Chapter Text
For the record, Itadori Yuuji had been doing fantastic.
It was just that the higher-ups mislabeled yet another curse as second grade when it was supposedly a special grade, and Yuuji prided himself on his patience — but there was only so many times he could save his students from poor management without developing a grudge.
While endangering himself is one thing, endangering his students was an entirely different ball game that Yuuji would never even want to risk playing in.
After he finally exorcised the special grade curse with a rough Dismantle, Yuuji’s immediate concern was for the students— his students—lying behind him. The curse explodes, its pieces dissipating like smoke, and Yuuji whirls around to check on them.
Bruised, battered, but thankfully alive— all three of them. As long as he takes them to Shoko or Yuuta straight after this, they probably won’t even scar from any of their injuries.
His students—promising first-years full of all the confidence and pride of warriors who hadn’t yet seen war—stare back at him with wide eyes lit with trust and hope. All from seeing their teacher arrive. All from seeing Yuuji.
They will never know how close they came to dying together because of Yuuji. Because for a moment there, a moment that almost cost him everyone—
It hadn’t worked.
For several seconds, his cursed energy had been unresponsive, and in those several seconds, his students would’ve been skewered all at once if Yuuji hadn’t desperately thrown himself on the curse as a last resort. Fists without cursed energy would only do so much damage, however, so when Yuuji finally began to feel the flicker of his control over cursed energy return, he had ended the battle as quickly as he could.
Using Shrine will never fail to leave a bad taste in his mouth, but it is inarguably his most effective cursed technique.
“I-Itadori-sensei?” his student asks, taking a hesitant step forward. “Are you o—”
Yuuji is not unfamiliar with the kind of exhaustion that sunk and ate into the marrow of his bones. He’s not unfamiliar with pushing past it.
Although Yuuji’s brain attempts to send signals to his arms to give the poor kid a double thumbs-up, Yuuji’s legs still decide to give out all on their own. There’s hardly any pain when his knees hit concrete, but then the rest of Yuuji decides to give out too and—
And then nothing.
Yuuji swims in and out of unconsciousness during what he assumes—hopes—to be a trip to Shoko’s. He’s being carried…maybe.
Choso’s face appears quite frequently, and it’s so twisted with fear that Yuuji fears the stress lines will be permanent for his brother. Yuuji tries to reassure him, but his tongue suddenly feels heavy and useless. Whatever he does manage to say only causes the wrinkles in Choso’s face to deepen. Oops.
His vision fades again.
When the world reforms again, Yuuji finds himself on a soft surface.
The air is chilly, and he knows the sound of those exhaust fans like an inescapable commercial jingle.
When he hears the rolling chair approach, Yuuji plasters on his brightest grin. “Ieiri-san! Sorry to bother you in the middle of the night again.”
But Shoko does not smile back.
Yuuji knows it’s not going to be good news when Shoko moves to light a smoke indoors.
He takes a deep breath. “So, how long do I have left?”
“At this stage? One month…maybe two.” Shoko sighs as she turns from the x-ray to face him. Her countenance is calm as always, but her eyes betray a heaviness that Yuuji has seen in his own mirror since Shibuya—since Shinjuku. “I’ll send these results to a friend of mine who specializes in gastroenterology to verify, but it doesn’t look good. It’s shocking that you’re even able to move right now.”
“Ah,” Yuuji says. It’s strange. His shoulders loosen and feel lighter than they have in years. A chuckle bubbles out of him. “Man. Can’t believe I defeated history’s strongest sorcerer just to have my own body rebel against me again. ”
Shoko’s eyebrows rise, but Yuuji’s laughter pulls her own smile out.
“You really can’t catch a break, can you, Itadori-kun?” she says. Yuuji can’t really argue with that. On the counter, he can see her filling out a prescription they both know he isn’t going to use.
“No pain, no gain, right?” Yuuji replies, grinning. He’s about to say something else when he’s rudely interrupted by a fit of intense coughing that starts and never really stops. It’s not the first time, though perhaps knowing what he does now, it feels worse than usual—like a fire has started burning within his lungs before spreading throughout the rest of his chest.
Shoko hands him a cloth that is quickly stained red, the smile that had begun to form long gone from her face.
Yuuji’s eyes linger on the color longer than they should. The bloodstain looks almost like a blossoming flower.
When Yuuji leaves Shoko’s office, Choso is already outside waiting for him. Pushing off from the wall he was leaning against, he instead leans toward Yuuji, his face a storm of worry and concern.
“So? What did she say?” Choso asks, and before Yuuji can answer, he continues, almost to himself, “I knew I should’ve gotten you to see her earlier. You almost died, and this wasn’t the first time—”
“ Choso, ” Yuuji interrupts. “I got it. You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Little brother, please,” Choso begs, and Yuuji winces when he accidentally meets his eyes, because oh no. Are those tears in Choso’s eyes? Yuuji’s slightly worried he’ll burst into tears right there in the middle of campus, which is fine—Yuuji has always encouraged a healthy expression of emotion, especially amongst his students—but seeing his brother cry on his behalf never feels great. “If you won’t let me care for you, then please care better for yourself.”
“I will,” Yuuji assures him. “Please don’t worry. Shoko says everything’s fine, and if anything changes, you’ll be the first to know from me.”
Shoko calls back the next day.
Yuuji hears words like metastasis and terminal, and he thinks: This is okay.
No one he knows would find it as funny as he does, but that’s okay.
No one besides Shoko needs to know, anyway.
Yuuji’s been ready for this moment for years now.
He’s okay with this. With the experience he gained from preparing for his grandfather’s passing, he prepares for his own by updating his will. He thinks about what to give away to who. He thinks about what to donate to the hospital that took care of his grandfather for so long. He thinks about what to donate for the future students at Jujutsu Tech, thinks about when to make an appointment with Hiromi to ensure that those donations actually get to where they should go.
Yuuji’s ready to go. He will never admit it to anyone around him, but a large part of him is eager to finally see his old friends and teachers again. He imagines they’d probably be less than happy to see him: Junpei might strap him in to watch the worst movies known to man, Nobara might threaten to drive nails directly into his soul, Megumi might attempt to waterboard him with shadows, Nanami might cause him emotional damage with his disappointed look alone, and Gojo-sensei—
Well. Gojo might be the only one who’d be happy to see him regardless of the circumstances.
It should be depressing, right?
But he finds himself smiling more—laughing more, even—for the first time in years.
And then.
One night, just as Yuuji is finalizing the details of his will to forward to Ijichi, his doorbell goes off repeatedly. It sounds frantic.
Yuuji sighs, but he’s curious. It’s not the first time someone’s tried to attack him at his own home, but this blatant tactic is new. He’s dying anyway, so why not check it out?
The ringing graduates to a physical pounding on his door, to which Yuuji mutters, “All right, all right. I’m coming!” His voice is hoarse from disuse, and he clears his throat in a manner more loudly than he would’ve liked. He sounds too much like his grandfather now…
He opens the door and—
Well, Yuuji doesn’t really know what he’s thinking. Maybe he’s not thinking anything at all. But he does feel.
Yuuji feels the world fall beneath his feet, feels the air forced from his lungs as if he’s been thrown through several concrete buildings. He’s reminded of only one other time he has felt this way—the time when he was met with not his best friend, Megumi, but Ryoumen Sukuna.
Gojo Satoru—drenched from the rain outside and breathing heavily—stands before him. Or what looks like Gojo Satoru.
And Yuuji thinks—well, he thinks so many things that he may as well not be thinking at all, but the gist of them all is this:
This is not okay.
“Yuuji—” it starts to say, with a hesitant, relieved little smile.
Yuuji’s hands move before his mind, one punching out with his meanest hook right before the other wraps around the throat of the body before him. It sounds just like him, he thinks wildly as his nails sharpen into bloody claws, but does it really? Yuuji can’t remember the exact tone, the exact cadence of his sensei’s voice anymore.
His eyes flicker to the imitation’s forehead, and the amount of relief he feels is almost nauseating when he doesn’t see any stitches.
Surprised by the sudden motion, the imitation stumbles back, and then they are both tumbling into the rain, off the railing, and down two stories before finally crashing into the dumpster below.
(Later, much later, Yuuji will consider the symbolism there about his life, and he will be mildly surprised that the dumpster didn't catch fire, too, just so that the universe could really rub it in.)