Chapter Text
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October
Pain arrives before thought.
It’s everywhere, spilling outward in a violent wash of heat that consumes muscle and bone. An animalistic scream tears through you as blood pours freely from ruptured flesh and soaks into the leaves beneath your cheek. The forest floor is trampled and slick with red. The taste of iron congeals on your tongue. Trees lie broken around you, trunks split and limbs torn away. The only sounds left are your wet gasps and the slow crunch of boots approaching through leaves and twigs.
A shadow falls over you before you can gather your senses – before you can even think – and a boot comes down hard on your hand. Fingers splay uselessly against the dirt. Bone grinds against bone. Your joints cry out. A noise dies in your throat as your jaw locks around the sound.
You can’t snap, you can’t move.
Your cursed energy surges in blind panic, flaring wildly beneath your skin with nowhere to discharge. It feeds into damaged nerves and amplifies every signal until your own ability only succeeds in tearing you further apart. Sound sharpens to agony and you hear everything. Each noise slams into your skull like it’s being struck from the inside. You hear the parting of his lips, the intake of breath.
“Yield.”
The single syllable rattles your soul. You know exactly how bad this is. Your body is broken, bleeding out, and pinned helplessly beneath him. Still, you refuse. After everything you’ve endured, you can’t bend here. You will not.
“Fuck you.” The words scrape out of you, shaking despite your intent. Thoughts scatter, trying desperately to assemble a plan that might let you trigger your technique, but nothing holds.
An insidious sensation creeps through you suddenly. Heat floods your veins, chased by biting cold. It spreads with ominous patience, weaving through muscle and marrow. Poison.
A quiet, knowing sound leaves him. He kneels, and the pressure on your hand eases and is replaced by something worse. Blood coated fingers closing around your chin, tilting your face upward with cruel gentleness. Your neck protests and you wonder absently which of your blood is smearing across your skin.
Anger crashes against apathy, your glare colliding with his unflinching calm. You’ve always hated how the amber hue pulls you in, how they manage to speak volumes while giving nothing away. Even now, ringed with battered markings and flecked with dried ichor, they’re beautiful. The thought makes you sick.
“I’ll never yield to you, Choso,” you whisper. It spills out breathless and fragile, your body betraying you at every turn. Saying his name sparks something burning and unspoken between you. His breath ghosts across your cheeks as he exhales, close enough to feel.
“My blood is poison,” Choso says evenly, detached. His thumb shifts minutely, brushing along your jaw as if tracing a memory rather than holding a dying enemy. “You lost the moment I pierced you.”
The world wobbles at the edges. Warm liquid leaks from your ears, dripping into the dirt with every sound ringing in your damaged eardrums.
“You will yield,” he reaffirms, nail digging into flesh.
You know this ends one of two ways. One: You give in. You lose everything you’ve fought for across all these endless encounters, and whatever remains of you after that likely won’t last long. Two: You keep fighting. However, your limbs feel like lead. You’ve never been forced this far, stripped of choice and dignity beneath the weight of someone stronger.
There's one card left. One final, desperate gambit. If this fails, you’re done. With the way your vision dims at the edges, you know you don’t have much time. There’s something you heard a long time ago: A cornered animal will always bite.
“I don’t hate you,” you grit through clenched teeth.
Confusion flickers across his face – a crack in that impenetrable calm. He won’t understand. He doesn’t need to. In the face of his hatred, his history, his choices, you can’t bring yourself to feel it in return. You know how this story ends.
His eyes widen
And you strike.
July
Rain wakes you. Cold strikes bare skin, soaks into fabric, and gathers on your lashes. You gasp and suck in water, coughing hard as your body curls on itself. Everything hurts.
You don’t open your eyes right away, laying there with your cheek pressed to solid ground. Somewhere nearby, water runs steadily down stone. Farther off, a chain-link fence rattles in the wind. A heartbeat is loud in your ears, frantic and stuttering. There’s a static buzzing beneath everything, a half-familiar hum you can’t delineate. Trying to remember how you got here does nothing, memory refusing to produce anything useful.
When you finally blink up at the sky, everything is grey. Droplets streak across your vision, blurring the corners of the world. There’s concrete everywhere. Under you, beside you, rising up in a monolithic slab to your left. A featureless building, its surface is darkened by water. Nothing that tells you where you are or how you got here.
Carefully, you test your fingers against the ground. They move sluggishly, numb from chill, but they move. That small confirmation sends a wave of relief through you. You draw one knee up, then the other, and push yourself upright with a groan.
That’s when you see the uniform.
It takes a second for your brain to process what it’s seeing. A soaked white blouse clings to your chest, a pleated skirt sticks to your thighs, and mud is splattered over your shoes.
“This isn’t…” The words die. You don’t finish the thought because you don’t know what it was supposed to be. A dream? A hallucination? A joke?
You straighten slowly, water dripping from your sleeves, and glance around again with more intention. The building beside you has no visible entrance or doors, just sheer concrete and windows. The ground is uneven, dotted with sparse grass struggling through cracks that's flattened by the downpour. Instinctively, you fold your arms around yourself and turn in a circle. The space is too open and you feel exposed.
Something dark lies half-submerged in a puddle near your foot. You blink, then crouch and grab it before you can think too hard about why. A messenger bag? The strap is familiar against your fingers, worn soft in places, as if it’s been handled often. You sling it over your shoulder and feel a strange, grounding weight settle against your side. It helps, a little.
Rain continues to fall, relentless and cold. Each step makes your shoes squelch unpleasantly, and every few paces you stop to listen, holding your breath.
The building stretches along your left and a shrubbery-lined fence lies somewhere to your right. There’s only one direction to go, so you start walking along the perimeter, each step cautious. As you move, a sensation begins to spread over your body. Pressure crawls in slowly, thickening the air around you until each breath feels more difficult than the last. Goosebumps ripple across your skin. Something tells you you’ve felt this before. You don’t know where you’ve felt it, or when, just that the familiarity of it curls unpleasantly in your gut.
The rain is all you hear before voices break through, and your head snaps up. They’re distant at first, warped by the downpour, but unmistakable in cadence. The barest sense of recognition flickers while you keep going, reaching the end of the building. You hesitate at the corner as a pulse of dread thuds through you, urging you to turn back.
The step is taken anyway.
The courtyard beyond is toiled with water, puddles rippling under the downpour, debris scattered across the concrete from something that tore through. Two figures stand at its center.
The first is facing away from you, posture rigid, hands raised in a formation you recognize the instant you see it. Black hair clings to his neck and a uniform weighs down his frame. Megumi Fushiguro. The name surfaces rapidly, carrying with it a surge of emotion you can’t untangle fast enough, confusion mostly. Opposite him stands another man. He's tall, looming not only in stature, but presence, utterly at ease in a way that sets your nerves howling. Markings crawl across his skin, etched into the flesh. His aura distorts the space around him, pressure radiating outward in waves that make your head buzz. Sukuna. You know this moment, but it's supposed to be on a screen.
Both of them turn toward you and time stutters.
Sukuna is in front of you before your brain can react. The air compresses violently, raising every little hair on your body as his shadow eclipses you. His eyes drag over you, molten red and horrifyingly curious, and your body locks up beneath the intensity of his attention. You catch the black gape of the wound in his chest as his hand closes around your blouse. Fabric tears with a rip that seems impossibly loud. Pain scratches across your sternum as his claws bite into skin, and a choked noise escapes you. Both of your hands snap to the forearm holding you and try to push, but he doesn't budge.
“Oh?” Sukuna rumbles, amused. “What’s this?”
Terrified, you try to wrench back, shoes sliding uselessly on wet concrete.
“I’ll get to you in a moment,” he sneers, lips curling up. "I'm a bit busy."
The ground disappears.
You’re flung upward, stomach lurching as the world spins. Wind roars in your ears. Rain lashes your face. The courtyard spins below in flashes of grey concrete, black hair, red blood, and Megumi’s face snapping upward.
“Nue!”
Shadow bursts open beneath you. Feathers brush your arms while talons close around your torso, yanking you out of freefall. The sudden stop wrenches your spine, knocking the air from your lungs in a sharp wheeze, and you cling to the solid presence above you.
Below, Sukuna has already turned away. He’s lost interest, like you're nothing more than an insect.
Nue descends with struggle, wings beating raggedly against the downpour, and drops you behind Megumi. You hit the concrete on your knees, palms scraping open as you catch yourself. Before you can lift your head, Megumi steps back without looking and places himself in front of you.
Sukuna sees the shift within the teen and grins madly. “Megumi! Show me what you’ve got!”
You stay where you are, stunned, rain dripping from your hair and lashes. Your chest aches fiercely where Sukuna grabbed you, fabric torn and skin throbbing beneath it. You press a hand there without thinking, fingers coming away slick with rain and blood.
Megumi raises his hands again. His fingers tremble as energy hums thickly in the air, tingling on your skin. The rain seems louder now, each drop distinct. “Sacred treasure swing and ring. Ring, eight grip -“ The energy falters.
Rainfall fills the ambiance until he speaks again. Surreally, you realize it's a speech you've heard a million times before.
“Oh, and just so you know…I didn’t have any logical reason for saving you back then.” He says quietly. Sukuna watches with open amusement. “Even though it was dangerous, I just couldn't bear to see a good person like you die. Sure, I had my reservations, but ultimately, I did it for selfish, emotional reasons.”
He narrows his eyes at the curse that has taken his classmates' body hostage. “But that’s fine, though.”
The markings on Sukuna’s body begin to fade. Megumi lowers his hands. Water drips from his lashes, tracing the planes of his face. “I’m a jujutsu sorcerer. I’m not a hero.”
By now, it's no longer Sukuna facing him, but Yuji. “And all this time, I’ve never regretted saving you.”
When he finishes, the traces of Sukuna are completely gone, and Yuji stands where he was. Power drains from the air, leaving behind a jarring emptiness in its wake. Yuji smiles weakly, rubbing the back of his head. Blood pours from the hole in his chest. Your breath catches at the sight.
“Right!” Yuji laughs despite the gravity of the situation. “You’re really a smart guy, Fushiguro.” There’s no bite in the pink-haired teens’ words, and he looks to the side for a moment. “I know you’ve put a lot of thought into this. I think your conviction is a good one. But I don’t think mine is exactly wrong, either.”
Blood gushes from the gaping hole in Yuji’s chest and he groans. He doesn’t let that stop him, not yet.
“Sorry, I guess I’m done for. At least I won’t be here worrying about you anymore, or Kugisaki, or Gojo.” His attention switches to you. “Uh, nice to meet you. Sorry about…all this.” He manages to force out before he speaks to Megumi again, voice growing weaker. “I hope you live a long life.”
Yuji's knees buckle, his body hitting the ground with a sick thud. Rain falls over all three of you, spreading blood thin over the concrete, gathering in the folds of Yuji’s uniform, and dripping from the ends of Megumi’s hair. The pressure that'd filled the courtyard has hollowed out entirely.
Megumi doesn’t move. Eventually, his hands curl at his sides and his shoulders begin to shake. He makes small noise, stripped of all composure. It feels wrong to witness, like you’ve intruded on something private. Your chest burns, clothes shift uncomfortably, and your heart won’t slow. You're either dreaming or on far too many drugs, and regardless of which, this is a fucked up trip.
You push yourself to your feet and approach, fighting the urge to stay back.
Megumi speaks before you can. “You can go.”
His voice is hoarse and he doesn’t look at you.
You hesitate, unsure how to react.
With visible effort, his hand lifts.
“Wait.” He drags the hand over his face, and only now do you notice how he's swaying. "You’ve seen too much…I,” He sluggishly feels around for his phone. “I need to call Ijichi.”
He abruptly tilts while dialing. You scramble, catching him before he can hit the ground and lowering him down as carefully as your shaking arms allow. His eyes are already closed.
Reaching over and picking up the phone that he’d dropped, you lift it with shaking fingers and bring it to your ear, rain dripping down your wrist. You wonder how you’re going to explain this, gaze flickering between Yuji’s body lying a couple of feet away and Megumi’s slack expression.
Right.
You’ve got this.
