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There’s a coldness that swims all around Yuuji, rising up from under his back and saturating through clothes and skin and the very marrow of his bones. It cools his soul, shrivels it till it’s nothing more than a pitiful little shade of its former glory.
A wounded bird fluttering broken wings in a drowning cage.
Someone laughs, so close and far that for a moment Yuuji thinks he’s going insane. Which couldn’t be true, because he’s dying. He can’t go insane just as he dies, this is the part in the movies where someone holds him tenderly and whispers soft, warm things and tethers him to the mortal plane before his consciousness slips away.
“We both know you don’t believe in that anymore.”
Heavy lids blink and Yuuji tries to smile, finally recognizing the timber of his ghost. “Sukuna,” he mumbles, closes his eyes and welcomes the escape into a sanctuary that’s crumbling and bowing at the seams.
The king of curses stands at the base of a sinking pile of skulls. Only his profile is visible to Yuuji as he impassively watches the fixture burble and slump into the abyss beyond.
Here, there is no feeling of exhaustion and no static to drag at Yuuji’s joints like marionette strings.
So he walks- runs to Sukuna, shedding any pretense of a grudge or feud when his death is finally here and ready to drag them apart forever.
Sukuna turns just in time to catch him, slides hands and long nails along his tattered clothing and laughs again, this time crystal clear. Thousands of words swell inside Yuuji’s lungs, an epic building on the tip of his tongue that he desperately needs to get out.
It’s for this reason that Sukuna hushes him, cuts off all his feelings to get right to the point.
“So,” Sukuna says, “it’s finally time.”
Time to go
Time to part
Time to die
“You’re an asshole,” Yuuji bites out, his voice cracking on the back end with the force of his emotions. Trust Sukuna to be impossible even now, even as bones rumble overhead and splinter, raining down like snow.
Red eyes roll before crinkling ever so slightly in the corners as Sukuna smiles , for once more amused than anything.
A large chunk of ribcage loosens and pierces the water top not too far away, sending waves of scarlet up to their knees. Drowning, even in his own safe place, how ironic.
How can you be okay with this? Yuuji wants to ask, but Sukuna’s smile stretches like he knows the heart of Yuuji and he clicks his tongue. “Our goodbye can’t be full of your crying, I won’t be able to say anything if you’re bawling your eyes out.”
Ah
A laugh bubbles up, thick and watery and Yuuji finds his arms twisting into Sukuna’s, like tree roots too stubborn to untangle.
“Guess you’re right,” he says, “I can’t hear you tell me you actually like me if I’m bawling.”
The water has swelled up to their hips now, rising quicker and quicker with every staggered breath Yuuji’s true body can’t take.
Sukuna sweeps a thoughtful look down, hesitating for less than a moment before he gives a short nod. There’s no use in lying now, not between them. “You’re right, dumb brat, I like you,” it’s said so fondly, soft and with a warmth that Yuuji can barely feel.
He thinks he digs his fingers in tighter to soaked robes and tattooed skin, but it’s useless.
Everything is useless here in these final moments. Against Yuuji’s desperate wishes, he sees tears film over his vision and cloud this perfect visage of Sukuna.
“I like you too,” Yuuji croaks, feels himself being drawn closer and presses the slope of his nose against Sukuna’s jaw, a sob working its way out.
“Don’t leave me, I love you,” Yuuji’s never said those words. Never said he’s loved anyone. But there was never really anyone to love but Sukuna was there?
Their bodies rise and fall at the contact of their chests as Sukuna sighs. The sound is so soft and for just a moment Yuuji can feel a spark of warmth when Sukuna moves his head and kisses him full on the lips.
It’s no more than a light press, tinged with the taste of iron and salt water that’s up to their shoulders now.
“Yuuji,” Sukuna says his name like a fond memory, like a broken wish. “Perhaps in another life we can find each other again.”
Yuuji can’t lift his hands above the waves to clear his vision, or feel much of anything below the neck but a heavy nothingness that’s dragging him away.
He kisses Sukuna again, urgent, feverish. His last rage against the dying of the light as he asks his final words.
“Will you love me then too?”
Before darkness takes over his vision, Yuuji sees something rolling down inked cheeks and hears a single word.
“Always.”
______________________________________________________________
And then there’s a chirp.
A sharp electronic sound that picks at Yuuji’s brain and drags him free of salt and ichor and a warm kiss that now burns across his face as he sits up with a torn gasp.
“Sukuna,” he tries to get out, valiantly fights against the Little Death that is fear to stumble over his curses name.
But there’s no response, and when Yuuji tries to push into the domain, into their sanctuary to find the king of shadows, only an empty maw stares back. A true gap in Yuuji that has yet to be filled by his other half.
Which doesn’t make sense, where is Sukuna? Where did he go?
Yuuji whips his head around, calling in a clearer voice, rising with hysteria, “Sukuna?”
No one responds, but the silence and the surroundings speak louder than Yuuji can begin to process.
He’s in his room
Not the makeshift one with Choso in their broken hideout. Not the sparse one from Jujutsu Tech with a sprinkling of personal effects.
It’s his room, his real room. The one from his youth, where colorful clothes lay scattered on the floor and trinkets and memories roam wild and free.
Quickly his hands go to his cheeks, shaky fingers searching for crescent markings that aren’t there. Thoughts begin to swarm like hurried flies searching for their next decaying meal. The pieces assemble in the only way that could begin to make sense.
But Yuuji can’t hold on to a fairytale hope, can’t play this off in a scenario that would make his younger self gasp with delight, unknowing of the potential it holds.
Yuuji rips his blankets aside, kicking and dumping himself onto the floor in his mad attempt to run for the phone.
Only one thing can prove his insane theory right. There’s only one and it lies on the other side of the house phone by the window, the number stil seared into his memory even after all this time.
It takes a couple tries for Yuuji to punch the buttons, fumbling with the weight of it all pressing on his spine. Eventually he manages to dial, pulls the phone to his ear and hears the shrill ring that will decide his fate.
It rings
And rings
And ri-
“This is the nurses station,” a friendly voice says. “How can I help you?”
Time slows to a stop, and for just a second Yuuji feels himself freeze.
“Hello?” The voice calls, “are you there?”
Yuuji swallows, tries to keep the fear out of his voice as he says, “I’m Itadori Yuuji, I’m calling to check up on my grandpa.”
There’s a beat of silence, then the nurse turns from the phone and Yuuji can hear muffled voices speaking quickly. He thinks he hears one say, why doesn’t he ever answer his room phone? Before a voice echoes from a distance that almost makes Yuuji want to throw up.
“Tell him to go to school!” His grandpa roars, “and don’t be late for his club!” But the words don’t really register, washing instead into static memories and the fuzz of carefree youth.
Go to school, go to your club, make friends, help people Yuuji.
Die surrounded by the ones you love the most
Yuuji hangs up before the nurse can say anything else. The phone slipping from his grasp and clattering to the floor as he sinks with it, curling into a ball using the bookcase at his side for support.
His grandpa is alive, reanimated with the rollback of time itself to Before. Before curses and Fushiguro and Sensei, before Nanamin and Getou and the destruction of his sanity.
Before Sukuna, and their final embrace in the sinking remains of their own personal Atlantis.
Here, by some strange twist of fate, is Yuuji’s chance to do it all over again. To go to school and be normal, or go back to Jujutsu Tech and make sure no one dies or gets captured.
To get Sukuna to really see him in the beginning, and cut out all their time spent at each other's throats.
Yuuji soothes fingers along the ghost of the scar that used to split his face.
He could save Choso and his brothers, maybe even stop the catalyst of Getou’s death if time had rolled back far enough.
These last few thoughts are enough to force Yuuji into motion. His body may be softer, lacking its scars and muscle memory, but Yuuji has been forevermore cursed with the efficiency of survival.
He pushes onto his feet, quickly walking back to his bedroom to take stock of the calendar on the wall.
It reads that it’s June 4th of 2018. Just seven days before Yuuji is due to meet Fushiguro and Gojou sensei and Sukuna. Before his grandpa will be sentenced to death by mother nature and father time.
There’s no saving Getou, he’s already been cracked apart and stitched back up by that thing puppeteering his body.
Yuuji can’t save his sensei’s best friend. But, he supposes, he can at least spare him the task of killing him a second time.
So Yuuji grabs his worn yellow hoodie, the one Sukuna had destroyed a lifetime ago and pulls it on. He hurries around grabbing shorts and shoes and a bag filled to the brim with supplies. The kind of stuff he’d desperately wished for during his time with Choso.
Dark, worried eyes flash in his mind, the phantom press of unnatural warmth against his skin.
Yuuji doesn’t know if he can have that kind of thing again with Choso. The family he so desperately envisioned and described to Yuuji. Now come to life, but at the cost of Yuuji never being a part of it like it was supposed to be.
“Focus,” he mutters to himself, “Sukuna would have called you an idiot for getting so caught up in this stuff.”
Sukuna probably would have called him a lot worse, but Yuuji had always tuned him out during his midnight rants.
There’s a sudden ache at the thought of Sukuna’s voice and mounting guilt that Yuuji should’ve never ignored him.
But that Sukuna is dead, that Yuuji is dead. This is a whole new sandbox for Yuuji to face his mistakes and fix them.
His first will be to collect the finger and leave a note so Fushiguro isn’t left totally in the dark. There’s a million and one things to write, to tell his friend in the hopes of sparing him heartache and loss.
Yuuji settles on something short and cryptic. The kind of thing that would ultimately drive Fushiguro insane with aggravation and pique sensei’s curiosity.
When Fushiguro Megumi opens the doors to the small shed by Sugisawa Municipal High School, he will only find a scrap of paper that reads this-
The finger of Ryoumen Sukuna has been collected by his rightful vessel
But right now, Yuuji simply tosses the paper inside the shed with an empty box. The sealed cocoon that is Sukuna’s finger tucked safely inside the pouch of his hoodie.
Where to go from here is a mystery. His happily ever after still shrouded in the murk and mire of a grand evil Yuuji never uncovered.
He supposes that for now, the best thing to do is to go see his grandpa and learn the truth about his parents. Give Itadori Wasuke the final moments that Yuuji had gotten, albeit in an unconventional way.
But first, very first, Yuuji carefully peels away the seals surrounding Sukuna’s finger. Cradling it in his hands like a baby bird, pretending like this item of mass destruction is so fragile and precious and new.
In the safety of the woods near the school grounds, Yuuji swallows Ryoumen Sukuna’s finger and clasps his hands over his mouth. Waiting impatiently to entwine their fates once again.
The pulse of curse energy roars through his veins like a wildfire. Like a sugary oil slick that crashes into Yuuji and saturates every inch of his body.
He feels the skin near the corners of his eyes split into half-moons, blooming into a visible connection between himself and the king of curses.
This time his soul is too strong to let Sukuna take over. This time, Yuuji pushes his way into the domain before Sukuna can get his bearings and stands at the base of a boneyard with fists clenched and jaw set.
“My name is Itadori Yuuji,” he says, red and gold clashing from ivory mountains and the scarlet sea.
“I’m your vessel, and I own your soul.”
From his throne of skulls and rot, Ryoumen Sukuna surveys the soul of Itadori Yuuji and finds himself unable to hide his amusement.
“Well brat,” Sukuna murmurs, a hand cupping his cheek, “you finally managed to surprise me.”
Perhaps in another life we can find each other again
Will you love me then too?
Always