Chapter Text
“Yo!” a jaunty voice calls behind him, again, for - hm - he finds himself unsurprised to have not kept track. It must’ve been hundreds of years since he listened upon this voice for the very first time.
A strange relief fills him; ‘previous’ was not ‘last’.
He twists his neck enough to catch within sight the grinning face in the corner of his sight, with a flutter of his lids, his eyes flick quickly forward to see the human settle down onto thin air, donned in the same white as ever.
Here the sit upon what was once a heavenly mark of land, a piece of the gods’ power fallen to earth, is now abandoned for miles around, unacknowledged. It’s a strange day, he feels a sorrow emanating unlike any witnessed from the soul he sees.
“How have you been, Nagi-sama?” pink hair sways in the wind, and yet, despite the despair dulling bright eyes mahogany, the question remains as genuine and hopeful as every other time. “Hope you didn’t miss me too much.” The cheeky comment accompanied with a boyish smile, was only made more charming by the never-healing scars contouring the expression on his youthful face.
Nagi - and shame to Minakanushi-sama, he’s even begun to refer himself with the inane name he provided to the human, one believed would be quickly lost centuries ago and the last he will give any - holds steadfast in tempering any outward exasperation. It would be unbecoming.
He levels a critical eye on the twisting fingers, a habit that does not herald good news.
“Tell me. What ails your heart so?” This soul, he knows, has been pushed to a point where it will never fully recover the form in which creation blessed. Sheer, beautiful strength; layers stripped down and then frayed beyond measure. But looking upon it this sun-cycle, he finds that he’s never seen it wracked with as much ache.
“I’m fine” the stubborn, stubborn child begins a blatant attempt at running him in circles. “I just thought I met… a friend, again, I guess.”
Indecipherable. Nagi finds that he must exert himself to weave the patchwork of the tapestry that makes up the sense of this child with the words he deflects back each time they speak.
Some days he is reticent and vague and on the others he’s loquacious and maintains the latter still. Speech filled with inane details and emotions, but rarely any recounting relevant events plainly, and certainly none complete.
He absently sends out a tendril of his power into the distance, a woman beseeching the cleanliness of the water she will serve her young child in a way that vaguely pulls at his consciousness. Rare enough these days that it’s instinctive to respond.
Then, gold glints, catching on his own form.
His fingers freeze in their tracks hovering mid-air, barely a second before, he relaxes the limb into a more natural posture. Ah, a misstep.
Nagi watches as the child transforms in front of him in real time. Concern drapes itself to preside over the pain of longing.
“Nagi-sama, you- why are you!” A different pain contorts itself through, “What’s happening?”
He lets out a breath; spring comes early somewhere, “Nothing that hasn’t been underway a long time coming.”
“But Nagi-sama…” the sweet voice pleads, “you’re vanishing.”
There surely is no other being more compelling of affection.
“Yes”
As if struck, the boy - for that is ever what he remains - rears forward, reaching towards his now, finally, ephemeral form. Pads of fingers, delicate in touch and small hover over his cheeks, gently sliding to cradle his face. Nagi feels his eyes flutter closed, unable to look upon such unhappiness from one who has been most precious for so long.
Yuuji cranes his head up to catch parallel the downward tilt of Nagi-sama’s porcelain visage. He pushes closer once again before closing his eyes in mirror, seeking comfort in closeness.
It’s been lonely, the past almost-two-thousand years. Yuuji spends waking moments in a state of such isolation that he feels like he’s about to choke on it and die of heartbreak. He encountered Nagi-sama when his heart had crystallized and only beat reflexively. After centuries, this is where he- they end. Not one has he known longer than he has Nagi-sama.
Tears fall as Yuuji weeps, his sorrow so deep that the blue of the sky deepens in empathy. The stars and the sky are the only to remain now.
“Let me stay?” Yuuji’s feels his mouth form around the words, not even a whisper. “Please. Let me stay with you till the end.”
His supplication, one which he already has uttered and carried out for countless others, comes one more time truly from the bottom of his heart, just as much for himself as it is for Nagi-sama.
Nagi opens his eyes and they slant into softness. He may finally understand his dear sister.
“Yuuji.” He speaks the name for the first time and experiences the shudder that wracks the boy through his palms. The rapture that overwhelms him and the smile that puts sunshine on earth that follows.
The sky darkens further somehow, Nagi has only vaguely begun to understand this child’s affinity with the space above.
In the next beat, they’re both enveloped in the child’s soul, the scenery around them shifting to materialize a place long gone.
A hand is held out, Nagi not even having noticed the withdrawal of fingers from his visage.
“Let’s go?” eyes crinkled and scars pulling, a spill of magenta and burnt gold and copper haloing this deeply cherished soul.
Oh.
I guess… I understand you. Now.
Once there was a goddess, that among those gods roamed earth, fell in love with a mortal woman so vibrant; naive of decay.
As humans do, her life flickers out in barely any time at all.
In absence, the Wave discovers fury.
Through the snuff of a single candle, She discovers grief. Grief so mighty that it shears through the veil, tearing into the Beyond and laying waste to what was perfect.
Grief that orphans the world of its parent.
Living with Nagi-sama in his childhood home has surprisingly been a predictable affair day-to-day.
Many details of Sendai City had escaped his recall after so many years. It had become too painful to summon his domain some dozen years after even Megumi-
After that, he didn't need it much anymore at all. Not for more than a minute, anyway.
Well, regardless - it’s been… nice? Rediscovering and tracing his steps from back then, to relive his childhood with his grandpa, his first meetings with Fushiguro and Gojo-sensei. Sukuna. The coffee shop dates with Nobara in the sunset of her time. Seeing them all together with Nagi-sama.
Nagi-sama, who has called him by name for the first time, who now asks him questions and collects his answers to value like gems. Who guards his sleep and feeds his domain expansion when he succumbs to his own humanity.
Who he noticed recently has definitely embedded something into Yuuji’s soul, straight out of their own very existence.
He hangs up their freshly laundered bedsheets on the clothing line hanging in the backyard of the house, straightening the fabric with his hands and leaning backwards, head turning to the call of Nagi-sama’s voice.
“Yuuji” he hears his name, sparsely spoken but now extant in that he does hear it every now and then. Overwhelming each time.
“Come here”
He obeys, kneeling on the grass in front of the usually towering figure, now lounging in repose - right elbow bracing his upper body on the floor of the engawa. The unoccupied hand reaches straight forward to brace Yuuji’s nape, one that is large enough that it ends up bracing two thirds of his skull as well.
Time dilates in Yuuji’s domain, it’s why he proposed it in the first place. Ten becomes a hundred. All Yuuji has is time, to at least extend what’s left with the only remaining precious person, the last one he’ll ever meet, to gradate the inexistence of the one who matters. Yuuji wouldn’t even care if the asking price was the entirety of his cursed energy, of his soul.
This way, he also reduces the amount of time he neglects reality, his vow to give people proper deaths.
“The kindest of souls,” Nagi-sama hums, the lapping waves of his voice wash over kindly “would you like the chance to save your love?”
Yuuji nuzzles into the soft strokes of fingers in his hair, letting out an inquisitive sound “Love, Nagi-sama? What love?”
“A heart so large, it’s hard to recognize even in oneself.”
“Nagi-sama?”
“I ardently wish to covet you, and yet can not bring myself to subject you to its consequence. All I can conceive to gift is to return you where the old guard was reparable. To revive what could possibly be the sole outcome that brings you peace.”
He lets himself close his eyes, pushing his face into the security of the chest in front of him. Yuuji breathes, wrapped in hands and body cool in a way humans can not be, to its core. Cool like the ground is, like trees are.
“I don’t know what you mean.” He murmurs into cloth. He then finds himself picked up and deposited into Nagi-sama’s lap with his back enveloped completely by the front of his companion, legs dangling together off the ledge. Yuuji finds himself draped in the purest of white sukotai, fluttering around him in arms embrace. A large hand entwines their fingers, holding up his own two in a sky facing palm. A deep inhale into his hair and a desperation he’s never felt from this otherworldly being in all their acquaintance radiates into him.
“It’s hard to let go.” He hears, to which Yuuji stiffens and tries to turn around. The hold around him tightens to keep them still.
“Nagi-sama?” Yuuji can not even blink in his fear “What are you saying?” It’s suddenly painful, how dearly he is being held. He doesn’t think he has ever been held this way. Always the one holding, grasping.
He’s shifted by those arms easily to the side, his legs draped perpendicularly over thighs. Arms loosely draped around him, one bracing his back and the other now cradling both his hands within. Yuuji nestles his side further into Nagi-sama’s torso, face tilted into collarbones and dread rooting into his very soul.
“Once it is done, you must Cleave the heavenly stone, Onogoroshima.” Nagi-sama gently instructs him, looking down to meet black pools into his own copper. This can’t be the last time.
“Yuuji.” Eyes soften and lips pull into a heartbreaking smile, “Do not be sad as you are blessed. By that cumbersome sky as well.” He huffs a scoff of annoyance, the latter sentence an afterthought. Yuuji is confused again… what? Sky?
“But more importantly, you are blessed by me. Never to be alone again as you have received the Only sacrifice that has ever been bestowed.”
He feels the breast under his ear expand, Nagi-sama inhales as if gathering his breath to compress under his tongue.
“I give you the remaining time left of Misogi no Izanagi” to which Yuuji feels something flood his cursed energy.
What is unmistakably Nagi-sama weaves itself into his very existence.
Yuuji grasps his arms out in complete despair in a desperate embrace “No!” He exclaims despair wracking through his body. “Don’t go!”
A hand rests into his hair, petting him gently, consolingly. He’s overcome now, he cannot live the remainder of his life knowing how much he will lose here. “I thought we had more time!” He pleads again.
His awareness is flooded with the affection of that which Yuuji is being cradled within.
No.
No no no.
His cursed energy releases to pulse around them wildly.
“Time is my gift to you.”
Izanagi-sama is all but an exhale away from nothingness and Yuuji feels his face compelled upwards by familiar fingers one last time.
Obsidian eyes glimmer like stars.
“Most Beloved.”
Lips press against his own.
Sendai city fades away.
Yuuji weeps again on a jutted rock that has not changed since it fell from the heavens unto earth.
But this time. Alone.
”Cleave”
And he is gone.
The sky quakes in fury, crushing the earth upon its violent descent.
A princess awakens to the cacophony of lost love.