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In Yuuji's hold, the Prison Realm was cold.
In Yuuji's hold, the Prison Realm dug into his ribcages and drew blood, but he had long since accustomed to red over skin, red over clothes. His fingers bent between the gaps of each eye, cradling it to his heartbeat in a fruitless hope of someone inside it could hear him and find assurance. Yuuji wished he could offer more comfort, but there was no repose amidst an escape, nor there was a lull for his breath to stutter out a cry.
Run, they spoke as blood frothed in their mouth. The Prison Realm was coated in bits of flesh—from curses who stood guard, from sorcerers who fought tooth and nail—by the time it found itself in Yuuji's possession. They didn't want Yuuji to look back, nor to stay any longer. They told him to run, run, run, as if they were carving the command onto Yuuji's brain.
Run. Remember why we're taking this risk. They embedded those words into his mind, drilled them past his hair and skull.
And so Yuuji ran.
The horizon faraway was dim, but a new dawn had started to crawl in, uncaring of the inferno unleashed overnight on tarnished soils. It gave purple to the starless sky above, gave grey to the dusts and corpses on the road, and gave light to the blood staining Yuuji's clothes. His shadow could no longer hide in the night when morning had approached and stretched it wide.
Yuuji had no place to hide, not anymore.
Screams permeated the very air Yuuji inhaled, the inhuman and human almost impossible to differ. The cube on his hands was as if a lighthouse on the sea of debris, and it magnetized all curses to give chase—or perhaps Yuuji should call it a voiceless siren instead, and he was the foolish sailor who snatched it from its perch and was now running away with it to his own demise?
Yuuji couldn't tell.
Yuuji couldn't speak.
Yuuji couldn't stop.
All he knew was that he should run—run to whenever his legs took him, run to where the sun shone the brightest, run to where blood of the innocents wouldn't drown him under.
Run on a world without Gojou-sensei.
Yuuji didn't stop running.
The Prison Realm was cold over his chest, but the eyelids that peeled its surface open showed a myriad of warm gazes.
In the nights where his sleeps were short, Yuuji liked to watch the Prison Realm's eyes.
Tonight was no different. Yuuji always made sure to find a place secluded enough for him to lie down a few hours before he went back to his feet. The path he walked on had no concrete destination; it'd just be him and the Prison Realm from onwards.
On where his palms cushioned its surface, no eyelids split open, but they were free to wander on the remaining five faces. Yuuji brought the cube to his eye level and watched it with rapt attention as one, two, four, eight, sixteen eyeballs tilted to his direction, crowding his vision with such a beautiful blue, such a familiar and loving blue that threatened to sway Yuuji into its deceit. Oh, how they sickened him.
They weren't Gojou-sensei's eyes. They lied.
But even the most negligent sorcerer would know whom these eyes belonged to, so what did that make the Prison Realm's eyes if not a mirror to Gojou-sensei's own?
Yuuji sighed, fluttering four rows of snow white lashes with his breath. Even as a cruel mockery to the real ones, they remained an invaluable wonder to behold—stark white and cosmic blue, tender flesh and solid object. Yuuji used to stand on his tiptoes, leaning forward and leaning sideways with playful intentions, just to see if he could catch a glimpse of the beautiful, familiar and loving blue of Gojou-sensei's eyes from underneath his blindfold.
Upon noticing him, Gojou-sensei would stand still, adapting an askew smirk on his face as he indulged Yuuji's curiosity. His gaze would be warm and fond, just as sunset was to Earth before it bid goodbye. It was only when Yuuji grinned and said that he wanted see his eyes that Gojou-sensei tugged his blindfold up with his thumb, allowing Yuuji to pick apart each adoration reflected in his irises.
To get the strongest's attention was easy.
To make the strongest stay was not.
"I guess I wasn't strong enough to make sensei stay," Yuuji murmured to the soundless listener on his palms. When the stars refused to heed a sinner's woe, then a fellow accursed would do. For a while, they wouldn't be Itadori Yuuji and Gojou Satoru. They'd just be a cursed vessel and a cursed object sharing one space, one time.
"Will you– Will you be disappointed in me, sensei?" Yuuji asked, a falter in his voice as tears began to stream down his marred face—a split skin above his nose, a piece of flesh gone near his lip, and a deep dent on his brow. Sixteen eyeballs soon rolled with urgency in their socket, tracking each droplet as if they wished to soothe him and devour coo sweet nothings. "Sensei, I'm a bad student, right? You can't possibly love a student who had killed hundreds, right?"
What was there to love from destruction? If to steal a youth's happiness was sin, then what of Yuuji who had robbed a lifetime of happiness that awaited hundreds of people?
Prison Realm said nothing, but those eyes spoke of deep concern Yuuji knew so well. It was sickening, it was wrong, it was fake—
Yuuji choke on a sob, and let his forehead fall to the cube. Sixteen eyeballs shot up at the contact, lush white lashes blinking slowly over his cheeks as if to mimic thumbing away one's tears.
—but it resembled Gojou-sensei so much.
Gojou-sensei and his kindness. Gojou-sensei and his concern. Gojou-sensei and his confidence. Gojou-sensei and his prowess. Gojou-sensei and his love.
"Gojou-sensei," Yuuji cried, his sadness a steady drizzle that dripped into those eyes.
None of his tears was left uneaten.
One, two, four.
Eight, sixteen.
Thirty two.
Prison Realm had thirty two eyeballs of Gojou-sensei's in total, and Yuuji had gone without their warmth for days too long.
Prison Realm understood when Yuuji's lips hovered near, as it could translate the sheen in his eyes as longing. Under this moonless night where the ashes of exorcised curses lingered on Yuuji's clothes, he sought relief in twitching flesh, closed eyelids, and slow swipes of white. Under this silent night where Yuuji's pursuers grew more persistent to not be dodged anymore, he sought company in sharp edges, cold surface, and an unmoving weight.
The eyelid was soft under Yuuji's lips, tasting of dust and stale air. The lashes tickled him just above his chin due to their length, barely noticeable like a shy caress of wind. It was too much reminiscent of Gojou-sensei, and Yuuji would let himself dream just this once.
His lips moved to another closed eyelid, pressing his love and affection and despair onto its thin fold, and so on. One, two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty two—each eye responded in kind, its lid closing when kissed and its eyeball twitching after Yuuji left for the next eye as if to voice a protest.
The semblance was uncanny, and Yuuji couldn't help but imagine holding Gojou-sensei's face in his palms, his lips peppering kisses all over warm skin, warm laugh, warm eyes.
He imagined large, strong hands that cupped his jaws in return to keep him in place. He dreamt of long, full lashes brushing his cheekbones in the miniscule distance between their faces. He imagined sugar coating his tongue, ichigo daifuku and mitsumame, after a fulfilling dinner from Gojou-sensei's lips. He imagined Gojou-sensei's eyes gazing lovingly at him, a bewitching pair of blue before his face was butchered to make place for four, eight, sixteen, thirty two eyes that cried blood.
Yuuji wrenched himself away, a rush of bile thick and heavy at the back of his throat.
When he looked back at the cube with his heartbeat ringing in his ears, every eyelid had flicked open to reveal a gorgeous blue, a sympathetic blue. Those were the eyes Gojou-sensei would have whenever he snapped Yuuji awake from a nightmare. Those were the eyes that promised safety as Gojou-sensei carefully pulled Yuuji into his embrace. Those were the eyes Yuuji could—would always—come home to.
Yuuji couldn't bear to see them right now, because it was too cruel to think about.
(Because Gojou-sensei was too cruel)
"Shut them," Yuuji croaked out, the cube trembling from where it was propped on his shaky fingertips. Those eyeballs merely blinked in question, but their blue was so ugly when smeared by his pooling tears, and Yuuji couldn't—! "Shut those eyes!! Close them!! Don't look at me with them!! Don't you dare to use Gojou-sensei's eyes on me!!"
One, two, four.
Eight, sixteen.
Thirty two.
All thirty two eyes fluttered to a close, leaving only curves of snow white on a cold surface.
Yuuji brought the Prison Realm close to his chest and curled his body on the grimed flooring, his teeth clattering behind his lips with the force of his sob. He spent his night that way, altering between punching out stuttered breaths or a broken echo of Gojou-sensei's name.
Behind each eyelid, each eyeball lamented to not be able to taste those tears once more.
Yuuji was a vessel, first and foremost.
A vessel contained an object of many forms. A vessel stored an object inside it and continued to keep it that way. A vessel prevented an object from escaping its confines. To become a vessel was to disembowel what made you you so there could be an empty space for that object.
Even so, a vessel wasn't excluded from having more than one object inside.
Yuuji was reminded of this fact after he had exorcised a curse near the shrine he had been staying for a few days in. His knuckles stung, the skin on his protruding bones abraded until the whites peeked from between reddening flesh. The pain had yet to ebb, and so did the thumps of Yuuji's heart. They were loud enough to made his teeth ache, his head dizzy, and his chest constricting. Even his vision was still tinged with red of rage. With bloodied fingers, Yuuji gently cradled the Prison Realm to his chest and reentered the shrine.
The curse had a moderate degree of intelligence, seeing it was sly enough to bait Yuuji outside so it could steal several paper talisman-wrapped objects from the altar, no doubt to strengthen itself, but it planted its final nail on the coffin when one of its disgusting tendrils reached out to the Prison Realm. Before Yuuji knew it himself, he had the curse pinned underneath him, its nine limbs ripped off and his fists delivering devasting blow after devastating blow.
Screams imploded in his ears, repeating the exact same words over and over again like a vow—don't touch him, don't touch him, don't touch him, don't touch him, DON'T TOUCH HIM. Yuuji only realized those words came from his own mouth after he coughed up blood and the screams stopped.
When Yuuji returned to his senses, he was drenched in purple blood from chest to legs, with soggy, wrinkled green flesh gluing to his arms from how deep his fists went into its head. The body under Yuuji gave a minute twitch, its cursed energy rapidly depleting near moments of death, thus it could no longer regenerate its missing limbs nor heal its sunken bones and skull. There was nothing else to see here but lumps of green, pools of purple, splatters of red from the corner of Yuuji's lips—nothing but death.
Yuuji's fingers speared into its elongated neck and tore its head apart from the rest of its body, just before it faded into ashes that smelt of rotting flesh and maggot.
The stench followed him, even after Yuuji lit up more incense and the noon shifted into night. The talisman-wrapped objects had been returned to their respective seat, and those also reeked or cursed energy, albeit slightly more subdued. Who was it again who told Yuuji that a sealed piece of a powerful curse could ward off weaker curses?
Oh right, Fushiguro. He wondered how was he doing right now. Had he made it to safety with the others, or did they die in the hands of the higher-ups they went against?
Yuuji couldn't tell.
Yuuji couldn't go back, not anymore.
"Sensei," Yuuji called, hefting the Prison Realm to his palms, and sixteen eyeballs fluttered open on cue. No amount of blood sullying Yuuji's hands could do foul to those eyes—an impossible blue, an intense blue that persisted to haunt Yuuji's dreams. Yuuji wanted to get lost in them and dismember each of their nerves if it meant it could bring Gojou-sensei back to him.
"Sensei, you're a cursed object now, right?" His question was answered with a simultaneous blink from all sixteen eyes. Their crystalline blue never once dimmed even in the darkest of nights—an undisputable opposite of a black body that Yuuji could seek with his eyes closed.
"Then, if I can reincarnate Sukuna inside me by eating his fingers, I should be able to reincarnate sensei too inside me with the same method, right?"
And he wondered whether their blue would die when it was no longer rooted to the cube.
One, two, four, eight, sixteen eyeballs bulged from their sockets when Yuuji prodded a finger into one. The eyes rolled and thrashed within their limited orbit, and their pupils had gone so wide, they almost swallowed the blue completely. Yuuji both hated it, because Gojou-sensei's blue was his tether to reality and how dare you take him away from me again, and rejoiced in it, because this proved that mere cursed object such as the Prison Realm could never replicate the celestial beauty that was Gojou-sensei's eyes.
"Gojou-sensei is the strongest," Yuuji said, just as his nail grazed the moist cornea. It'd be so laughably easy to pierce, and it was a desire most tempting. "Gojou-sensei had nothing to worry about if someone came for his eyes, especially if it was me. But I'd never hurt Gojou-sensei, and that gave him more reason to not worry. If you wanted to mock me with sensei's eyes—"
His finger slid in between the trembling eyelid and frantic eyeball, and Yuuji drove it all the way in—until the blood exploded on his face, until other fifteen eyeballs convulsed, until one eyeball popped off its socket and languidly rolled onto Yuuji's awaiting palm.
"—at least do a better job at it."
In the hollow space of where an eyeball should be, only black and red remained—an endless darkness, a bleeding red. The lush white lashes were now streaked with the same red, and it cried a river of blood on the old wooden flooring of the shrine. Yuuji didn't spare it a second glance when he put down the Prison Realm, because he finally had Gojou-sensei's eye on his hands, and he had gone without its warmth far too long.
"Gojou-sensei," Yuuji breathed out, lips twitching to form a smile—his very first smile ever since that night. It looked odd and rigid at best, but Yuuji believed no expression could do justice for the sheer euphoria he felt right now. Now unshackled by the cube, Gojou-sensei's eye had regained its cosmic blue that Yuuji loved so much, his pupil normal and his iris starlight.
Some drops of blood coated Gojou-sensei's beautiful eye, but it was okay, because Yuuji would clean it up for Gojou-sensei. He laid a gentle kiss over the pupil first, before running his tongue along the soaked circumference. It tasted of iron, of salt and of warmth—the taste of Gojou-sensei's eye, the window to Gojou-sensei's soul.
"Gojou-sensei," Yuuji called out again, this time with a fleshed out smile. "Please come back to me. Please let this work."
With his eyes tightly shut, Yuuji threw the whole eyeball into his mouth and gulped it in one go.
It came rushing back with blood and bile.
Nausea crashed onto him with greater force than an earthquake, and his stomach did a violent flip that threatened to double Yuuji over to the floor. He could feel the eyeball clogging his throat, the acid setting his skin afire, the tears springing from his eyes. There was a pressure building up in his neck as his windpipes strained to have oxygen, and the more he pummeled his fist to his chest, the more he coughed up saliva and blood, acid and flesh.
It continued to burn, burn, and burn, like torture dragging a clawed hand down his throat. Yuuji gagged one more time before foul liquid flooded his tongue and he vomited, Gojou-sensei's eyeball floating in between yellow-green bile and strings of blood. Some even trickled from his nostrils, and it smelt of rot and iron, and salt of his tears.
The eye was sloshed around until it tilted Yuuji's direction. It remained a beautiful, familiar and loving blue, and onto its defiled surfaced that Yuuji's tears fell.
Yuuji sobbed, heart splitting into two in his chest, but his nails dug crescent indents in his closed fist, and his teeth clanked together as he clenched his jaws in determination.
"I- I'll try again," he told himself this as he dragged the still bleeding Prison Realm to his lap. With each syllable spoken, leftover acid further licked inside his mouth and inflamed the sensitive flesh, but Yuuji didn't care. "I'll try again, and again, and again, until I can get you back, Gojou-sensei. I promise."
One eyeball was sacrificed for nothing. Yuuji wouldn't make the same mistake afterwards, for Gojou-sensei's eyes were too beautiful, too precious to be wasted like that. If there was sin in wasting food, surely there was sin in wasting love too. Disgracing the strongest's flesh with tears and bile like this... he really was fated for an execution.
But only by Gojou-sensei. Yuuji wouldn't accept any other hands to end him.
He gouged the second eyeball from its socket, using three fingers at once this time. The silent horror from all eyes on the cube was regarded with steel resolve in return. The spherical flesh leaped from the sheer force of his push alone, and Yuuji plunged it into his mouth despite the lingering reek of vomit. Having to learn his lesson, his teeth cut up the eyeball first before he swallowed it. Minced flesh was easier to stomach than an eye, and Yuuji pinched his nose to make sure it wouldn't be expelled again.
His breath hitched when another hand came to rest atop of his, slackening the grip on his nose out of shock. Yuuji knew those deft fingers by heart, knew that smooth skin and coarse lines as he was familiar with his own face. Yuuji knew that warmth should he search it blindfolded, should he search it without limbs nor eyes to see.
It was impossible. Yuuji was all alone here.
Yet he couldn't help but echo his yearning.
"Gojou... -sensei...?"
"Good boy, Yuuji," someone whispered, possessing Yuuji between the beats of his heart. Someone would've to rearrange Yuuji's brain, synapses by synapses, to make him forget his voice. "Just thirty more to go."
His hand left as gently as it arrived. Yuuji snapped his eyes open only to see wooden beams on the ceiling, green and white on the floor, and hands stained with red.
Breath picking up as his lips twisted into an euphoric grin, Yuuji's whole world shrunk into one purpose: devour Gojou-sensei's eyes.
One failed. One succeeded.
Then it became two. Then it became three.
Gojou-sensei's hands entered Yuuji's field of his vision again, and they gingerly covered his eyes with no heavier weight than a feather. Those large, strong hands kept him in place as Gojou-sensei murmured words of encouragement to his ears: "Keep going, Yuuji. You're doing wonderful.".
It rose to four. It rose to five.
Butterflies took flight in Yuuji's stomach when he felt the tip of a nose bumping lightly against his to impersonate an Eskimo kiss. Long, full lashes brushed his cheekbones in the miniscule distance between their faces, and Yuuji almost forgot this was how it felt like to have his heart so full of love.
Eight eyeballs in. Nine eyeballs in.
Soft, plump lips touched Yuuji's own, and Yuuji's moan was drank by a greedy mouth who had been derived of its other half for too long. Copper coated Yuuji's tongue, crushed eyeballs and mangled flesh, after a fulfilling slaughter from his lips.
Sixteen eyes. Seventeen eyes.
Gojou-sensei's hands slid away from his face, again, and Yuuji snatched him by the wrist with such a raw strength that'd snap bones—a might only born from desperation. A fond laughter echoed from somewhere behind him, and another eyeball was pressed to his lips in a fleeting touch, much like an illicit invitation teasingly handed over.
"Come home to me, Yuuji?"
There was nothing else Yuuji ever wanted in the whole world. "Of course, sensei."
Thirty one.
Yuuji blacked out into a warm embrace.
"Gojou-sensei?"
Sukuna's inner domain had never undergone a change, no matter what his vessel had experienced. White and red added bits of life for the abyss, and above were enormous ribcages standing tall—Yuuji's own ribcages. There was no heart nor veins in sight, its only occupant was Yuuji. It was a cage, a shackle, a prison all at once, entrapping Yuuji in his own body like he existed only in mind.
But for the first time in Yuuji's life, his mind was a clear surface of blue—a cosmic blue, a beautiful and loving blue. It was the blue of unreachable Heavens, the blue of Yuuji's mortal love, the blue of Gojou-sensei's eyes.
"Gojou-sensei!" Yuuji called out again, his voice travelling together with the light to draw ripples on the serene lull. Even if here was clean of blood, clean of nightmares, clean of desperation, Yuuji remained a hollow vessel without the subject of his love in it. "Sensei, where—"
"Yuuji."
Yuuji turned around and—
"Yuuji, I'm so proud of you."
There Gojou-sensei stood, all black attires and pristine white hair, just as Yuuji remembered. His blindfold was nowhere to be seen, and his cheeks, his nose, his chin, his temples, his forehead—everything was occupied by slim curves with snow white lashes. Yuuji was magnetized as a sailor would to a siren amidst of a raging storm.
But the difference was here: the sailor had to row his boat across the water. Yuuji skipped all the pretenses and jumped straight into Gojou-sensei's awaiting arms.
"Gojou-sensei... I miss you..." Yuuji sniffed onto his chest, balling his jacket into his fist. He was tangible in Yuuji's hold—all tender flesh and solid warmth. "Never do that again to me, ever. It's not good for my heart..."
"Oh, Yuuji," Gojou-sensei cooed, and it got Yuuji to look up. Gojou-sensei was gazing lovingly at him, bewitching pairs of blue abundant on his face that was butchered to make place for two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty one eyes that spoke aloud of his love.
"You don't have to worry anymore. Just stay close to me, as always. Those sorcerers would have to dissect you apart, cell by cell, if they wanted to separate us."
His lips kissed Yuuji's tears away, and Yuuji was surprised to taste salt on his tongue too.
"Because now we are special—we are one, and we are the strongest. We'll never know separation ever again."
Yuuji grinned, and it was mirrored on Gojou-sensei's face amidst the elated eyes.
"Special, together."