Chapter Text
Nobara wakes up early.
At least that’s what she feels has happened when she opens her eyes and sees Ieiri-san’s slightly raised eyebrows.
“You’re awake,” she murmurs, and then she’s pushing Nobara back down the moment she tries to sit up in her cot. “Don’t. You…” she trails off and her hands tighten slightly from where they’re placed on Nobara’s shoulders. “I’m glad you’re awake. Let me check you over first, and then you can jump back into action kid. If you’re fit for it.”
There’s a warning in her eyes, so Nobara only grumbles a bit before letting Ieiri-san do her thing. She’s restless, a thousand questions rushing through her mind. The last thing she remembers was chasing after that patchwork curse - that coward who’d started running the second Nobara was close to killing him. She’d followed him down the subway, eyes catching on Itadori and there had been relief that blossomed in her heart then, because he was okay and the two of them could easily take down patch-face. Then she saw that there were two heads of blue, not just one. They’d swapped, the one Itadori had been fighting running towards her, but it was fine because his technique wasn’t working-
But no. Because he touched her face and the slap sounded out like a death knell. One second felt like a thousand, and Itadori’s face was painted in her vision and she was sure that it would be the last thing she saw-
But no. She was awake. She was here. Because Kugisaki Nobara was strong, she had to be strong. She wouldn’t just fall down and die that easily. No. She would keep going- she had to keep going if she wanted to keep up with Itadori Yuuji, vessel of the King Of Curses himself and the very definition of ‘the indomitable human spirit’ and Fushiguro Megumi, Ten Shadows Technique user and unbelievably thoughtful and calculating, the reins that held back herself and Itadori who would rather charge headfirst into battle instead. Standing in between those two, Nobara can’t afford to stop moving forward. She can’t afford a moment of weakness; she can’t afford to get left behind. Kugisaki Nobara knows that she is strong. Kugisaki Nobara knows that she must get stronger.
She tightens her hand into a fist as she sits up and looks at Ieiri-san who is already looking down at her, expression moulded into that passive unreadability she always wears.
“So, where are those two idiots?”
It isn’t hard to find them. Ieiri-san told her she’d woken up right on time. Itadori and Megumi had just come onto campus themselves to talk to Tengen. If she gets there on time, she could catch them before they went inside. Which she does.
The two were walking out in the courtyard, a few others behind them, and the moment she spots them she points at the duo, a hand on her hip as she yells out.
“HEY!”
The group tenses at the shout. A man with pigtails moves to step in front of Itadori almost protectively, but the boy tugs him out of the way and Nobara finds herself in an intense stare down with her friend. He takes one step forward, eyes darting across her face and locking onto her eyepatch and Nobara makes her way down the steps. She flicks her eyes away to glance at Fushiguro, checking to make sure that he’s alive as well. The boys stand together, and Itadori’s face holds quantities of emotion that she does not want to deal with right now. Her own gut twists and churns, and she can’t even figure out why. It’s not important. They’re all alive. Whatever.
She stops right in front of them and catches herself breathing heavily, she hadn’t realized she’d ran. Frowning, she brings up both arms and-
“Kugisaki.” Fushiguro glares up at her from where he’s now crouched over and clutching his shoulder, and Itadori groans as he holds his stomach. “What the hell.”
She laughs, the sound wet and she clears her throat as if that would drown out the oasis in her windpipe, and her heart, and her eyes. “Sorry. Force of habit… I didn’t mean to punch you.”
“It’s okay,” the sniffle makes both their eyes turn towards their pink-haired counterpart. “You’re okay.” Itadori says, eyes blinking hard and fast and if her eyes were an oasis then Itadori seems like he’d drown in the flood waiting to burst forth from his own. “Kugis- Nobara. I’m sorry.”
She blinks. The first name…. hell, if anyone deserves to call her by that, it’s these two idiots. “What the hell are you sorry for Itadori.” She sees his eyes flash to the eyepatch across her face and frowns before huffing out another breath. “I swear to god, Itadori… No, Yuuji.” The boy’s eyes finally flick to her face instead of vacantly staring at her eyepatch and she puts a hand on his shoulder, gripping hard as she continues. “Yuuji. It’s not your fault. If anything, it’s my fault for not being on guard and acting faster.”
Yuuji frowns and moves forward as if to decline what was so obviously the truth, and she uses that momentum to pull him in. His hold is tighter than her own, the hug feels like it’ll start crushing her ribs but she just grips him harder.
“You’re not allowed to say it’s your fault either,” comes the murmur from where his face is buried in her shoulder and she snorts.
“Fine.” She grumbles and then shoots out a hand and waves it towards the lanky boy watching them. “C’mere.”
Yuuji’s head pops up at that and he grins brightly. He grabs at Fushiguro who had already taken a step back. But regardless of how unwilling the boy had seemed a second ago, the shikigami user wraps his arms around the two of them almost immediately. She feels his fingers gripping at the back of her gakuran, hard enough to leave some wrinkles even, but she can’t complain because her nails dig into the back of his own uniform just as tight.
“I’m glad you’re okay… Nobara.” The name sounds almost constipated slipping from his lips but she only grins and grips him tighter.
“Thanks, Megumi.”
The boy huffs, although the false distaste doesn’t even try to make it to his eyes or even his voice as he grumbles at her to shut up. The frown turns into a wince as Yuuji pokes him in the ribs and leans closer to the other boy’s face.
“Me! Do me next, say my name.”
“No.” Megumi looks away and Nobara snorts at the exchange. The taller boy misses the disappointed expression that flits through Yuuji’s face, just as Yuuji misses the embarrassment that colours Megumi’s ears. Idiots.
“C’mon. Megumi. Megu-”
Megumi steers the both of them around, effectively interrupting Yuuji as he pushes them towards the others. “Let’s just go see Tengen already.”
Tengen is…. Well, Nobara doesn’t really know what to think. All-powerful, but isolated from the humanity that he protects. She kind of pities him, but feels that wouldn’t go over well if she voiced it so she keeps the thought tucked inside her brain.
“That’s an inside-thought, Nobara-chan!” Gojo-sensei whined, clutching his chest in fake pain as he frowned her way.
“No, I definitely meant to say that aloud.” She told him bluntly, idly kicking her legs from where she sat on the ledge of the building. She felt infinity brush against her back, a safeguard making sure that she wouldn’t somehow lose her balance and fall backwards into the alleyway that waited some thirty floors down. “Hey sensei, can we go shopping after this?” She asked. Her eyes idly trailed the rooftop and then fell on the door. Still no curse in sight.
“I dunno Nobara-chan, you were kind of mean to me just now. I don’t know if I want to give you my card.” He pouted at her and she stared back at blankly.
“I said you’re starting to get wrinkles.” She told him and he crossed his arms and glanced down at her, prompting her to continue as if expecting an apology. “…And I was serious. You literally have one in between your eyebrows right now.”
“Eh?” Face pulled into ridiculous shock tinged with the tiniest bit of actual offence, he gaped at her. Nobara really couldn’t understand how people fell at their feet for her sensei’s supposed ‘attractiveness’ when he made ugly faces such as this so often.
The door creaked open as the curse they had been waiting for finally, finally, sludged out onto the rooftop. Gojo-sensei cocked his head at it assessingly and then smirked. He sat down on the rooftop ledge right next to her, leg crossed over the other and ruffled her hair.
“Say, Nobara-chan. I’ll let you go on that shopping trip if you can defeat that curse in under four minutes. It’s only a semi-grade two.”
With that, he pushed Nobara towards the curse with his infinity. She scowled at him for a second before rolling her shoulders. Fine.
It took more effort than she'd like to admit to finish off the curse, but she was sure she'd still made it within the time limit once she was done. Pocketing her hammer, she turned to face Gojo-sensei with a smirk. “So? How’d I do?”
The man blinked up at her from where he’d been playing a game on his phone. “Huh?” He paused, seeming to remember something and snapped his fingers. “Oh right, the challenge!” He shrugged his shoulders. “I wasn’t keeping track of the time, so I wouldn’t know how long you took.”
“Hah?? What do you mean you don’t know? You’re the one who was meant to be counting!”
“I never said that Nobara-chan.” He smirked. “Since it’s a challenge for you, you should have been the one keeping an eye on the time.”
“That’s so stupid-”
“See, take this as a lesson on the importance of multi-tasking-”
“You want me to fight curses AND record how long I take doing so-”
“No, but that’s a funny thought. Maybe you could steal Nanamin’s watch and everything.”
“You’re so annoying, I can’t believe you baited me with-”
“Whatever, Let’s go. Those shops won’t stay open forever yknow? It’s getting late and I want to stop by some street vendors before we hit the clothing stores.”
“-with shopping! Wait. What?”
Gojo-sensei coked his head at her, humming in question. “What, you don’t want to go shopping anymore?”
“No, I-” She tsked, the tension draining from her shoulders once it clicked that he had just pissed her off for fun. The wide grin on his face told her he’d enjoyed every second of it and she felt her temper start to raise again. Barging forward, she swiped the black card he was now holding in his hand. “Whatever. Let’s just go. You’re such a ragebaiter.”
“Ragebaiter? Is that what the kids call it these days?”
“Yes, old man. I’ll buy you some anti-aging cream for your wrinkles.”
“Aww, thanks Nobara-chan. Wait. No. Do I really have wrinkles? Nobara? Nobara??”
Blinking the memory away, she focuses back in on the conversation Tengen is having with the pretty blonde lady and the pigtails man. She doesn’t know what made her think about that day with Gojo-sensei so suddenly. Running a hand through her hair, she lets her eyes wander and they land on Yuuji pocketing the cube that Tengen had given them. The back of the Prison Realm. Right. So maybe she does know what had caused that trip down memory lane.
Whatever.
They’d find a way to open that prison realm and she’d drag Gojo-sensei with her for another one of their shopping trips. She’s basically earned the right to as many trips as she wants after everything they’ve done – and will do, really – recently. She also needs to hit Gojo-sensei over the head, she reminds herself.
The man had really gone ahead and destroyed the two cursed items that would have helped them unseal him. What were they called again? The Inverted Spear of Heaven and The Black Rope. What had their sensei been thinking when he destroyed them? She doesn’t even know if he destroyed them knowing about the Prison Realm or if it was for some other unrelated reason. God, she barley knows anything about Gojo.
For someone so lax and seemingly care-free, he kept a lot of stuff about himself… locked away. Sometimes it felt like his annoying-act was just one giant deflection urging people to not look too closely or try to get too close and… yeah. Putting a stop to that thought train. She wasn’t here to psycho-analyse her teacher. She was here to save him. Unseal him. And then he could come out and flick his fingers and save all of them just like he’s done a million times before.
Nobara follows the others out, except for the two that had decided to stay behind to protect Tengen, as they make their way out of the room. She’s deep in thought, admittedly, so she nearly bumps into Yuuji who had also lagged near the exit of the room. The boy is looking back at pigtail man, Choso, she’d heard Yuuji call him that, and they seem to be saying their goodbyes, so she trails off to the side and stands next to Megumi.
“So… your sister’s awake, huh?” She eyes him, crossing her arms as she talks and he nods swiftly.
“Yeah.” He says and his voice has that far off quality to it that makes her queasy and she pinches her own arm from where she has them crossed so that she doesn’t do something like punch him. She doesn’t like the look he gets in his eyes, as if he’s practically screaming to the world ‘Take me. Take me instead.’
She leans into his side slightly, because she really can’t stand to see that look on his face. His eyes snap back into focus and she’s thankful for it as she continues. “We’ll save her.” She nods.
He nods right back at her, and she takes that as allowance to grin, slightly feral. “Plus, I’ve really been wanting to meet your sister yknow. I bet she has the most embarrassing stories. We all know about delinquent little Megumi, but were you a problem child as a toddler as well?”
He rolls his eyes and puts a hand on her head, pushing it down and also messing up her hair as punishment. “Shut up, you’re literally a delinquent right now so you can’t even talk.”
“I am not a delinquent.”
“You are.”
“No.”
“Thanks for waiting guys!” Itadori’s grin is wide but it’s dim, so much dimmer than when she’d first met him and damn, that queasy feeling is back again. “I’m good to go now.”
“Cool, let’s go then slowpoke.” She tells him and drags him so that he’s sandwiched in-between her and Megumi.
They make their way outside the room and into the corridor and this is where she pauses. She looks at the other two who stare at the doors in front of them blankly as well and she comes to the realization that they don’t know which way they’re meant to be going either. Well. That’s okay.
“It’s this door.” She says and points to the left.
Yuuji stares at the door and then at her. “Are you sure…”
“Are you questioning my directional abilities Yuuji?”
“I am.” Megumi tells her bluntly and he swivels his head towards the doors to point at the one on the right. “That one.”
“No, it’s definitely not that one.” Nobara huffs.
Yuuji looks between the two of them and then points at the last door which is in between the other two. “Let’s go through that one! It’s always the middle door.” And then immediately starts walking towards it.
Nobara, who had in a moment of weakness from being separated from the two for too long, had had her hand hooked around Yuuji’s and is pulled with him as the boy starts walking towards the door. She grabs onto Megumi and pulls him too and the boy stumbles but then grips onto Nobara’s hand properly and follows them.
Yuuji opens the door and it’s so bright, the light is blinding and dizzying and Yuuji is pulled inside and then Nobara goes in second and her grip on Megumi tightens so she can only hope he’s followed them in as well. But she’ll never know because she falls.
Into what, she’s not sure either. The light is so bright it’s headache inducing. She feels a rush of everything and nothing. And then there is darkness.