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Ryomen Sukuna opens his eyes to the sight of a crisp and gentle night sky. The skyline glimmers with flashing and blinking lights in a humans’ maze of perpetual living, and he blinks at the sight of it. It’s a strangely beautiful sight, that unfamiliar glow.
The coldness of night treats him kindly like nothing else has. Sukuna’s hands shake from the mere absurdity of it all.
Before him stands a curse. Its energy is malleable as it is pungent, and Sukuna scrunches his nose at the sight of it. The scent is so horrible that his unaccustomed nostrils burn with it all the way down his throat.
“Begone,” Sukuna commands, swiping two fingers towards the sky. The curse falls to pieces in reply, and he hums in contemplation at the sight. “An admirable attempt at jestering.” He kicks a piece of curse flesh with unfamiliar shoes and watches disinterestedly as the curse hurries off into smoke and drifts away. “But pitiful in execution.”
“You’re–”
Oh, Sukuna thinks, turning around until his back faces the fading remnants of the curse that would dare to attempt and take his life. A Zenin boy.
The King of Curses steps forward suddenly, seemingly appearing in front of the boy out of thin air at the action. The boy, whose hands are clasped closely together, reels backwards in his crouch in surprise. He moves to open his mouth and continue his exclamation, but Ryomen Sukuna hums in interruption.
He leans closer, relishing in the boy’s frightened expression as he does so.
“The Ten Shadows chose you?” Sukuna asks curiously, breathing out every word quietly, as though speaking too loudly would cause his conversational partner to fizzle apart at the seams. “Interesting.”
The boy's hands are shaking now, but they remain close together. He breathes in, the air trembling as it enters his lips, and readjusts his palms. Cursed energy wells up within his chest, a silent howl for attention and for a rightful opponent that nearly causes Sukuna to drool outright.
“With–”
“Well,” Sukuna questions, interrupting the boy yet again. “Are you strong? You must be. A technique like that would not simply choose any run of the mill sorcerer to inhabit. Ancient things do not tend to ‘make do’.” He squints, holding his chin in his hand as he straightens back up. “Then again, if no one more optimal were available, a sorcerer merely sub-par would be able to adapt to the technique.”
He turns back towards the boy. “Although,” Sukuna ponders, “you aren’t even able to call upon that power.” He hums. “But you have… potential.”
The hand on his chin digs in deeper to his skin against his will, and Sukuna furrows unfamiliar brows at the impromptu puppeteering of his person.
“Hey!” His own mouth demands, voice sharp and young in a way Sukuna hasn’t heard in over sixty living years, “Give my body back, you freak!”
It feels as though the stars have aligned above his head. Birds chirp in the darkness of his mind, and a smiling boy invades his memory like a lover, dead and gone. Sukuna’s borrowed eyes widen at the mere sound of the boy’s voice.
“Yuuji,” he whispers softly, tone wavering on the edge of questioning as his breath evades him in surprise.
“Huh?” the boy exclaims sharply, pressing his fingers into his own chin with his hand. Sukuna’s claws dig into the flesh of his face as a result. “You think you know me? Talk about creepy.”
The stars return to their rightful places in the sky. All the birds in the heavens fall dead. Yuuji, in his memory, falls apart in the middle of town as his head falls off a time-weary executional stone.
Creepy, Sukuna muses dejectedly. I’m creepy?
“Really creepy,” Not-his-Yuuij affirms quickly as he pushes the pads of his regular, boring, human fingers into the skin on his cheeks to check if he’s awake, alive, and breathing. “No offense.”
“Surely,” Ryomen Sukuna replies from a mouth suddenly sprung to eldritchian horror on his cheek. “You are incapable of procuring offence.”
Not-his-Yuuji furrows his brow and reaches down to help the other boy off of the ground. He hesitates to accept the offered help, but ultimately takes Yuuji’s hand. They lean against each other in a sudden portrayal of the exhaustion that stems from a fading rush of adrenaline, and Yuuji sighs.
“Thanks?” he replies unsurely, scratching at his cheek again.
Sukuna’s mouth frumples at the action so close to his teeth and scowls to keep from biting the boy’s finger off. “Without the brain capacity to do so, offence is beyond you.”
“Hey!” Yuuji exclaims indigently, loudly, so akin to how the Ryomen’s mutt had been in those first few months that it shocks Sukuna’s mouth back into the boy’s skin. “Wh–you–get back here this instant!”
No, Sukuna crows victoriously from his innate domain. You can’t make me.
“Oh, yeah?” Not-his-Yuuji prods. “Wanna bet?”
“Please don’t make a deal with the devil,” the young sorcerer to his side laments. “Please, Itadori.”
Yuuji eyes Fushiguro’s tired, pleading eyes and sighs. “Fine,” he groans. “But he isn’t… oh, whatever. Who cares?”
“I do!”
Fushiguro spins around, clutching at the chest of his uniform about where his heart is located. “Geez–Gojo! What’re you doing here?!”
Yuuji turns around to check who Fushiguro is talking to, and is immediately hit with the sudden urge to press the stranger’s face into the pavement. He cringes as Sukuna begins shouting childishly about six eyes and stupid Sugawara and killing shadows and ruining all his fun, rubbing at the back of his neck in reply to the pinching in his brain.
Gojo approaches him suddenly, leaning into Yuuji’s personal space like he’s getting paid to put the boy on edge. “You ate it, didn’t you?”
Yuuji blinks owlishly. Then, he blinks again. “Huh? Oh, that finger?” He grins. “Yeah. Sorry ‘bout that.”
Gojo scoffs, leaning even closer to the boy. His frantic hair brushes the boy’s nose from the proximity. “Wow,” he remarks, somehow managing to sound impressed around his displeasure. “It really did merge with you. Damn. That sucks.”
Yuuji laughs nervously. “Really, does it?”
Gojo hums in affirmation before stepping back. He leans into a wide, low stretch and twists his back both ways until it cracks satisfactorily. “Yep,” he replies cheerfully. “You’re not feeling ‘murder-y’ at all, are ya?”
“Uh,” Yuuji drawls, scratching at his chin. “Not… particularly? I mean, I’m not. Sukuna seems pretty intent on killing some ‘Sugawara’ guy, though.”
“Oh,” Gojo questions, voice light with intrigue even as he stretches towards the sky and jumps up and down a few times. “Really? Tell me more.”
Yuuji grimaces. “He says that you killed his only shot at fun in the year… oh! I’ll translate. You killed his only shot at fun in the Edo Period.” He hums, glancing up into the shimmering night sky like every answer in Heaven will rain down upon him if he just looks hard enough. “He says it wasn’t you… it was a woman just like you. And that she…” Yuuji furrows his brows. “Had horrible taste in men… I don’t wanna be the messenger anymore. ‘You wanna talk to him?”
Gojo grins. “I’d love to! Thank you for the offer.”
Yuuji breathes in deeply, stretching his back and stretching his arms before releasing the breath. He suddenly tips forward, but manages to catch himself from falling at the last second.
Ryomen Sukuna presses his hair back upon the top of his vessel’s head with a horribly bored expression on his face. The first thing that comes out from his mouth is a displeased sigh.
“Sorcerer,” he greets flatly, checking the hematomas under his nails for any purities in need of sorting out.
“Ryomen Sukuna,” Gojo greets in return, still with that irritatingly smug grin on his face. “I would–”
“You would like for me to return to my throne?” Sukuna questions dully. “I would like that very much as well.”
Gojo shifts his weight, breathing in deeply. He spits out quickly, “I would like to fight you”, and releases the rest of his breath like it means nothing.
Ryomen Sukuna hums in consideration. He twists his neck to examine the twinkling lights of the bustling city down below and breathes in deeply the chilled, night air. It has been some time since he’s experienced as calm a time as this, especially with a familiar cold that does not stem from the artificial snow of his subordinate’s technique.
“No,” he remarks lightly, like a man teaching his dog not to eat fallen scraps off of the floor.
“No,” Gojo echoes questioningly, rolling his shoulders regardless of the King of Curse’s immediate response. “Why?”
“Quite simply, you are weak.” Sukuna sighs and presses his hands onto the outer seams of his pants to flatten the fabric there down, and–Oh, my. What is this portable pouch?
It’s a pocket, Itadori replies helpfully.
Sukuna clicks his tongue. You will not speak unless you are being spoken to.
Yuuji squwaks. You’re in my body!
“I’m weak,” Gojo repeats, voice haunted in that melancholy sort of way Sukuna is somewhat familiar with. The sorcerer furrows his brow and scoffs softly. “Me. I’m weak?”
“Yes,” Sukuna replies easily, his arms jerking as he refutes the urge to cross his arms with the comfortable warmth of the pockets his hands rest comfortably in. “True strength does not come from anything you harbor.”
“Really?” Gojo remarks flatly. His fingers twitch impatiently at his sides.
Sukuna’s eyes jut to the sight, but any further action does not betray his curiosity. He presses his hands firmer into the swaddling warmth of his pockets and breathes in deeply. Suddenly, his cursed energy wanes. It pulls himself back into his vessel’s skin like a dog on a leash. Sukuna grimaces at the resemblance to being enchained.
“That’s enough of that,” Not-his-Yuuji says, taking back control of his body like he owns the thing or something foolish like that.
Sukuna, now without pockets to rely on, crosses his arms atop his throne of skulls. He scoffs into the echoing expanse of his innate domain and examines the Sugawara’s displeased expression at his forced removal.
“Well!” Gojo claps his hands together cheerfully. “I’ll be taking you back to headquarters,” the Sugawara remarks with a grin, procuring the nerve to reach out towards Sukuna’s vessel with a hand intent on disarming him.
“You will not,” Ryomen Sukuna disagrees from this Yuuji’s cheek, teeth gnashing in disapproval.
“Is that so?” Gojo asks unamusedly, tapping at his forehead despite Sukuna’s verbal rebuking.
Damn it, Sukuna thinks woefully, scoffing into the darkness of sudden unconsciousness that will soon shoot his vessel into this red space with him. This was not the plan.
Not-his-Yuuji falls unceremoniously into the shallow, bloody waters of Ryomen Sukuna’s innate domain with an ungraceful exclamation and a face on the floor. Sukuna gladly shoves his sandal onto the side of the boy’s face, reveling in the indigent shout he gets in reply.
“You must know what position that man has left you in,” Sukuna remarks, squishing in the boy’s cheek as he rolls his head back and forth.
Yuuji grabs onto his ankle with both hands and shoves the Ryomen back from him without much effort. Sukuna furrows his brow at the sudden show of physical prowess, hopping backwards to regain his footing without appearing foolish.
“You are strong, physically,” he remarks. One could almost mistake his words for praise.
Yuuji scowls as he pushes himself off of the ground and into a criss-cross position. “Yeah? So, what? ‘You gonna beat the muscle out of me so I can’t give you any trouble?”
Almost.
“Not quite,” Sukuna chimes smoothly, grinning at the boy’s blatant spunk, his fierce and sure-fire nerve that strikes him shallowly. “Close, but not quite.”
Like a stubborn bruise that refuses to heal, Ryomen Sukuna makes him stand and trains him to fight the best way he knows how, in a way that has produced real and tangible results for him in the past. Even when his vessel begins to stir, his body waking to the living world and leaving this red and bloodied one behind, Sukuna presses on.
“Cleave,” he says, and the boy’s hand falls off of his wrist.
“Dismantle,” Sukuna commands, and his feet dice themselves into mincemeat.
“Please,” Not-yet-his-Yuuji pleads, tears running down his face and snot sliding down his chin. “I’m waking up. Let me wake up. Please.”
Sukuna hums, considering, and holds his own chin as his thoughts swim around him. Light dawns around them as Yuuji’s mind comes to life, and Sukuna’s consideration comes to a head.
“Let you wake up,” he echoes darkly. “Perhaps.”
Yuuji grins wetly, hopefully, as Sukuna approaches him slowly.
Blood pools dutifully beneath his leaking wounds, and blood pools dutifully as his head falls clean off his shoulders.
“Enchain,” Sukuna decrees, and it is so.