Chapter Text
When Yuuji had received the deed to an inherited cursed heirloom, he—like any other simple-minded creature—had expected a weapon, just as the document had claimed. Instead, he had a man standing on his doorstep declaring that he was said weapon.
A headache was developing behind Yuuji’s eyes. In retrospect, crying for several hours had been a dumb decision. Because now he was hallucinating. How else was he supposed to explain the creature standing on the engawa claiming to be his weapon?
“...Come again. Why exactly can’t I free you?”
“...You stupid—” the man cut himself off only to unleash a string of expletives in archaic Japanese. “In infant terms: the vow does not permit it. Refuse ownership, and I’ll simply be passed to the next fool carrying my blood.”
Yuuji tried not to sound like the child he was.
“But why me specifically?”
The man’s eye—one of his four (four?!)—twitched.
“Because your grandfather carried my brother’s soul. The old man spent forty years keeping me asleep.”
Yuuji stared.
At four arms. At too many eyes. At the eight feet of curse currently dripping mud and leaves over the welcome mat.
The sun had begun to peek over the horizon, washing everything in soft pink. The same shade as Yuuji’s hair. As Sukuna’s.
They really were related.
Gramps had spoken once about a curse in their bloodline—extra eyes, extra arms. Yuuji had dismissed it as senility-induced poeticism and dutifully written it down for Wasuke’s new up-and-coming anthology.
Yuuji’s eyes started to sting again.
Gramps wouldn’t have left family standing outside the door.
And sure enough, there was an ominous clink from the urn resting on the mantelpiece behind him.
He’d inherited a person before he’d even finished mourning one.
Yuuji sighed and wiped at his eyes.
“Come in, Uncle Sukuna.”
Uncle grunted and trudged in, not bothering to wipe his feet.
Wait, feet? Where the hell were his shoes? Did he walk all the way here? Was he sleeping in the woods?
“I could not find any before the vow compelled me to move, yes. And I was put to sleep in a shrine. In the woods.”
Hell, Yuuji hadn’t realised he’d spoken out loud. His ears burned furiously. Sukuna didn’t spare him a glance as he paused in the hallway.
Yuuji tried not to stare at the red mixed in with mud.
“That's.... blood”, he said stupidly.
For a moment Sukuna seemed unmoored —before schooling his features back into a scowl and muttering something about amateur wielders.
“It is nothing. You must not have partaken in many missions if the sight of blood makes you queasy.”
Sight of blood? Did Sukuna really think that was the problem?
Yuuji felt something in his gut twist unpleasantly.
“It’s not—I think you should sit down.”
To his horror, Sukuna did, in perfect seiza, directly on the floor.
“No, no, I meant the chair. The sofa—”
Sukuna grunted, before moving to the sofa leaving faint red footprints behind him, as if he'd meant to do that all along.
All semblance of exhaustion had left Yuuji’s mind. Something was really, really wrong.
Focus, Yuuji.
“I’ll—I’ll put some tea on.”
Sukuna didn’t respond. His eyes were closed now, head resting against the backrest, chest rising and falling steadily.
Yuuji panicked until one of the smaller eyes flickered open and rolled at him like he was the idiot here.
Yuuji put tea on. And leftover broth from Gramps’ prescribed diet—because god knew when the last time Sukuna ate and Sukuna’s face has looked hollow beneath the dirt and Yuuji didn't want to kill him by refeeding wrong and—
Yuuji, calm the fuck down, Wasuke’s voice echoed in his head.
And Yuuji took a deep breath. Four seconds in, hold, four seconds out.
Then he started mentally cataloguing supplies and gathering more things: Grandpa’s oversized robe, loose trousers, the first aid kit, clean blankets, towels fresh from the dryer. And allowed himself exactly one minute to panic.
Did Grandpa really trap a person? Did he know what state Sukuna was in? How long had Sukuna even been alive if he counted as an heirloom?And the vow—what even were the terms?
Yuuji swallowed hard.
What if he accidentally hurt Sukuna somehow? What if someone already had?
No. Grandpa couldn’t have known Sukuna would walk here half-dead.
...Could he?
The egg timer went off.
Yuuji resumed stirring the broth.
By the time he made it back to the sofa, Sukuna had put his feet on the table.
Under normal circumstances Yuuji would’ve been livid.
Under normal circumstances, said feet wouldn’t have been embedded with glass and debris, bleeding sluggishly over the tabletop.
Yuuji set everything down carefully and steeled himself.
Basic assessment first. Panic later.
Gramps had taught him that.
“Okay,” Yuuji muttered, mostly to himself. “Okay. Don’t bite my head off, but I need to look at your feet.”
“I assure you, brat, they are still attached.”
One of the smaller eyes cracked open just enough to glare at him.
Good. Conscious. Annoying. Probably not dying immediately.
Yuuji crouched in front of the sofa and tried not to visibly wince.
Up close, the damage looked worse.
Mud caked Sukuna’s skin almost to the ankle, darkened with blood. Tiny cuts crisscrossed the soles of his feet, but those weren’t the problem. Glass glittered beneath the skin in several places, mixed with gravel and splinters. One deeper shard near the arch had bled enough to stain the edge of the sofa.
“How long did you walk like this?”
Sukuna shrugged one shoulder, eyes still closed.
That meant either hours or days. Extremely unhelpful.
“Do you have injuries anywhere else?”
Silence.
Yuuji looked up flatly. Sukuna finally opened his eyes.
“That means yes.”
“It means it is irrelevant.”
“You’re dripping blood on my furniture.”
“It is a poor table.”
Yuuji stared at him for a long moment.
Then he grabbed a towel and pressed it gently beneath Sukuna’s feet before the blood ruined the kotatsu too.
Sukuna clicked his tongue but allowed it.
That worried Yuuji more than the blood.
“Can you feel this?”
Yuuji pulled on a pair of sterile gloves, and lightly touched the side of Sukuna’s foot with gauze.
“Yes, idiot.”
“Are you dizzy?”
“No.”
“Cold?”
“No.”
A pause.
“...Perhaps slightly.”
Liar.
Sukuna’s skin felt freezing even through the grime.
Yuuji stood abruptly and wrapped one of the dryer-warm blankets around Sukuna’s shoulders before the man could protest.
Sukuna stilled, something complicated passing through his face, before scowling. “You fuss too much.”
“You look like you crawled out of a riverbank.”
“I did.”
Yuuji stopped.
“...Seriously?”
“The shrine flooded seasonally.”
There was probably a reasonable response to that information. Yuuji couldn’t think of one.
Instead he knelt again and opened the first aid kit.
Don’t pull out anything big, Gramps had once warned while helping patch up a neighborhood construction worker. If it’s deep and bleeding hard, leave it until you know what you’re doing.
Yuuji suddenly missed him so badly his chest hurt.
Focus.
The smaller pieces first.
“Tell me before you stab me,” Sukuna said as Yuuji reached for the tweezers.
Yuuji huffed softly and leaned closer, carefully pulling a tiny shard of glass free from the ball of Sukuna’s foot.
Sukuna didn’t even twitch.
That was almost worse.
The shallow cuts he could rinse clean. The deeper wounds he packed carefully with gauze after flushing dirt away with warm saline. Sukuna watched him through half-lidded eyes, expression unreadable.
“You’ve done this before,” Sukuna said eventually.
“Not really.”
“A lie.”
Yuuji shook his head.
“Just little stuff. Gramps was a field medic, he volunteered at welfare clinics. He taught me the basics. ”
At the mention of Wasuke, something strange crossed Sukuna’s face. Gone too quickly for Yuuji to place.
“You favor him,” Sukuna muttered.
Yuuji swallowed around the sudden tightness in his throat.
“People keep saying that.”
Silence settled for a moment, broken only by the hum of the kettle in the kitchen.
Then, as Yuuji reached carefully for the deeper shard lodged near Sukuna’s arch, he finally noticed it.
Not the foot.
The breathing.
Too shallow.
Too careful.
Like every inhale hurt.
Yuuji’s gaze lifted slowly.
There, beneath the torn layers of Sukuna’s robe, dark blood had dried nearly black along his side. Fresh red seeped through every time he breathed deeply.
The feet had never been the real problem.
“...You’re injured.”
Sukuna looked away.
Which was answer enough.