So I was playing around with the idea of Modulo Yuuji traveling back in time to help raise himself, with the idea that it would be mostly wholesome with some unhinged reactions/fights on the side. Except when I thought about Modulo Yuuji swallowing Sukuna’s fingers, again, and this scene enter my brain and would not leave.
This is not wholesome. This is Yuuji and Sukuna being as weird as possible about each other.
I don’t know if/when I’ll write the rest of the fic; I love the concept but have so many WIPs and projects that I’m not able to commit to it right now. So I figured I’d share this (very very rough draft of a) scene because if I had to be tortured with the visions I may as well share the results.
—-
Sukuna came back to himself in a surge of power, violent and hungry . He expanded out and out and out to control whatever poor fool had awoken him, long dormant blood lust unleashed in a seething tide of hate.
So focused on violence, on human flesh, on victory, that he didn't notice the barrier until he was suddenly stopped in his expansion. Running into it soul first was a violation of his being, and he spared no thought to fighting it, pressing harder and harder against whatever stood between him and his rightful place as ruler of this pathetic nation.
The barrier was absolute.
Snarling, Sukuna retreated, gathering himself within an innate domain carved in to whosever soul he now resided. After the barrier, he expected similar resistance to the creation of the domain, but it was…easy.Familiar, in a way it shouldn't be.
This soul knew him. He felt echoes of his power coursing through this body's blood, his essence seeped into the bone.
Something darker, something hungry, that was not his but so familiar it may as well have been.
Sukuna opened his eyes to his innate domain, standing before the stairs to his throne.
He was not alone.
His first instinct was, of course, to attack, but something in the man's face held him steady. It wasn't the scars on his face, nor his hair that was such a familiar shade of pink.
It was his smile, amused and almost fond.
Nobody had ever looked at Sukuna like that, and it unsettled him more than he cared to admit. So he stood, arms crossed into his kimono sleeves, and stared at the stranger who dared intrude upon him.
"Hello, Sukuna," the man said. "It's been a long time."
Sukuna narrowed his eyes. Something about this man was deeply wrong, but it wasn't anything Sukuna could put a name to. Not yet.
"Who," he asked, letting nothing but disdain show in his voice, "are you?"
The man's smile widened.
"I am Itadori Yuuji." He bowed head slightly as he spoke. "The vessel for Ryōmen Sukuna, meticulously handcrafted and born into being by Kenjaku themselves."
This did not feel like a lie. It should have felt like triumph. But…
Sukuna looked around, felt a soul so much older than his vessel appeared, and recognized remnants of himself that felt…tended to, like a shrine almost forgotten.
Fealty he was used to. That kind of devotion had always been limited to one person who was certainly not the man before him, and even they were smart enough to show respect. Beyond the obvious, something about this felt deeply wrong.
"Hm," he said at last. "Time travel, then?"
Itadori Yuuji's eyes crinkled, and he laughed, brief but true.
"You always were more clever than a lot of people gave you credit for. They'd get all caught up in the cannibalism and murder and forget all the other reasons you were feared on the battlefield."
It was unpleasant, the way the words twisted inside Sukuna; the way Itadori looked at him with bright eyes and a smile.
"Why." Sukuna did not bother to question, just demand.
Itadori did not seem bothered. He simply tucked his hands into the front pockets of his jacket and shrugged.
"Finished everything I needed to do, or at least got to the point where sticking around would do more harm than good. With no real way to die and no good reason to live, I got to thinking about what I'd change if I had the power and knowledge I have now back then. Or…I guess the power I have in the future, now? But also still have? Time travel makes it weird." He paused and scratched his temple, before making a humming sound and continuing. "Anyway, The more I thought about it the more appealing the idea seemed to be. Figured that I couldn't make the outcomes much worse, so why not see if I could make things better?"
"How heroic," he sneered.
Itadori shrugged again. "Not really. It's honestly more selfish than anything. Besides, I stopped wanting to be a hero a long time ago."
"You are my vessel. That you ever wanted to be a hero at all is insolence and foolishness."
He expected Itadori to push back on that, just a bit, because people with those bright eyes always did.
"Yeah, you're probably right," he agreed instead. "But I think all kids are insolent and foolish to some degree."
Sukuna did not know what to make of Itadori Yuuji, with his large eyes and relaxed posture and something else that waited, patient, in the dark.
Instead of wasting his energy on questions with no answer, he looked around at his domain; he felt around the edges to see what was his and what was his ghost's.
"This is…fake," he said eventually, more annoyed than anything.
"Oh, yeah," Itadori admitted easily. "It changed a lot when you were here last time, but since this is new for you I thought you'd appreciate something more familiar."
"What is it truly?"
"A train station."
Sukuna clenched his jaw. "A…train station."
"Yep." Itadori rocked back on his heels, and for a moment Sukuna caught a glimpse of something like longing, something like youth. It was gone as quick as a breath but it disconcerted Sukuna all the same.
"Hm."
"Yeah, you weren't a huge fan of it the first time around either."
There was a ping on his senses, and he and Itadori both cocked their heads. That they did so in perfect sync was something Sukuna opted to ignore.
"Sorcerers," Sukuna hissed, blood heating with the expectation of battle, the desire to kill, and it was echoed across the soul where he dwelt. But instead of rising to it, as his vessel should, Itadori did not acknowledge it at all.
"Took them longer than I expected, honestly," Itadori said, then smiled, practically bouncing with it. "Oh! Gojou-sensei is here! Well. Probably baby Gojou-sensei. I bet he's going to be adorable."
Sukuna was already furious by everything that had been happening, but being ignored in favor of another ghost was intolerable. It was past time for this worm of a vessel to learn his place.
He'd no more had the thought than Itadori…disappeared.
No.
Itadori was behind him, standing back to back, with his head and shoulders resting lightly on Sukuna's.
Fury became something foreign, and he knew what had been bothering him: Itadori Yuuji knew he was the strongest person around, knew it so deeply that it bypassed confidence or arrogance and became a simple, innate fact. He stood before Sukuna with no more fear than one would have standing before a newborn fawn.
His vessel had the assurance of his place that was rightfully Sukuna's, and oh, how that burned.
"I know you want to ask about what happened to you, but don't want to ask. That's okay, I have a moment before I need to go."
Sukuna grit his teeth and swung around, eager to remind Itadori that becoming unafraid of Ryōmen Sukuna was a mistake he would not repeat.
Itadori moved so quickly Sukuna could not track the exact sequence of events, knew only that his wrist stung from where it had been batted away, his throat burned where Itadori gripped it, and his forehead was cool where it was pressed against his vessel's.
He could be excused for not recognizing the feeling at first. It had been so long since Sukuna had been afraid, after all, and it mixed strangely with another, more familiar feeling that writhed in his gut.
"There was fight," Itadori said, voice unnervingly soft. "Epic, fate of the world stuff. Eventually you lost. Oh, don't worry, you killed a lot of people first. I cherished, even loved, many of them, and I mourned them all."
A pause, and Sukuna felt an ancient grief, as much a part of Itadori as his own presence. Just a mere brush of it and Sukuna had to fight not to buckle under its weight.
"In the end I gave you a choice, and you chose to die."
Sukuna laughed, disbelief temporarily outweighing anything else.
"And what? Did you think this time you'd manage to convince me otherwise?"
Itadori moved his head back slightly, fingers still gripped tight around his throat, and pressed a kiss to Sukuna's forehead.
"No, Sukuna," he said, lips moving gently across his skin, "this time I won't give you a choice at all."
He was gone before Sukuna even registered what had been said, and was grateful for the fact when he could not contain his shudder.
Sukuna had never been touched so sweetly.
Nor, he thought, as cruelly
He was aware, in that distant way, that Itadori was talking to the sorcerers who had dared intrude on their conversation. Knew, somehow, that if he wanted to watch it for himself he could.
It would be interesting to see the face Itadori wore around others, see if he hid from them what Sukuna already knew so well. So he rolled his shoulders, took a breath, and with a disdainful flick of his fingers banished the illusion Itadori had set.
There was actually a train station. How horribly banal. No wonder he'd hated it before.
Nothing had gone according to plan, his glorious reemergence halted by a man shaped by grief and power and Sukuna himself, but who still had such a horribly bright laugh.
As he sat down on a bench, resting his face on a fist, Sukuna grinned.
Not all was lost, no matter how poorly it began, no matter what his vessel said or did or left him feeling.
Because Sukuna knew now that Itadori Yuuji was a monster, complete with a monster's hunger.
And Sukuna found he was very invested in watching how his vessel fed.
