Chapter Text
If he had known the brat was his true vessel from the beginning, he wouldn't have been so quick to be rid of the boy. He knew something was wrong when Fushiguro, the boy he'd stolen, had started to crumble under the weight of his soul. It had been nice for a bit until he realised that the child's body was wasting away with him. The more the days past the more the boys’ skin peeled and rotted. Until his brat barely recognised the carcass his friend had become. He had laughed when the boy saw his best friends’ body, he hadn't thought far enough ahead. A mistake.
He should have realised something was wrong or… right when his brat's body refused to disintegrate. But he hadn't been thinking about that then, he'd been thinking only about his lack of control. If he'd bothered to raise the brat in his image, he never would have had this problem and he would have Kaori's gravity manipulation. The boy's grandfather never got a chance to tell him that before he died. He could train that.
Uraume had been preparing the ritual for months, Sukuna leaned back while his brat faced him, his features had been twisted from stress and his scars. It was strange to see him like this. To see how grown he'd become when he wasn't watching.
“My favourite brat.” He cooed mockingly. “Have you come to finish me off? Should I be honoured?”
“You don't have to die.” His brat said. “Release Fushiguro and come back to me. It doesn't have to end like this!”
Wasn't that just like his brat? To think of mercy even ‘til the end. Considering everything he did to him, he wasn't sure if his brat was the stupidest person in the world or the nicest. Sukuna's nerves twisted in excitement at what he would become once Uraume finishes the ritual. He'll never reach his potential if he keeps up this sordid nonsense. His nephew shouldn't bend to these insects and their every whim. He was above them as he always should have been. He'll fix it soon enough.
“You're right.” He said.
His brat stumbled from his shock. He would have fallen had Sukuna not steadied him in the last moment. He pulled the boy closer to him.
“Does it surprise you?” He asked. “That I don't want to kill you?”
His brat stuttered, his arms were frozen by his side. He was considering whether he should hug him or run away. Both options would have been amusing.
“I didn't think—” he stuttered.
“You never do, brat. Why would I kill that which belongs to me?” he asked.
His brat's heart rate was about to burst through his chest. He wasn't accustomed to the amount of possessiveness Sukuna had started to feel for his brat since he'd been separated from him. It surprised him too.
“I don't belong to anyone.” His brat hissed.
“You know you do, boy.” He grinned.
He grabbed the boy suddenly when he felt the pull on his naval. The boy tried to push him away, panicked and frightened but he tightened his hold and gave him a savage smile.
“Come, let's do this again, nephew, one last time.”
Before the boy could consider that mind fuck of what he just called him, the earth tilted on its axis and the floor beneath them vanished, sending them plummeting into the Abyss of darkness.
-
Yuji woke up with a gasp. His body sprung from his bed, and his chest ached where his heart hammered against it. Where was he? For a moment, his mind stayed fuzzy and he looked around in confusion. He focused on the walls and his posters flickered to life. Except they were wrong, the last time he’d been here after Shibuya… all his posters had faded and dust coated every inch of his much loved room. If his grandpa had been alive to see the state of it, he would have been given the scolding of his life.
What’s happening? Has he gone mad?
Did Sukuna kill him when he grabbed him? His recollection of what he’d said was fuzzy.
He turned around and grabbed his phone, he hadn’t seen that since he smashed it back during the fight with Choso, it was really hard to believe he’d gone that whole time without his bloody phone. The numbers burnt brightly against the pale gold of morning.
24th of December
2016
Yuji dropped his phone and the crash echoed around his quiet house.
2 years, he’d sent them two years into the past. What had been his plan? Had he meant for that to happen? Was this serious? He wasn't a sorcerer and his grandpa was still alive? Had he really been given a second chance? To stop it all from happening?
“Yuji!” his grandpa’s panicked voice blasted through his door, the frame shuddered when he flung it open. “What happened? Someone break in!?”
Yuji couldn’t help it, his eyes pooled over in tears and he flung his arms around his grandfather. If this was a dream, he couldn’t wake up, not yet. And if it was real, he wanted to have this chance, to hug his grandpa one last time before he gets too sick to be able to squeeze him in his arms.
“Aw, what’s with this, eh?” he asked softly. “I’m right here.”
Please stay that way, please don’t leave me.
-
Sukuna watched from the old man’s skull when his brat squeezed the life out of his withering corpse. Even at the tender age of 13, the boy was stronger than half the sorcerers who’d taken him on back in Heian.
He hadn’t been best pleased when Uraume told him that they were putting him inside the boy’s old man. He had wanted to manifest in the boy quicker. He had never been one for patience. But they had insisted.
“Your boys’ grandfather raised him. He’s the person the young lord would listen to without question.”
He was a bit lost in truth about the whole “raising children” thing, he mostly ate the ones that the petrified villagers gave to him as offerings. So he’d reluctantly agreed to take up residence in the old man’s body once Uraume forced him to eat a finger. It had been laughably simple.
It remained to be seen if Uraume had wasted their time or if it proved to be the boon they promised.
-
Yuji was still shaking in his grandpas’ arms when he let go of him and placed his hands on his shoulders. Grandpa leaned down and gave him a gentle smile.
“What’s gotten into you?”
He shouldn’t tell him, he knew he shouldn’t, but before he could stop himself, words burst from his lips, everything from the second he died until the last moment between him and Sukuna. His grandpa stared at him in silence before he sighed and dragged his hand down his face.
“Right, Yuji, let’s sit down, okay? There’s something I gotta tell you about your mom.”
-
Yuji stared into space for a while. His mind rumbled with his grandfather’s words. But he just couldn’t believe it. His mom was a sorcerer, she wasn’t only a sorcerer, she was one of the most powerful sorcerers in the world having a cursed technique called anti-gravity. Did Gojo-sensei know that? If he did, why didn’t he tell him? Why didn’t the principal? Why did they hide something so important from him?
Were they scared of him? Still? Was that why they never said anything? Was it because of Sukuna? Were they afraid of him getting his hands on such a devastating power? There had to have been a reason, right? They wouldn’t just hide that from him for nothing, would they?
“Yuji?” his grandpa’s hand landed on his shoulder.
Yuji jumped five feet in the air, terror iced through his veins. The hand… he’d been so frightened. His grandpa’s eyes widened and he held up his hands.
“Are you okay, kid?” he asked worriedly. His brow crinkled. “I knew it, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Yuji shook his head quickly and grabbed his grandpa’s hands.
“No! It’s not that! I was… sorry, I was miles away, I just got jump scared by the hand is all.”
His grandpa eyed him in suspicion, Yuji hadn’t been great at lying since he was a kid but whatever his grandpa saw seemed to be enough to calm him down.
“Did you think about it?” he asked.
Yuji nodded.
His grandpa had told him that if he wanted he could take him to a sorcerer he knew, an old friend of his moms’, that the person would be able to make him a sorcerer and teach him her technique. Since he’s the only one who’d even know what to do to train it. And he had agonised over what to do.
Meeting someone who’d known his mom would be amazing. But grandpa was set to get sick later this year and he was going to start going to the hospital more and more. Leaving him behind. When he passed away the first time. The regret had plunged into him worse than any pain he’d ever felt. Even when Mahito stabbed him.
It was like a shard of poison had been injected into his heart and the poison just spread and spread the more time he spent trying to forget how he hadn’t told him he loved him, how their last conversation had been them arguing, how he wished he could have told him that he was so, so grateful for everything he’d done for him.
And he knew that this time, he couldn’t leave either.
“I’ll stay here, grandpa, just for now.” he said. “I can train myself.”
“Are you sure?” his grandpa asked, his brows furrowed once more.
Yuuji nodded.
Nothing was going to take him away from his grandpa, not until it was his time to go.
-
“My brat, such a little fool.” Sukuna sighed inside the old man. “Why would you give up on something like that?”
He loathed to admit it, but Uraume had been right to have him possess the old man. There were very few people in this world that his boy would stand beside until their death and he had such obedience to the doddering fool. It was almost insulting.
If he’d known the brat would obey the old man without question, he would have possessed him the first time around.
That was the glory of second chances, reflection. A trait that was useless to insects who wouldn’t live past birthing their spawn. But something indispensable to a being of his might.
This body wouldn’t make it past the boy’s 15th birthday. He needed to be careful how he did this. He’d made a mistake earlier when he’d phased through the old man slightly and his brat had noticed. He’s never seen the boy jump so fast in his life. It would be too much to ask for this to be easy after all the effort he and Uraume went through to get them here, wouldn’t it?
No matter, a simple mistake, he would be more careful from now on.
If they were in the Heian period, he daydreamed about the beatings he would give the boy to brand it into his soul who he must be and why. But in this soft age that was apparently against the laws. Japan had become so bothersome in its old age. What could he do instead? Manipulation? That was what he was going to have to do, he didn’t pretend he was the best at the sort of finesse it took to twist childrens’ minds. He was much better when he was manipulating whores. Children were a different breed, he’d never understood them, especially in life. After some time in Fushiguro’s mind and his brat’s mind, he had a better grasp on what to do. But he feared the sloppiness that he might slip into.
It would take only one slip and his brat would know it’s him.
Because despite what Fushiguro thought, his boy was smarter than he was given credit for.