Chapter Text
Yuji’s head is pounding. He blinks blearily at the sight before him. A large circular pit in the road lies before him. All the buildings previously towering over him knocked down.
Vague memories from when Sukuna was in control flash before his eyes. Fighting Maharaga, malevolent shrine… and then realisation sets in.
What has he done?
So many people are now dead because of him.
Panic sets in. Yuji collapses to his knees. His breath is shaky. His hands curl into fists as he folds himself over his knees, forehead to the ground. Bile rises in his throat. He coughs out a spluttering sob, dragging his fingertips across the rough tarmac he is kneeling on. Blood spurts to the surface of his skin, but he can’t feel it. He tries to suck in a shaky breath and chokes, vomiting on the ground in front of his face. His eyes burn and tears roll down his face, stained from the burnt road he had been resting his head on. Thoughts fly through his mind too fast for him to even register.
Fushiguro slumped up against a metal frame, blood framing his head like a halo.
Two young girls begging sukuna for help, slashed in half.
The feeling of Sukuna’s fingers being forced down his throat whole, the soapy taste of the embalming wax filling his mouth.
He pounds his fists against the ground beneath him. “Only me” he breathes to himself quietly.
“Only me”, he says aloud to himself now. He draws in another shaky breath, the taste of vomit and soot fresh in his mouth.
“Only me!” He yells into the abyss in front of him. He goes to lower his head again on the road in front of him and-
Yuji jolts awake, gasping for air now. He sits up bolt straight in his bed, sucking in shallow breaths to try and stop the pounding feeling coming from behind his ribs. “It’s was just a dream, just a dream, just a dream…” he says in a low muttered to himself. Except…
It wasn’t just a dream. All of those things had actually happened, he had actually killed at least a hundred people while Sukuna had taken control of his body. That wasn’t a dream, it was a memory.
The idea of this ties a knot in his stomach and brings a burning sensation to his throat. He flings his legs over the edge of the bed, sprints to his door, and flies down the hallway of the boy’s dorms to the shared bathroom down the hallway. He pushes past the door and immediately situates himself on the floor in front of the toilet in the first stall, not bothering to lock the door behind him. He throws up into the water below.
When he finishes, he sits himself against the wall of the stall and balances his forearms on top of his knees, hanging his head between his shaking hands. He gasps for breath and swallows thickly. He gives himself a few seconds before he pushes himself up off the ground, flushes the toilet, washes his hand and goes to make his way back to his dorm room.
On the way back however, a door opens in the hallway ahead of him. Out of the open door steps Fushiguro, eyes and limbs heavy with sleep, obviously having just woken up. “Itadori?” He croaks out softly, before clearing his throat. “What are you doing?”
Yuji stood for a split second in front of Fushiguro, mouth open and eyes wide. “S-sorry, had to pee. Did I wake you up?”
“Yeah, when you sprinted down the hallway. How was all that just to pee?”
“Hey, when a mans gotta go a mans gotta go” Yuji jokes lightly with a shrug.
“Whatever. Go back to sleep, Itadori, Gojo is has us scheduled for morning training with the second years”
Yujj groans at the thought. “Right. Sorry for waking you, Fushiguro. Goodnight!”
“Goodnight, Itadori.”
Yuji trudges his way back into his room and falls back into his bed. The throws the cover over himself and squeezes his eyes shut. But no matter how much tossing and turning and breathing exercises he does, he cannot lull himself back to sleep.
He sits up in his bed again, sighing. His eyes scan over his room, landing on his desk that stands across the room from him. His eyes zero in on the drawer that rolls underneath the desk.
He knows he probably shouldn’t, that its not good for him.
But he feels like he deserves it, after killing all those people, after waking up Fushiguro when he knows he has training in the morning.
He also knows it will help him get to sleep.
He quietly steps out of bed and pads his way across the room to sit in his desk drawer. Once sat he opened his desk drawer and on the left side lay a small black box, right where he had left it previously, months ago.
Opening the box he removes the small silver razor blade from inside it. He set the blade down on the desk before him and began rolling up his sleeve. His head is pounding and his ears are ringing as he glances down the length of his forearm, faded white scars gazing back up at him. At had been a while since he had done this.
His thoughts were rudely interrupted, a voice cutting through the silent room surrounding him.
“What do you think you’re doing, vessel?”
Fuck. Sukuna. Yuji had almost forgotten about him completely. One of Sukuna’s eyes had opened on his cheek and a small mouth had appeared on the side o Yuji’s face.
“Don’t act you like you care, Sukuna. This is all your fault anyway.”
“Whether or not it’s my fault is debatable, and I don’t want a maimed vessel. I’m already stuck inside the body of a teenage boy, who only has two arms.”
Yuji clenches his jaw in frustration. Why does Sukuna even care what he does to his own body? Sukuna is the one who had taken over Yuji’s body and murdered all hose people, destroyed all those buildings. It was his fault. His fault. His fault.
Was it? Yuji was the on trip weak to fight off Choso and Jogo. It was his fault he was ever in a position to be taken advantage of. If he had just remained conscious the Jogo never would have been able to feed him all those fingers and get Sukuna to take control of his body. It’s because of him that so many are dead now. Those two young girls never would have died, Fushiguro never would have summoned Maharaga, all those people-
Yuji shuts his eyes to force the train of thoughts out of his brain. He draws in a quivering breath as his lips tremble.
“Like I care how you feel about your vessel. This is my body, and you used it to kill literally hundreds of people” Now he’s just deflecting the blame. “I would prefer my body not to be overtaken by a murderer on a whim.”
“Whatever, weakling. It’s not my fault you couldn’t fight me off.”
“Go away, Sukuna, please.” Yuji whispers quietly. He doesn’t want a lecture from some stupid curse who was the cause of all of his struggles in the first place.
Life was so much more simple when Yuji didn’t have an evil curse user living in his mind constantly. He feels like the cursed energy he harbours within him will eventually seep out of the cracks and seams of his soul and he will become like Sukuna.
Something small in the back of his mind whispers that the reason he feels like this all the time and the reason his mental health hasn’t been the best lately is because of the negative energy he consumes when he ingests one of sukuna’s fingers. He could feel that the first finger he ate had an impact on his mindset, however small. Now, it was much worse, considering he has now consumed fifteen fingers. It is hard to tell though, seeing as Shibuya had some outside variables involved, not just him consuming more fingers.
“Fine. But remember, sideways for attention, vertical for results, vessel.”
The silence is very pronounced in the room once Sukuna’s mouth disappears into the skin of Yuji’s face once again. He breathes in a shaky sigh, shaking his head to get rid of the feeling that he was still being watched by the king of curses.
No matter how much Yuji tried to blame Sukuna for everything he had done in Shibuya, he felt the guilt sitting like a boulder in the pit of his stomach. All those people, regular, normal, people- none of them got to have proper deaths. He had ended all of their lives prematurely.
He picks up the blade and lowers it to the skin on his mid forearm. He drags a horizontal line across his arm, specifically to piss off Sukuna, who is obviously watching from the depths of his mind.
The relief he feels from the first bite of the blade against his skin is almost instant.
It feels like letting out a long breath on a hot beach at peak summer.
It feels like when his tea has cooled down enough to take a long warm sip without scalding himself. Yuji feels the pressure being released from his body. He feels like he can breathe again.
But he could never stop at just one.
He drags the blade across his wrist again, and again, and again, adding a stack of fresh red horizontal lines on his arm atop all the faded scars below.
When he finally feels satisfied, he drops the blade back onto his desk. He sits back in his chair, bringing his arm up in front of his face to admire the way the blood bubbles out of the cuts on his arm, so brilliantly and vibrantly red. He watches as a small trickle of blood threatens to make its way to stain his sleeve. He doesn’t let it, though, reaching across his desk to grab a tissue and dab up the blood spewing from his arm.
After a few minutes of cleaning himself up, and his arm no longer bleeding profusely, Yuji feels his eyes becoming heavy and tired, yearning for sleep. He knew this would work. He pulls his sleeve down over his arm and crawls back into his bed, laying on his side under the covers until the comfort of sleep eventually washes over him, his breaths falling even and his mind finally shutting down.