Chapter Text
Sendai. June, 2018.
"This it?" Yuji asks.
"Yeah." Fushiguro doesn't touch it. "The cursed object, Ryomen Sukuna's finger. It's a miracle that thing didn't swallow it."
Yuji leans in a little closer than is probably wise. "Why would anything eat this? Is it good?"
"Don't be dense." Fushiguro's voice goes flat in the specific way Yuji's already learned means I don't have time for this. "You'd eat it to gain stronger cursed energy. Now. hand it over, it's dangerous."
Yuji hadn't even realized he'd picked it up. It's lighter than he expects, or heavier — he can't decide which, the thing seeming to shift its own weight in his palm before he passes it back.
"Fine. Here."
That's the exact moment the second curse crashes down from the floor above.
Yuji didn’t see it coming. Fushiguro did though, and shoved Yuji hard out of the way half a second before it landed, taking the brunt of the impact. The curse hauls him up like he weighs nothing, slamming him against the wall. His dogs — Shikigami Fushiguro called them — melting when his focus wanes.
Yuji moves before logic can catch up.
He's stronger than most people. He's faster than most people. But it doesn't matter. His fists keep connecting with something that isn't quite solid enough to care about his strength or speed. Every time he lands a hit it just bounces back unphased. He loses ground. He keeps losing it. And somewhere in the middle of all that losing, the finger gets knocked loose and is thrown up into the air, freefalling into a mouth that is, very clearly, about to close around it.
Yuji's gets there first. Catching the finger between his teeth. He's not sure he chose that. He's not sure there was a choice involved at all.
Instinct?
His arms were pinned by the monsters grip, and legs too busy keeping him from falling into the jaws of death.
He’s facing away from where Fushiguro ended up now, but he can smell the iron in the air from the other boy’s injuries.
‘I know what I have to do,’ His thoughts are racing, mind screaming at him that this is a bad idea, and yet it doesn’t feel wrong. His body isn't obeying his brains logic.
Just its own instinct.
Only a curse can beat a curse. That’s what Fushiguro told him.
"There's a way I can save everyone," he says, or thinks, he genuinely isn't sure by this point which version of himself is doing the talking. "I just need to have my own cursed energy, don't I?"
Fushiguro shouts something. Yuji doesn't catch the words. It's too late for the words to matter.
Yuji swallows.
Yuji Itadori has always known he was strong. Not as a boast or something their parents told them that they parrot to their peers — Gramps made sure Yuji never got cocky or abused his strength — just as a kind of background hum underneath everything, the way you know your own heartbeat is happening without checking.
He was four the first time it showed itself in a way anyone else noticed. There was a snake on the playground — thin, dark, coiled loosely enough near the slide that every other kid had scattered toward the safety of their parents, shrieking the specific delighted-terrified shriek of children who've just found something to be afraid of together. Not Yuji. Yuji had walked straight up to it and picked it up with both hands before carrying it to the edge of the field to set it free in the long grass.
He's fairly sure, now, looking back, that it bit him somewhere in the process. He remembers a hospital, Gramps' face doing something complicated that Yuji hadn't yet learned to read as fear. The doctors were fairly sure the snake hadn't been venomous. Gramps liked to tell that story for years afterward, softened at the edges into something almost funny by distance — his brave but stupid Yuji, delivered every time with the same exact fondness, like the fear had never happened at all.
Then there was the car.
Gramps didn’t like to talk about that story. Yuji had to piece it together secondhand, from a neighbour who couldn't resist filling in the gaps one afternoon while Gramps was out. Yuji had been six. A ball had rolled too far down the street after the other kids had already been called inside for the evening, and Yuji — kind, brave, stupid Yuji — had gone after it alone.
The driver was young, tired after working from dawn to dusk. Everyone thought he was a drunk when he swore he’d hit the kid and watched him be sent flying. Yuji doesn't remember the impact at all. He only remembers seeing his grandpa cry for the first time.
Gramps stopped letting him play in the street after that. Told him that the neighbourhood was too nosey for its own good, and left it there, and Yuji — young enough not to ask the questions that would have mattered — let it be forgotten.
Yuji was strong. He was tough, kind and resilient.
"You're a strong boy, so try to help others."
Gramps' dying wish. His voice was thinner than Yuji had ever heard it, but still somehow carrying every ounce of certainty it had always had.
"Save the people you can, even if it's only those closest to you."
He will. He'd promised that much without even needing to say the words out loud.
"It's okay if you lose your way. And don't worry about whether they'll thank you or not."
Something had moved in Yuji's chest at that, something he hadn't had a name for at the time and still doesn't, not really, even now.
"Just save as many people as you can, even if you can only save one."
"Only one?"
Yuji opens his eyes onto a throne set at the top of a mountain of bones.
Yuji opens his eyes to find himself standing before a throne on top of a mountain of bones. They didn’t look human, for the most part. Mostly cow and buffalo, but some ribs, jaws and femurs human enough that it makes his stomach do something complicated even as some detached part of his brain notes, that he's seen worse in horror movies. Somehow that thought doesn't help at all.
"We can do better than that."
There's a version of himself seated on the throne. Dressed wrong — refined and traditional in a way that doesn't belong anywhere near Yuji's actual life — with black markings scored across his face and down what Yuji can see of his chest, and a second pair of eyes set into his skull stare into the very essence of Yuji’s soul. The pout on that face is the wrong shape for it, too childish, too petulant for something with eyes so old. As quickly as it was there, the pout was replaced with a grin that revealed teeth far too sharp.
"You and me, brat? We're gonna save everyone."
This is the worst case scenario. A one in a million chance.
Megumi can't do anything but watch as the grade two's purple blood falls like rain around him.
The special grade cursed object has incarnated.
The boy standing where Itadori used to be is not Itadori anymore, not fully — not with those dark marks decorating his skin, not with the once-warm brown of his eyes gone a bitter, ugly red, not with the second set of eyes that has opened below the first like something being born. Megumi's own blood is still wet down the side of his face, and he can't get his phone hand to stop shaking long enough to try Gojo again.
‘Damn it, Gojo,’ Megumi curses to himself, ‘Why couldn't you pick up your phone?’
The boy before him curls in on himself, shaking, and for one terrible half-second Megumi wonders if he's wrong — if this is still, somehow, Itadori underneath.
Megumi shifted to his knees, hesitating to jump into action too quickly with his injuries still fresh.
Itadori, who learned cursed spirits existed less than an hour ago, there’s no way he’d be capable of holding back the strongest sorcerer in all of history. And that technique he used to take down the Grade 2… It left an unsettling feeling lingering in the air.
Then there’s laughter.
Sukuna's laughter. It rolls out across the school grounds and down Megumi's spine like something cold poured straight into his collar.
Sukuna tears the boy's ruined hoodie the rest of the way off, chest bared, more of those dark marks scattered across skin.
"I knew it! The light feels so sweet with a body! Cursed flesh sucks!" He's up on the roof fence in the same breath, balanced there like it's nothing, looking out over the rooftops of Sendai with an expression Megumi couldn’t quite place. "Oh yeah, this was definitely worth the wait! What a wonderful time to be back!"
Megumi didn’t expect this. He'd braced himself for a grating voice, something that announced its own monstrousness — not this. Sukuna’s voice was pitched so close to Itadori’s own, so wrong for something this old and this powerful that the wrongness itself becomes its own kind of horror.
"What to do first, hmm? Maybe some food or movies? Or maybe I should just kill them now…" There's a snarl folded into the end of it, low, almost private.
It's enough to snap Megumi out of his own paralysis — A reminder that this cannot be Itadori. He shifts his stance, calling on his last real weapon, though some logical part of his brain is already doing the math and coming up short — what exactly is a second-year supposed to do against a sorcerer incarnated straight out of the Heian era. He doesn't have an answer. He raises his hands anyway.
"Under Jujutsu regulation, Yuji Itadori, by law I will now exorcise you as a curse!"
Sukuna's laughter echoes in his mind, manic and delighted, and Megumi — who had met Itadori for the first time only that morning, filling out paperwork after his grandfather's death — finds himself hoping, absurdly, that the boy has people left to mourn him properly.
Sukuna turns toward him. His expression is unreadable in a way that feels worse than any bloodlust could have been.
Shit.
Megumi doesn't even realise his eyes are snapping shut as he anticipates one of Sukuna’s techniques to rend him in two.
A moment passes.
He's still alive. He can still fight. He has to — for Itadori's sake, if nothing else. But something about the silence stretching past the moment he expected to die feels wrong in a way that has nothing to do with fear.
He opens his eyes.
Sukuna stands in front of him with both hands raised, palms out. Except — it isn't Sukuna anymore. The second pair of eyes have closed, sitting on his face now like nothing more than an old scar. The black markings have faded to nothing. And the brown eyes that are left are full of confusion instead of bloodlust.
"Fushiguro?" The boy tilts his head. "Hey! I feel fine!"
This can't be Itadori. It's not possible. A trick, maybe? Has to be a trick.
"You and I are both pretty beat up. Shouldn't we see a doctor or something?"
Megumi's jaw tightens. He genuinely cannot tell, standing here, whether he's looking at a boy or a weapon wearing a boy's face.
‘Damn it… what am I supposed to do now.’
"What's the situation?"
Megumi doesn't need to turn around to know who's finally decided to show up.
"Gojo? You're here?"
"I wasn't planning on showing up. But you got kinda roughed up, kid!" Gojo's already got his phone out, thumb hovering. "I'll show the second years. Say cheese!"
Megumi quickly covers his beat up face the best he can with his arm. This was embarrassing. Embarrassing that he got beat up so badly, embarrassing that Gojo had to come save him, embarrassing that now Maki and Okkotsu were going to see how pathetic he is.
"I got an earful from the higher-ups 'cause the special grade cursed object's still missing. Thought I'd do a little sightseeing and stop by." Gojo finally glances up from his phone. "So? Did you find it yet?"
Megumi stares at the ground and says nothing.
Itadori pipes up instead, entirely unbothered. "Uh… sorry, but I kinda ate that thing."
Even Gojo looks briefly, genuinely thrown. "…Really?"
"He did." "I did." The two confess.
"..." Gojo tilts his head, studying the boy properly now, cursed energy assessment written plainly across his face even behind the blindfold. Strong. Tainted, unmistakably, by the specific rot that is Ryomen Sukuna. His laugh, when it comes, startles both of them. "Damn, it really did combine with you! That's hilarious. Anything weird about your body?"
"Nah!" Itadori checks his own limbs anyway, turning his hands over like he's checking someone else's. "Seems okay!"
"Can you swap out with Sukuna at will?"
"Sukuna?"
"Yeah, the curse you ate?"
"Oh!" A pause, Itadori mulls the idea over. "Hmm… mmhm! Yeah, I think I can do that!"
Gojo starts stretching, unbothered as anything. "Okay! Give us ten seconds and then change right back into yourself."
"Yeah but…"
"Don't worry, I'm way too strong for him." Confident as ever. “Megumi, hold onto this for me.”
He tosses the pink paper bag he's been carrying to Megumi without looking and begins stretching. Always have to set a good example for his students after all! Even if it's unnecessary, with him being the strongest after all.
“So what is this?” Megumi’s voice is hoarse from the beating he took earlier.
“Kikufuku from Kikusuian!” Gojo’s smile is even bigger as he talks more about it, though at this point the two boys are tuning him out. "Kikufuku's just the best—"
One…
Sukuna interrupts and strikes first.
Or tries to.
Dust and shattered concrete swallow the impact whole, and by the time it clears, Gojo has somehow ended up sitting directly on top of him, Megumi's face inches from Sukuna's own without either of them quite tracking how it happened.
"I think it's the whipped cream inside that really makes a difference," Gojo says, not even glancing at the man he's currently pinning to the ground.
Two…
Sukuna's laughter comes back, manic, delighted, as he throws a rapid series of strikes that Gojo dodges with a speed that shouldn't be physically available to anything human.
Three…
More swings — wide, devastating arcs that are tearing through concrete and steel, each one missing its true target. Gojo slipping sideways or backwards or simply somewhere else entirely at the last possible instant.
Yet it doesn’t even seem like Sukuna is trying. That's the part that settles wrong in Megumi's chest — the swings are enormous, powerful enough to crack the rooftop underfoot just from the displacement, but Sukuna's face looks like a kid playing a game for the millionth time. Like he already knows exactly how this ends and finds it funny.
Gojo, for his part, is starting to look genuinely annoyed about it. "I get you're a few fingers short, but don't tell me you're taking it a little easy on me, Sukuna?" The strongest sorcerer in all of history isn’t taking the strongest of today seriously. This isn’t making Gojo look good at all! How is he meant to show off if it’s clear his opponent isn’t going all out?
"What's the point if I know I can never land an attack on you?" Sukuna laughs, launching himself skyward before bringing an attack down hard enough to demolish the floor beneath them.
Four… Five… Six…
Gojo yanks Megumi clear of the blast radius without breaking stride.
Sukuna figured out Gojo’s technique that quickly? Normally opponents take at least a couple minutes of fighting Gojo to realise something’s off. For Sukuna to figure it out in seconds? Gojo knows he’s going to have to keep an eye on this one.
"Seven… Eight… Nine… and that should do it," Gojo finishes, intrigued by the strange kid standing in the middle of all this wreckage.
Sukuna stills, cursed energy flaring once before it drops away entirely. "Damn… wish I could play around a little longer…" The markings start to fade, second set of eyes closing. “Ah well. See you soon, S—”
Where Sukuna stood a moment ago, Yuji Itadori stands instead, surrounded by crumbling concrete, looking about as confused as he did ten seconds ago earlier.
"Oh!” Itadori fully comes back to himself. “How did it go?"
Gojo chuckles, releasing his technique now the immediate danger has been subdued. Definitely intriguing. “How about that? So you really can control that guy!”
Itadori shrugs, skin stinging slightly from the beating. “He’s not all that bad, to tell the truth. Kinda creepy, I guess?” He bangs at his temple with the palm of his hand. “I keep hearing his voice!”
Gojo approaches the boy, relaxed and unassuming. “It’s a miracle that’s all he’s doing to you.” Two fingers tap Itadori’s forehead.
Then it all goes dark.
Heian-kyō. Heian Period.
What do you call a young god who is yet to be worshipped? A young god with more power than even he knows? Whose very existence in this time tips the balance of the universe and curses the hand of fate?
A god among men. A vulture. A criminal.
The boy is disfigured. He wanders the village edges in rags too thin for the season, four arms folded wrong against a frame too small to carry them, a second set of eyes that sit on his face like they were meant for someone else's skull entirely. His teeth bared unnaturally sharp and too big for his small jaw. His nails pointed, halfway to a claw.
"Demon!" the people shout when they see him.
"Monster!" the other children scream, scattering away less he steals them from their homes.
"Curse!" from the ones he believed would help him find his home.
"Cleave," the boy would call out when the blades finally come for him.
The bodies fall around him, and the earth beneath his bare feet fertilised with their blood.
The boy understands, standing alone among the corpses of those who thought they were strong, that he is entirely, irreversibly alone.
There is no other like him.
Not yet.