Work Text:
Far too often, Yuta hates the way his body feels. Like it’s not his own—like it belongs to someone else entirely.
A glitch—a fissure—the world flickering in and out of focus.
In those moments, it feels as if his skin has been stripped away, his bones pulled apart, tendons snapping, and organs rupturing. Afterwards, stitched up—the parts of him glued back together, he’s whole again. Whole and wrong. Fucked up and wrung out.
Like a puzzle where none of the pieces fit together.
Tonight, his head pulsates with a migraine that extends into his eyes and down to his neck. The scar on his forehead itches, and the urge to scratch at it leaves his fingers jittery and full of pins and needles.
The makeshift blindfold does help, but not enough. It’s never enough. And Yuta wants to scream (a vacant cry because his vocal cords have been cut right through, blue on his fingertips, and a spearhead down his throat—Raven hair and the smell of blood—a darkened alleyway against the setting sun and a smile so soft—)
Yuta idly wonders, squeezing his eyes shut tight, how Gojo-sensei dealt with this. Though he knows, he knows already far too well and yet—
The next throb of pain that shoots through him has the sour saliva collecting at the back of his throat. He swallows it back, harshly.
Ugh.
It’s remarkable that the consequences of the body switch only reached this far. And really, it’s only a small price to pay for wielding his sensei’s body like a tool—a weapon they desperately needed to go against the threat that had loomed over their world. And sensei himself had consented to it, easily even, so why, why, why—
That night, Yuta doesn’t sleep. Instead, echoes of his own present, and a past that isn’t his, keep his eyes wide open, skipping the beat of his heart in a familiar, yet foreign sorrow.
-/-
“You’re eating too much candy.” Maki is staring down at him disapprovingly, and Yuta feels the tips of his ears burn. His stomach protests despite the craving clawing at him, nausea crawling up his throat.
“It’s nothing, probably just came down with something.” He sniffs. His body feels restless—bones and tendons all twisted and wrong.
“No, don’t think I didn’t notice. You should sleep more, too. You look exhausted.”
“I’m fine.”
“Your eyebags will start having eyebags at this point.” Maki huffs, crossing her arms against her chest, eying him sharply with a pointed glare. “I’ve been trying to give you space, but you should really tell me if something is going on. I know we have a lot on our plates right now, but you can let me carry a bit of your burden, too. I won’t break.”
I won’t break, I won’t bent.
No, I know, but maybe I will.
“I know. I trust you,” Yuta says instead of the things screaming in his head. “It’s just... well, with the duties of Clan Head being moved onto me, and the overhaul of the higher-ups, and oh, plus the other million things I need to get to.” Yuta groans, eyes closing for a moment (blue—impossibly blue). He pushes a hand through his hair, pulling at the strands. When he opens his eyes again, he smiles a bit wryly as he meets Maki’s gaze. “I guess it’s indeed just a lot right now.”
“As I was saying, let me help you. You’ve been running on fumes lately.”
“We all are stretched thin right now,” Yuta counters, shaking his head.
“Doesn’t matter.” Maki’s lips tick downwards. “You’ve been struggling beyond that. And I want to know.” A breath, and Yuta feels the drop in his stomach as she says: “You’re not gonna find peace in sour candy and vanilla ice cream crepes, you know.”
-/-
“You should stop the imitation bullshit. You’re nothing like him. You never came even close.”
Megumi is angry. Megumi should be angry. Yuta is angry too. At himself, at his inability not to fuck up for once, at the sweat on his brow as the world seems to beam down on him with every step he takes. Too loud. Too much. Too sharp. The nasua curls in his stomach. Maybe Yuta is a bit angry at the world, too.
“Sorry,” he says, feeling the guilt pooling in his gut. He looks down at his feet—scuffed shoes smudged with grass stains. “I assure you, I’m very well aware. Gojo-sensei was... well, he was himself. And I’m me.” The sudden, unbidden unfortunately goes unsaid, stuck behind his teeth. He swallows.
“I’m only an heir in name, nothing more. But you’re family in every way that truly matters. If you’re worried about any valuables—anything important to you. With the will reading and all. I haven’t even been to his penthouse. I was pushed to go, but—”
“I don’t care about that shit, there’s nothing there for me,” Megumi says sharply, getting up from his crouch. His trousers are dusted with pale sand. His face twists into something wrenched for a moment, as he says, “Also, stop looking at me like you know—as if you pity me.” The words are meant to hurt, spat out with spite. Then he’s gone, treading the worn path towards the dorms.
Megumi’s retreating back looks lonely, and something about that aches in Yuta. That same something makes him want to reach out and lay his hand on that spiky black hair. He bites down until his teeth ache.
A vision rises unbidden: a young Megumi, looking slightly miffed, suddenly crowds his mind. Next to him is Tsumiki, beaming at the camera, pink summer dress fluttering in the light breeze. Yuta can still taste the strawberry ice cream from that summer day. Gojo had teased Megumi about his petulant scowl, which only made his expression stormier. Still, Megumi had accepted the ice cream they got on their way back, so it had been a win in Gojo’s book.
—“Don’t look so sour, Megs. A bit longer and your face will be permanently molded into that scowl. You’d still be adorable, though!"—
Wiping his forehead, Yuta looks after him till Megumi disappears around the corner—till his mind lets go of the imagines filtering through it. At last, he turns his face towards the stark blue expanse of the summer sky. His eyes hurt despite the muted effect of the sunglasses perched on his nose.
“I know,” he whispers at last, voice low and ugly and croaky, and with no one there, the words meant for no one but himself.
-/-
The words stumble out of him one early morning, cool air brushing his cheeks, the sun still hidden behind a horizon soon to be painted coppery orange.
“I don’t know who I am.”
“You’re Yuta, always have been.”
It seems so simple. But it’s not. It just is not.
Yuta bites the inside of his cheek. “How do you know?”
“I just do. We’re all a bit messed up, honestly. But who wouldn’t be, y’know? After everything we’ve been through.” Yuji gives him a small smile, tinged with melancholy. The movement pulls at the scar at the corner of his mouth. He looks tired, his face a bit gaunt. “It’s normal. All that stuff, it’s what made you who you are.”
Yuji sounds so sure. But Yuta feels the total opposite of sure. He feels shaky, one step away from tumbling down into something nameless and intangible yet terrifying.
“Maybe,” Yuta says instead of the ugly thing in his head that makes him want to rip off his skin and turn himself inside out.
Yuta feels out of sorts, one step away from stumbling and plunging into something unknown and formless yet frighteningly real. It’s the way his body is his own, yet somehow foreign. It’s the cravings for sweet stuff. It’s the ache behind his eyes and the comfort of a pair of sunglasses resting in his palm. It’s the memories that are not his own, screaming in his head—overlapping and twisting into his until he doesn’t know where his sensei’s end and his own begin.
It’s the blood in his mouth. Hollow Purple at his fingertips. And grief, grief, grief.
After a particular nasty nightmare, a few weeks later and well into late July, it finally comes spilling out between searing tears and strangled hiccups. He’s tired; he’s been so stressed about it all and everything in between. He tells Maki while she rubs his back in soothing motions, her head resting on his shoulder, while he tries to breathe.
"I'm sorry," she says later when the oxygen doesn't feel so thin in his lungs. "I knew something was wrong, but—"
She pulls him closer, warmth and comfort. And Yuta closes his aching eyes.
-/-
Yuta’s so very grateful for the privacy Shoko has granted him. He could have found the place himself—the path winding here is burned into his memory. But it wouldn’t feel right to come without permission, without asking. It’s her past, too, after all.
Yuta takes a deep breath of the stale air; there’s a faint scent of antiseptic and cigarettes. It’s familiar, a comfort. The grief aches at the back of his throat as he gazes down at the old wooden desk, which is all the way to the back of the morgue. Almost hidden if you didn’t know where to look. It’s withered with time. Faded carvings spell out names, alluding to a long-foregone history. He reaches out a hand, slowly, slowly, till his fingertips skim the rough surface, wiping away the few dried flower petals there. He watches as they flutter to the tiled floor. Somehow, it’s that which pushes the tears forward and down the slope of his cheeks. Yuta tries, but his choked breaths echo along the walls of the barren room, breaking the stillness.
It’s no use to try anyway, so he lets the sorrow wash over him, breathing salt and spit, a hole in his chest and cheeks burning, an echo of long forgotten pleas on his tongue.
It’s only fitting.
“I think I mourned his grief for him, since Sensei didn’t,” Yuta says later, still sniffly and a bit red-eyed. Sensei hadn’t let himself mourn. Not really. Not enough.
It’s tragic. So very tragic.
It tugs at the edge of Yuta’s mind. It always does—a glimmer of blue and the taste of regret.
—”My student ID, you found it for me, Sensei?”—
The pieces of the puzzle—slotting slowly into place. A bleak conclusion as the grand prize.
—”No, not me. My best friend. My one and only”—
“That’s... kinda fucked up. But also good, I guess? For you, for him too, maybe?” Maki says, breaking through his spiraling thoughts. “How do you feel now? Any better?”
“...I think? I’m just tired.”
“You should try to sleep some more.” Maki bends forward and kisses the corner of his mouth gently.
And Yuta does, falling into a deep, bottomless sleep.
-/-
Eyes snap open—a surge of information spanning 29 years in a single moment—a mosaic of cursed energy cloaking a world of detail he never could have imagined. It’s breathtaking; it hurts. Yuta chokes as his lungs expand.
“Yuta!”
A voice? He moves, the world tilting with him as his brain tries to make sense of the body it’s in. The frigid steel of the surgical table bites into his skin as he claws at it for some sense of stability. The world blurs; blue and red make purple and—
“—uta!”
A hand on his shoulder snaps his focus back into place. Shoko is bent over him, brow furrowed in worry.
“Sorry—Sorry,” he says, voice too deep, lilt all wrong (because Sensei would never sound this unsure).
“How are you feeling?”
“It’s fine—I’m fine. I need to get going.”
There was no time—no time at all. Not even to feel nausea at the idea of Sensei’s body belonging to him at this moment. He starts to glide off the table, eyes screaming at the bright glare from the overhead lights. A hand again, its touch sending goosebumps across his skin, stopping him.
“I know, but take a breath first. C’mon.”
Shoko makes him breathe with her, makes him close his eyes, and centre his cursed energy. In, out, repeat.
“Good luck,” Shoko says when she’s satisfied, taking a step back. “Get out there and kick Megumi’s ass for making us worry about him so much.” She smiles, a sad and tiny thing that doesn’t reach her eyes. She smells like cigarettes and rubbing alcohol, and blood.
“I will try.” Yuta tries to smile back. And with the strength of a supernova at his fingertips, and the tang of iron at the back of his throat, Yuta goes.
-/-
Though he was seen as one—even, to an extent, by himself—Gojo was not a tool, not a weapon. He was a human shackled by his strength: the title of the strongest bestowed upon him by those who feared him, loathed him, worshipped the ground he walked on—who looked away at the merest glimpse of humanity beneath that veil of power. Pushing the burden of being the monster onto him without a second thought had always been so easy for so many. It angered Yuta, acidic rage fueling his words as they spilled out.
—”If no one else will, then I will become the monster!”—
They were so apathetic to it. Even Gojo-sensei himself. Even Gojo-sensei didn’t see how fucked up it was that the full burden of the Jujutsu Society rested on his shoulders.
So Yuta finally took the step forward; it was someone else's turn to be the monster. Yuta had the power—had the strength, after all.
—”Don't bear the burden of being a monster alone anymore.”—
Gojo Satoru had been so much more than the power flowing through his veins—Infinity dancing across his skin. He was a person. Hopes and dreams, fears, and the bitter tang of regret.
The cost of wielding his sensei’s body as a means against the threat to humanity: anger, guilt, and skin-crawling revulsion at having to use a body—a corpse—of the one who had always been seen as a tool, who was still a tool even in death. But Yuta would make sure. After this, Gojo Satoru would rest.
Yuta had been handed Gojo-sensei’s life—memories and feelings branded into his mind, seared into his skin. He would keep them safe, a keepsake: precious and fragile.
They were proof of the life Gojo Satoru had lived, after all.