Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The moment Satoru Gojo was born, the balance of the world shifted to keep up with his level of sheer power. Cursed Spirits began growing stronger, curse users hid in fear of his Six Eyes, even other special grades never came quite as close to achieving the nigh godhood he seemed to have.

The moment Kouji Gojo was born, the balance shifted once more, in a way nobody could have ever predicted.

A child more cursed spirit than sorcerer, more monster than human.

Something so horrible could never be tolerated in Jujutsu Society let alone in their sacred clan, and thus, Kouji was locked away, sealed in a room full of talismans, bound and occasionally fed like a wild animal.

His mere presence struck dread and fear into the hearts of relatives, every moment spent around him felt like their very being, their essence, was being consumed. It was clear that whatever kind of abomination he was, he could never be released into the world. He was an all-devouring void, he would destroy everything they held dear if they all let him loose.

They were sure of it.

—

The cold and damp basement of the Gojo Estate held their most well-kept secret, the existence of Kouji Gojo. In a room lined from ceiling to wall to floor in protective talismans, engraved in words meant to imprison and seal.

A young boy stands in the middle of that room, he has just turned three years old, not that he knows that. He runs his hands over the soft candle light, the only source of light allowed for him. No matter how much it burns his fingers when he touches the flame, he does it again and again, in the hopes that flame will spread through his whole body, allowing him to feel genuinely and truly warm. It never does.

Sometimes the door opens and someone comes in to bring him food, he can see just a sliver of that light peeking through but it’s always gone before he can see what’s on the other side.

Perhaps one day, he’ll bask in that light like everyone else. But today is not that day.

On days like these, children like him will blow out candles and make wishes for their future, but he does not have that luxury.

That candle represents his only wish, to see that light, and so it keeps burning.

—

Sometimes, after he’s already woken up, the door opens and someone comes in to bring food, usually the food is already cold when he’s awake but sometimes the strange person who brings it stays a little longer. On those days, the food is fresh and warm, the unknown figure kneels in front of him, strokes his face, and whispers comforting words he cannot understand. He doesn’t understand what they want. He simply waits for them to come back time and time again.

They come back today even if they were here the day before, the food smells good, it’s something he doesn’t recognize. The stranger brings him a present, another candle. They whisper comforting songs in this ear while they present the candle and the sweet smelling food to him.

Among all the whispers, only one word stands out to him. The long haired figure’s arms wrap around him, their words repeat over and over again, softer and softer each and every time.

“K…ouji….Kouji…..Kouji….”

Their voice cracks. The figure’s embrace is warm and comforting, like the candles flickering light, instinctively, he hugs them back. In the faint candlelight, he can make out milky white eyes filled with tears, a face full of guilt and shame.

They stay like that for a while. Until the figure suddenly stands up to leave, more words uttered that he cannot understand. Except one, ‘Kouji’. Gentle hands caress his face and soft lips press a kiss on his forehead.

The door opens, the figure looks back, and then it is shut once more.

That glimpse of light had been shown and then promptly taken from him. So now he sits by the candles, hoping for that warmth to come back to him once more.

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(lots of design elements i want to talk about but it’s best if it’s just told through the story :3)

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The child waits. It’s all he can do, he can only stare at the burned out candles, puddles of burnt wax pooling on the cold floor. He knows that when the candle's light fades, she will come back, she’ll bring him food, and read him words he can only faintly piece together. He tries to stay awake as long as possible so she can keep reading to him, but he never can. He’s fast asleep before she can finish the whole story.

—

“-and so the tanuki...Kouji?”

She whispers to the boy on her lap, he’s already fallen asleep. Her son, her beautiful, horrible, monstrous boy. The one she cannot bear to look at, the one she cannot help but love, the one she cannot let go of.

“...”

She holds him tighter. She traces her fingers over his marred flesh, the soft thrum of cursed energy just barely being contained in his tiny body, she runs her other hand through his soft white hair, it’s grown long enough to cover his eyes, she should cut it soon. 

She cups his face, he looks so peaceful, so sweet as he sleeps. If she closes her eyes, she can almost pretend he’s a normal little boy, just slumbering away at his mother’s side, she can forget about the hideous pulsating purple marks on his face, his exposed teeth, his pitch black eyes that incite nothing but dread and fear but that show nothing but innocence and kindness. She wants to rip them out. 

It’s a horrible thought, to be so repulsed by your own flesh and blood, your child, to the point of wishing harm against them. But can she be faulted for it? Even her own clan, her family, damned him to an existence of isolation for his entire cursed life. To her and maybe to him, death would be a mercy. 

But she could never bring herself to do it. Even if her clan wouldn’t do anything against her if she did, she couldn’t. Her guilt and a twisted sense of love and obligation refuse to let her harm him.

Her shaky hands move downward to his tiny neck, despite her frailness, it would be easy to snap the bone, it would be easy to wrap around and suffocate the boy especially in his sleep, it would be so easy to end this. So easy to end his miserable life right here, he would never be aware of the curse he had brought down on her and this family, on the world-

“Mo..m…?”

He’s awake. His eyes blink open, he looks up at her, unaware of what she’d just tried to do. 

“...Y-Yes Kouji? You should go back to sleep, it’s only been a few minutes.”

Her voice wobbles as she moves her hands back to his face, she gently puts her fingers on his eyelids to close them shut again.

“N…no…wanna hear the story…” He whines, his chubby fingers attempting to pry hers off his face so he can keep his eyes open.

“Okay, okay I’ll…continue…”

She opens the book once more, her eyes unable to meet him as he stares in anticipation.

—

Kouji has never strayed from outside the candle’s light. He sits by it, day by day, without fail, perhaps it’s because he believes there is nothing outside its light. He’s never thought about it, he’s never questioned it.

The surrounding darkness is suffocating, it makes him sick. Without the candle, he’s sure the darkness would seep into every part of his body, permeating itself into his skin, a filth he could never get rid of.

It makes him itchy, like something under his skin desperately wants to get out. Maybe the darkness has already crawled inside him. Maybe it’s always been a part of him.

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“Any last words?”

“…”

He hesitates, for once he chooses to remember, to remember the young boy he left behind to be sold off to his power-hungry family. He remembers the little baby he held in his arms, the only time he’d ever held him . He faintly recalls their names. He can barely see their faces in his mind. 

He was a real shit dad wasn’t he? It was too late to make amends. The best he could do was entrust their fates to Satoru Gojo. Those two had potential, far more than he ever had, they might be better off in the hands of the clan members…but deep down he knew they wouldn’t. 

He would have consigned them to a life as miserable as his own.

So he chooses to trust Satoru Gojo. To hope, maybe, that those kids would turn out okay.

“My sons…one of them will be sold off to the Zenin Clan in about two…three years. The other… is of your own blood. Do with that what you will.”

There’s the faintest shock in Satoru Gojo’s face at that information and it gives Toji Fushiguro the tiniest bit of satisfaction before it all fades away.

———

“What…do you want to name him?”

“Kouji.”

“…Seriously? Are you joking?”

“I’m being serious, look, I actually did some research like you said I should.”

“Really now? You didn’t just name him after yourself?”

“I would never, although the similarity is a reason I picked it.”

“Fine then, enlighten me, why did you pick this name?”

“Here, this is the kanji I picked.”

“…*Little second universe?”

“Yes, it fits him don’t you think?”

“He is quite little…and the universe…limitless possibilities like my clan’s technique…but why the ‘second’?”

“Because he’ll be a smaller version of me. I can already see it in his beady little eyes…”

“Pah! You are shameless…I suppose you aren’t wrong though. He’s…”

“He’s what?”

“Nothing. Nevermind.”

———

He had disappeared completely after 2 months. He left her no choice but to crawl back to her clan for help. He left no notice, nothing. It was as if their entire relationship had simply never happened. Now she was left with a child she was unsure how to raise, the burden of having had that child out of wedlock, and the growing dread as she realised the child’s fate.

His father had been an ‘abomination’ to their society, an anomaly. He had been outcast and because of it, he was free from it all, it had been the thing that drew her to him in the first place. What she hadn’t noticed at the time was that she, herself, was the one being bound. She was still chained and confined to the rules of this unceasing cycle, and thus their child was born both an abomination and a victim to their cruel system.

She felt nothing but pity and regret whenever she looked upon that sweet, innocent boy but she was also unable to forgive him for what he did to her, as much as she loved her dear son, she could not see him as any less of an abomination than anyone else.

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The child waits, for what choice does it have? 

It merely sits in total silence, the slowly flickering candle is the only thing disturbing the darkness. But the flame burns out too quickly, gone before it knows it. 

Minutes stretch into hours, into days, into weeks, into months, into years.

The child has no sense for this of course, it begins counting by the marks on its skin. It claws and scratches and bites at it again and again, leaving scar after scar after scar. The skin gives way under it’s unnaturally sharp teeth and nails, it digs into the flesh as though it’s looking for something, as though it’s desperate to pull it out—

———

“Why do you keep scratching at it Kouji?! Why do you always make it worse?!”

Cold liquid is rubbed into his skin, it hurts even more now but he doesn’t complain. The soft candle light illuminates his open wounds, large scars dig down to the bone, the soft tissues and skin ripped completely open and yet, Sekiko can already see the muscle strands unnaturally weaving together to heal itself. Blackened blood pools inside to reconstruct every individual vein and artery, his hand begins to regain movement. Reversed cursed technique.

“It was…something inside mama…it hurt…”

The boy pitifully attempts to explain, his reasoning offers no comfort and aggravates his mother even more. 

“Does this not hurt more!?”

She shrieks, her tone marred with concern and anger. The boy flinches back from the sudden noise and subconsciously tries to dig his fingers into the flesh again, she grabs his hand to stop him. 

“Stop. Doing this. Do you understand?”

She grits out before letting out a sigh. She leaves for a moment and he’s afraid he’d angered her to the point she wouldn’t feed him like she was supposed to. But she returns with lengths and lengths of fabric. Bandages. 

That strange cold liquid is poured all over his wounds before it’s tightly wrapped in bandages, words or rather, incantations are hastily scrawled along the length of the gauze. 

“Here. You won’t be able to scratch anymore with this.”

His mother wraps it tightly around his arm before tying it off. It burns. It burns and he hates it, it isn’t warm like the candle’s flame, it’s cold, stinging, pain. 

“I…don’t like mama…I-I wanna take it off…”

He begins scratching again but his nails, no matter how sharp, cannot pierce through the wrap.

“No!”

She shouts, her voice uncharacteristically frantic. 

“No. Never…never take them off, understand?”

Her voice calms, she tries to smile at him to reassure him. She’s raised her voice one too many times at him.

“Oh…okay…”

He attempts to pick at his bandages, it doesn’t work of course.

“I…I should wrap more around you. Just to make sure.”

The bandages are seemingly endless as they’re wrapped around his torso, his other arm, his neck, and around his legs. He can practically feel his mother’s disappointed gaze as she sees all the hidden scars littered all across his body. All as blackened and discolored as the next, all almost completely healed with cursed energy. 

“It still hurts…”

He mutters, now dejectedly rubbing at the newly applied bandages. 

“It’ll stop hurting after a while.”

Surely a few sealing wards and incantations wouldn’t hurt more than having your arm skinned to the bone.

“…Al…alright.”

He trusts her at her word. 

———

Now the child has nothing more to do than wait. The room is no longer as dark as it once was, candles light up every corner now and the walls finally take shape in his mind. They’re covered corner to corner, edge to edge, in papers, papers that flutter from wind that shouldn’t be coming through the room. 

He counts them, repeatedly, sometimes the number of papers, sometimes the amount of marks on each one, and sometimes he even makes little games out of the patterned papers, seeing how many have a certain number of shapes and lines. The repetition comforts him, it puts his mind at ease. 

It takes his mind off of the burning feeling in his body, the overwhelming feeling of something still crawling and creeping inside his skin. It’s waiting. Just like he is.