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So much blood for so many lives.
Yuji, once again among the countless other times, swallows back the bile rising in his throat. His breath hitches and his shoulders are stiff, and he bites down hard on his lower lip, adamant to stop it from trembling, until the taste of iron fills his mouth. There’s an instant pang of pain, but this is nothing to cry over, not when there’s been so much worse.
He keeps his sight pinned on the running faucet and lets the sound of flowing water hitting the metal sink drown out his thoughts. The water runs crimson and purple, both human and curse blood, no matter how many times Yuji scrubs his hands together.
Two days. It is November second—two days after his execution was resumed, two days after his massacre at Shibuya, two days after he’s ran away from Fushiguro and the others, two days after everything has been his fault, and his only.
He scrubs his hands faster.
-
They weren’t fast enough.
Many of the curses Kenjaku’d released had fled, with whatever ones that tried to charge at them exorcized with some effort.
Now, Yuji stood in the center of the crater; the very same crater Sukuna created, from which he’d left Yuji to agonize over. The very same crater where all his allies and classmates and friends surrounded him, each with their own wounds and bruises from Shibuya. From Sukuna. From Yuji’s incompetence.
Just another cog in the wheel. Kenjaku had escaped with the Prison Realm because Yuji hadn’t been fast enough to catch him.
He was exhausted, the weight of the battles heavy on his shoulder and the adrenaline in his body dwindling away. All that’s left was the thick scent of death permeating the air and the soreness that ran deep into his bones.
“Yuji.”
Choso had been the first to approach him after they’d cleared everything out, placing a hand on his shoulder. The touch was too warm and soft, and while Yuji normally wouldn’t mind, this wasn’t normally. He rolled his shoulder, and Choso got the hint, dropping the contact.
“We can't stay here,” Choso said. Yuji looked up from the ground to see everyone had gradually gathered around him. He didn’t dare to look any of them in the eye. He could tell they didn’t want to either. Shame had burned through his very being.
“…this will be disastrous for the HQ to cover up,” someone muttered. Tsukumo-san, probably. “Aaaaah… well, at the end of the day… that Death Painting’s right. Sukuna’s destruction and bloodlust won’t—”
Yuji froze, a sensation not unlike the ice they’d all been encapsulated in by the white-haired curse user allied with Kenjaku. A whole storm of debris and concrete and death slamming back into the ground. Dozens of people dead for every slice and dice of his hands.
To think he started all of this so he’d be surrounded by people when he died. When he saw Fushiguro, blood running down half his face, that he was about to die if Yuji didn’t go ahead and swallow that finger, the finger that led down to all of this.
Even though he’d already thrown his guts up prior, the sickening feeling of vomit arose in his throat again.
“—I’ll stay with Yuji and run,” Choso said, chin jutting down in a firm and absolute nod, leaving no room for arguments. No one dares to speak up otherwise, or, at least, Yuji doesn’t hear it muddled among his tumbling thoughts of that day. “The quicker we get out of here, the better. And we’ll stay behind exorcizing curses.”
Yuji’s head snapped up.
Choso had looked back at him. He gave Yuji a smile far kinder than what he deserved. “This would give me time to get to know you as well, outside of the battlefield, and to apologize for attempting to kill you when we first met, little brother.”
Little brother. Hah. He felt sick to the core. What use was all of that to a mere cog in the machine? He would wear himself out eventually, rotting away into static rust until he’s discarded, as all tools and cogs were meant to be done. After this, he’d resigned his life to be a ticking clock, counting down the seconds for his utility to be over, where he’d then be executed promptly.
It’s what they should’ve done in the first place. He was the only one who could house Sukuna, right? Where normal people would’ve died because they weren’t strong enough to, right? Yuji had been too much of a spineless coward before then, determined to follow through with his grandfather’s words of “dying a proper death” like some idiot.
Choso must’ve sensed Yuji’s disassociation because the next thing he did was come over and reach out, but his hand, hovering right above Yuji’s elbow, hesitated. He dropped it, reminded of the earlier attempt at physical contact and Yuji’s avoidance of it, and the gentle smile returned to his face again. Again, entirely undeserving of it.
“Let’s go, Yuji.”
He didn’t know how he must’ve looked to the rest of his friends and seniors. A million questions had burned on the tip of his tongue, but speaking to them was further incriminating them, and Yuji had dragged down enough people already, so he swallowed the words in his throat and ran.
-
Is this supposed to make you feel better?
The reply, fast and snappish and entirely furious with the acid-bubbling in his guts, comes out before Yuji has the decency—though it’s Sukuna, so he can’t give less of a fuck what leaves his mouth—to think about his words: “shut the fuck up.”
With his rather lame reply, one he’s spat at Sukuna’s voice inside his head a million times over, one he’s thought and said and exorcized curses to nothing more than a mushy pulp into way more violently than he has to too many times to even Choso telling him to ground himself, is the vile feeling of something rancid and rotten, like the cursed energy pumping through his veins.
If he blurs his sight, the dripping red gathered at his fingertips morph into claws, long and sharp and purple and exactly like Sukuna’s.
It’s so fun watching you run yourself down like this, brat.
“All of this is your fault.”
Yuji feels and sounds like a broken record, justifying himself to himself through Sukuna, repeating the same bullshit to the ghosts and nightmares and the empty buildings he keeps finding himself in.
His scrubbing becomes more vigorous, fingertips scratching along the soft and calloused skin of his palms and the back of his hand, trying to wash himself clean. No matter what he seems to do, he can’t rid himself of the ever-potent, metallic stench of blood and the dried flakes it clings onto, on his face, on his hair, on his skin, on his hands. Even worse, it’s mixed with the thick, almost oily texture of the purple blood from the curses he’d exorcized earlier in the day. No matter how many times Yuji scrubs and washes, they cling on.
Sukuna laughs.
The sound rocks him to his very core, every time. He drops his head low, shoulders hunched and bunching together in an attempt to shrink himself, succumbing to the mockery of the sound that bounces around his skull. His breathing quickens for every shrill in his brain, and he’s almost certain some of the bloody flashbacks that’s pushed to the forefront of his mind’s eye aren’t just by Yuji’s subconscious alone.
The two sisters that simply wanted the dead corpse of their dad back, killing whoever was holding his body hostage, and how cruelly Sukuna had ended their lives, a simple flick of the wrists that sent one of their heads flying off and decimated the other’s body in seconds—that, and the dozens of people who’d looked to him in initial confusion and fear when he, no, when Sukuna in his body, but it is Yuji’s body, so whatever Sukuna does is, by extent, entirely his fault, crashed into the buildings and stores where civilians had taken refuge under the confusion of the barriers set while fighting the shikigami that, that—
It’s not coming off, Yuji realizes with a heave of his chest and a pounding fear in his heart.
His fingers, yes, they are normal fingers on his own hand, with nails chewed down to the bloody flesh instead of the elongated, unnatural, freakish purple ones of Sukuna and the fingers he ate, Yuji blinks once, twice, and three times, squeezing his eyes shut every time, to make sure they aren’t claws, have dug into the skin on the back of his palm in his frenzy. He faintly feels warm blood oozing out of the scratches he’d created. The sting is negligible. The infection that can occur may not be, and Yuji—Yuji will deserve it.
No matter how many curses you exorcize—
“Leave me alone,” Yuji whispers into the sink, eternally scrubbing at his hands, the panic taking control of his veins. His voice is frantic, yes, and his actions even more so. He’s lost track of actually attempting to go through the motions of washing his hands by this point, resorting to clawing and scratching and digging to do whatever he can to get it off. He just wants it all off. He doesn’t want to wake up and move through the day knowing his hands are coated in the blood of—
—nothing will ever make up for—
“Stop.” He bends into the sink, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to tune out Sukuna’s voice. The water runs red, unable to cleanse him of—
Yuji sinks to the floor, bringing his knees up to his forehead and curling into a ball.
—it seems you already know, don’t you?