Chapter Text
“After all, you’re weak.”
Those words replayed in Utahime’s mind as she felt a bruise forming on her entire side. She didn’t know what kind of grave sin she was being punished for as she watched one of her colleagues get pinned against a stone pillar. The grotesque curse hadn’t killed him yet. It had embedded something into his chest, an appendage pulsing and rooting deeper every time he struggled.
“Help..” He tried, blood running down his chin as he clawed uselessly at the stone. “Iori-”
The large curse let out a delighted sound before tightening its grip. Ribs collapsed inward with a sound like breaking chopsticks. He didn’t die right away. His eyes stayed on Utahime as the curse dropped him. She looked away from the sight of his twitching body folding on the floor in an unnatural way.
There was no time to register that as the curse dragged another friend, letting Utahime hear every second of her despair. Nails scraping and a couple attacks followed by a wet thud. A female voice broke out in a sob begging for a mother Utahime didn’t even know. She watched the girl’s lips ripped from her face and her arm torn free. One second the girl’s presence was there: familiar and reassuring because, like Utahime, she wasn’t among the strongest sorcerers. The next it was gone, like a candle snuffed out in a sealed room as she got discarded and bled out.
Why the hell is this special grade curse here? This was a nightmare and she wasn’t waking up. Four of them had been sent there and didn’t stand a chance. The third sorcerer was seated upright against the shrine wall, closer to Utahime, head bowed like he was resting. For half a second -one devastatingly merciful half second- Utahime thought he was alive. That maybe he’d been spared. Perhaps she wasn’t completely alone yet. She whispered his name and stepped closer, wondering how to get him out of here. She really wish she hadn’t. His hands were folded neatly in his lap. Palms together. Fingers interlaced the way people did when they were trying to be polite. She froze upon realizing that the curse had peeled the skin from his forearms. The torn, exposed muscle had gone dark and stiff, the blood already drying into something sticky and sweet-smelling that made Utahime gag.
His chest still moved. His breathing was shallow, wet, bubbling in a way that made her stomach twist. His eyes were glassy and unfocused but when she said his name again, they shifted to her direction. His lips trembled. Sound came out but not words-his tongue was gone. The inside of his mouth was ruined, edges cauterized by so he wouldn’t bleed out too quickly.
He desperately reached for her and in doing so, the cloth covering his chest slid off. That was when she saw why he was still alive. The curse had hollowed him out from the inside, leaving his ribs intact like a cage. Something inside him moved, a small part of the curse, testing the limits of what was left.
Utahime dropped to her knees, hands shaking, chanting prayers that had nowhere to go. She wished he would die faster as she heard him convulse.
He did not.
She thought of finishing the job but she knew she was next. Its eyes were on her.
Utahime forced herself to stand. Her legs shook so badly she nearly fell back onto the body. She didn’t dare to look down again. If she did, she knew she wouldn’t be able to get back up. The nameless being lunged for her and she threw herself sideways. More pain tore through her shoulder as she hit the hard ground. She rolled, came up coughing and ran.
She sprinted down corridors while the curse followed at a leisurely pace, letting her exhaust herself, letting her hope. It absorbed every impact like it had expected it, pivoting its head with horrifying speed. Each attack she tried to send slowed the curse only for a heartbeat before it twisted and reshaped with a fluidity, mocking all her efforts.
She held tightly onto the dagger borrowed from the girl who was now dead and lipless. Utahime reached the inner sanctum and turned just as it struck her. The blow lifted her off the ground and slammed her into the altar hard enough to crack it. She bit back a scream and that was when it leaned in close.
What a beautiful face..
Wherever the voice came from wasn’t her major concern. Its mouth opened wide, stretching impossibly and coming close - Utahime barely had time to raise her arm before it bit down and unimaginable pain detonated across her face. Something cold tore across her cheek, across the bridge of her nose, down toward her jaw, dragging skin and muscle in a single motion.
Beautiful.
Something warm flooded her eye. She tasted iron and rot. She could feel the air on things that should never have been exposed. Her vision fractured, one eye gone dark, the other swimming.
This mindless curse obviously likes to torture its victims. Shitty luck. It didn’t snap its jaws shut. It seemed to chew, letting its teeth grind against bone. Utahime’s scream broke into something animal, a sound she didn’t recognize as her own. Her hands clawed uselessly at its face, fingers slipping on slick flesh and blood that might have been hers or might have been someone else’s.
Beautifu-
Instinct took over where training had failed. Utahime screamed a chant she’d never used like this. With that, she slammed cursed energy outward -not into a barrier or some sort of defense- but into the monster itself, destabilizing the domain from the inside like a seizure.
The curse hissed, startled.
Utahime didn’t hesitate.
She jammed the dagger into its mouth. It surged from her palm and corrupted the inside of its jaw. The curse recoiled and Utahime forced herself out of its grip, skin ripping again as she fell away.
Walls of the atmosphere bent inward, screaming like metal under stress. The curse roared in fury now, lunging again but the space between them warped violently. Floor and corridors seemed to change shape and collapse into each other.
Utahime crawled away from the shitshow, wondering how she pulled that off. She couldn’t see straight. Blood poured down her neck, soaked her collar, her hands slipping every time she tried to push herself forward. Her face felt open and uneven.
Perhaps she began hallucinating the fracture in reality, a tearing seam forming in front of her out of nowhere. Utahime didn’t question it. She shoved her arm into it and let the backlash tear through her body as she got the rest of herself in. The curse let out another screeching noise and lunged after her but the portal closed. Utahime hit the forest floor like a corpse thrown from its casket. She retched blood and bile into the dirt. For a moment, Utahime stayed there half-conscious, cheek pressed into earth, soaking the moss.
Move.
It didn’t matter where she was. She crawled because standing wasn’t possible. Her palms split on rocks. Her knees screamed when they struck roots. She left a trail behind her but still, stopping meant dying just like her team had.
At some point, her hands stopped obeying her. She fell onto her side, chest heaving. Stars bled through the canopy above her as she began to lose consciousness.
He was already uneasy before he found her. The residual cursed energy readings were more chaotic than usual, smeared like something had thrashed violently and then vanished. The report said four sorcerers were deployed and hadn’t returned. One of them had been someone he liked to tease since they were high schoolers.
Now she was lying crumpled on her side, hair matted, body terrifyingly still. He reached for her shoulder and froze. He forced himself to look, to assess, like he’d been trained to. Skin was torn. Bone visible underneath. One eye ruined. Blood crusted and fresh all at once. It felt as if he left his body as he tried to decide what state she was in. He checked for a pulse.
She’s alive.
Gojo didn’t waste another second. He shrugged off his jacket and pressed it against her face, hands violently shaking as he tried to staunch bleeding. He was silent as he lifted her into his arms.
“Dead..” She mustered, surprising him. “All of them..”
He tightened his hold just enough to shift her weight, cradling her more securely. “You’re awake? You pick the worst days to almost die, Utahime.”
She groaned. “Not.. you..” Pain shot through her shoulder and side when she tried to move. She winced, the motion barely registering in her exhausted body. “I couldn’t do anything.”
Gojo’s jaw tightened just slightly. “Focus on staying alive.” The conviction behind it cut through the fog of her self loathing. “I’ll make sure this doesn’t happen to you again. You just… hold on for a few more seconds.”
After being transported to Shoko’s office, she was quiet again. Her skin was cold, her pulse faint enough that Gojo thought that he’d been too late after all. Shoko looked up when the door slammed open.
“Shit. Put her on the table.”
Gojo set her down carefully like a ragdoll, stepping back just far enough to take in the full carnage.
Shoko’s expression didn’t change as she took in the damage. Only her eyes hardened, sharp and furious as she began to work. “Get out. If she were awake, she wouldn’t want you here.”
Utahime’s body was wrapped in bandages, her face almost completely obscured. Days passed and friends came to visit occasionally. Through their hurried, worried chatter, there was no time to mourn and she had learned things she wasn’t ready to process: the bodies of the victims were recovered but mangled and the curse that had torn through her team had been destroyed. She didn’t know the details, only that it involved the head of the Gojo clan.
One day he appeared at her door alone. He didn’t ask if she wanted him there. He didn’t offer platitudes or assurances or tease her for being helpless like he usually would. He simply existed in the room, sitting on the chair beside her bed.
Her hands twitched beneath the sheets, a reflexive agitation of him being near. But she did not did not allow herself to show any sign that she knew he had been the one to take care of everything, even the higher ups who sent her that night. She wasn’t in the mood to thank him nor apologize. The silence was hers to command. He did not press it, did not fill it. Words were useless anyway; her throat still felt raw and her mind was a tangle of fear, grief and anger at her own uselessness. At some point he rested a hand lightly on the edge of the bed, missing hers by an inch.
Slowly, with effort, she lifted a trembling hand from beneath the sheets and pressed it lightly over his.