Chapter Text
The purge starts in a week. The warm February air is coming down from the mountains, melting snow and ushering up spring flowers and thawing the streams outside the gates. The whole world is unfreezing.
Their whole world.
“So it’s cursed paper to start..?” Nanami asks.
They’re all standing in Toji’s office, looking at the mess of boxes and seals that has exploded into existence now that the March deadline is approaching.
“Yes. Starting with the food...” Toji says, holding up a talisman paper with the curse inflicted into it.
“How does it not catch any wrong children?” Gojo asks, peering down into the city with all-seeing eyes. “The mothers that consume the cursed food, but don’t give birth until after March ends? Does it skip those, or are we killing ones we know for certain, certain, aren’t the curse, just for the hell of it?” It’s clipped and bitter, and while his anger is not directed at Toji specifically he is the nearest one they can direct it to.
“It’ll skip them.” Toji says with a sigh.
“Skip them?” Nanami interrupts before Toji can finish his thought.
“The curse has conditions.” Toji says, “if the mother consumes the curse but her baby is not born until after March, the curse won’t activate. It becomes a dud, a null point. Same thing if the baby is a girl, it will skip it too. So long as it’s male and born within the duration of March, it will die, either in the womb or right after.”
“So they won’t know?” Haibara mutters angrily, chin resting in his hand as he watches Toji push a pencil back and forth with his finger.
The king shakes his head. “The boys born in March will die, almost all of them, from some ‘illness.’ It’s as simple and as painless as that. They’ll go to sleep and they won’t wake up again.”
“And what about the mothers?” Gojo asks.
“Should remain unaffected.”
“How is it being distributed?” Haibara, this time.
“It’s already started. Rice, bread, flour, eggs. It’s in everything sold in the markets already, and cautionarily, talismans have been concealed in houses and entranceways aswell.”
“So we’re cursing the entire population?” Nanami asks.
“It’ll only affect the few we want but, technically, yes.”
“Tengen sure has thought this through, huh.” Geto snipes.
The room goes quiet. Toji shrugs almost. It was never his plan, not his idea. But he believed in it now, understood the necessity of this bit of evil to stop something worse.
They all fall in solemn silence, lingering at the thought of the children that are out there waiting to die. How many lives are about to be snuffed out in the dark in the coming weeks. One of them is marked not only by the curse they’ll be feeding to his mother and him, but marked by his destiny. And the jujutsu world is mostly joined in prayer that it dies now and then. Now and then. Now and then. Now and —
“Now we just hope the right miserable little kid eats the right curse and dies.” Toji sighs, running his hand over his face.
“What about the sorcerers?" Nanami asks. “Pregnant sorcerers who know about the curse? They won’t eat the cursed food, they’ll be able to see it. What is stopping them from leaving? From telling other pregnant women and their families?”
Toji had hoped they wouldn’t think this far. He knows it’s a silly idea, to imagine them not questioning everything in full, but if he had been honest, he had hoped that they would turn their backs to the purge like he had asked them to, and been blind.
Only a hope, though.
“The borders are closed.” Toji says simply, standing as he shuffles papers into a pile and stores them in his desk. “That’s where the rest of you come in.”
“..what?” Haibara asks.
“You’re the last ones to be briefed because I expected you to protest it,” Toji sighs, pinching his brow. “Sorcerers have already been posted throughout the city and spread amongst the countryside as far as we can bear. Tengen thinks the curse will be born within city limits due to the amount of cursed energy in big populations, so we’re mostly collected in our respected city limits, but —”
“Wait.” Nanami stands, chair crumpling the woven carpet beneath him. “We’re being ordered to kill other sorcerers as well as their newborn babies?”
Toji watches the room turn on him. He stiffs his lip and runs his hand through his hair, trying to push away the heated air as he sighs.
“You all agreed to this when you stayed the first time we heard about it.” Toji reminds coldly. “So yes. If you find someone, sorcerer or not, trying to leave the kingdom with an infant, or protecting someone with an infant, your mission is to kill the baby and arrest or kill the traitor.”
They all stare at him, wide eyed and certain that he’s wrong. And it’s not that he disagrees with them — he’s not fond of having his hands drenched in the blood of infants, of defenceless children.
“Look —” He sighs, lifting his gaze from where they lingered on the desk to avoid their attention, “We all saw what a curse did to Nabito in this very room a year ago for this future monster. Do you want that thing to grow? To walk amongst all of us untethered? For other curses to confide in? To call him King? To tear down sorcerer society and the rest of the world? Cause that’s what’s gonna happen if he grows up.”
Silence hangs heavy over each of their heads for a while. It clings weighted to Toji’s neck, making his shoulders sag a little inward.
“I won’t do it.” Nanami says after a while. “I’m sorry. But I can’t.”
“I don’t care that you ‘can’t’, Kento. You have to.” Toji sighs, lifting his forehead from where he’d buried it tiredly into his palm. “It’s not me that’s telling you to, if you’ve got an issue take it up with Tengen —”
“I’m serious, Toji.” Nanami says solemnly. “I won’t do it.”
Toji’s eyes lift, face a cold slate as he watches the room of sorcerer’s decide wether or not infanticide is worth the safety of the rest of the world. If the amount of blood drawn now is worth the amount of blood that will be drawn in the future if left alone. If they can weigh it against their own consciousness.
“Kento —” Toji begins.
“I won’t do it.” Nanami says, steeling his resolve. “If that’s such an issue, then arrest me. But I won’t —”
“Kento, don’t push me right now-” Toji starts.
“Kento.” Gojo interprets their arguing to address Nanami, the inclusion of his first name catching him astray. “I’m… not sure we’re right, anymore.”
“You’ve changed your mind?” Nanami spits at Gojo dryly. “You’re serious!?”
“I-” he sighs, looking to the ceiling, “I can’t justify in my head a thousand over millions. Millions of people, including children, their future children, their families. Of everybody in the world versus the only boys born in a single month.”
“They’ll be—” Kento huffs, kicking his chair in anger. “It’s children!! Little children, actual babies! Do none of you hear yourselves?”
“Nanami..” Geto even starts, his mind turned too toward the greater masses than the March babies.
Haibara says nothing, and Toji sighs as he stands. Nanami stiffens, frowning across the room at the king, as if expecting retaliation.
“You’re retired, Kento Nanami.” He says dryly.
“What?” Nanami spits.
“You’re no longer a sorcerer. As of right now, you don’t have to partake in the March slaughter at all. You can step away and keep your hands clean if you seriously wish to do so. I should say — if you’re all serious about not doing your fucking jobs, then leave.”
Nanami goes to move, ready to be done with this horrific situation and get the hell out of there.
“But,” Toji warns. “If I find you helping these infants, if anyone finds you helping these infants, I won’t let my personal feelings for any of you stand in the way anymore than they already have. You will be arrested, and you will be tried and sentenced to death and that will be the end of it.
So, if you seriously can’t stomach this tiny bit of blood to stop the world from being drenched in it forever, then. Fuck. Off. But know that I’ve just extended you all a mercy that no one from this point on will give you, including me.”
“I’ll pack my things.” Nanami says after a long moment, the room clinging to the heavy words hung over each head like a noose ready to be drawn and pulled.
They watch in silence as Nanami turns on his heels, swings the door open and out, disappearing into the hall.
Toji sighs, pinching his brow with unsteady hands. “Anyone else?”
Haibara glances around the room, uncertain. He lifts his gaze to Gojo and Geto, the matching pair unmoving as they watch the events unfold, and to the King whose head must be reeling.
“I’m sorry, Toji.” Haibara mumbles, and he too turns on his heels to flee the room and responsibility.
Toji watches him go, hand balling into a fist with anger as he collapses into his seat with a bitter sigh. When the air stills, he drags his gaze from where he’s buried his eyes behind his crunched up palm to the only two who remain.
Gojo and Geto linger.
“The hell are you two still standing here for?” Toji spits angrily.
“We’re going to go through with it.” Geto says shortly.
“You are?”
“It’s not for you, Toji.” Gojo adds quickly, withdrawing tiredly toward the door with Geto trailing along after him.
“It’s for the fact that I believe this child really will be the end of the world the way Tengen thinks he will be. The true king of curses. That’s why I’ll help with the curse distribution, why I’ll guard the borders and why I’ll allow you to slaughter any baby boy. Because I don’t want to see what the world will become if he survives. And only that.”
And with that, both Gojo and Geto leave the room then too. Toji watches the door latch close behind them, listening distantly to the noise of the world outside his study, the bustle and shout of people preparing for the infanticide to come.
Toji sighs into his palm miserably. “Fuck.”
He goes looking for Megumi and Chie. There’s a nonstop buzzing behind his eyelids, lowly and noisy and thundering in his skull. If he’s honest with himself, he’s seeking out Chie and Megumi because he wants a friendly face to confide in. Megumi knows no better, still too little and preoccupied with chewing his crib corners to care, and Chie will at least pretend to support him to some extent, even if he knows she disagrees. He knows it's for the greater good, not just for his family. For all of them.
Convincing everyone else that was the tricker task.
He checks their room first, but it’s empty. The curtains are drawn, the evening sun filtering through the gaps. The window is open, pushing the curtains into movement, long open-armed dancers greeting the world without a care. The chill in the air sends a shiver over his skin, and a frown chases his face.
“Chie?” He asks, turning on his heels. He knows it’s probably illogical, that since his coming into power security, monitoring and patrols, and curses all together near the castle have died down. He ensured that nothing like Naobito’s death would happen to his family – that they wouldn’t be slaughtered in their own home under the noses of everyone they were supposed to be protected by – but still… especially now, not being able to find his wife and son makes him unspeakably worried.
He snaps at a guard in his passing, barely stopping as he strides past the smaller man. “Have you seen my wife and son?”
The guard, surprised to be spoken to at all, shakes his head dumbly. “I heard last they were in your quarters, sir but I h–”
Toji waves him off, already uninterested if he has no actual useful information. He stalks down the hall like a dark storm, shoving his way down the cobblestone building at lightning speed, blurring past people. He scatters papers when he passes some, old decorative armour shakes in its stands as he rushes past. Someone asks if he’s fine but he ignores them.
He checks her usual hideaways first, ones closest to him as he goes, her private study he helped design and had built for her once she moved in, found empty, then the study they share, two massive chairs shoved side by side, cold. Where the hell is his kid and wife..?
He flings the door open to the library, desperate for anything. The heavy door clangs loudly at his entrance, reverberating against the wall. The castle librarian, one he hired at Chie’s request, looks up to chastise him, but sees who it is that is making such a commotion, and bites her tongue.
“Is my wife and son here?” He asks, a little too loudly.
The librarian is about to direct him, but she’s too late as Chie’s face pops around from a corner, face downturned in concern at the ruckus he’s making. “Toji?”
“Are you okay?” He asks, outstretching for her like how a storm reaches to touch ground, quickly blitzing from his flungopen entryway to her in the third row of shelves. Her hair rustles with his speed. “Where’s Megumi?”
“He’s asleep.” She says, pointing down the way to Megumi, laying on the floor, surrounded by throws and flattened clothes. He’s swaddled in a blanket Chie had made him, and beside him is Chie’s guard he’s insisted follow her.
Chie had protested it profusely, but the guard simply did as ordered and followed her everywhere anyway. Chie’s berating he could handle to a degree, though sometimes she pushes him away enough by sheer grumpy face – but disobeying a direct order from King Fushiguro, one designed to keep the man’s wife and only child safe – he’d sooner die.
“What ever is the matter? You swung in here like a wild animal.” She asks.
“I couldn’t find you.” He huffs angrily, “you weren’t in our room, nor your study or ours, you were nowhere.”
“I was here.” She supplies simply, lifting her hand to touch his cheek. “I told you this morning that I’d stop by here today… remember?”
Toji blinks, leaning into her palm. He takes it from her, kissing it gently as he holds it for a moment. Breathing, knowing that she’s fine, that their baby is fine. He exhales.
“I could not find you.” He whispers.
Her face softens at his worry, holding his hand gently. She brushes his hair from his eyes, but it sticks up in a funny way, and she smiles, huffing her laughter under her breath. She smoothes it back down with a wry smile.
“Kenji,” Toji directs himself to the guard standing watch over Megumi “take the day. I’m here now.”
Kenji bows, gives the family a final look-over to assure everything is fine before his departure, then turns on his heels, not before though, giving a tiny wave goodbye to little Megumi on the floor. The baby has stirred now, waking and wiggling on his mat of blankets.
Toji shifts toward him, still holding Chie’s hand as he returns the other half of his family to the whole. “Megumi..” he whispers with an upturned smile. Their little blessing is growing more than Toji thought he would. He’s still a little small, maybe a bit smaller than average, but Toji thinks he’s strong. Or that he most certainly will be.
Chie sinks to the floor beside Megumi, smiling as the little baby wiggles an arm free and wraps his extended hand around his mothers finger. Toji follows after her, laying on his side to encase them both from view, quietly admiring the two he gets to call his own.
“I think he’ll be able to walk soon.” She says proudly, though she’s very wrong, Megumi still has a long way to go before walking is even on his mind, let alone crawling. All he does at the moment is cry and poop and throw up on Toji’s clean uniforms.
“I wish he wouldn’t. He’s not even three months old.” Toji huffs. “I have a hard enough time keeping track of you two as is.”
“You worry too much.” Chie says simply, “It’s turning your hair grey.” To extend her point, she reaches across and tugs a hair from his head sharply before he can protest. He scoffs, shaking his head.
“That wasn’t grey!” He huffs, “you’ll make me bald before I can afford to go grey. Besides, it’s my whole job to worry. Especially now.”
“I don’t think they’ll make it into the castle.” Chie says.
“Naobito thought that too.” Toji reminds, “Look where that got him.”
“Naobito was not as prepared as you are,” She says, “he was not diligent, or quick witted, or cared half as much as you do. Nothing will happen, Toji.”
“The second I start believing that, something will happen.” Toji sighs, brushing his thumb against Megumi’s cotton swaddle with a sad frown. “Promise me you won't go out this month, Chie.”
Chie frowns, “I thought you said I –”
“I know what I said. But I’ve changed my mind.” He says simply, wrinkles pushing his face down as he looks at their little boy, safe and secure and unknowing of the slaughter that’s about to take place of the babies unfortunate to be born the year after him.
“Please,” he pleads with her. “Just.. stay in the castle, okay? Don’t chase off Kenji like I know you like to do. He’s here to protect you both.”
“I can look after me and Megumi,” She insists, upset. He knows she could. She’s adept enough with a sword. Her father has insisted she’d be trained when she was young and she makes a thrilling sparring partner for Toji. He knows to an extent, she’s much more prepared than the average non-combatant woman in the castle for a sort of invasion.
But still. The thought of her having to raise a sword to stop something wishing to hurt her or Megumi. It makes his skin crawl.
“Chie,” He insists, “Please, for me, just for the month. Stay put.” She frowns, unconvinced, so he continues, voice a little lower. “Kento Nanami and Yu Haibara have just quit. I’m not sure where Gojo and Geto are lining up in this so just –”
“They quit?” She asks, sitting a little straighter. “They can do that..?”
“No.” He sighs, “not really. But it's Nanami and Haibara. I can’t exactly have them arrested right then and there, can I? I don’t even know if Gojo and Geto would’ve agreed with me if I had them detained anyway. I’d rather not have a spat with the six-eyed idiot right now if it can be helped.”
“Nanami’s a good man, so is Haibara.” Chie notes thoughtfully, “I’m sure they didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I know that.” Toji says, “Still… I’m down two grade one sorcerers. So just… please?”
She sighs. Toji leans over Megumi carefully, his hand cupping her face almost entirely, running a gentle finger through her short hair as he kisses her. She melts into it, almost as much as maybe he does.
She breaks it with a smile, exhaling softly. “You shouldn’t worry so much. It’ll rub off on Megumi. He’ll grow to be a worry wart like you.”
Toji huffs a chuckle against his teeth, glancing down at the baby between them. Megumi’s little round face is looking up happily at them, babbling endlessly as if he has so many things to say to them. His little blue-grey eyes watch them, and then, something must amuse him, because the baby looks at Toji’s face then laughs at him candidly.
“He keeps laughing everytime he looks at me…” Toji laments with a lighthearted frown as Chie scoops Megumi into her arms.
She watches Megumi in her grasp, gentle and delicate and still so new. She smiles, cooing at him as he settles back down. “Okay,” she whispers after a moment.
“Okay?”
She nods. “Okay, we’ll stay put for March, if you’re still so insistent that the purge goes through.” She’s tried talking him out of it plenty of times, tried convincing her Father out of it. She’s even sent messages to other monarchs, pleading for a little bit of sense among them, but she’s received either silence, pointed messages telling her to leave it to her sorcerer husband, or laughter.
“We would be the only kingdom not doing it, and besides, Naobito already signed his written consent and that passed down to me when he died. We’re already in agreement.”
“Can you not just take it back? It was his word, not yours that agreed.”
“I agreed during the first meeting, and I agree now.” He reminds her.
“It’s children, Toji.”
“I know that, Chie.” He says tiredly, “but if this child doesn’t die, everyone, the whole world as we know it, will suffer for it. Better we stop him now before he becomes something we can’t stop. If he isn't, there won't be anything left for Megumi to inherit. There won't be any more royalties, no independence between here and the south, nothing. It will belong to the King of Curses.”
“He’s a baby.”
“He’s a curse.” Toji reminds her pointedly. “And even if he is just a baby now, we’d be waging war against everyone else by harbouring him. There is no choice left anymore.”
“There should always be a choice, Toji.” She insists.
“I know. And I’ve made mine, so has your father, Tengen, Gakuganji, the Inumakis, the Kamos, the Zenins, the Gojo’s. For once, we’re all united. And I trust Tengen. I’ve seen what’s been done already.”
She still looks unconvinced. “Chie.” He insists in a whisper, “If I didn’t believe in it, I wouldn’t be doing it.”
He looks at Megumi, frowning as he runs his pinky finger over the infant's black curly hair. “I’m… afraid of the King of Curses.” He admits quietly, “I don’t want to have to face him twenty years down the line. So please –” He lifts his gaze to her, eyes soft as he pleads.
“Let's just kill him now before he turns the world upside down."