Chapter Text
Satoru stood over the lifeless body. The events of Shibuya had spread throughout the world, news channels were broadcasting images of the city's remaining destruction. However, Kenjaku's death had prevented the curses from attacking everyone. The students and other sorcerers were still outside, hunting the remaining curses. Meanwhile, the stupid higher-ups had declared Gojo Satoru a traitor. The reason was the return of Geto Suguru. But no one knew the truth. While everyone still believed him to be imprisoned, he was standing over your corpse. And while everyone held Geto responsible for everything, Yuta was burying the body. Far from the prying eyes of the higher-ups and the sorrowful gazes of his peers...
He had chosen a clearing deep within a nameless forest. The grave was not deep. Beside it lay the body of Geto Suguru, carefully wrapped in a simple, clean white shroud. Yuta had taken the time to retrieve the head, placing it back where it belonged not for the monster Kenjaku, but for the man his teacher had once called his one and only best friend. This was not a disposal, it was a rite.
He knelt and gently lifted the shrouded form. It was lighter than he expected, as if the evil that had inhabited it had a physical weight that was now gone, leaving only an empty vessel behind. He lowered the body into the earth, arranging the cloth so that it lay peacefully. For a long moment, Yuta stared down at the figure. He was burying a history of pain. He was burying the man who had tried to kill him, the man Gojo had been forced to execute, and the monster who had returned to torture his teacher.
𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦. Yuta thought. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘯, 𝘚𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘪.
He picked up the shovel. The first cascade of earth striking the white shroud was the only sound in the clearing.
He was erasing a ghost from the world so that his teacher might, one day, find a way to exorcise the one in his heart.
He worked without pause until the grave was filled and the earth was smoothed over. He left no marker, no stone, no name. This place was to be forgotten. Standing there in the growing light, Yuta wiped the dirt from his hands. The first part of his duty was complete. Now, for the second, far more difficult task. The one that would truly end this war.
࣪ ִֶָ☾.
The door to the infirmary was already open. Yuji hesitated in the hallway. The fight was over, but the silence that followed was somehow louder and more terrifying than the battle itself. He could hear the rhythmic beep of a monitor from inside.
"Gojo-sensei."
He was sitting in a simple chair pulled up beside an examination table. Slumped forward, elbows on his knees, his face buried in his hands. He wasn't wearing his blindfold, and his white hair fell around his fingers. He looked smaller than Yuji had ever seen him.
Yuji's throat went dry. He took a cautious step inside. "Sensei...?"
He didn't seem to have heard. Yuji walked closer, his heart aching for the man who had always seemed so untouchable, so far above the pain that plagued everyone else. "Shoko-san told me... what happened." Yuji said softly, standing a few feet away. "She... she was brave. She saved you, Sensei." He didn't know what else to say.
Satoru finally lowered his hands. "Who was supposed to save the one person who didn't have any power? That was my job. It was always my job." He looked away, his shoulders slumping again.
Yuji felt a crushing sense of his own uselessness. He just wanted to help, to offer some comfort, but he had nothing.
A mouth split open on Yuji’s own cheek. "So this is the pathetic creature. Barely worth the effort. I can smell the blood congealing under that sheet. A shame."
Yuji's blood ran cold. He instinctively slapped a hand over his cheek, as if he could physically shove the vile words back inside. "No, stop!"
Gojo hadn't moved a muscle. But the atmosphere in the room had changed. He slowly lifted his head, and his eyes fixed not on Yuji, but on the mouth on his cheek. "You know... I was just thinking about how much I wanted to tear something apart."
His gaze was so intense, so full of murderous promise, that the mouth on Yuji's cheek twitched and then sealed shut, Sukuna retreating into silence.
"Sensei... I'm so sorry, I didn't..."
"It wasn't you, Yuji." His gaze dropped back to the sheet. He reached out a trembling hand and gently placed it on the covered form. "Leave me."
Yuji nodded. He backed out of the room, pulling the door quietly shut, leaving his teacher alone once more with his grief. He walked outside and met Shoko.
"Shoko-san... I'm sorry. About... in there. Sukuna-"
"That wasn't you. Sukuna is a parasite. We all know that." She was tired too. She had waited by your side all night. But she couldn't bring you back, your heart would never beat again. She didn't know why, but she felt as if she had lost someone close to her. Satoru's pain had hurt her too.
Yuji's shoulders slumped. "I've never seen him like that. He looks... hollow."
"Imagine being the most powerful man in the world, only to be saved by the one person you were supposed to protect. He's not just grieving, Yuji. He's grappling with the fact that his own power is meaningless in the face of what she did."
"So... what are we supposed to do?"
"Our job is to handle what he can't. We keep fighting. We clean up the rest of Kenjaku's mess. We make sure her sacrifice wasn't for nothing."
Yuji sulked. He wished Nanami were here with them, too. Perhaps his composure would have been good for Satoru. But they had lost Nanami. So many innocent people had died in a single night.
What was to be done? There wasn't even time to sit and mourn. Sukuna was still inside his body. He had intended to cooperate with Kenjaku to regain his true power, but now Kenjaku was gone. He needed to leave this body and take over Megumi's as soon as possible. For Sukuna, all that was left was to plan for victory.
But he didn't know it. He, too, would pay the price for the mistake he had made.
"I'll visit Nobara now. Megumi is already awake, you should go see him."
At least his friends were still with him.
࣪ ִֶָ☾.
Satoru had not moved from the floor. His head rested against the cold steel of the table, right beside your still hand.
He didn't notice the first one. A single sound from the heart monitor Shoko had left connected, a sound so faint it was barely more than a mechanical sigh. It was probably just the machine's final, meaningless spasm.
But the sound repeated.
His gaze was fixed on the IV line still taped to your arm, the tube connecting his own vein to yours. It was a monument to his uselessness. A bridge to nowhere.
He saw it then. Beneath the pale, translucent skin of your forearm, a tiny blue vein pulsed. Once. He blinked, convinced his exhausted eyes were playing tricks on him. Grief was a poison, it made you see ghosts. But it pulsed again, a rhythmic twitch in time with the soft blips from the monitor he had been ignoring. His head snapped up. His eyes shot to the IV bag hanging beside the table. The dark, crimson liquid... was dripping. Each drop fell, disappearing down the tube being impossibly drawn into your body.
Scrambling to his feet with a surge of energy he didn't know he possessed, he lunged for your wrist. His fingers, trembling violently, pressed against the cold skin where a pulse should be. Nothing. He pressed harder, his Six Eyes flaring to life, desperately searching for the faintest flow of energy, of life.
And there it was.
His own cursed energy, carried within the blood he had given you, was being accepted, circulated, fueling a spark that should have been extinguished forever. The flat, dead tone of the monitor was gone, replaced by a steady rhythm.
The sound was a miracle. It was an impossibility. He stumbled back, his hand flying to his mouth as a raw sound escaped his throat. For a moment, he could do nothing but stare at the rising and falling line on the monitor, his mind unable to process the reality unfolding before him. Then, the shock gave way to a urgency. He threw the infirmary door open with such force that it slammed against the hallway wall.
"Shoko!"
࣪ ִֶָ☾.
"The reports said you fought a stranger. The internal damage should have been… extensive. But there's barely any sign of it."
Megumi looked down at his own hands, flexing his fingers. "Sukuna healed me."
Shoko stopped scrolling. She looked up, her gaze sharp and analytical. "He did? Why? Wasting that much cursed energy on someone who isn't his primary vessel makes no sense. It's not in his nature."
"I think… he's interested in my technique. He said something about it before. Maybe keeping me alive and at full strength is part of some larger plan. An investment."
"An investment, or a cage he's reinforcing?" Shoko countered grimly. "Don't be naive, Fushiguro. A favor from a curse like Sukuna always comes with a price. He's marking you."
Before Megumi could respond, the door to their room was thrown open. Satoru just lunged forward and grabbed Shoko by the arm, pulling her from her chair.
"Sensei-" Megumi started, moving to stand.
"The monitor." Gojo choked out. "The blood. It's taking the blood. You have to come now."
Without waiting for a reply, he pulled her out of the room, his desperate strength undeniable. Shoko stumbled after him, her datapad clattering to the floor. Megumi was left alone in the sudden silence, staring at the empty doorway, his own concerns forgotten.
Megumi knew. No, everyone at Jujutsu High knew. There was a girl who had saved their teacher, but she was already dead. So much had happened that no one had found the chance to talk about it. Choso had joined the team, Nanami was dead, and Nobara had come back from the brink of death. Everyone was caught up in their own grief, exhausted after fighting for hours in Shibuya. On top of it all, their teacher had been declared a traitor, and Yuji had been sentenced to death. Since everyone thought Satoru was still imprisoned, all their focus was on Yuji, and he couldn't stay in one place for long. And Megumi? What had fate written for him? And why did it feel as if his own destiny had already been rewritten a thousand times over?
࣪ ִֶָ☾.
He practically dragged Shoko back inside. Megumi followed a few steps behind. Her eyes immediately shot to the heart monitor. She pressed two fingers to your neck again, her eyes closing in concentration. Her expression shifted from skepticism to utter disbelief. "It's thready... weak. But it's a sinus rhythm."
Satoru stood frozen a few feet away, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. He looked like a man on a knife's edge, terrified that if he breathed too loudly, the fragile miracle would shatter. She glanced at the IV bag, then back at your arm. The skin around the needle, once pale and lifeless, had a flush. "The body is accepting the transfusion." Her mind raced through every medical and cursed energy principle she knew. "Your cursed energy... it must be acting as a binding agent, forcing the cells to... to restart."
She grabbed a flashlight, pried open one of your eyelids, and shone the beam into your eye. Your pupil, once fixed and dilated, constricted sluggishly in response to the light.
A choked sound escaped Satoru's throat.
Shoko straightened up, turning to face him. "I can't explain this, Satoru. By every law of medicine and cursed energy, this should be impossible. She's not back. But her body is fighting. It's using your blood, your energy." She pointed to a cabinet. "Get another unit of blood. And saline. Now."
The command broke his paralysis. For the first time since he'd brought you here, the devastating grief in his eyes was eclipsed by determination. He didn't question her. He moved.
"I need blood pressure, oxygen saturation, everything." Shoko expertly administered a saline drip to help stabilize your blood pressure. "Her body temperature is dangerously low. Hypothermic shock. Megumi, find every thermal blanket we have."
Satoru returned with supplies. As Megumi rushed to obey, Shoko hovered her glowing hands over your chest once more. "This is the part I don't understand. Ordinarily, a transfusion is just physical. But your cursed energy is... intertwined with blood. It's actively stimulating her autonomic functions. Like a jump start for the soul's connection to the body."
He was pouring his will into you, a silent command for you to stay, to fight. "What can I do?"
"The connection is you. Keep giving blood until I tell you to stop. Your energy is the only thing keeping this miracle from collapsing."
Hours bled into one another. Yuji, hearing the commotion, appeared at the door, his face a mask of confusion and hope. Shoko put him to work, sending him for more supplies, keeping everyone busy, keeping the fragile momentum going. The sun rose higher in the sky, casting golden light through the infirmary windows. The beeping of the monitor grew stronger. The deathly pale of your skin was slowly being replaced by human warmth. You were not awake. You had not moved. But you were no longer a corpse on a table. You were a patient, fighting your way back from an abyss no one had ever returned from before, tethered to the world by the love and lifeblood of the strongest sorcerer.