your cheeks in waves.
All were still stuck in bewilderment.
Megumi was the first to act, shooting up from his place on the stairs on instinct to reach you before you could begin to hurt yourself with the power of your output. He coated his body with his own energy in an offensive manner but as he crossed the threshold of the dense wild fury of green’s and yellow’s surrounding you, it felt as if he was pushing through a raging body of water—the current becoming thicker, more forceful the closer he got to your motionless body.
It was quite the spectacle, to see someone completely devoid of emotion and movement surrounded by a contradicting flurry of explosive colors. Even more unnerving considering no one has ever seen you as anything other than lighthearted and entertaining, poking fun at those close to you and feigning hurt when they did the same back. This was never something a single person that had spent time around you ever expected to experience.
You had thoroughly, utterly, completely lost it.
As Megumi reached your figure collapsed in the concrete it felt as if a myriad of tiny needles were addressing his skin, your cursed power unsurprisingly overriding his own. But he wouldn’t stop.
You two had known each other the longest out of the group of four that made up the first years. He’d even go as far as to call you his closest friend. And to see you breaking right before his eyes broke a part of him in turn. Megumi felt the urge to demolish their thoughtless teacher for sending you there without giving you the news that the person you had so obviously adored was murdered. And not simply murdered—murdered by the curse that resided within himself.
It was blindingly obvious what was going on between you and Itadori. Disregarding the public aspect of both adoration’s, you gushed regularly to Megumi behind closed doors and Yuji to Nobara, who both sequentially converged to talk shit. Those two knew more than they’d like to admit about the amount of space you and Yuji held for the other in your hearts.
Neither Nobara nor Megumi knew how you’d act when you got back to Tokyo, both well believing you’d already been made aware of the situation. They felt unbounded guilt for not being able to save their classmate. It was eating at them from the inside out. And they feared facing you for the same reason. But those fears were pushed away at the sight of your current state.
Megumi needed to calm you down.
Your cursed energy began to splinter through your muscles, slowly tearing at the fibers, ripping you apart from the inside out brutally. Blood began to drop from your nose, diluted by the tears but you didn’t notice. You didn’t feel a single thing until a foreign almost bone snapping pressure was clenched around your upper body. With the awareness of outside stimulus, you began to feel the wetness down your cheeks, slowly becoming lucid.
When… When did I start crying?
Your completely darkened vision now faded into fuzzy reality. There was an opaque and blurry figure wrapped around you, surrounded by frenzied green and yellow ripples. Another four figures stood a good distance away from you but you couldn’t see who it was or begin to process who they were before your downfall. But then soft vibrations resonated from the thing wrapped around you. You assumed it was talking but you still didn’t hold the ability to hear anything.
Bit by bit, you began to see clearly. Hear clearly. The new sensation pulling you slightly out of the abyss.
You began to recognize it. It was Megumi. Your friend Megumi. Megumi was holding you.
His arms held you crushingly close to his own body as he talked into your ear. Only words broken from their sentences could be made out. “…breath… out… okay… please… hurt… sorry… Toge!”
Inumaki didn’t need Megumi to explain why he called for him as he unzipped the jacket that buried his mouth, calling out your name.
“Calm down.”
All of the muddled colors of your curse engulfing you and the dark haired boy began to disintegrate. You were able to move your empty and swollen eyes once again and your ears that went deaf slowly began to buzz with the sudden impact of full hearing. The feeling of broken cement painfully pressing into your folded legs and the soreness of the muscles that had begun to tear hit you in its entirety, letting out a loud grunt in pain as you leaned your head onto the shoulder in front of you. Megumi felt a wave of relief fall over him now that you had finally moved, beginning to show some semblance of feeling outside of the hushed tears.
He had yelled at Nobara earlier in the ordeal to find a teacher that was not Gojo, so she was no longer watching the scene. But the second years stood around not quite sure what else to do. Still in a state of silenced bafflement.
“Meg-Megumi,” your voice was so broken. So pained. Your friend’s relief disappeared as quickly as it grew. “It hurts… so much.”
“I’m sorry,” his voice sounded through you remorsefully with your name. “I’m so sorry.”
You didn’t have the function to tell Megumi you didn’t blame him. No, you didn’t blame him at all. You were the one that wasn’t there. You weren’t able to protect Yuji because, why? Because you were out having a grand ol’ time in a completely different country living it up with Gojo while the boy you held close to your heart had lost his life.
You didn’t need to know why or how it happened. You just knew you weren’t there.
No. You didn’t blame Megumi at all. Not him. Not Nobara. You blamed yourself.
That was the first time you felt regret for meeting Yuji simply because it hurt so badly. But as quickly as that thought came, so did the disgust with yourself for letting such a notion take a place in your mind. It was pushed away into the boiling pit of your stomach the moment it made itself known.
—
Two months passed since Yuji had died.
You found out what exactly happened a few hours after your meltdown as you sat in your bed to recover from the strain the absurd amount of cursed output had given your body. Megumi had to explain it all as he laid next to you with a gentle hand placed on your head.
At the time you couldn’t move or so much as speak from the physical pain and emotional distress. So when Gojo had timidly tiptoed into your room obviously expecting a not so positive reaction, he was not only met with absolute jarring shock at the state his student was in but also a kick to the ribs Megumi had given him on behalf of you both.
For you because so much trauma could have been avoided simply by approaching the news properly.
For himself because he was put into the position of messenger and savior ignorantly, forced to bear witness to the literal destruction of yourself.
You wouldn’t have the mind to act on anger towards the way Gojo handled the situation, the man predicted that much. Which is why he walked into your room without his protective barrier. That was a miscalculation. Megumi was with you, very much not bedridden or lacking in emotional capacity.
But everything was back to normal. For the most part.
The Tokyo and Kyoto students had just begun gathering around to… greet one another, the only person missing being Gojo.
Since that day two months ago, you had been adorned in monotony. Your usual heart-on-your-sleeve expressions were completely void. Gone was your optimism and cheerfulness.
You had worked yourself to the bone in the past months earning the rank of a semi-first grade sorcerer. Although you still felt an insane amount of guilt, a lot of anger was directed at the heads of the Jujutsu Community. That was a big reason you worked so hard to move up the ranks outside of the obvious attempt to keep your thoughts at bay by drowning in work.
You still trained. You still fought curses. You didn’t stop your life. But everything was different. You were different.
But while standing amidst the group of students and teachers, the boy you had believed to be dead—believed to have had his heart ripped out of his chest—appeared before everyone.
When the friend Megumi saw die with his own eyes popped out of the moving box Gojo had wheeled in followed with a stupid fucking punchline that normally would have you chocking in laughter, you stared glazed and heart pounding from that back of the crowd of Tokyo students.
His usual exuberant demeanor was completely intact, heart very much still in his chest as if nothing had happened. As if nothing had changed.
Everyone stared at him dumbfounded, confused.
The few witnesses to your literal mental breakdown watch from the corner of their eyes with bated breaths half expecting you to lose yourself in a storm of green and yellows once again. It was painfully silent, you staring dazed at the inconceivable presence before you.
There was no manual titled ‘How to React When the Boy You Severely Cherished Who Was Supposed to be Dead Returns’.
Is there a proper way to act in a situation like this?
What were you supposed to do?
What were you supposed to say?
Do you smile?
Do you cry?
Do you praise the gods he’s actually alive?
Those who looked your way watched as Gojo popped up behind your statued figure, placing a heavy hand on your shoulder.
To him this was a good moment. A moment where you should have been feeling happy or complete relief now that the cause of your personality change was no more. He was ready for you to be you again. And he had just wheeled in the one thing he believed could do that. So your teacher, your oh-so emotionally simpleminded teacher, wasn't using his protective shield in the approach of his favorite student and mission partner.
That was his mistake.
Mouths attached to the eyes glued on you gasped in a multitude of severity, everyone who wasn’t looking before quickly following the sentiments. In the blink of an eye the blindfolded man was thrown over your shoulder, his back hitting the ground with a small ‘umph’ passing his lips, splintered cracks forming in the wake of your sheer force.
He knew about this. About all of it. And he knew what had happened to you. He knew a piece of the dearest student he’d love to drag around on his own assignments had disappeared along with the life of Itadori. He knew.
God… he knew and did absolutely… nothing.
You couldn’t define the bubbling blurred manifestation filling your being.
Were you feeling bittersweet? Enmity? Pure rage? Misery? Hatred? Relief?
Either you were feeling it all at once or nothing at all.
Not once did your eyes leave Yuji’s figure. The action you made caused a break in the group where Gojo now laid on the floor leading to Itadori’s posed form, putting you in his view for the first time in two months.
He called out to you. The hint of a question to your name displayed his uncertainty.
Your actions didn’t match what Itadori grew to learn about you. The look in your eyes was practically dead in comparison to the last time he saw you.
You had waved animatedly with a toothy grin, bouncing on the balls of your feet as you walked backwards, off to play chaperone. The contradiction to then and what he just witnessed threw him off completely. He expected surprise and shock, sure. But this? You were never violent outside of doing your job or the playful spirit in which you hit the back of Gojo’s head whenever he was being bodaciously irritating. Yuji loathed the way you were looking at him. His stomach churned with an uncomfortable figure. Before, you’d look towards him sparkling, awe-inspired and filled with simply sweet curiosity.
Now there was nothing.
The childlikeness of the voice believed to only remain present in the camera roll of your phone fell onto you with the force of Maki’s fighting staff.
Your breath caught in your throat.
This is real.
This building series of shock continued when everyone watched you appear in front of the pink haired boy in an instant. There was little time for due process before an enclosed fist connected with his gut… hard. And when stooped over from the unexpected pain, mouth spitting from the force of your punch, he felt your hands flank in soft familiarity around the pink of his head. The gentleness you held him was discredited when your knee slammed up into his face, your hold releasing to allow him ample space to fly back.
You still couldn’t understand what you were feeling.
Todo whistled at the spectacle. Mai cackled. All else watching in arrant disbelief at your reaction to the alive boy. What the hell were they supposed to do in such a situation? Stop you? No one had the heart to do such a thing.
“Itadori.”
It fell out placid and empty, your voice negating the violent actions previously taken. He cringed at the word as he situated into a sitting position from where he landed, hand to nose in hopes to dull the sharp aching.
It wasn’t broken. You’d gone easy on him.
The first and last time you called him by his surname was the day you had met him. He gladly gave you permission not to use it when you insisted on him calling you casually.
When your lips parted once more no sound came out. You closed your eyes in conquest of your brain fighting itself with the words to say. Letting out a defeated sigh you spun heavily on your heels and left him behind, speed walking through the still parted group of people and on top of Gojo who had dutifully stayed in place after realizing how perturbed you truly were. His barrier was active but he gave a gruff heave to placate you when feet met his protected chest.
The destination was unknown but you moved quickly as if to say otherwise. Your classmates could explain the rules of the exchange event to you later, the situation was becoming too much to bear too quickly. There wasn’t a single coherent thought—words and emotions jumbled together in the oppressive weight of your head. You had to actively stay conscious of your breathing in fear of losing yourself for a second time.
Some knew a conversation needed to be held between you and Itadori while others held childish hope to see him doubled over from your strength once again. In response to such, no one attempted to stop one of the objects of your violence when he pushed himself from his place on the concrete and took off after you.
Concern burned through his veins at your retreating figure. He abhorred the empty way you met his eyes, the uncharacteristic slump in your shoulders, the dip of your chin and the daunting weight of the breath you left behind when you turned away from him. That was not the you he knew nor the you expected to see when he came back. He needed to say something to you. Anything.
Running footsteps approached you from behind, a hectic voice resounding your name persistently in hopes you’d choose to stop. It took little time for him to catch up, prompting your movements to still when arms wrapped tightly around your waist as his face pressed firmly into the crook between your neck and shoulder.
He took in a shaky breath, squeezing you close. You still smelled the same. Like clean linen and rain. The familiarity he’d been waiting for made his heart tighten.
His voice came barely above a whisper. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you.”
There was no way to tell how much time passed before you spoke. But that was okay. He would wait as long as he needed to.
“How long?” Your voice fell more pathetically than you intended.
His grip tightened microscopically. “W-what?”
Words clipped and steady. “How. Long... Have you been alive?”
“… two months.”
You fell into silence once more, Itadori growing impossibly uneasy with every passing second. It was after a few moments he realized you weren’t breathing, actively holding your breath making your body impossibly still against his grip. Instinct kicked in and you were forcibly spun around, calloused hands grasping the sides of your face. Brown eyes met your tear blurred vision and he audibly sucked in a piercing breath.
“Fuck,” thumbs smeared against the warm liquid. “Fuck, I-I’m so sorry. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”
Cognitive functions began to stir within you, confused tears turning into burning anger on your cheeks. It was abrupt, the change in demeanor, and entirely staggering. The palm of your hands reached his chest as you pushed him back, the absence of warmth from his touch leaving you almost regretful of the action. You missed him so much it pierced through the part of your chest you believed was empty but you were so unbearably pissed you refused to let it sway you.
With a rough wipe of your sleeve over your eyes you began a tempered descent on him, all of the emotions that had been locked out finally seemed to slip through the cracks of the weak barrier built from avoidance.
“For as long as I- for as long as we have been mourning you,” you met his own submissive gaze with wide offensive eyes. Your voice wasn’t raised, remaining ominously calm besides the minuscule scornful bite of your stressed words. “For as long as we’ve had to adjust to our lives without you in it, you were what? Playing hide and seek with Gojo and eating kikufuku?” Another drop slipped from your eyes, one of his previously fallen hands came up gently to swipe it away once more.
Itadori’s guilt was painfully evident, his bottom lip pulled between his teeth and eyebrows drawn so tight they almost touched. It was a knife to his heart to know he was the reason for your tears.
His touch was so tender, so remorseful against your heated face. His presence, his warmth… you wanted to placate your anger because of it but that just proved to confuse your already disordered sensibilities.
“You do understand, Itadori, that while you had the luxury of knowing you could be with the people you care about again, we had to live believing we would never be able to see you… for the rest of our lives. I had to live with that,” your voice began to crack as its volume rose but it went unnoticed by you. “And you…” A tight hand fisted the uniform jacket before you, chin dropping until the object of your desire and instability wasn’t in view. “You want to literally, literally, pop up like absolutely nothing happened? Did Gojo even tell you what happened to me? What I did to myself unknowingly? I ripped through every useless fiber of my body. I nearly tore my fucking self apart from the inside out when I found out you died! And I- I didnt even know it was happening… fuck! When I couldn’t process that you had-!” An uneven breath left your lips, eyes squeezing painfully closed as continued much more faintly in pure defeat. “I had to keep on living while getting used to the person I had fallen for so quickly being gone forever.”
“I know that now and I’m so sorry. If Gojo Sensei hadn’t told me-”
“Fuck that oversized tooth brush,” you inturrupted with little bite to your words. “Don’t bring up that traitor unless it’s to plan his funeral.”
The boy who took in your explosive rant kindly, snorted, nudging your chin with his hand that never left, willing you to look up at him. You only lifted your eyes just enough to meet his own. They were exactly how you remembered. Affectionate. Cordial. Incredibly bright.
During the past two months you had thought once or twice about how you would react if you could see Yuji again, never once thinking it would actually happen. You believed you would be absolutely relieved, completely ecstatic to have the only person you’ve ever held such affection for back. That obviously isn’t what happened.
Your mind screamed to continue on in your overbearing anger, to make him feel as close to your pain as humanly possible for what you dealt with in his dead absence. But you were looking up at something—someone—who not minutes before ceased to exist. And having already punched, kneed, cried and yelled, all that was left behind was… wanting.
“If there was a way I could have been with you guys without the threat of being targeted again and you all getting caught up in the crossfire-”
That took your attention, head shooting up to meet him in full. “Targeted? Who the fuck is targeting you? Did they cause this? I’ll fucking rip their di-”
A soft and prolonged kiss to the space between your eyebrows cut your words off effectively. “I’ll tell you everything later. Just… listen.” His forehead dropped against yours, breath fanning your face as he continued.
“If there was a way to be with you safely I would have chosen it in a heartbeat. Please understand how much I wanted to see you again. It obviously wasn’t anywhere close to what you were put through but it got harder everyday I didn’t get to be with you. There were too many times I nearly gave up safety entirely so I could see you again. I’m sorry I showed up completely ignorant to how you would feel.” Hands grazed down the length of your arms, stroking thoughtfully against your palms before engulfing them in his own, pulling them to his lips for another two gentle kisses. “I won’t ask for much, just please… don’t hate me… Oh!” The sudden raise in his voice surprised you, brows raising in question. “Also, please don’t call me Itadori anymore. Scream at me. Even punch me again if you want to! But I really can’t stand to hear you call me that.”
You pondered on his comment for a few moments, nodding in silent understanding.
Your expressed sentiment made the brilliant toothy grin you yearned for spread boyishly over Yuji’s features. Sliding your hands from his grasp, one lifted to run longingly through the pink tufts of his hair. He leaned into it greedily though it lasted for only a moment before you landed another solid punch to the previously assaulted gut of the boy you knew you loved dearly.
The regret you felt for meeting Itadori lasted longer in the second coming but it vanished just the same in the end.