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After he’s broken several different Rokudo Mukuros from several different universes across his knee, Byakuran pulls himself back into the fold and goes traveling, seeking out the very first thread of existence from which all of the other possible outcomes branched out from. He watches as the Estraneo Family bring in their scientists and their magicians, as the children step one by one into the many rooms and do not come out, as the whitewashed walls of the facilities slowly turn gray and dirty and splotched with old blood and other, more terrible stains. A few years pass before the boy that would become Rokudo Mukuro finally comes: a scrawny thing, pale and drawn from fear, with the brightest blue eyes that Byakuran’s ever seen.
There’s something strange and beautiful about staying on the fringes of the past, watching as the greed of a single family, with their spells and their needles, turns a child into a smiling demon, watching Mukuro go from crying in the corner of a room full of corpses to thrusting his hand through the chest of the nearest human in order to rip out its heart and eat it for breakfast. He feels like a father, almost, even though he’s done nothing but keep his distance and watch.
Strange, then, how he’ll come back to his time ten years later, meet the Mukuro he watched face-to-face and catch that split-second pause before the younger man’s first words and the next.
“Déjà vu?” Byakuran teases later, when they’re about to fight. Mukuro chuckles, spins his trident and takes a swing at Byakuran’s throat.