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It happens quicker than anyone can expect.
A snake lunging for its squealing prey; a wolf clamping its jaws around a dashing rabbit; a misplaced step and then you’re falling.
One minute Megumi is standing straight, a boot-clad foot urging backwards to settle his lean body into a more-than-defiant stance. His scarred hands draw confidently up in front of him, lifting into a familiar position that will soon bring forth squirming creatures from the surrounding shadows; creatures that are ready to fight on his behalf.
He’s tense in all of the places that he needs to be but not exactly overly worried. It’s supposed to be an easy curse to deal with, after all—or at least, easier compared to that of, say, a grinning special grade running on the power of Sukuna’s finger. There’s no reason for him to be cautious, to be quick with his words that will bring forth Nue or Kon, to be nervous about the situation.
There’s no reason for him to look behind himself, not when the curse appears to be in front.
There’s no reason to be scared.
Megumi takes a breath, and he squares his shoulders, and his lips part, and—
—and one minute, Megumi is standing upwards.
He is ready, and he is prepared, and he is breathing, moving, living.
The next, he is not.
A blink of an eye and Megumi’s chest erupts outwards—skin, flesh, bone fragments. His ribcage opens out like the unfurling of a flower, petals of fat, and twitching muscle, and dripping beads of red spreading to reveal precious glimpses of a stuttering heart—Megumi’s quivering, bewildered heart.
He sucks in an abrupt breath, and already is it disastrously faint.
He’s been speared completely through, skewered in the most morbid of ways by the impossibly sharp, and dangerously serrated, hand of a slobbering curse. His insides have been pulverised, guts torn, liver weeping, his spleen a ripped, almost unrecognisable, mess. There’s blood, and there’s gore, and there are so many things that are suddenly out of place - a jigsaw that’s fallen off of the table, pieces askew.
It hurts.
Megumi stumbles once, a fawn on unused limbs, and then he does so again. His previous composure dissipates, trickling away almost immediately as his legs begin to shake and his mind twists in nauseating circles—the pain sapping away at his prior poise quicker than he can blink.
His sheet-white face morphs into that of a shocked expression, eyebrows lifting, lips twitching. They part once, twice, and then a desperate third time that leaves them disgustingly sticky and unnaturally red. His mouth tastes metallic, and it's almost unbearable.
He wants to attempt to figure out what had happened—what had gone wrong, when he’d assumed that everything was going right, but he finds his sluggish mind too difficult to work with.
A shaking hand lifts upwards as best it can once more. Wavering fingers trace over torn edges of skin. They bump into broken ribs, nudge over wobbling intestines, dip into gushing rivers of darkening crimson. They edge upwards, somewhat, and knock against something hard, and sharp, and entirely abnormal, and Megumi drops his hand just as quickly as the curse pulls back.
The curse, one that should have never been behind him in the first place, recedes gleefully, undeniably proud of its wicked accomplishments, and the sorcerer's chest is left gaping, open—exposed in a way that is harrowingly familiar for reasons that he will now never come to know.
It should be a good thing, really.
The curse is going away. The curse is leaving him alone. The curse is disappearing, and it’s no longer touching him, and Megumi is free from both it and everything that it brings. Now, he can step forward, he can reach towards one of his classmates—his friends. He can get them to call for Gojo, for Shoko, for somebody who will stitch him back together again so that Megumi doesn’t have to feel all of this—hurt.
Megumi doesn’t want to hurt anymore. He doesn’t want to feel this pain anymore.
But as the curse pulls away, it is not a clean manoeuvre. It’s not gracious, nor is it accommodating. It’s a messy act, a cruel one, a mean one, full of destruction and disaster, full of unyielding dismissal, and it’s entirely uncaring as it draws its jagged, sawtoothed arm upwards while simultaneously withdrawing back.
It shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. It really, truly shouldn’t matter amidst all of the impairment it has already caused - all of the aches and the stings.
It does matter, though, as sharp edges catch against the delicate casing of his pathetic, little, blabbering heart. His pathetic, little, human heart.
Megumi’s very core splits open, spilling out every thought, every feeling, every word, every moment that he has ever lived—ever been a part of. Every single inch of him is revealed, shone against with a blinding torch, disclosed to the waiting world, exposed, and uncovered, and displayed.
Megumi stands in front of the open exhibition surrounding his entire life, and absently wonders why it cuts short half-way through.
And then everything goes dark.
Megumi is seconds old and his umbilical cord is cut. Though his face is scrunched and his mouth is screaming, he doesn’t feel a thing.
Megumi is thirteen months old and he scrapes his knee after tripping up. His mother coos at him, and she kisses all over his face until he stops hysterically crying.
Megumi is three years old and he nicks his finger on a knife. His father eyes him lazily like he doesn’t really care, but he still slaps a pink bandaid over the cut and moves the knife far from his reach.
Megumi is seven years old and he burns his hand while cooking. It stings, and it’s hot, and he only comes back to himself when Tsumiki guides him away, her touch caring, and her tone half-amused as she informs him that she’ll finish the cooking instead.
Megumi is eleven years old and he sprains his ankle. He doesn’t cry when it happens, doesn’t even flinch despite the pain that emanates from the bruising, but Gojo pats gently at his cheeks anyway, his blue eyes impossibly warm as he carefully carries him towards a lady who smells of thick smoke and regards him with a clinical gaze.
Megumi is fifteen years old, and he’s been impaled straight through. There is nobody there to catch him as he falls.
Megumi is dead before he even hits the ground.
Though his heart screams out in denial, and his guts twist nauseatingly at just the idea of it, Yuuji knows it to be true.
There’s no coming back from the destruction he’s just witnessed. He’d only caught glimpses, momentarily distracted when it had initially happened, and yet he already knows that it’s worse than the reports he’d heard about his own body when Sukuna had decided to use Yuuji’s actual heart to make a stupid, stupid point.
It’s terrible, and it’s bad, and it should have never even happened in the first place, and—
—and it’s worse, and Yuuji’s on the verge of throwing up as he races towards Megumi’s still body the very moment that he regains some semblance of wavering control over his numb limbs.
There are waves of vomit crashing against the back of his throat as he goes. Wind whips bitterly against his flushed cheeks, cold icicles nicking his skin. His steps are uncoordinated, his legs still half-feel like jelly, and everything is devastatingly overwhelming in all of the worst ways.
Yuuji’s feeling everything all at once, and simultaneously nothing at all. He’s angry, and he’s furious, and he’s so upset that he could scream. But he’s also numb, dazed, his vision spotty at best and blurring dangerously at the edges.
Somebody is shouting behind him now—Nobara, most likely, because he might not be moving, but the curse still is, and they still need to exorcise it, still need to finish the mission, still need to confirm their own safety, but he can’t properly focus on that.
Maybe if there was some sort of twitch, it would be okay.
Maybe if Megumi’s fingers just twisted a little, maybe if he stuttered on a sudden breath, maybe if his eyelids fluttered, or his lips parted, or his legs spasmed. Maybe if Megumi gave even the slightest indication that he’s still there, that he hasn’t yet abandoned them, that he hasn’t yet left, Yuuji wouldn’t feel like his whole world is splitting apart right in front of him.
But Megumi doesn’t move an inch. He doesn’t speak, and he doesn’t twitch, and he doesn’t breathe.
He doesn’t lift his head with an awkward laugh, and maybe some sort of half-grunt, indicating his embarrassment over being knocked over. He doesn’t reach a hand upwards, certain that Yuuji will be there to grip onto it and pull him back up off of the ground like he’s done before. He doesn’t shift, and wriggle, and stretch, and then get up.
Megumi doesn’t move.
He doesn’t. Because—because—
Yuuji’s breath catches in his throat, stuck around a stubborn sob that’s clinging to the walls of his sore oesophagus. He’s going to throw up. He’s going to vomit. He’s going to be sick. He’s really going to.
He wants his grandfather. He wants Gojo. He wants Nanami. He wants Megumi.
Yuuji’s fingers twist to dig into his palms, his nails stabbing deep into soft skin. His heart furiously thumps within his chest, and his throat tightens, and tightens, and then tightens some more.
But he can’t have him.
Because he’s dead.
He’s dead.
He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s—
Yuuji’s just about to drop to his knees beside his best friend’s sickeningly still, sickeningly pale, sickeningly broken body, when his world cuts off entirely.
Enchain.
Sukuna does not feel in the same way that humans do.
He shares some qualities with them, of course. He understands irritation, and wrath, and mocking glee. He understands how to be cruel, but never cowardly, and he understands how to passionately appreciate the subtle taste of human flesh, but then he falls behind somewhat in other categories.
He does not properly feel, nor does he understand, even the simplest of ‘good’ emotions—the simplest of more accepted man-made feelings.
Warm hands are icy against his skin, gentle words are daggers within his mind, kindness is nothing but a false pretence; a way of attempting to soften his hardened walls through any means imaginable. Not that it ever works, of course, but it’s an attempt all the same.
Sukuna does not feel sympathy for others, he doesn’t have the capacity to. He didn’t when he was human, didn’t when he was something strangely in between, and he doesn’t now as the infamous King of Curses. He does not feel reverence, or tenderness, or even—love.
It is not possible for him to do so, and he knows this as fact.
But.
But as he sinks to his knees, scarred fingers twitching where they hover, and brows pinching together into a creased frown, he can’t help the awful twinge within his chest. It’s not right, it’s not good, it shouldn’t even be there in the first place, but it is, as he stares down at Fushiguro Megumi’s still body. His still, unmoving body. His still, unmoving, bloody body. His still, unmoving, bloody, ruined body.
Sukuna’s chest aches with something fierce - a burning feeling that he can’t even begin to comprehend - and his throat feels impossibly clogged, and his mind is fracturing at the edges, breaking, and splitting, and disintegrating, in ways that he never thought possible for somebody like him.
Ryomen Sukuna is the King of Curses. He is the Disgraced One. He has witnessed more death and destruction than others can only begin to imagine, and he has caused it, too.
He has cut women and children down without a second thought. He has devoured the cooked limbs of weaker men. He has been a Demon that towns have feared, he has robbed, and ravaged, and devastated thousands. He has—
—he has never felt like this before. He’s never dealt with emotions like these before; ones he thought himself entirely incapable of.
Sukuna sucks in a shuddery, uncertain breath, and it is unlike anything that he has ever taken. He almost wants to blame it on the body that he inhabits, but he knows that wouldn’t be completely true.
He’s used to gnawing anger, and mild humour, and burning, blistering, fury. He’s used to being rage incarnate, to being the snarling visage underneath one’s bed, to being a horrible, terrible creature that is feared by most, if not all. He is used to being evil.
He is not used to the heavy sheet of melancholy that settles carefully over his tense shoulders, nor is he acquainted with the way that his body throbs with each beat his—Itadori’s—his heart gives off.
This is not right.
It is not right, it is not acceptable, and in the most childish way imaginable, it is not fair, either. Not to Fushiguro Megumi, not to Sukuna.
Not even to the world, perhaps.
Sukuna swallows once. Twice. There’s something obstructing his airways and he wants it gone.
He’d noticed the curse when it had first appeared. Of course, he had. Despite what some might say, what they might want to argue, Itadori Yuuji doesn’t exactly have the most interesting of lives, at least to Sukuna’s standards.
He’s quite boring—average at best, if Sukuna were to rank him. When he’s not training with the witless second years, or struggling through his mountain of homework that he’s constantly behind on, all he does is watch movies, or stroll around the street, or babble at his two friends about meaningless topics that leave Sukuna wanting to bash his head against his own throne.
His mindless antics are nothing at all similar to the more interesting times Sukuna himself had spent within the Heian era. There’s no murder, no real fighting, no spouts of never-ending destruction—there’s not much of anything, really. Not anything particularly engrossing, at least.
So, when Itadori actually goes on missions, Sukuna likes to take every opportunity he can to see something even remotely intriguing. Which means watching just about everything at once.
Truthfully, he’d assumed that somebody would realise there was a second curse about to strike Fushiguro. He’d assumed that the sorcerer himself would happen to notice. Sukuna had assumed that he would be fine, that it would just be another one of those things.
Sukuna had assumed, and he’d watched, and then he’d glanced away, and the split-second he looked back it was already too late.
Megumi had been pierced through, gored, ruined, and completely unfixable for even him.
Sukuna isn’t exactly new to butchery, but even he can understand that the sight had been—unpleasant.
It’s even more unpleasant now, with Fushiguro’s still, pale body laying out in front of him. His chest is a gaping hole, covered in bone fragments, and split-open layers of fat, and so much blood. There’s so much red, and so much pain, and Sukuna used to eat people, so, really, this shouldn’t affect him in the slightest.
He shouldn’t care.
And yet his stomach is twisting in nauseating loops, and his mind is whirling, and his own hands twitch like they want to fix, but know that they can’t. He’s feeling so much all at once, his stuttering brain only off-handedly recognising it as slithering regret, and snapping anger, and sadness—so much unfamiliar sadness.
Sukuna forces in another breath. It’s as if Itadori’s gentle, caring, loving humanity has seeped into even the darkest pits of Sukuna’s being.
That brat, he curses furiously, but lets his hands lower against Megumi’s body anyway.
The sorcerer is getting colder with each second that passes by. Sukuna can tell. He brushes over the edges of the wound, then presses against the few spaces of unmarred flesh, and he can tell that his dead—Megumi’s dead body is losing its natural warmth.
It’s a morbid notion, but a true one all the same, and it makes Sukuna’s entire body spark as he reaches to grip onto the dark blue uniform instead. He tugs slightly, urging Megumi closer to him like he needs him near.
This isn’t how it was supposed to go, he thinks, as he brushes back at Megumi’s dark hair. He’d died with his eyes open, and the blue seems uncomfortably dull as Sukuna peers into them.
Megumi wasn’t supposed to die. Not right now, at least.
Maybe he was someday—a day far into the future that Sukuna had intended to carefully cultivate, but not now. Not today. Not here, and certainly not like this. It wasn’t—it wasn’t supposed to be so sudden. It wasn’t supposed to happen in such a way.
It wasn’t supposed to unfold like this, where Sukuna - King, Calamity, Demon - is entirely useless.
Megumi is supposed to be alive—
—and Sukuna wasn’t supposed to have gotten so attached.
“I don’t like you,” he breathes out, like the liar that he is. “I don’t need you. I don’t want you,” he says, and tries not to think about everything that had made Megumi—well, Megumi.
Sukuna curses the dead sorcerer, shouts, and swears, and tells himself it doesn’t matter, while simultaneously thinking about the amusing faces that Megumi had pulled whenever Sukuna would crack open an eye just underneath Itadori’s so that he could peer unblinkingly at the Ten Shadows user.
He thinks about the time that Megumi had - quite forcefully - shoved a dumpling in the snapping mouth that Sukuna had formed on the back of Itadori’s hand just to get him to stop belittling the grumbling vessel over just about everything that Sukuna could think of at the time.
He thinks about the night that he’d finally managed to take control of the brat because he was too tired to fend Sukuna off, and instead of fighting, or killing, or even lightly maiming, he’d just calmly sat with Megumi at the kitchen table, sharing quiet conversations over udon noodle soup.
He thinks about the shared glances whenever Sukuna was able to form his eyes without interruption; thinks about hushed discussions whenever the other brats had fallen asleep during movie nights; thinks about Megumi’s laugh, and his smile, and all of his talent that had both fascinated Sukuna and, in some, strange way, awed him.
Sukuna thinks about all of the ways that Fushiguro Megumi has made him feel, even though Sukuna was never meant to do so in the first place.
“Wake up,” Sukuna hisses, but Megumi never will, and Sukuna’s minute is finally up.
The dark markings on Yuuji’s face begin to fade, crumbling away to reveal unmarred skin. He’s hunched over Megumi’s still body, trembling as he was before, and there are tears rolling down his cheeks that aren’t yet his.