Chapter Text
After Gojo Satoru’s death, Yuuji stopped tearing through his heart, stopped searching for new heartstrings to tug at until, like a hair thread, they snapped, leaving him a crying, aching mess for those he mourned.
After Gojo Satoru’s death, Yuuji told himself there was no time to let his gaze linger on the bodies piled up by Sukuna’s hand. The seconds ticked too fast, the world spun too fast and Yuuji stopped thinking about anything other than the present. When Yuuta’s arm got severed by a Dismantle, he merely flinched, taking a step back. When Maki left the battlefield bruised and battered, he pushed his legs ahead to continue walking.
But now, seeing Choso’s body disintegrate like star dust with only a bitter smile, he wasn’t so sure he could keep going without acknowledging anything that happened up to this point.
How could he keep going with a fate so twisted? How could he walk away from their bodies as if they have been nothing? Kugisaki had once told him, as she had aimed her nails higher and struck, that sometimes you just have to keep trying, even if you know it won’t work. She had been wrong, telling him that. He can’t go on, not with Sukuna still here, not when a fight was simply futile.
He knows they’re just throwing themselves at The King of Curses, acting like they have a chance—like every new challenger isn’t just another body dropping, like every ‘fulfilled’ life isn’t just regret— so he’s asking, why? If this is how he dies, why?
Why be abandoned when his single goal had been to save people and die surrounded by close ones? Why be left with nothing to his name?
No friends, no allies, no family, no strangers.
The protective barrier around him shatters, the black tint of it collapsing to the ground like all the rest of the city. Yuuji gasps for air through the smoke still spreading from Divine Flame, eyes stinging from the ashes and dust sticking to his lashes.
He doesn’t know why he tries to call when there’s no one there. He doesn’t know anything anymore, except that it’s his fault. Words are already leaving his mouth, a small, uncertain echo from the country mouse, right before the cat reaches to claw and slaughter it.
“....Guys?” He chokes. “Any—Anybody?”
Anybody doesn’t answer, instead the silence stretches and the smoke blows further away. It caresses his hair, moving the bloodied strands from one side to the other. Yuuji shivers, either it being from winter making itself known, or his greatest fears coming true.
There’s no one else anymore, is there?
Except him. Except them.
A figure emerges from the ruin, tall and victorious. He had won whereas Yuuji had failed. He had been right when he had spat at Yuuji—all those warm days ago when Gojo had still been Gojo, the furthest thing from the bisected man painting the ground of Shinjuku—that he was weak, a brat. His cursed energy clutches Yuuji by the throat, suffocating him and all his thoughts with ease.
The same ease he had been wearing as he ruined the world. Not Yuuji’s. His world had ended when Shibuya happened, and began again by the next day. No, the actual world. Because if his homeland was now in ruins, everything else on this Earth followed.
Sukuna approaches with no delicacy. He’s tense, all his eyes narrowed, as if he, himself, couldn’t believe Yuuji would be the last survivor here. His hatred hasn’t faltered. The curse hates him the same way winners at solidarity games hate beginners who don’t play by the rules. But Yuuji hates him more. More than Mahito. More than anything he has ever hated.
“You’re still here?” Sukuna grunts, advancing on the field. The ground shakes, but it’s been too long since Yuuji even dared to acknowledge the raw strength the man possessed. His back straightens, legs already moving.
“Always will be,” he spits in his direction.
Sukuna has always acted so arrogant, so pleased at the fact he had played all his cards right to plan his perfect return. Yuuji should have known better, should have seen all of this coming. Should have stopped him before Megumi became his newest jacket, from beneath hiding the tools to make a perfect weapon to kill Gojo Satoru once and for all.
When Sukuna changed hosts, Yuuji had fought him thinking his own life didn’t matter. Now that was not the case. It was not a thought anymore, it just was. There was no comparison needed to describe how reckless he’d be, because his life now truly didn’t matter.
Let him die. Let him see Nanami again. Let him bicker with Kugisaki. Let him hug Gojo-sensei and promise him he was still the best sensei, even if he had lost in the end and paid the price with his life and pride. Drag him to wherever people go after they die, but let him see them, damn it.
The vision of his single eye blurs, and as he clenches his own fist, he realizes tears had finally built. If this was it, if this was the end, then at least he’d go down fighting.
“Don’t fret, my brother!” A loud voice booms from somewhere to his right, so familiar and so impossible. Yuuji’s head whips around, breath catching on its way out. “I am here!”
Todo walks over to stand beside him, not a day older than how he had looked on the date of the Shibuya incident. His arm is wrapped in sheets, a firm reminder of yet another of Yuuji’s failures.
And yet.
And yet all Yuuji could think about is that someone else is here. That someone survived like he did. That someone might help him again.
If there’s a chance—even a slim chance—that it’s not over, then he has to take it. He has to believe that he’s not the only one. Somehow, somewhere, someday.
“Ah, it’s the Kyoto gorilla,” Sukuna scoffs, stopping just short of them.
He almost wants to laugh at the insult, but instead he grins, blinking away the tears that threatened to spill. Putting it all behind him. He only gives a simple nod while he turns around, advancing on Sukuna with Todo just beside.
Take Sukuna down, he thinks. Even if you die, you have to take him with you.
“Shall we begin, my brother?” Todo asks without a hint of a smile.
“Hai!”
Todo hits his vibraslap, and suddenly all three of them are switching places constantly, like on a roulette wheel. The fever of the fight draws him out of his thoughts, letting way to unrestrained, burning hatred to fuel him and his conviction.
The game wheel spins, the scenery changes. Sukuna grins, one moment beside him, the other in front of him. Todo’s palm covers the wooden part of his percussion instrument, ending the confusing game. Not a second passes and Yuuji finds his fist already planted into Sukuna’s side, while Todo kicks for the sky and his chin.
Blood splutters, Sukuna groans and Yuji follows it up with another punch. It’s electrifying, it’s beautiful, but only in the short moment it happens. He can’t dwell on any past events, not now.
In the moment it takes for him to step back from his punch, he watches as Sukuna leaps into the air, falling short of Todo. More debris goes up in the air, like in one of those Hollywood films with CGI. The real thing doesn’t compare. Purely on adrenaline, Yuuji catches an average sized rock that nearly cut through his chin. He grips it enough to crack, with a new move set in his mind. He throws it in Sukuna's direction.
Todo, ever the fast reader, slaps his vibraslap again.
CHA-RRR!
From his peripheral view he sees the grin widening on Todo’s face.
He throws himself as a cannonball at Sukuna, changing places with the rock. Concrete flies in all directions, accompanying the cracked bricks raining down on them. His feet plant themselves onto Sukuna’s chest and Yuji pushes deeper. He hopes he made a scar, hopes he made himself a home into the bastard’s skin the same way he carved his home into Yuji. The crash echoes loudly and down they go, breaking through a reinforced wall.
“Fucking brat!” Sukuna trashes, and before Yuuji gets a chance to block, his face is already being grabbed by rough, bloody hands.
A similar slap to the one earlier echoes from Todo’s direction. Internally, Yuuji cheers. Externally, he moves in front of Sukuna thanks to the new position that freed him, preparing a punch that has to end it all. That no matter what is going to be the end of Sukuna.
So he puts everything in it. His past, his present, his future. Hopes and dreams, regrets, and over them all: despair. Yuuji watches as cursed energy explodes from his fist, as blue as the sea in Malaysia. The air stills. The hair on the back of his neck raises.
The end to this cycle of curses, he finds himself thinking.
Black flash! His fist meets Sukuna’s chest, rays of red and black flying from the wound that had just formed. He reckons the impact is loud, but he cannot hear it over his guttural scream of pain and agony. The worst of humility leaves from between his lips. The punch is meant to end Sukuna. End him the way he had ended Yuuji the moment he swallowed that finger. Made to make him feel as bad as he has felt for forever.
Blood sprays his face, coaxing his whole hand below his wrist. Something ugly stirs in his chest, the same emotion that makes his hand go deeper in the cut he had drawn. His claws prick at Sukuna’s heart, gripping it as if to steady himself.
A single drop of blood falls on his forehead, and when he lifts his eyes he sees Sukuna looking down at him, mouth full of his own blood. He raises two fingers deliberately in his field of view.
A handsign.
Gojo’s hand sign.
Yuuji’s eyes widen, breath stalling.
How dare he—How dare that bastard—
Booming laughter follows, genuine joy spreading on Sukuna’s face from Yuuji’s shock. Slowly, Yuuji realizes he is no longer the focus of attention. Sukuna’s looking somewhere to the right, through the smoke engulfed around them.
“I get it now!” Sukuna howls. His lower hand finds Yuuji’s face, smacking him off to the far left like a discarded toy.
“Shit!” he cusses in the air. Pain blossoms, but it’s nothing new.
“Sorry I took you lighty!” The King of Curses goes on. “I didn’t think you were capable of doing that...!”
The ground creates a crater around the spot he dented into. He feels his head hit a rock, deep enough to leave another wound he’d need to fix. His fingers shake, his legs won’t work, and yet his eyes creep higher and higher.
The signature white hair and blue eyes are the first characteristics he spots. His breathing halts.
The world tilts on its axes, for the last time in Yuuji’s life. How, he doesn’t know, but the image of the dead man Sukuna had buried with his own two hands stares right at him, only a few feet away.
“Okkotsu Yuuta!” Sukuna roars.
Gojo Satoru raises his hand to form a sign, and Yuuji is ready to puke.
Gojo Satoru.
Except it’s wrong.
Except Gojo-sensei couldn’t be here. He was dead, even if Yuuji had believed for the first few hours that he’d come back miraculously, sewn together by a thread and Reverse Cursed Technique. He was never coming back, that much he had realized and the fact had only been made more clear with each second that passed.
It’s more likely his own Reverse Cursed Technique was finally backfiring on him, or maybe that simple rock had taken all his brain power, once and for all. Even those sounded silly… But then what? An illusion technique, maybe, revealed this late?
No. Sukuna just called the body Okkotsu Yuuta. Yuuta, as in his upperclassman.
The domino pieces fall into place, a sick explanation beginning to unravel in his mind.
His eyes take in everything about the man as his mind spirals and spirals. Gojo’s white hair blows in the wind, revealing a tight line on his head. Yuuji’s lips thin, a shiver going up his spine.
Then it clicks.
Gojo Satoru has never, ever had a suture across his forehead. The only other person to have that…was the bastard in monk’s robes who had caused the Shibuya Incident, alongside Mahito. The same bastard Okkotsu had killed. Kenjaku’s technique had something to do with switching hosts. But, Okkotsu’s cursed technique, Copy, let him wield the cursed techniques of others as long as Rika, his cursed spirit, consumed a part of the opponent’s body.
So then, had Yuuta made Rika eat a part of Kenjaku’s body, so he would get to wield his technique and change hosts to none other than Gojo Satoru?
“Okkotsu…?” he trails off breathlessly.
Sukuna laughs again, turning around to face ‘Gojo Satoru’. His shadow falls over Yuuji, swallowing him completely.
“You sorcerers would do anything to win,” Sukuna jests. His right hands lift, no doubt preparing his attack aimed at the new opponent. Weakly, Yuuji pushes to his feet. “But let’s have it your way, if you so want, without any other pests”
The fake ‘Gojo Satoru’ dashes forward, while Sukuna’s hands form a familiar hand sign, one so recognizable, but so out of place.
“Scale of the dragon—”
‘Gojo Satoru’ launches forward, a knee shooting out towards Sukuna’s face. It was a beginner move so unlike his sensei, Yuuji couldn’t even hold his gasp hidden when it had been aimed.
It seems Sukuna could also tell that was dumb, since his lower hand wraps around the ankle quickly, throwing ‘Gojo’ to the side before the hit could even connect.
“Recoil,” Sukuna continues chanting.
Yuuji’s fists bang against his knees, begging, willing his legs to start moving before Sukuna could get to use the slash and terminate everyone else still left alive. But he couldn’t. He was as weak as he’d always been.
Sukuna side-steps a barrage of attacks coming from a now standing ‘Gojo’, either ducking or completely moving behind the man. The bang of the vibraslap rings through the air, just as Todo changes places with a rock and throws a right hook to Sukuna’s jaw, pushing his feet further into the rubble.
Sukuna’s laughter breaks him out of his thoughts.
That’s right, Yuuji thinks, coughing blood into his hand as his legs wobble forward, Sukuna only has two arms left, both on the right side. He needs a hand sign to perform his slash, meaning he can’t attack if he wants to use it.
If Yuji could get there, if he could damage the barrier between Fushiguro's and Sukuna’s souls, then Sukuna could never finish the incantation, and thus never send—
“Twin meteors!”
Yuuji’s heart drops to the bottom of his stomach.
The monster of a man turns around in the blink of an eye, with a grin stretched so far to his ears, you could have mistaken it for a smile. Both his eyes glow, an almost faint red, as they zero on Yuuji’s form.
“World cutting slash,” Sukuna guffaws, eyes formed into half-moons.
Yuuji’s eyes fully widen.
The cut wasn’t aimed at Gojo, but me?! He tricked me by facing the other way!
“Brother!” Todo roars, too distant to be heard by Yuuji’s ringing ears. He sees the slash course through the air before it even hits.
It’s a mess of lines jumbled into a single one at the edges, uneven and chopped. A polar opposite to the neat cuts done by Dismantle or Cleave. It flies through the air as if it hasn’t ever been there.
And maybe it’s because he has nothing to lose, or maybe because he has finally given up on going as he is, but Yuuji’s fist pushes forward as fast as it can. To shield himself from it, or maybe to feel it faster, he doesn’t know. But that doesn’t stop him from doing it.
On the moment of impact between Sukuna’s slash and Yuuji’s punch, black sparks fly in all directions. Instead of his own screaming, he hears the sharp, chattering sound of a wooden ball. Far away, almost drowned out. After that everything below him collapses a level down in a storm of cracked slashes and black and red waves.
The world doesn’t tilt on its axes this time. It completely folds into itself, like it’s contracting. It’s the epitome of nothingness. He doesn’t see, or at least not much, and he doesn’t feel. Then, like a drop of water falling into a pond, the world expands. Matter appears from thin air. Too big, too bright.
He feels like static on a TV, trembling with an uneven form in a void of black and white. His footing slips.
No, wait. The better explanation is that gravity reverses.
One moment, he obeys no laws of physics, with no ground to glue his shoes on. The very next, he curls into himself, as if his fist is a black hole, swallowing him whole. His hands shiver uncontrollably.
He’s slipping away.
Is this death?
He finds himself not as repelled by the idea as he thought he’d be. After all, if death is what brings him closer to those he loved that have already been gone, why not greet it with open arms?
Why not let himself rest…? Let himself bestow the weight of the world on someone else’s shoulders. Someone better…someone more competent…
And then, as fast and sudden as it had happened—the feeling, the white, the static—all of them pulled away from the place where they had settled into his bones.
Cold wind blows up in his face, harsher than it should be. It slaps him out of whatever dream he has been having, eyes flying open. The sky greets his view just as a window breaks behind him, shards shooting into his view and grazing his ears. Slowly, he realizes he’s not suspended in the void anymore.
No, he’s doing worse.
He’s falling.
“Oh my god! Someone jumped!” A woman’s voice screams from somewhere behind, alerting other people. Jumped? He? He blinks a couple of times, almost hoping he’s imagining being in the air. Everything’s a blur, though he can tell it’s night, somehow, with lights everywhere he looks, and buildings standing tall and mighty.
Most of them, if not all, he recognizes from childhood.
Tokyo. He has to be in Tokyo. One not ruined by Kenjaku’s plans, nor by Sukuna’s battles.
The window shards fly past him, giving him the opportunity to look behind and see a massive building with glass panels.
He almost starts laughing. People are crowding below him, with functioning cars driving and places restored to their full glory, as if the Shibuya incident hadn’t happened. As if the showdown at Shinjuku had had no casualties. A domain expansion, then? But whose?
His eyes land on a bright billboard up ahead, inviting people to watch a new movie releasing soon. More specifically, a movie coming out later in 2005.
His heart begins to pound loudly in his ears. What the actual fuck?
There’s no—No—That’s not how it works.
This isn’t like that one shitty sci-fi movie where a kid time-travels thanks to some car and plutonium. He’s also pretty sure he didn’t walk into a blue telephone booth beforehand.
So no, he agrees with himself. He’s just missing some vital piece of information in Okkotsu’s plan, that’s all.
After all, what buffoon ends up 13 years in the past?
Screams start resonating through the crowd below, bringing Yuuji back to the present. Focus on not dying first, idiot! He feels his inner Kugisaki scold him. The speed his body is falling at only increases and if he’s not going to start doing something soon he might become pancake Yuuji. He makes a mental note about it.
The lights begin to become stretched lines, as he rotates like a particular blue hedgehog. He could probably make it even if he crashes. Sure, not unscattered, but alive.
Yet, with the reminder that people are crowded like ants not too far away and it’d be better not to crush them, Yuuji puts all his strength into angling his body to be able to fall on his feet, into a crouch.
Right before the moment of impact, he braces for the contact and prays for the best.
Right after it, he crash-lands in the middle of the Shibuya Scramble Crossing.
His heels dig into the burning asphalt, halting his sliding from going any further and into the cars stopped at the red light. The earth shatters with a spiderweb pattern of cuts. It’s as if Sukuna was awakened all over again. It wraps from below, causing a curtain of smoke to rise. Dust and debris go up in the air and—not too far away from where Yuuji is exactly—a choir of screams resonates.
His feet hurt, his fingers are bleeding from the pressure he applied to keep them on the ground to stop his speed. But most of all, he feels sick to his core at the image he had created, all on his own.
Shibuya, with dents in it because of him, for the second time.
Sweat sticks to his forehead, breaths coming uneven. Before he knows it, his eyes close tightly. Images of Nanami and Kugisaki flicker in the dark, their last moment being replayed like a broken note on a piano.
Fushiguro (the tattoos stretching his face, they make him look like it’s not him, and it isn’t, he’s now him—) had long told him before their entry to the Culling Game that this type of freezing from traumatic memories will be the death of him, either that or his selflessness. So Yuuji does the only thing he can.
He inhales, exhales, and peeks through his lashes at the smoking ground, to ground himself. It’s not working well, it hasn’t worked well since Gojo-sensei’s defeat. It’s why the lump in his throat doesn’t go away, why his hands still shake, why—
Some type of stick smacks the back of his head, making him gasp. His eyes rise to meet the two pairs staring down at him.
“Stay done; and cease moving, curse user” A girl with purple-ish hair tied in two pigtails squeaks at him, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. While her voice was certain and harsh, the nervous energy could be detected off her as easily as her cursed energy.
Yuuji squints, taking a better look at her traditional miko outfit. She looked quite similar to someone he swore he saw before, he just couldn’t pin-point who.
Yuuji hears a whistle follow. From behind him, a girl with blue hair moves to stand tall next to the other girl, dragging the tip of the umbrella he had been hit earlier by through the cracks on the ground.
“Such strength,” The new girl muses, voice smooth and velvet. “One would wonder how you survived a land like such”
This girl, too, seemed just a bit too familiar.
“Have…” He clears his throat, swallowing the blood rising in his mouth from one of his internal wounds. “Have we met before?
The girl with blue hair chuckled. “How funny you ask that. I suppose curse users just keep getting better and better at their opening dialogue. I wonder, how much would the elders charge for charity work after a long mission?”
Charge? This girl sounds as greedy as Mei Mei. Yuji’s eyes go over her uniform, from the dress to the hairstyle, until, finally, something clicks into place.
The billboard had said 2005, and this girl seemed oddly similar to the woman Yuuji had gotten to know as a Grade 1 sorcerer not many months ago. It couldn’t actually be her, could it?
His knees unbend and he finally straightens to his full height.
“You don’t happen to be Mei Mei, do you?” he murmurs with no hesitation. He needs to know if this was just another sick joke that fate was playing on him.
“And if I say I was?” A Mei Mei from 13 years ago chuckles richly, settling the umbrella over her shoulder.
The moment her ghost-smile widened to a toothy grin, as she leered at him through her lashes, Yuuji felt his stomach twist painfully. He was actually in the past, thrown from his original timeline to the high school days of the adults around him.
Words from months ago rang out in his head, ones that described both the situation from then and from now. “The worst-case scenario, one in a million!” Fushiguro had gasped.
He proved to be again and again just that, a one in a million chance.
“Mei-chan, do you know this curse user?” the girl wearing the traditional miko asks, surprise coloring her voice. Her hand grips Mei Mei’s forearm, but with no actual strength to hold down.
Mei Mei doesn’t let him reply, already talking.
“Not at all. But take a closer look, Utahime, he isn’t actually a curse user.” Her eyes shine down to his chest and Yuuji understands immediately she’s looking at the squiggly, golden button over his jacket. She’s confused by it, most likely, but Yuuji can’t detect any emotion in those dull eyes of hers.
Wait, hold on.
Did she just say Utahime? As in Utahime Iori, the woman teaching at the sister school of Tokyo Jujutsu High?
“I’m not” Yuji blurts out, solidifying Mei Mei’s message from earlier.
“I can tell that much,” Mei Mei says, “Who are you?”
This is the billion dollar question, isn’t it? One he doesn’t know how to answer without revealing too much or without spouting nonsense. Of course, there is also the option of lying, but he isn’t particularly good at that one. His eyes widen at the unmoving stares of the girls, his shoulders squaring up.
“I’m, uh, I’m Itadori.”
Utahime arches an eyebrow with obvious skepticism.
“I haven’t heard of any sorcerer named Itadori,” she whispers to Mei Mei, but unfortunately it’s just a bit too loud for Yuuji to be able to catch.
“Because I’m a new student. Here. At Jujutsu High, I mean,” he settles on. There, not a complete lie.
Young Utahime assesses him with clear suspicion, while Mei Mei with indifference.
“You should have begun with that. You’re Yaga-sensei’s first student, then” Mei Mei hums. “The others are set to arrive a few days later, but with such a troublemaker as yourself, Yaga’ll have his hands full even without the rest of the first-years.”
Before another comment can be made, the girl turns around, walking slowly and elegantly towards the nearest sidewalk. As if there wasn’t a trench through Shibuya.
“Come with us. We’re going back to Tokyo Jujutsu High,” She calls from over her shoulder, twirling her hair with her free hand.
He finds himself blinking a couple of times, baffled at the new information and the revelation he was in the past, and at the careless behaviour Mei Mei showed. For God knows what reason, she actually believed him, no questions asked. If it doesn’t involve money, then she truly doesn’t care, it seems.
Utahime, on the other hand, shared his sentiment, since as soon as Mei Mei’s words were out, her whole body froze up. The face she made was priceless, completely out of a comedy. Utahime turned on her heels not a moment later. She stumbled her way towards the other girl, waving her hands around.
“Are you not going to ask him more?” the voice of reason cries out in distress. “He appeared from the sky! The sky!” She points a finger at the broken ground, but doesn’t stop walking beside Mei Mei. Yuji watches with growing amusement as the pair strolls down the road.
“There’s a dent in the ground, not to talk about the chaos going on in traffic right now. People could’ve been injured! Maybe he’s injured. Actually, look at him! He is! He’s hurting. Maybe lying! What if he’s just lying, Mei-chan?! We should call Yaga-sensei to let him know some guy is claiming to be a student at Tokyo Metropolitan—HEY! Are you even listening to me, you little—!”
Yuuji jogs up to walk behind them, tuning out Utahime’s justified lecture.
His nerves haven’t calmed down one bit, but whatever it is he talked with Mei Mei helped him push out the images of those-who-shall-not-be-named to the back of his mind. He still felt sick, but it was as if seeing familiar faces (though rather young) had brought him some relief.
Don’t get him wrong; there was still an elephant in the room that he needed to address. Well, more like a good few: “How did he actually get here?”, “Is this really the past, or some complex technique?”, “Should he be honest and tell everything that happened, or fabricate a lie for simplicity?”, and his fan favourite “What’s the plan?”. But for now…
For now he just needed to get to the school and enroll, for the second time beginning his first year. Because if this is the past, truly the past, and not some delusion he had brought into reality, then everything—Kenjaku’s plan, the magnitude attack from the disaster curses on 31st October, Sukuna’s reign of terror—can be stopped.
One step at a time, Yuuji Itadori will rewrite history.
He will rise up and make a difference.
One step at a time.