Chapter Text
Dawn breaks over the land, splashes of warm watercolour hues painting the otherwise dreary cityscape.
A new bounty was announced that morning of midsummer.
Omitting crucial details, age, gender, name, ambiguous as can be, promising a sweet investment. The exact identity of the target will only be revealed to interested parties under a binding vow.
A clandestine operation, then. Yuta has seen the upper-class issue too many of them. Political clashes, negotiations made in smoke filled rooms, and if someone were to disappear the next day - most will be none the wiser.
But this was different.
Yuta sees it in the general unease of the elite sorcerers within his class, in their hushed tones and urgent gesticulations. Rumors of a threat, greater than any other. He was curious, but never too intrigued, not enough to warrant any questions. So, he stays in his bubble, as he always has, spending time with Rika as the days go by, slow as ever.
It is on the day of the winter solstice, that Yuta is called into the President’s office and presented with a peculiar request.
The President smiles at him when he enters, eyes upturned, the same fake, placid expression he always wears when he is about to ask for a stomach-turning favour. Yuta stops at the door.
"About the bounty –”
"No." Yuta says flatly. "I'm not helping you with that."
The President laughs, something cold and unhumorous, and leans forward in his seat. The man changes appearances on whim, notably with every few years. Today, they present as a tall and well-muscled man, clean shaven and arguably handsome - perhaps the young son of some corrupt envoy, taken as a penance for his crimes.
Yuta used to feel pity for them - still feels pity for them, to some degree, but he has never wanted anything more than to live a quiet life with his friends, and he has learned a long time ago to never wonder too much about anything else.
"This isn't a request," the President says, brushing aside his refusal with a careless wave, and drums his fingers on the broad desk. "It's of utmost urgency, I'm afraid. And there is no one else better suited than you."
Yuta crosses his arms, leaning against the doorframe. He pretends to contemplate it, between the light staccato taps filling the room, letting his disapproval show.
This was likened to an assassination attempt. Most probably meant to be covered up after, under falsehoods and pretty lies. It has been nearing two seasons’ end since the bounty was issued. Surely, with the urgency and premium at stake – there must have been takers.
“Come now,” the man before him says, “it’s for the good of the country.”
A line reiterated endlessly by the elite upper class of the capital, said like a broken record until it has lost meaning with the years. Hearing it manifests a nasty thing at the pit of Yuta's stomach, having been privy to the President’s cursed techniques, but he pushes it down like bile, and reminds himself that Rika's wellbeing was his primary concern.
At the end of the day, everything else was secondary, and nothing else truly mattered more.
The President appraises him quietly, and there is something unnerving in the way he seems to read him like a book, in the way he catches his gaze, almost purposefully, running a thumb across the stitch marks on his forehead –
“You must be quite desperate,” Yuta finally says. “You never call on me for hit jobs. Why this time?”
The man before him simply smiles at him, as if the absence of an explanation was answer enough. Then -
“How has Rika been? It's a pity the curse hasn't been broken yet. She must be suffering.”
Yuta stiffens.
“Such a poor thing,” the offending man continues to say, sickly sweet, “Perhaps I’ll look into her case for you, once things are taken care of. It’ll be remiss of me to neglect the welfare of my precious sorcerers."
As much as he loves Rika, his goal has always been to break the curse he has placed on her, to allow her to pass to the afterlife.
Yuta glares at him, but his offer has already ignited a spark of hope in his chest, nursing a dull, familiar ache. He remains silent, even as Kenjaku reaches out a hand for him to take, stained with blackened seal markings, an offer for the binding vow.
"You’re our only precious special grade, after all."
Yuta bumps into a young sorcerer as he leaves the office, and quickly slides his right hand in his sleeve, still hot with telltale binding marks. The child runs straight into his mid-riff, displacing his long black hair.
"Geto-kun?"
The child looks surprised, but nonetheless bows his head in greeting, as courteous as ever. It wasn't difficult to see how he has managed to land in everyone’s good graces, even at his tender age. Known for his mild and gentle personality, the 10-year-old had already made a name for himself with his extraordinary curse technique.
The young sorcerer appeared out of the blue one day, likely plucked from one of the districts during the annual reaping. Sorcerers could be born from non-sorcerers, after all, and the capital was always quick to comb through the district dwellers on an annual basis to weed out potential sorcerers. Some were brought back to the capital, while the rest were executed. They can't afford to have dissenters, after all, especially those that can wield curse techniques.
“Okkotsu-sensei.” The child says politely, keeping his head bowed. “I was looking for you.”
Yuta blinks, breaking out of his thoughts, and an easy laugh escapes him. “Oh, cut that out. I’m not much older than you, you know.”
“You’re old enough,” Geto huffs, blowing a strand of hair out of his face. “What were you doing in his office, anyway?”
“Just processing some paperwork. What do you need?”
“Your reverse cursed technique. I want to learn it.”
Yuta stares at young child in disbelief, then beckons him to walk beside him as they leave the hallway. “Geto-kun. Where on earth did you hear that from?"
Geto shrugs, propping his arms behind his head. “Just figured it out on my own. You are the strongest. You must know how to do it.”
Yuta’s eyelid twitches.
“Besides,” the young sorcerer smirks, “I saw you heal Haibara's arm, after the grade one curse attack on third December.”
Yuta sighs. It was impossible to keep a secret from children. “It’s a crime to snoop around like that, Geto-kun.”
“But it’s a crime to keep this information from everyone else, too, isn't it?” Geto frowns, and for his age, he was remarkably wise. "Don't we need more medics?"
“It’s –” Yuta closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, inhaling deeply. “ – it’s complicated, Geto. You’re young, too young to learn this technique yet. As for me, well, let’s make a deal.”
The young child nods, listening with rapt attention.
“Keep this a secret between you and me.” Yuta pauses, considering. “After I perfect the technique in a few years, I will teach you some tricks.”
Geto studies him for a moment, seemingly unconvinced. “You promise?”
Holding out his pinky finger, the younger sorcerer looks at him expectantly, and Yuta feels a knot loosen in his chest at the simple display of trust. Yuta kneels down to link their fingers together, and tightens them briefly, as if to seal the deal. “Yeah, I promise.”
Geto smiles, and something shifts in Yuta's chest, and it's strangely bitter, conflicted, like he has seen this sight before, in another reality.
"Good luck." Geto says cheekily, "It's just a non-sorcerer anyway. You'll definitely be successful." And before Yuta can react, the child has already disappeared down the path to the dormitories.
Yuta shakes his head with a troubled sigh. It appears that word had already spread.
"A dangerous non-sorcerer who wields stolen clan techniques. Trace his residual and kill him.”
Yuta finds his target remarkably easily.
The child is sitting at the edge of a vast veranda overlooking a snow-covered yard, thumbing a loose string from his yukata. The yard bleeds into a dark forest, and the house is situated at the very outskirts of town, hidden away from prying eyes. He looks almost bored when he lifts his eyes to meet his from across the yard, picking him out from the shrubbery and darkness. Pools of crystal blue, all consuming, and it tears into Yuta like a festering splinter, taking him apart like a marionette in the hands of a puppeteer.
An insidious power, almost matching his own. It feels newly awakened, judging from its residual flare, palpable throughout the region. This was not a non-sorcerer.
But the boy can't be more than 10-years-old.
There is a beat of silence, and Yuta's thumb is on the hilt of his katana, poised to strike, frozen in place. A mere child. He was sent to take the life of a child, and now he understands why he was sent here alone.
"Ohayo." The boy says, tilting his head, with all the nonchalance of someone talking about the weather. "You must be here to kill me."
Said simply. Factually, even.
It occurs to Yuta, then, that the smashed flowerpots and ruined fencing was not a by-product of poor upkeeping or avant-garde taste. Bloodstains mar the rich mahogany parquet of the veranda, bleeding deep into the wood, camouflaged in shadows. It was unsurprising, given the hefty bounty on his head.
"Were you expecting a normal person?" the boy muses, with a bubble of amusement in his voice. "Believing that makes it easier to kill me, right?"
The level of cursed energy spikes abruptly, and Yuta throws himself forward in time to dodge the channeled blow of concentrated energy, nicking his sleeve and leaving a torrent of shredded forest leafage in its wake.
What incredible power.
Before Yuta can react, the child materialises before him, arm reeled back in a punch, and Yuta immediately twists to the right in anticipation of the blow. The boy kicks out his leg in kind, nailing Yuta squarely in the chest, taking the air from his lungs. It sends him crashing down onto the flowerbed, and before he can recover, the boy leaps in the air above him, gathering a distorted azure ball of energy between his palms.
Enough is enough. But he didn't need to summon Rika for this. Instead -
A blistering energy gathers in Yuta's chest, crawling up his throat, and the cursed words spill forth, etching hot marks on his tongue and mouth.
"Don't move."
The boy's lips part in a silent gasp, and he stills in mid-air. Yuta rolls to the side just as he falls to the ground, grunting from the impact.
Yuta gathers himself in an instant. He jumps to his feet and reaches out to tug the boy upright, only to meet with nothing. He blinks and realises that his fingers were skimming an invisible force. Infinity. The ability that he has heard of countless times, owned only by the Gojo clan to date.
It takes Yuta only a moment too long to realise his mistake. A swirl of energy gathers beneath his touch, and a large attractive force sends an uprooted tree slamming into his back, dragging him across the split wood of the veranda. He pulls himself up and coughs up some blood, watching as the Gojo boy shoots him a small smirk. The boy raises his hands and summons a small void of blue, pulling in hard garden debris and cement chunks from the cracked paving.
The boy was extremely powerful, given his age, and Yuta finally understands the reason for all the paranoia sported by the upper-class. But there is an undercurrent of weakness, an element of something unrefined, and Yuta can taste the immaturity of the technique in the air. Too overconfident, too reckless; and given that Yuta had disclosed his own cursed speech earlier, far too careless.
Yuta summons the familiar bitterness at the back of his throat again, and wills it past his lips.
"Sleep."
The boy jerks back, eyelids falling shut for a few seconds, before he forces himself awake. A few seconds was all Yuta needed. He jumps behind the boy, lightning fast, snatching his collar to fling him through the window of a room and into the house. The wood splinters and the glass shatters. The boy falls through, slamming against the hardwood bedframe before skidding to a stop on the floor.
Yuta jumps in through the opening, and the boy is on his feet once more, sporting a huge gash on the side of his face. It mars his delicate features, turns his babylike appearance into something fierce, desperate, like that of a cornered animal.
"Where's your family?" Yuta asks abruptly, and the boy flinches in anticipation at his voice.
No one else was around. The boy came to this deserted retreat on his own will, surely without his clan's knowledge. All to fend off his own attackers without implicating his own family. It was an act of pure arrogance, or something else that Yuta couldn't quite put his finger on.
The Gojo boy narrows his eyes, guarded, but doesn't say a word. There is something raw in his expression now, a mask of seriousness, and it marks the exact moment that the boy realises that he might - might just be in danger. It was obvious that he has done this song and dance too many times, alone at that, but the result has never been so dire, so real, and he probably has never been truly hurt.
Yuta can read him easily now, and he looks tired, a boy forced to mature well beyond his years. A child his age shouldn't be expected to awaken their cursed abilities, much less fight with such finesse - albeit slightly clumsy, wielding his budding powers like a child handed a tool too technical for him to learn, far too early, and he was far too young to be fighting older sorcerers.
"How many?”
The boy frowns, and finally speaks. "Dunno. Maybe ten, or twenty." A pause. "I lost count after five."
"It'll never end." Yuta says, quietly. "If not me, it’ll be someone else.” His memory flashes to an older mercenary he bumped into earlier, with a razor like scar on the corner of his lip, and the most distant gaze he has ever seen.
The Gojo child simply looks at him with glassy eyes, a tint of emotion indecipherable within the sea blue depths. It looks almost like sadness. Yuta remembers seeing the same look mirrored on the faces of the district children, as they watch their houses razed to the ground for a feigned crime. Resignation.
Then the boy parts his lips, next words spoken with an admirable amount of grit, "let them come. I'm strong."
That was an undeniable fact. But Yuta looks at the deep slash marring the boy's cheek, childish frame small and brittle in the moonlight, and knows better. There is steel in his gaze, fight in his jaw, but his chest is heaving, and Yuta knows that he is well at his limit. It wouldn't take much to finish him from here. A cursed verse or two - and no matter how much the boy will try to block his ears with cursed energy - it was enough to impair him for a few seconds. Long enough for Yuta to slide forward and draw his blade -
It would be easy, too easy. This child, who hasn't yet learned how to regulate his energy or tap into his reserves, who hasn't had enough tactical experience above fighting the twenty or so grade two to four sorcerers. He, who for all his arrogance, decided to distance his clan members from all the violence and assassinations, despite his own vulnerability, his frailty.
Kenjaku and the higher-ups saw him not as a threat to the other sorcerers, but as a threat to their ideals. The Gojo clan is known for their apathy towards the leadership's beliefs, after all.
The boy is looking at him again, and it is then, that Yuta realises that the emotion wasn’t resignation, but rather –
Loneliness.
A strong gale billows through the opening of the room, sending a flurry of snow over them. There is something poetic in the way the flakes land on the boy before him, clinging to his pale lashes and hair. A glimpse of a new era, heralded by icy blue and winter snow. A lonely path, as penance for his power.
Yuta steps forward, drawing his blade with finality.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, “this will only hurt for a moment.”
If the upper-class wants to disguise this boy's death as that of a non-sorcerer's, then he shall lead a life well-lived as one.
6 years later
Yuta learns later, that things were never that simple.
It is on a rainy morning, when Yuta gets a call to return to Kyoto. A month ago, a civil war had started, wiping out half of the Zenin and Kamo clans. He returns to hear that the internal war was instigated by the Gojo clan, cursing bloodshed and war.
Opportunistic and spiteful, a large group of non-sorcerers from the districts launched their attack at the same time, adding fuel to the raging war.
Explosions go off throughout the city, a cascade of detonations, and the state goes into a frenzy immediately. Code-red with a growing death list, and he was only informed too late due to administrative complications.
Administrative complications.
Yuta arrives to see a large black curtain cast over the city, and finally understands the reason why. He breaks through the barrier with ease, and is greeted with a cacophony of war torn cries, and the sound of guns splitting the air.
Sorcerers and non-sorcerers are everywhere, and almost evenly matched, to his shock, and it is then that he notices what is held in the non-sorcerers' hands -
Simple weapons. Guns and swords, but there was something different about them, and a shot was enough to send a sorcerer crumpling to the ground to recover.
The weapons must be infused with cursed energy. But the non-sorcerers have never been able to achieve such a feat, never with so many weapons before.
A particularly large blast detonates near the school quarters, punctuating the crisp air with screams of terror. Yuta arrives on-site within minutes, but the insipid smell of metal and burning flesh is already in the air, and he rushes in without a second thought. Medic - not fast enough, and the sight of bodies around him, friends, juniors he cares about, dying, and there is not enough time -
Yuta moves to the nearest body, crushed under a ceiling beam, and his breath catches in his throat. Haibara - his junior is fighting for breath, lungs crushed, and even after pulling him from beneath the rubble, he can feel his energy, soft and iridescent, slipping away.
It was a split-second decision.
Shaking, he presses his hands, slippery with blood, to the sorcerer's body. Squeezing his eyes shut, he triggers a shift in his energy, fusing them together, reversing its destructive properties. An action he hasn't allowed himself to perform since that winter night.
Someone joins him, by his side, a familiar warmth, and when he looks up, Geto is watching his healing technique with wide eyes. Older, bloody and injured, but distinctively him, and Yuta hasn't seen the teen since he left for Osaka to train.
“Sensei..." trailing off, Geto appears to hesitate. Voice cracking, but warm. "You're here."
"Geto-kun." Yuta breathes, "what happened?"
How can this happen?
"The Gojo clan declared war on everyone. They claim that their child was assassinated by the other clans." Geto says, quietly. "And the non-sorcerers have weapons with cursed energy. No one knows why. We've never seen them with so many."
Yuta's blood runs cold in his veins. He pulls back to look at Geto, and finds that the teen looks rugged, exhaustion rimming his delicate features.
"Say, Okkotsu-sensei. I have always wanted to ask you something."
Yuta didn't need to look to know that the expression Geto was making, to know that he was fitting together the pieces, bit by bit.
"You revived the non-sorcerer last time, didn't you."
Yuta didn't respond for a while. "I killed him," he states simply.
Geto shakes his head, and looks at the ground. "No one knew that you could bring someone back to life." A beat of silence. "But you knew how to, didn't you. Even years ago."
"I don't," Yuta asserts, "I can only heal fresh injuries, Geto-kun. You know that."
Geto looks at Haibara lying motionless before them, pointedly, and it is then that Yuta realises that the boy is cold, has been cold - and it is only with his efforts that his cheeks are suffusing with colour again.
"Kenjaku sent you, didn't he." Yuta says, and looks back at his hands. Trembling slightly, now. But he didn't stop his healing. "You aren't here by coincidence."
"You didn't have to heal Haibara-kun." Geto says, instead. Went unsaid - you put yourself at risk, anyone could have seen you, but you did -
"And let him die?" Yuta replies, with a soft laugh, then, heavy for what it is worth, "I couldn't just let him die."
Geto dips his head at Yuta's indirect confession, expression tight. Refusing to meet his eyes.
"Something needs to change, Geto-kun. Non-sorcerers have never deserved what we have sentenced them to. They live in the slums, terrorised by their own curses day and night. All Kenjaku and the higher-ups want is to kill them off, but this isn't right, it has never been."
"Why did you damn us?" Geto snaps. "Look at all this, so many of us are dead. These bombs were set by non-sorcerers. You spared that non-sorcerer's life, and this is a direct result of it!"
"Non-sorcerer's didn't start this war." Yuta says, softly, quietly, as he notices Geto's disheveled appearance and deep-set eyes. He pulls away from Haibara to study Geto properly, finally taking in his appearance. In the years that he left, the young child has grown into an attractive and well groomed teenager, with his signature long hair tucked neatly into a bun. Yet his demeanor carries a certain hardness - masked conflict, and it strikes him as something familiar, for some reason. "What happened to you? Why do you hate them as well?"
"It’s pointless, isn't it?" Geto mutters, all pleasantness gone. "They only exist to create problems for us. We keep dying for their sakes."
A belief echoed by the higher-ups too many times. Fearmongering, blaming the non-sorcerers for their ills and never-ending work of dispelling curses. This has already led to a distinct segregation between the two classes, banishing the non-sorcerers to the slums. Something churns in Yuta's chest then, foreboding, and he wonders if Geto even remembers where he came from, or who his parents were.
"I have to heal the others." Yuta says, standing on his feet, and Geto backs away, brows furrowed in concentration.
"We can still fix this, Okkotsu-sensei." A last ditch effort, an olive branch. "Tell me where he is."
Yuta halts in his steps. 'You'll kill him," he says simply, "Kenjaku's orders, right?"
The air sizzles with positive energy and curse residuals, buzzing with electric. Yuta turns, snapping the necklace around his neck, and slides the ring onto his finger. Geto's energy flares, hand sign at ready, but Yuta can tell that he is holding back, and there are still injured students around them -
Electricity crackles and snaps, white hot. A ring of sigils form beneath their feet briefly, and both of them barely have time to react before an immense gravitational force crushes them.
Then nothing.
Two forms stir awake in two vastly different locations a few hours later.
Yuta wakes up disorientated and confused, staring at his palms, soaking wet, then realises that he has ended up in the middle of a shallow pond.
It is with frightening clarity that he realises that the highly positive energy in the moment must have resonated with Geto's cursed energy, linking him with an object of his same reversal technique in the past -
But there was only one other.
Yuta swallows. He has just sent the worst person to the exact same location of the whereabouts of the boy he had spared years ago, and the world was massively screwed.
"Ah, hah. Rika-chan, I screwed up."