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“A cursed seed.”
Shoko's hands are very still, dropped dead at her sides. “Hanami's flower was never just a flower. There was always a chance it might have its own devices of destruction that we couldn't predict or remove at the time.”
“So remove it now!”
My voice — precipitous, craggy — echoes too high from the tiles and the corners and gets caught in flapping green curtains separating beds. Bodies. Beds.
Her lip curls in anger. “By now it's spread pretty much everywhere. Not a chance in hell to get it out or exorcize it without killing the host.”
Next to me Kugisaki — Nobara — with fists balled to fight the truth. “If we can't get it out we'll just have to battle it from the inside. Maybe Resonance could—”
“It's invaded everything.”
Invaded. Megumi, his body, invaded. Again. That horrible chill all over, freezing my limbs, my breath, my heart.
“We've found the plant's cursed signature in Fushiguro's blood, in his bone marrow, in his skin, in all sorts of tissue, in his brain. There's no—”
No way. No way. After all that we've been through. After Shibuya, after the Culling Game, after Sukuna, after…
“What does it do?”
It's the first thing Megumi has said ever since we've entered the room and found Shoko, spine curled in defeat, hand closed around the pack of cigarettes she'd sworn to quit.
*
It bends me in half and breaks me.
Quiet, lumpy groans. At long last, not just in sleep, not just during those moments of rest when the wheels of routine have stopped their turns. No longer only at times when he thinks I don't listen.
Used to strain my ears all night — and then comes the point I wish I'd turned deaf. Face the wall don't hear don't think don't see.
He hides his body. But we've seen, we have. The veins bulged, blackish, bucking against skin. Twisting against flesh. Veins? Vines?
The anger. Why can't it fucking stop?
The fear. Nauseating lurch of my stomach when his breath hitches and his hand clutches at his torso, his arm, his leg. Bruising, clawing, and then it's over again.
Until, one day, it breaks through.
*
Arm ripped open. We've seen that before, we've seen it all. Cleaved flesh, chunky, flapping with blood gurgling from it garnet red —
But the vines. That slither from the wound and rear their bloomless ovaries and carpels like hydra heads. That turn on him, razor-sharp, to tear off more skin wherever they reach. That slice off three of my fingers and my left ear while I grab and hold and holler for help.
His scream in my other ear. Yuji! Let go! LET GO!
His blood, drenching our uniforms lukewarm, and the vines shuddering in their slippery bath.
Inumaki, who fights to freeze them.
Okkotsu, who cuts them off with one cursed slash, along with the rest of Megumi's arm. Nobara's nails, finishing off the writhing remnants on the floor.
We breathe, and bleed, and he blacks out in my butchered arms.
*
“A curse, Itadori. What did you expect?”
It's the Angel who speaks from Hana's cheek. Sharp, melodic trill in my right ear, cotton-muffled in my newly restored left one. Hana twists her hands into her sweater, stares at Megumi's pale brow.
I don't bother to reply. Turn back to Shoko instead.
“You said it's like a parasite. But this...this is like a monster inside —“
Shoko, in deep concentration, shakes her head. She's still mending Megumi's last finger, close to total exhaustion from the ordeal of reattaching the arm she and Okkotsu saved.
“It's a curse. It fights back.”
“And Megumi's fighting it all the time?” Hana whispers. I can't bring myself to lay my hand onto her shoulder for comfort. Find that I can't stand the way she twists and twists the fabric between her fingers.
“He needs to drastically reduce his cursed energy output.” Shoko, finished, stands heavily. Hana grabs a glass of water and all but shoves it into Shoko's hand. Silence stretches when she gulps it down, and I bite the tip of my tongue to keep from stating the obvious.
*
“I'd rather die.”
I close my eyes. Force myself to believe it's progress. A year ago, he wouldn't have said it. He'd have nodded and walked away in order to off himself.
“Snap out of it, Fushiguro!” As always, Nobara demands. Challenges. The tone, more so than the words, reaches out to Megumi and finds a thread to pull. “You're telling me you're gonna chicken out of living? After all that you've survived?”
There's love in her words, thick and feral. And panic that we pretend not to hear.
“It's just until we've found something. Something that neutralizes it. Like Technique Extinguishment, but for the curse itself.” I know I'm babbling. After all this time, I still know so little of the mechanisms and conditions of jujutsu. And Megumi, who knows so much more, keeps looking at his stitched-up arm, at the black brushstrokes that already begin to bloom forth beneath unblemished skin.
Obsidian eyes. Brows of broken steel.
“There must be something,” Nobara agrees, urgent, despair cloaked in anger. “Just lay low for a while. Don't allow that bastard weed to feed on your energy.”
*
My beautiful seedling.
I can feel you grow. The pumping of your life-sap, viscid, through strong-walled veins. So alive.
My pride. My legacy.
You will take back what should never have been given away. You will own and govern and cherish what now bemoans human oppression.
Slow and steady, my beautiful seedling.
Grow towards the core. Towards the life-sustaining systems. Take over. Take it all.
*
We're in the kitchen when he drops down.
A cut-off gasp, air punched out of him.
“Megumi!“
His hand grasps at his chest, grasps nothing, freezes, cramped and distorted, in mid-air. Eyes split open with horror, jaw dropped with retching, choked groans breaking in his throat.
“Megumi!!!”
Blood. Just a trickle from the corner of his lower lip, then a lurch that slams him forward and a flood of dark clotted crimson that bursts from his mouth.
“Fuck! We need Shoko.”
Megumi, still retching, heaving, choking, tears leaking from unseeing eyes. On my knees in front of his convulsing body, I grab his shoulders. Grab his jaw to —
“Oh my God.”
“Shoko, please, get Shoko! “
I choke it out just as the vines break forth from the cavern of his trachea, bloodied snakes that crawl over his tongue, slither along his blood-smeared lips, and—
shoot around my arms, tightening, dragging. Immobilized. I pull, scream, and—
A leaf strokes my cheek. Spindly and coarse underneath its coat of blood. Tender and ticklish on its way down the side of my throat.
There's silence. A breath shudders through me and ripples the vine that's reached my collarbone. My gaze snaps up to Megumi's heaving chest, his lips, breath forced out past foreign matter and leftover rivulets of red. His wide eyes.
A sudden ache spreads from my solar plexus through my entire abdomen and chest. A familiar ache.
In the hospital right after my grandfather's death. In the detention center. In the shadows of Yasohachi bridge. After Shibuya. During the Culling Game. And again when the fight was over. Meeting Megumi's eyes. For the first time, for the last time, for eternity.
Unable to reach out with my captured hands I reach out with all that I have, my eyes, my thoughts — we'll fix it, Megumi, we always did, sort of, it's always seemed impossible but we did it — my heart. That beats, wild and aching, as the vines protruding from his gaping mouth snake their ways softly around my torso.
A choked cry.
Neither of us moves. Then the air sings with people, with cursed energy, with shouts and stifled swears.
And as the plant begins to choke me I'm watching Megumi's cheeks split open with black-blustering ramifications, and my lungs collapse before I get a chance to scream.
*
The night is paper-thin between our beds. It rustles with inhales and exhales, it creaks with soft groans. Its barbed cold nicks skin that's come uncovered.
“Megumi…” Barely a whisper.
“Stop it, Itadori.”
I swallow the sound of my last name like acid. “Stop what?”
“Stop trying to protect me.”
“What happened to ‘Save me’?” A pathetic croak. The joke is lost in longing.
An exasperated sigh rushes out of him. In its wake a persistent cough, wrenched from deep within his chest where the vipers are lying at rest.
“Go to sleep, Itadori.”
His back is turned. A thin stretch of white fabric over his curved spine. Steep precipices between vertebrae. They draw my fingers, my fingers that scream comfort, that beg to give. But my name on his lips — the wrong one, the one he stopped using a year ago — is what holds me, sheets like shackles round my ankles.
And I try to go to sleep, I do, despite the threat. It looms at the edges of my consciousness whenever I close my eyes. Not the usual nightmares, the old specters, the fresher horrors. Something's near.
But when I open my eyes again there's still Megumi's white-clothed back, his wild strands curled into the mattress. A statue of granite and graphite. Solid, strong. Self-sufficient. Can a plant erode a rock? Dig its tendrils so deep into the crevices that it ruptures to its core? Nestle into the wounds and mold itself into flesh to reshape it from within?
My beautiful seedling…
I freeze. A flare of panic, clawing at my neck. The darkness rings with the reverberations of a voice.
Easy now… ease your way out…
Panic spikes, all too familiar, fight or flight, and the latter has never been an option for us but—
But I am caught. My eyes fixed onto the white mound of Megumi's back, white dotted dark red in a long line from neck to bottom, dots growing, growing into each other, seeping, dripping red — and underneath a spider's web of twining, curling, ramifying veins, branching out, out of the body, out from underneath the shirt and over the sheets, out of the bed and onto the floor, sliding soundless, growing, breaching.
What have we got here, my beautiful seedling?
Spread like webby wings from Megumi's back, spilling onto the ground, searching still.
This one?
They're here. Crawling over the edge of my bed. Heart racing I hold my breath and prepare to strike.
And then there's nothing. Nothing but a whispery brush of fern in the crook of my elbow. Nothing but a purple blossom. Another. And another. Blossoms like dots of blood purpling all over Megumi's back. Blossoms, like expired stars laid out between our beds. Blossoms, like Tahitian pearls strewn onto a dress of darkness.
Oh my little seedling. So you've chosen.
The voice fills me. Ringing with terrifying beauty over the sea of black-purplish roses.
They surround me still when morning cracks its first light through the blinds. Wither and fade when Megumi stirs and starts to wake.
*
“I'm sorry, Itadori-kun?”
“What's it like,” I repeat. Knuckles white where my hands have closed around the edge of the table. “What's it like to be loved by a curse?”
Okkotsu stares. Eyes like pools, swallow souls, swallow cursed techniques, swallow pain and grief and power.
“Not that much different, I'd wager.” A shrug, then a smile far too shy to belong to one of the greatest sorcerers alive. “I've never been loved by anyone but Rika.”
“Uh.” It's not my place. Not my place to tell him what everyone else — everyone but Okkotsu — seems to know. That, perhaps, a glance in the right direction might change his mind about that. I take a breath to clear my head. Focus on what I need to know.
“Does Rika… Did she… want…?”
“You mean… the physical aspects?”
I nod. We may both have killed, died, come back to life, but we're still barely adults and I can tell my cheeks are flushed just as flaming red as his.
“Rika, well, she—” Okkotsu bites his lip, looks away. “She was a child when she died. She liked hugs, and kisses, and, obviously she's still there when I—” He closes his eyes. “Well.” A helpless shrug.
“Okay,” I try to sound confident. Like I know what I'm talking about. “So the curse, she might, maybe, uh, want to join you?”
Okkotsu’s eyes jump to meet mine. I can't shake the feeling that it's the curse staring back from their depths. “This is… about Fushiguro-kun.”
*
“Like, a poison?” Nobara's arms are crossed over her chest, defensive, protective. Trying for professional calm but failing over the magnitude of her emotions.
I nod. “Only to the curse, of course, but since it's seeped so far into Fushiguro's entire being, it's still— well, I—”
“Like chemotherapy for cancer treatment?”
Her eyes are narrowed. She knows she's hit the mark.
I nod again. “Only faster. Gotta go all-in so there's no chance for it to fight back.”
I wonder if she's guessed the plan, even though I try to stay as vague as possible.
*
I slip into his room at nightfall. He glances up from the book in his lap, then snaps it shut.
“No.”
His rejection breaks like a wave against my chest. I hold my breath to push through it.
“You're gonna have to throw me out, then.”
“I will, then.”
His growl — sounds so much like his Divine Dog. Fondness crashes into my guts, warm, unchanged, for all this time we've known each other. The same reaction I've always provoked in him.
How painful do you want this to be, Megumi? I stand. Wait. Hope against hope that he won't try. Not entirely human, am I? Too strong for my own good. Too headstrong for him.
Shadows swirl beneath me and I jump away just in time to avoid the gaping abyss that would have taken me away.
“You're not supposed to use it!” I accuse, worry spiking as I wait for the inevitable, the choking, the busted limbs, the vines erupting from the body I want to pull into my arms.
“You leave me no choice!”
Darkness breaks away from the walls, reaches for me, attempts to push me out of the door and it's a narrow win this time because I'm trying not to hurt his cursed energy as I bat it away.
When it subsides, I don't give him time for another attempt. Move through the dust of residuals towards him, stand before him.
“Itadori.” His voice, thin and taut, like a string drawn to the point of flying apart.
“Megumi.” And I allow myself to break. Let it all flow into that one word. The crushing despair, the fierce longing, the unyielding need. “Megumi.” Sinking to my knees next to his bedside, head bowed in a helpless prayer. My name, please, let me hear you say it. Before I do this, let me know we're still—
No. I can't expect comfort. I don't deserve comfort.
But there are fingers carding through my hair. Tremulous fingers. As if he were on the verge of breaking, too.
“Itadori . You know what it wants.” His whisper, urgent with anxiety, more aware than I dare to think about.
I know. But there's nothing I can tell him. Nothing I can give him. Except for this: I smile. And he knows what it means.
“ Itadori.”
When he jerks his hand away I capture it in mine. Bring it to my lips for them to trace the texture of his skin, calloused fingertips, the back of his hand rough silk, the dreamy curve of his thumb.
On the inside of his wrist my tongue meets moss-green veins, barely contained by skin. I glance up through the fence of his curled fingers. Witness the battle in his eyes. Anger. Fear. Wanting. So much wanting.
I taste him, reverent, a scrape of teeth and moist breath, and watch his lips part in a silent groan. Watch the emerald flames shift like shadows round his pupils.
Oh, how I want him in return.
Floodgates pushed open between us, we surge into each other. Hands that haul me up and heave me into the mattress. For a moment, it is all I know: that his lips are strong taste bitter slide dry press hard want more than he will ever tell in words. Lips sans poetry. Furious hands. Battle-armored body falling apart. Uncoordinated. Unconsciously opened thighs. Closer. Wanting, needing—
And then it's there. The usurper. Megumi's frantic heart bumps into mine through our chests. He makes a last attempt to shove me away, palms against my shoulders, and I let myself fall backward to pull him with me, above me. Clasping and searching the fortress of his ribcage with my fingertips, waiting for the retching, the skin pried open from inside, the twist of my stomach as I watch him suffer.
Nothing.
We breathe each other's apprehension. Taste adrenaline when I brush his lips with mine. It's there. But it's waiting.
I don't want to think about what that means. Want to beg him not to hate me, once all of this is over.
Megumi's jaw, snapped shut, tight with determination. Pinched frown, blazing eyes. So beautiful, even like this, terse and angry, at me, at his desires, at the unfairness of it all. Fairness. He's fair. Pale skin beneath the gruesome curse marks. I trace a finger over them. The old ones, courtesy of Sukuna's slanted eyes. The new ones. Thin lines branching out from his hairline over his temples. “Beautiful,” I murmur, and he huffs away the notion.
“It's a curse.” Voice harsh with disgust. Husky, too, as I shift beneath him.
“You forget,” I raise my hips into his warmth and watch the flutter of his eyelids, “that I had a curse inside me for almost half a year.” Again. The jolt of excitement when I realize he's shifted closer, more intimate. “That never stopped you from—”
Words ripped from my throat with a kiss. I gasp into his mouth and find his lips nudging a smile against mine. Have to close my eyes to catch the tear that threatens to spill over.
Don't cry. Just — hold onto him.
And I do. My hands hooked into his shoulder blades. My ankle slung over the small of his back. Kissing with our mouths open, famished, tongues roaming and retreating in a heady, tidal dance.
His fingers work my sweatpants loose and tug and travel and trace and grip with a sudden sting of blunt fingernails as he groans—
Wet beneath my palms. It's not sweat it's—
And from fresh, oozing wounds along his trapezius it burrows its way out, like worms that bump my hands. Vines creep underneath my bloodied fingers. Vines that spread, that wiggle free from flesh even as I press harder into the wounds, trying in vain to stop their growth, to stifle the pained groan that accompanies their ghastly birth.
They are on me in an instant. Round my shoulders, my arms, my legs, my throat. Enmeshed. And Megumi jerks away from my grip, my kiss, but I hold him with all my strength and lick a desperate plea against the roof of his mouth. Trust me, just— I don't know how, I can't even imagine— but please, trust me.
“The youngling.”
It's the voice. Wafting over us like wind in the woods. Megumi freezes in my arms, and I loosen my grasp. The kiss breaks as my lips fall from his. No more running now. We're caught like goldfish in a net, flopping fins and gasps devoid of life.
Vines on my cheeks, sliding down, grazing where his lips held mine just moments ago. His eyes are broken gems, sharp and shuddering with flickers of light, fixed on my face, on what's being done to it.
“We've been patient, youngling. But we always take what we want. Eventually.”
“Hanami,” I whisper against the tendrils on my lips.
“You know our name, youngling.”
“And you know mine.” My hands clench into fists around the torn fabric on Megumi's shoulders. “I'm the Death Painting Cursed Womb Itadori Yuji.”
Megumi's eyes turn black with betrayal. “Hanami,” he barks, “this is Jujutsu Sorcerer Itadori Yuji.”
“We've met before, Itadori Yuji. We've learned a lot since then.”
A single blossom unfolds its dark petals in the corner of my mouth, right over the scar. I don't dare to part my lips. Bite my tongue and breathe through my nose.
“You're a curse. That's all you know.” Megumi's level tone. His confidence, the power of his arms next to my head, supporting his weight. His attempt to draw Hanami's attention away from me. It aches to know so much about someone you're about to hurt.
I can't allow his diversion to work.
“What have you learned, Hanami?” I demand. Stare helplessly into Megumi's eyes that scream at me to stop — Itadori! You idiot! — Megumi's eyes that pierce my body deeper than any curse can.
Vines, everywhere, all around us and all over me. Where I want his hands. Where I want him. Where I want no one but him, ever.
“We understand Mahito now. His fascination with humans.”
“Mahito—” I spit out the name like a foul substance on my tongue “—didn't care for any of this. How we…” I don't have words, words for the way Megumi is looking at me, words for what I feel and what I have to do. “How we give ourselves… to another.”
Something’s between the bedsheets and the very end of my spine. Something not human. Panic claws at me — stuck caught helpless it's gonna hurt — but I've learned to shove that feeling back down. Let my eyes cling to Megumi's, let them anchor me. Beg them to see what I'm trying to hide. Megumi. You. Only you.
“A strange procedure. So exclusive when used for reproduction. So dependent. ”
Megumi's gaze flickers down between our bodies where vines have begun to tear fabric, unravel threads, decompose clothing. Bared hips between my naked thighs. The heavy tang of arousal ruddies the fear.
“It's worked well enough for our race.” The moment hangs in the air, a curtain about to be lifted, to reveal the dance. I need only go that one step further.
I can't. Not against your will, Megumi.
My hand is caught in Hanami's grip. But when I fight to reach up, the vines give me enough room to lift it to Megumi's cheek. He catches it before it lands. His lips bury a sealed promise in the nook of my palm.
When he turns to press his cheek into the warm hollow, I feel him nod. A confirmation nearly imperceptible, but the keen understanding in his gaze is enough to back it up.
“I can show you.” The vines shiver against my wrists. Okkotsu was right. Angel, too. It's gonna work.
“You give yourself to us, Itadori Yuji? To a curse you tried to kill?”
“I'm more than half a curse myself.” It's not a lie, is it? No matter what Megumi says, I'm still—
“Let go.”
I wince. But no, the growl Megumi forces through clenched teeth is not directed at me. Hanami's vines have tightened around his fingers to drag them away from where they covered mine, to drag them towards—
“Let go,” he barks, “I'll do it.”
And for a second I want to cry in relief because Megumi is reaching down, is guiding himself, and yes, the vines are still there, all over him and me, and almost inside, sap-slick and skin-warm, and I feel them align, coil around him, moving, writhing , but— but it's still Megumi.
A gentle nudge. Careful pressure. Slippery tendrils hold flesh that's just a little too soft, urge him in even as he tries to go slower. He cradles me in his gaze. Harsh breaths through his nose. A tiny push that burns when he swells and the vines pulse in answer. Another and he's inside.
Too big. Still squirming. Breathe. Don't think don't think don't try to wrap your head around what's happening. Focus. Keep breathing. It's Megumi.
He sags against me. Forehead to forehead.
“Yuji.”
This time, I cry. Just a few solitary drops that can't rival the cascade of warmth erupting from deep within. The things you do to me.
And with his warmth blanketing my body, the panic and discomfort fade to a dull haze. Stutters of breath whisper in my ear, wordless affirmation, every time he pulls back and is tugged forward again, faster than he wants to. I answer in breathy gasps.
The vines emit a throbbing pulse. Inside me, around us, in time with the thrusts, rocking us like a ship into the cresting wave. Powerful. All-encompassing. I cling to his shoulders. His arms tremble as he holds his weight.
Feel him grow bigger. The— the vines spreading. His mouth on mine and our lips open and there's — tendrils tracing all over my tongue — along his tongue — push my jaw open to take, and take, and choke on them.
And he groans, drawn-out, relentless, overcome. Gods, Megumi. So beautiful.
Everything clenches tight, so tight, fuck , a flash of pain, and then—
It releases.
A tremor that rattles the bedframe. Megumi's strangled gasp. A shock of purple as petals erupt from tendrils, and from the blossoms—
It's beautiful. They are floating, all around us, particles of gilded dust. Megumi collapses on my shoulder, body wrecked by shudders. The voice weaves itself into the golden spray.
“You're ours now.”
Realization, like a douse of ice water down my spine. Now. It's gotta be now. With my gaze fixed on Megumi's wounded shoulders. Now. With my eyes and arms and senses so full of him I could overflow with this raging love. Now, while he's still too out of it to react.
“Not yet.” I don't manage more than a whisper. “Not yet. You have to take my heart.”
“But your heart belongs to him.”
Even the curse knows. Gods, how can I do this to him.
“I'm willing to share.”
This careering heart that grows bigger and heavier with each moment until—
Until a vine wrenches him away from my chest, drags him upright, and he opens his eyes just in time to witness as it lunges like a cobra's head—
Agony. Blood bursting. Drenched sheets. Drowned gold.
The plant, writhing, wriggling. So much blood. All over him. His hair, his face. His wounds. All soaked.
Crimson fog. The scream of a beast… Am I— no. It's him.
But it's me who did this. The crushed emeralds. Dulled to black. The failing strength of despairing hands. Trying to rip tendrils out of my open chest. Soaked petals coating his fingers. Purple slime. He calls me.
Calls my name.
My name…
*
It's dark when I come back. My face, pressed into his naked shoulder, the side of his neck. His hand clutching strands at the back of my head. The familiar tingle of Reverse Cursed Technique.
“Less than twenty minutes dead. A new record for you.”
He grunts it through chattering teeth. Feverish skin. Shaking all over. The Cursed Blood is already at work.
“Gotta—” My throat feels raw. “Gotta get you to Shoko. My blood’s like— like poison, for—”
“I know. Idiot.”
We're still covered in vines. Limp, wilting, twitching vines.
“Liar…”
It whispers like an eerie breeze. And I think of golden dust and purple blossoms and I hug his quivering body to mine as he curses me and calls me an idiot and maybe I cry again, too. Cause Gojo sensei was always right, wasn't he, and love is still the most twisted curse of all.