Hey!
First of all, I'm a non-native English speaker, so I'm sorry if there's any mistake.
It's my first JJK fic and also the first time I'm writing something in present tense so I hope it won't sound too weird!
Anyway, I listened to "To Be Loved" by Askjell ft. AURORA while writing this so you should maybe listen to it while reading the fic!
Please, be aware that this is taking place between chapter 136 and 139.
See you at the end!
Yuuji wants to die.
In this instant, there's nothing Yuuji wants more than this.
He feels angry. Though this anger is mixed up with pain, and is so far from the initial rage he'd felt at first when all of this started.
He's angry at the higher ups for taking advantage of Gojo's sealing to discredit his sensei. And yet, this anger is fading. The more days goes by, the more it's dulling, and the more he's losing his initial will to fight them.
Instead he fights curses, everyday long. He doesn't really have a reason anymore. So many people died because of his inability to hold Sukuna back inside him, and yet he's not even killing these curses to atone for his weakness that allowed this to happen.
Exorcising is the only thing he does now, it's become mechanical, his fists striking continuously just as if he was doing assembly-line work. Sometimes it lasts for hours, until his body falls from exhaustion. He does it because right now, it's the only thing he knows how to do.
He could almost feel bad about it, his inability to fight for a cause, if he hadn't stopped thinking about it days before. He's killing curses and sometimes he gets hurt, but it doesn't make him feel as alive as he'd thought it would.
He once heard someone say that one wasn't truly alive until they felt the true nature of pain. Yuuji's never been one for pretty turns of phrases and quotes, but he remembers distinctly thinking, the first time he'd heard it, that it might be true. He now knows that it's not. It's pure bullshit. Or the sentence just doesn't apply to the kind of pain he's experiencing.
He even has tried to get hurt during a fight, deliberately, to see what it would feel like. To feel the pain and maybe react to it. But it didn't work. It didn't make him feel alive. In fact, it probably just reinforced his wish to die. And to make the pain stop, too. To put an end to this existence that feels so meaningless right now.
There's a void in his chest but Yuuji's too tired to be afraid of it now, to be scared about how much he changed in the span of a few months only.
He doesn't remember ever wanting to die before this moment.
And now that's the only thing he wants. The only thing he yearns for. And yet he can't.
When he fights until exhaustion, his body just drops, not caring that he's standing on concrete. His body decides for him, even if Yuuji doesn't want to, even if he tries to get back up each time until even his eyelids are just too heavy for him to lift and so he can only fall in a dreamless sleep.
And when Yuuji's entire body rumbles from hunger, Choso is here to force him to eat, even though the curse doesn't need to himself. He makes sure that Yuuji is fed and rested, just enough so that he's not going to starve to death or pass out in the middle of a fight. Though even if it happens, the curse is never really far, ready to intervene and rescue his "little brother" at any given time.
Actually, even if he purposefully let himself be fatally wounded during a fight, Sukuna would just relive him on his own initiative. Because even though the king of curses pretends that Yuuji simply is a mere mortal and just a vessel, Yuuji knows that he's also the closest thing to reality that Sukuna's ever going to get, and that the man would probably not waste this only chance out of pure vagaries.
But Yuuji knows, too, how much Sukuna loves to watch him each day lose more and more his will to live, to fight, and eventually, to go up against him. Yuuji knows that from his own domain, Sukuna is jubilating at his display of weaknesses and pitifulness.
He's enjoying the way Yuuji's losing his will to live, and the fact that no matter what Yuuji could actually try to put an end to his life, Sukuna would always be able to bring him back. Contained in the confines of his small realm, Sukuna's only power is his ability to crush the remnants of Yuuji's humanity.
Yuuji cannot die.
And even if he physically could, deep down he knows that he couldn't bring himself to do it. It wouldn't be out of cowardice, because it wouldn't be the first time that Yuuji would put his own life on the line, no. It would be because he has been entrusted with a responsibility.
He can't die, because Nanami used the last seconds of his life to entrust him with the end of this fight. Until Gojo's unsealment.
He should feel grateful for it, for the depths of Nanami's trust in him, but instead he feels like this encouragement Nanami threw at him on his last breath was in fact a curse. Because it forces Yuuji to fight until this is over, until everything, and whatever this conflict is, comes to an end. And Yuuji knows that there probably will be no end to this. The elders Jujutsu sorcerers would have ended this reign of terror centuries before if there was something able to stop this constant flow of destructive curses.
So with a single sentence, Nanami enslaved Yuuji to a life of devotion to the destruction of curses. Yuuji has stopped thinking about it, not caring anymore about Nanami's real intent behind these spoken words, because now Nanami is dead and it doesn't matter anymore. It could either be the manifestation of Nanami's trust in Yuuji's abilities, or Nanami's attempts at cursing Yuuji, that the boy wouldn't care anyway.
His life is entwined with this reality now, and there isn't much he can do about it. Besides, he has nothing better to do.
He's too tired to think about it, but there's a hollowness in his chest that keeps getting bigger each day, and if he doesn't find a way to make it stop soon, there might be no turning point.
If he paid attention to it, he'd maybe even realise that no one might ever be able to fill it up again.
Or maybe he knows it, after all. Maybe he knows that it's too late for the feeling of loneliness that's been gnawing at him for years to disappear now that he's fighting curses alone in a concrete jungle that looks nothing like the place he grew up in.
He technically isn't alone, but Choso's just a stranger to him at this point. A man he was ready to die against when they started a deadly battle, and who decided out of the blue to play the doting big brother. The curse sure is handy, a strong ally in the hunt of other curses, but his presence makes Yuuji uneasy, and sometimes angry.
He's sick and tired of people deciding for him. He doesn't understand why Choso suddenly decided to call himself his big brother, but it reminds him of Todo's similar reaction during the Goodwill event, and the memory is enough to leave a sour taste in Yuuji's mouth.
He never asked to be their friend, never asked for their sudden attention, and yet it seems like his opinion doesn't matter that much. He doesn't have his word to say in the matter.
Yuuji can't even consider that he's lost his footing now that he's allegedly a wanted criminal. His own life was dispossessed of any meaning the day he met Fushiguro Megumi. Or maybe the trigger wasn't Megumi's appearance but his grandfather's passing? He doesn't really know, and it probably doesn't matter anyway.
It's different with Megumi. If Choso and Todo are almost strangers to him, Megumi at least is someone Yuuji can claim to know, at the minimum, relatively well. And at least hewants to have something to do with Megumi.
It feels – or felt, he doesn't know anymore – easier with Megumi. Because Megumi knows him, because he genuinely wants to, and not out of pure interest. He has learned Yuuji's meatballs' recipe just because he liked it, he knows about Yuuji's movie tastes because he listened to him talk about it, and he knows Yuuji's favourite subject in class as well because he always explains it to him when the peach-haired boy doesn't understand something. He's the closest thing to a close friend Yuuji has, and yet, just like everyone else, he feels like a stranger to Yuuji right now.
Megumi's just someone who knows about his tastes, but he doesn't know Itadori Yuuji. It's something Yuuji himself cannot explain, but he feels so disconnected from the black-haired boy now. Maybe it's just momentary, maybe it's just a fleeting feeling, but he feels like no one understands him. He's the only one who knows about his own fears, insecurities, and terrors.
The only person who really knew him was his grandfather, and now he's dead too. No one can claim to know him anymore.
Now, nobody knows him.
Nobody knows him and he's alone, killing curses after curses because it is the only thing that he can do now that death does not want him anymore.
In the rare occasions where his mind is not focused on exorcising curses, Yuuji thinks back on the day when he ate Sukuna's first finger. He's not sure if he regrets having refused Megumi's offer at exorcising him. He's not sure if he regrets having entered Tokyo Jujutsu High after having bargained with Gojo for a reprieve before his inevitable execution.
Ever since this fatal day, he has lived on borrowed time, considering each new day like a bonus since he should have died there and then, on his own high school's rooftop. Yet, he has realised that everything that has happened ever since this day is a result from him still being alive. From the smallest change in the other students' routine to the literal sealing of Gojo Sensei, he's the one to blame.
Yuuji has enjoyed his time as a sorcerer, but pain has taken over pleasure, and now all his memories are stained with the images of a white cube covered in eyes, of scars forming on the left side of a pretty face, and of lips declaiming a last sentence before turning red.
Yuuji doesn't bother with regrets, the pain it would give him would do nothing to bring back those he has lost. He doesn't regret having met Megumi Fushiguro that day, but he doesn't want to know if Megumi regrets having met him that day. In any case, Yuuji thinks he should.
Megumi lost everything because of Yuuji. He lost the safety of his school, the relative stability in his life, and his literal legal guardian. If he doesn't hate him, at least Yuuji's doing a pretty job at doing it for both of them.
It doesn't hurt anymore. Or maybe it does, but Yuuji's too busy fighting to care about it. He's fine with being alone for now, only waiting for his time to come. Hoping for his time to come.
Because Yuuji wants to die, but he can't.
Okay so I hope that you liked it!
I usually write happy endings to my fics but it just didn't feel right with this one so… sorry.
I'm glad I was finally able to write something about JJK, I've been having quite a fixation on the manga lately and now that I wrote about it I might be able to get it out of my system!
Anyway please leave some kudos and comments, it always makes me so happy to read them! :D