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20 Don’t mind me😩

[vennywrites]

Rule of Beasts

Pairing: Heian!Ryōmen Sukuna x Reader

Wordcount: 16.9k

Summary: You are the beginning of his end. Sukuna invited defeat right into his corner when he took you in. He should have known the moment he ate like a dog from your outstretched palm or that moment he ripped out the throats of men to ensure your safety. Nothing as strong as a bond honed by misery and shared meals, knowing each other inside and out before either of you had grown sharp teeth and claws and hollow eyes. Out of all the pieces he’s made of, you might be the only soft one he possesses.

Warnings: Angst, Violence, Gore, Blood, Murder, Implied Cannibalism, Animal Death, Abandonment, Assault, Mutilation (Reader), Mental Health Disorders, Depression, Desecration of Religious Shrines, Historical Inaccuracies, Unhealthy Relationship, Obsession, Sex (first time writing smut, please be kind), Blood Play, Kidnapping, Major Character Death, I make my own stuff up about what happened during Sukuna’s original lifespan bc who can make sense of it all? Not me!

a/n: It's finally here and I am so excited and so anxious about it. This is my entry for @sweethearticism's Brutal Bakery Collab. I tried to challenge myself to do things I've never done before (ehem, writing smut) and I'm kind of really scared if it does the whole challenge any justice. But I had a blast writing and I suppose that's the most important part. An absolute Angstfest for all of us fans of Despair, Heartbreak and Misery. English isn't my first language.

Pinterest Board, read it on Ao3

I.

The shrine is already occupied.

When Sukuna arrives - abandoned, dirty, rags hanging off his body and hair disheveled and matted at the back - you already sit in the doorway, the peach’s nectar dripping down your chin.

He is starving. And all his life, Sukuna only ever knew how to fight everything that got in his way. The shinsen is hidden inside, illuminated by golden candlelight and blocked off by your body.

You’re one of the first to not run when you spot him, crawling up the stairs on his arms and legs. Shortly, he considers you might just be too weak to run from him.

It’s all the same to him in the end. You’re in his way and he will carve his path through everything.

Strangely, he does not even manage to cross all the distance before you extend your arm, so thin he could crush it like fish bones. In your palm, the half eaten peach, dripping and delicious.

Wordlessly you offer him food and he just might take your whole hand for it. Neither hand nor body shake as you hold it out before you and when he snarls and snaps at you, you only blink and mimic his grimace.

Your growl is a pathetic thing, small and weak and the sound that leaves you only that of a day old kitten. Orphaned and young, you live by what the wild has taught you. Take from the weak and ally with the strong. You try, you do.

“Yours,” you offer, carefully. And he rips the fruit from your hand, hears your fingers crack as he tugs too hard on them but you don’t flinch away and he doesn’t stay to assess the damage. Tearing through the shrine, he devours the peach and everything else it has to offer.

“Mine,” he snarls back and you watch quietly, eyes vacant and skin sticky.

In the end, when there is nothing left to ransack, Sukuna leaves and finds you trailing behind. On wobbly legs you follow him, clothes on your body dirty and loose.

A monster like him does not concern himself with a shadow like you. So he leaves you be.

But you turn out to be as persistent as the darkness. Through every shrine you follow him and accept the scraps he leaves behind.

You’re slower, must be younger than him too, not even six and the only thing you have on him is height. When the plum rain hits without mercy, he thinks you might just succumb to the waters. Drown in puddles or wash away with the flooded rivers.

But Sukuna is not that fortunate.

You stay and each day he manages to gain distance on you, you return with the night, exhausted and panting but with hope in your eyes as they find him. You curl up a safe distance away, his eyes glowing in the dark as you watch him. There’s safety in numbers but he seems to be enough to keep the wolves at bay.

When you come up sick, Sukuna finds himself lingering. He has no food to offer you, nothing to give but his presence as he sits close by, watches you thrash through your fever until your skin shines like the moon in the night.

On the fourth night, he’s sure your heart will give out and in the morning, Sukuna declares you dead. Despite the shallow breaths, despite the stuttering heartbeat, Sukuna abandons you.

He doesn’t make it far before he hears you, feet stumbling, breath ragged as you drag your body after him.

A random girl more loyal than his father, his mother, his twin.

So, he keeps you.

For the boy inside of him that always wanted to belong. For the hole inside his chest that steadily warps to fit your shape.

And in return, for the first time in your life, your loyalty is rewarded. Like a dog you defend him, howl and snap at people who throw things when he comes too close. He’s the only home you’ll ever know and you’re grateful for it, for the four arms that can hold you better than two and for the four eyes that can read you like an open book. A home-shaped monster. A monster-shaped home.

Somewhere along the line, he thinks you could be his pet. A small, ferocious companion that curls at his feet, eyes on the entrance, nails long enough to draw blood.

What a feral thing you are.

And what a deadly thing he is.

Because when a man catches you stealing his fish, grip bruising, the imprint of his hand on your cheek scarlet red, Sukuna does not think before he acts. Even in the womb, he was a killer. Even now, eight and savage, many-limbed and four-eyed, he jumps the man without a warning, rips at his throat until he tastes blood, keeps biting until the thrashing stops, screams up a thunderstorm until the man lies there in pieces and you sob at his side, small and weak but his. Only his.

Years you spend roaming the lands, taking what you can from the people who can’t keep it. Something like rhythm finds you, something like routine, like habit, like home.

You never believed a building could hold you and you realize soon, only one person can.

Sukuna commands the dirt roads you travel, overshadows the towns you come through, dwarfing whole city squares with his presence.

When adolescence strikes, what height you had on him shrinks and soon, he towers over you, three heads taller and three times as wide.

He eats more than you can provide and yet, you work yourself to the bone to keep him fed. You do anything you can for grain and fish and veggies. He takes up jobs to foul for normal men.

In the evenings, hiding inside shrines and ruins, he holds your hands and growls at the raw skin, snarls at reddened cuticles, bares his teeth when he finds cuts and bruises.

His way of taking care of you is brutal: Like a wound, he lays himself bare before you, gratitude in the shape of dull blades, wools and blankets and dead livestock.

That’s how he provides. By killing the sheep and the cows and the oxen and dragging them to you where you try your best to turn them into something edible. You stain your hands in blood for him.

When you are more woman than girl, he finds an abandoned farmhouse at the edge of a village and it becomes your shelter. Not home - never home when it’s a person, when it’s four arms and four eyes and a smile that cuts you open. But you feel safer when there’s doors to shut, when the roof keeps the rain away, when the two of you find a rotting futon, large enough to fit the both of you.

Sukuna leaves during the day and returns at night smelling of smoke and bloodshed. Each night, you clean the blood off his face, his hands, his neck. You stitch the wounds that need stitching with a tread of your dress. You wash his leathers and shine his armor, wipe his blades until you can see yourself in the shine of the metal. You do not question what he does, you do not ask about the blades he sharpens at your back or the screams that follow him.

He takes care of you in the same way he has always taken care of himself. Ferocious and dedicated, whole-heartedly and with blood smeared about.

You feel safe with him. Life is looking up.

But everything good eventually comes to an end and every childhood eventually concludes in a cruel and sudden way one only recognizes down the road. This is where ruin found a home in me, this is where innocence died.

And it isn’t even special or extraordinary. It happens on your way to the market, a short walk, early morning, when the birds chirp and the sun is just warm enough to soften your shoulders and warm you cheeks.

It’s five of them and they do not find the money they search for.

You try to run from them but their steps are made of light and shadow and their sorcery is more powerful than your survival instinct can ever be. They laugh when they catch you, taunt when you beg.

And because there’s no money, they take everything else from you instead - peace and hope and voice.

You scream so much they cut your tongue right out of you and when they leave you to die, you drag yourself back to him with a mouth full of blood.

You’ve been through worse, you tell yourself. You just need to make it back to him, you convince yourself and when you faint on the steps of your shared house, Sukuna finds you drowning on your own blood.

Anger isn’t what does him justice. Wrath doesn’t even come close.

For the first time in your life together, Sukuna lets a stranger get close to you. The local healer comes with incense and fearsome eyes. She tries her best to stop the bleeding, to disinfect the wound and for the few moments you’re conscious and aware, Sukuna fills your whole vision - your blood on his clothes, something strange and hurting in his eyes that do not blink when they regard you.

If he blinks, you will die, he tells himself and keeps staring. Stares until his eyes water and his lids twitch. Stares even when the healer is long since gone, and you’ve fallen into a restless, deep sleep.

It takes three days for you to wake. Eyes sluggish and mind hazy as you blink up at the ceiling.

There’s a fire somewhere, soft crackling and the flicker of light.

He hears the change of your breathing. The drum of your heartbeat.

That night, he curls closer, has you pressed against his chest, his chin against the crown of your head. You dream of knives and blood and screams. Sukuna guards you through it all. There’s a beast in your dreams, a looming shadow that protects you like it’s heart.

Eating is difficult. You choke on rice grains, need to rip everything else into small, digestible pieces and hate each second of it. To your surprise, Sukuna takes the change in strides.

Like a bird he feeds you food, makes sure you swallow each bite he offers. Vulnerability is foreign to him. He does not see how much it costs you to be this weak, this voiceless, this lost.

When you try to speak to him and all the sounds are garbled and muted and wrong, you cry for hours. Sukuna doesn’t know how to console, but he tries for you. Tries with clumsy words and hands that are too strong. He holds you till your body aches and licks your tears till your cheeks are flushed and hot.

Recovery takes months. Maybe forever.

Life changes after this.

For you, it’s in the silence that settles over it all.

For him, it’s in the utter shock of your mortality. His inability to stop your hurt.

The worst part is, that Sukuna has no trouble finding the attackers. They’re sorcerers, high on power, high on boredom. They blame him. Say they came for him but got distracted. Ask for forgiveness in all the wrong places. There is nothing like forgiveness in his heart. Only rage, only hatred, only violence. They knew you belonged to him - a wicked girl in the shadows of a demon.

He kills them in all the horrible ways he knows how to and it leaves him empty. It doesn’t do anything to him or for you. He still hates the world for what it did and you still find no words to speak.

From this point forward he knows. He knows you’re his, only his. He will die trying to shield you from the cruelty of this world.

Something dark and hungry eats at him and when the time comes, nothing can stop it. Hatred consumes him. Revenge becomes the thing he lives by. Hatred in the rhythm of his heart.

Violence for violence.

Blood for blood.

II.

There is a void inside of him and Sukuna has spent all his life standing at the edge of it, staring down into the endless black until it looked just like him - sharp teeth and too many eyes.

It grins at him at random times, whispers promises and lies, draws him closer with the song of vengeance and power.

Sukuna trains, endlessly. The little farmhouse is still decrepit, still in ruin, still yours. Grunts echo through the garden when you watch him work. Sweat coating his body, muscles bulging and trembling from strain. He never stops and you don’t think he even can.

Because he was born with a chip on his shoulder and all it’s done was grow and grow. Now it’s so large, it swallows him whole.

There’s a void inside you too. You’re scared of it. You’ve done your best to befriend it, to come to terms with the hollow pit in your chest, but it swallows you whole more often than not.

“Curses just ooze out of you, woman,” he drawls one day, watching you watching him. He’s told you before, how your misery takes shape. How that endless pit inside of you is not just that but a birthplace for more struggle, more sorrow, more pain. How your sadness follows you with snapping jaws and saliva dripping from it’s fangs. How the weight on your shoulders is not the world but the curses you keep creating.

It doesn’t take much to eliminate them. You watch him do it so effortlessly, the snap of a finger, the fling of a hand.

You’ve never seen them for yourself, but you know of the power that encompasses it all. Everybody knows, because it’s the Golden Era of Jujutsu, Sorcerers are everywhere and Sukuna is the strongest you’ve ever encountered.

There’s attempts where he tries to make you a part of this world.

But he is a bad teacher. Brash and impatient and rude. You appreciate that he tries. That he makes a valiant effort at teaching you how to control your energy, how to not birth more of the monsters into this world. Some days it works, on others it doesn’t.

Sometimes, you think of them as your pets. Your little misery-companions. Your sorrowful, ghostly entourage.

Sukuna calls them a pest.

When he exorcises them, you feel lighter, if only for a few days, ensuring you don’t drown in your own emotions, choke on the depression that clings to you like a second skin.

And when you finally master it, know how to control yourself and dampen the energy to something that won’t spew forth wicked beasts, he smiles at you in this lopsided, honest way. Pride makes him appear even taller, but it softens him in a secret way.

With your newfound ability, you grow sensitized to cursed energy. It fills your ears with a constant buzz. When Sukuna is close, it climbs to a roar - the endless push and pull of an angry ocean, the endless scream of earth cracking open.

After that, something changes between you. It’s raw and fragile and unknown. Shows itself in lingering eyes and wandering hands. When he holds you at night, it feels different and when you wake in the morning, tension crackles in the air like lightning.

He can come home bloody and broken and bruised and you still embrace him with all you have. You can rot in your room for weeks, stink of misery and hopelessness and he will still look at you as if you’re beautiful.

Sukuna takes any job that is offered to him - kills curses and bad men, returns with heads on his saddle and flowers from the roadside and all you see is the smile on his lips as you greet him.

You realize it’s love when a cut across his chest brings you to tears, leaves you hyperventilating and fear-struck as he tries to calm you. His attempts are clumsy, blood dripping on splintered floorboards and even once the wound is cleaned and stitched and bandaged, you can’t bring yourself to leave his side.

That night, you sit in his lap and stare at the wound as if it could burst open again.

Sukuna teases you for it, sharp teeth and reckless eyes.

“One day you will die,” you threaten with shaking hands and press your palm above his heart to ensure it’s not yet time.

He only snorts, unbothered. “We all do one day.”

“You’re all I have.”

That makes him go quiet, if only for a moment. “You’re all I need,” he mumbles in the space between you and you can feel your heart jump.

“If you die, so will I”, and you believe it. There’s no world without him, no life. The time before you met him is shadow and ash, a flicker at your periphery you can never quiet catch.

Your life started with him - it will end with him too.

He’s so close you can feel his breath against your skin, making your skin crawl with the way he smells of something raw, like meat and something chilled, like steel.

Your fingers scratch gently over the bandages you secured around his torso and when his hands around your hips pull you closer, when his lips meet yours, he steals your breath away. He kisses you like a starved man an*d you kiss him back with all the bravery his care has given you.

Sukuna is as brutal in love as he is in friendship.

His hunger is endless and it’s one only you seem able to satisfy. You give yourself willingly, hopefully, whole-heartedly.

You want all of him, sharp edges that cut you open whenever he presses close, blood on his lips when you kiss.

The first time he lays with you, you know he tries to be gentle. Tears streak your cheeks, blur your vision as his trembling hands claim you, pry you open like seafood, take something you know you will only ever offer to him. He loves you with his teeth in your skin and you return it with his blood beneath your nails. His lust has claws and leaves you a shell, sucked empty, mind blank. His devotion rots even through bone.

You call it love.

He’s a passionate lover, a ravenous one. You’re an offering at his altar, a gift to unwrap and claim each time he returns, sweat in his hair and dirt on his hands.

You bend for him however you can, twist and turn to still his hunger, break apart beneath and above, unravel with groans and cries and endless devotion.

But Sukuna was born with a chip on his shoulder, a mountain on his back.

And when there’s no curses left to kill, your home grows too small for the demons he’s facing and you will never be able to fight his battles for him. Trying to hold him together with warm meals and unconditional love turns out to not be enough.

It’s not enough that your constant tremble only ever stops when he’s there, that you drown in his ox blood eyes and feel peace for the only time. Because your body doesn’t have the same effects on him. Because in some way, you will never be enough for the beast inside of him.

Fights are quick to rise and it’s small, unnecessary things, mostly. You call it love anyway, ignore the shades of purple and black that decorate your skin, turn a blind eye to the tears you shed each time he leaves angry and fuming, punching holes through paper doors and glass-like domesticity. Sukuna punishes with silence and absence and fear.

Every fight is unfair at best because language is beyond you. Signs are there but even with four eyes, he looks away when he is angry. Sometimes, arguments mean he’s screaming until your ears ring and your hands shake so much that even they fail you. Sometimes, he’s as quiet as you, all four of his hands desperately trying to proof a point in your very own words - silent, twenty fingers at once.

Those are the worst days. When he leaves in anger and you know not when he’ll return. The farmhouse is just shelter when he’s not there, just a roof over your head, just four walls keeping you caged.

More often than not, he’s gone for weeks, months even.

During his absence, the house becomes haunted. All the demons he’s facing and all of them are yours. You’ve always been a creature of sadness.

Some days, you don’t even manage to get up from the ground, curled beneath blankets and wools. Your cheek sunken so deep into the futon that you feel like the whole world bears down on you. You do not care for your creations, for the curses that dwell when he’s not there.

Whispers find you before he does.

You know the world has always been too small for him, to meek for the power that courses through his veins. You fear he might find someone out there, in the wilds, who will match his freak better than you ever will. You fear he’ll never return at all. You wait. You yearn. You wallow in self-pity.

It’s one of the market women who tells you of the newest gossip. It starts easy, with weddings and children and stolen goods, a death. Someone is killing sorcerers and leaves them a bloody mess to be found.

At first, you give it little thought. Competition is ever present. You think it’s like the mice and the black kites that live about. First too much food, then too many predators. Give and take. Like the tides.

You consider Sukuna the pinnacle of sorcery. An apex predator among spoiled, household pets.

Maybe, maybe Sukuna is the black kite, and when all the curses had vanished, he turned to cannibalism, turning from rodents to his very own kind.

Nobody ever makes it out alive, nobody ever returns from the fights and is able to tell who attacked them. You know it’s Sukuna, when people whisper of an imaginary demon, a warrior more monster than man, blood-eyes and too many limbs.

When he finally returns to you, in dusty clothes and with blood dried dark against his skin, you run to him before he even manages to fully slide the door open. He huffs, but his hands find your waist, your shoulders, the back of your head. He holds you close, your face buried against his chest where you can hear the drum of his heart, steady and slow.

He kisses you gentler, then. Passion dampened by lonely nights, with longing for the body and mind that fit so easily with his.

You learn not to mention the arguments, the fights. You take him back in just as he did when you were a child.

Rhythm and routine are slow.

You love him when he’s with you and you hate him when he’s not.

You watch the scars accumulate on his skin, watch ink spread beneath it, watch his hair grow long and unruly until he lets you cut it.

You keep a lock of his hair, sew it into the sleeve of your tomesode, ensure he stays in all the ways you can make him. You curate bruises like love marks, hope your scratches stay long enough on his skin until he returns.

Kisses linger. So do his hands.

One night, during late autumn, Sukuna sits with you on the veranda, his hulking mass dwarfing you while you arrange the fallen maple leafs by shade of red.

“You’re mine,” he claims and doesn’t even have the need to look at you while doing so.

You wait for him to finally turn his head before you sign your answer, fingertips smudged with damp dirt.

“Enough to marry me?”

“Enough that there’s no need to do so. You’re mine in every instance, every way. In body, soul and mind. Neither you nor me need law to make it true.”

You should have known it was something protective, maybe even frightened, that kept him from claiming you by name. Tying you to him in a world made up of blood and power, it would have been the noose around your neck, the blade slicing your throat.

So he doesn’t.

Momentarily, you mourn the fact that others will never know who you are to him. But in the end, you watch the moon reflect in his eyes and realize that he is yours just as much.

In body, soul and mind, he’s yours and you are his.

III.

During the times Sukuna stays, he stays fully.

He learns to take his time with you, to treasure the mornings, the noons, the evenings, the nights.

You cook for him only to find his hands around your tummy, dragging you back just enough to be able to move around you, taking your spot, helping you in all the unhelpful ways only a brute like him can.

He chops the vegetables too large, overcooks the rice, crushes seafood before it has a chance to be eaten.

You take life in strides like this. With him at your side, it’s a bit easier to conquer the darkness that lurks in the corners of your mind.

He tries to refine your cursed energy. You try to teach him how to sing.

Both of you are horrible at it.

He teaches you of weapons, how to spot sorcerers, what to do when you encounter them. You teach him how to garden. How to nurture without drowning, how to safely remove what’s rotten without killing it.

For you, Sukuna stains his hands with dirt - for him, you learn how to hold a blade steady.

Slowly, the two of you cultivate the garden. Years of overgrowth and kudzu smothering the place are ripped and burned and banished.

In the center of it, an ancient maple tree stands tall. Crooked roots and aching branches that droop low with age. When you ask him to, he hangs lanterns on the branches while you light them, perched on his shoulders.

You plant flowerbeds in his name, red as his eyes, striking as his form, unforgettable as his presence. From his travels, he brings you seeds. Hydrangea becomes your favorite, the small blossoms crowding together in beautiful colors. You place them everywhere - at the front of your house, in the garden, as cuttings in every room. He acts as if he finds them annoying, but you catch him smiling when he thinks you aren’t there.

Love warps over the years.

You adapt to his sharp edges, mold yourself into a shape that fits effortlessly against him. You harden into something only he can crack open. He softens into something only you get to see.

He kisses his adoration into your skin and worships your body beneath the moonlight. Sukuna tells you that’s how he likes to claim you the most. Bare beneath him, moonlight turning your skin blue. He says the sounds you make when he’s pressed so deep he sees the stars are the ones he likes best. Your moans and badly stifled cries only he can pull from you.

With each thrust he punches the air from your lungs, with each spill of him inside you, he ensures he’s the only one you’ll ever take. You don’t think you could ever enjoy another man claiming you. He’s spoiled you like this, ruined you for the world. Each time you topple over the edge, he smothers you with his weight, has you twitching and trapped beneath him until your vision swims.

Afterwards, he licks the tears from your skin, cleans you with a damp cloth, swaddles you in furs and blankets and holds you till your breath is even and calm again.

So, the two of you have something good. Something peaceful.

But peace can never be good for long in the eyes of men like Sukuna.

IV.

A home is a home not for the furniture or walls, but the people that reside in it. But for Sukuna, a home is a trap.

It cages him, ties his wrists and muzzles his jaws. Restlessly he paces the halls, wanders the grounds while you sleep. He is a trapped wolf, ears twitching, jaws snapping at anything that moves.

He is made for you, but not made for this life.

It is when the garden slumbers beneath thick layers of snow that he leaves, only footsteps and a short letter in his wake, trying to give words to the feeling in his chest that agitates and pulls on him. Pulls him out the door, away from the decrepit place you two have made your own, away from the small town that hides cattle and sheep behind fences and guard dogs.

His horse is anxious, ears flat against it’s head, eyes white-rimmed as he chases it out the stables.

Maybe in another life he could stay with you, build a true home, maybe even a family. But he’s been born a curse to his kind and you’re a girl he found by the shrine - unsure if goddess made flesh or sacrifice to his very own slaughter.

V.

Fear reigns southern Japan.

The Jujutsu Sorcerers have finally come together against one common threat. A curse, a demon, a king in his own right.

First time you hear the whispers, you do not believe them. It’s not unusual for him to disappear, not uncommon that he vanishes without a proper kiss goodbye. You’re not sure your heart could take it, if he left while you were awake, following him to the door and kissing him with the prospect of having to stop. You’re not sure you could survive watching him ride down the road until he vanishes out of view, chest so tight it might just collapse.

People whisper a name and one name only: Ryōmen Sukuna has declared war upon the world and the grand clans have answered.

There’s little reprieve in the fact that you’re in the south, that the most powerful clan sits up in the north, behind high castle walls and armed guards.

You find posters of him nailed to the walls.

The portrait doesn’t do him justice, a hulking beast with sharp teeth, nothing like the man you love. A bounty is set on his head but someone rips down the papers before anyone could ever really do anything.

Your hometown turns a blind eye, known him from childhood like a local cryptid, feared but treasured. You find offerings at the small shrines, placed there in his name. From pearls to dried flowers to food. How ironic, you think, now that he holds power they give what they all denied you as children, when you begged for scraps and anything else that could keep you alive.

You feel no remorse when you take what is offered in his name, feel no shame when you take the food, take the coins, the jewelry.

Wandering traders speak of bloodbaths by the coast.

You seek them out in taverns and squares, ask for stories like any bored housewife would. They do not question your curiosity, only feed you all that they’ve seen and heard.

A monster has the land in a chokehold. They speak of him as if he’s a curse, a demon, a fiend. You yearn for the man only you love. The man that only ever loved you.

Over a year passes before he returns to your side, on a random summer day.

The air is stifling, heat so oppressing that you only step from shadow to shadow, a wet piece of linen draped over your head to soften the migraine that’s lingered there for days.

The footsteps that approach you are layered, several or at least two, and when you finally deign to look, it’s him, unchanged.

Same hair, if longer, same body, if even broader, same eyes. Same eyes that stare without blinking as you scramble to your feet, cloth falling without your notice, stumbling towards where he stands. You cry before you even reach him, throw yourself against his chest with enough force he has to balance out, a half-step back before his arms circle you, his laughter rumbling in his chest.

He kisses you like a starved man.

You kiss him like your life depends on it.

When you finally pull away, just enough to look at him, to keep looking until there’s an afterimage that lingers for the rest of your life, he smiles at you with all the love he holds for you.

Only then do you realize there’s someone else.

A child stands beside him, skin and bones, eyes so sunken their face already looks dead. He introduces them with something wicked in his eyes.

Uraume is, like all of you, an outcast. Skirting by the edges of society and they’ve come to find themselves pulling the short end of the stick.

It’s with laughter that Sukuna claims he’s found you a cook. Your questioning eyes are met with more barks, sharp teeth and a grin that reaches higher on the left than on the right. The rundown on their power leaves you breathless - pity for a child that ruined their own life.

You wonder if a frozen wasteland really is what you need in your life, more cold while he’s not there, more ice in your veins when he abandons your side.

Your worries are unnecessary.

Unlike you, Uraume has the benefit of traveling with him, of sticking to his side when you’re left behind over and over again. Sorcerers among Sorcerers, you think and wonder if there truly ever was a place at his side for you.

Maybe it’s supposed to be that way: Mice to the mice and black kites to black kites.

VI.

The world has pledged itself against your happiness.

Japan is at war with your husband, smoking wastelands and mass grave battlefields left in his wake.

Despite his first claims, Uraume stays at the farm, sometimes. There’s something hopeful about their presence, childlike wonder in their eyes when they help you in the garden or when the two you realize you can freeze water to cool yourself down during heat waves. Put sticks in the little bowls you freeze it in and then make a challenge who’s tongue gets stuck first until the sun melts it away.

For the first time in years, laughter fills your home.

When Sukuna returns, you feel like a family. You might not carry his name but you carry his heart, right beneath your ribcage, where it beats inside your own. You and Uraume create banquets for his returns, grilled meat and fish, rice with all the vegetables you can find, rice cakes for good measure.

At night, when Uraume sleeps down the hall, safely tugged away beside a steadily burning light, he loves you beneath the moonshine like he always does. Holds you till you sink into sleep, nose pressed against his chest, his scent inhaled with each breath you take.

But each time he leaves again, you’re left with the cold space beside you, an indent in the futon, clothes strewn about and his smell lingering for a few days before everything is gone again.

He vanishes like a ghost and you’re left in the ruins of it all.

And he is only gone for a few days, before your luck runs out.

Darkness has crept back into your life, one that not even Uraume can alleviate. It leaves you bedridden, weak, a brain full of fog and one of his obi wrapped around you as if it could bandage your heart back together.

It’s Uraume who wakes you, doors pushed open so forcefully that the wood splinters, paper ripping.

“Get up, get up!” they scream before you’re really awake, tugging on your arm, dragging you from your bed and to your feet. “They’re here! Get up, please!”

You try, if only for Uraume’s sake. They lead you through the back door, along the veranda and the sprawling gardens. At night, the moonlight turns it into a flowering ocean, paints everything in blue and white.

But tonight, the garden blooms orange and yellow.

You smell it before your eyes can make sense of what you see, your paradise of trees and flowers engulfed by flames, the further part of the building, the one closer to the road, groaning under the roar of the flames. Your maple tree is a husk, a canopy of fire and enough heat to push you back a step.

Beneath it all, the shouts of men, armor and weapons clanking together.

For the first time in your life, you’re glad no words can leave your lips.

Because you would scream, you would howl, you would curse them all. But as you are, the sounds that leave you are muffled and wrong. Easily swallowed by the fire that lick up your home, that swallow the farmhouse in minutes, eager to devour and leave nothing behind.

Uraume drags you through the night. Their grip like a vice around your wrist, they pull you forward, along the edge of the garden, only away.

Behind you, the only place you ever called yours, goes up in flame.

Then, you run headfirst into your companion. Staggering, you loose balance and almost fall, only to be quickly moved about, hidden behind the child you took in, smaller and younger and more powerful than you will ever be.

The men who find you are armed to the teeth. They wear the emblem proudly on their chest but you cannot place it. A circle, leaves, wisteria if you combine it with the colors that adorn their belts.

When one of them raises their weapon, points it at Uraume and you, time freezes. Literally.

They have no chance to attack before the ice caught up to them, before the chill in the air is so overpowering that even your breath fogs up, safely hidden behind Uraume, where none of the cold will touch you. The men freeze to death before they ever lay a hand on you.

Quietly, Uraume grunts, takes a hold of you again, and drags you further into the wilderness.

You return two days later, exhausted and hungry and what you find breaks your heart right in two. Nothing is left of the farm and the gardens. Charred beams of wood and the husk of your tree are the only landmark you can find for the place you considered your household. You find nothing of worth in the rubble and suddenly, your possessions shrink back down to the clothes you wear on your body.

Back to being a child, back to ransacking shrines and stealing from the already poor. You sob and cry and mourn a place that holds more memories than you can cradle in your hands.

Hot and furious tears burn their way down your cheeks and drip from your jaw.

Maybe for the first time in your life, you feel the anger Sukuna tells you about. You feel the injustice, the urge to put the whole world down with you. To tear and rip and shred it to pieces like your poor heart.

Weeks you sit in the ruins of your house and wait for Sukuna to return. Some foolish, hopeful part of you thinks he must feel your anguish, must know you need him and come to your aid.

Time drag by. Uraume salvages what they can but the townsfolk is too scared to help and you’re too saddened to do anything but weep.

You sit in your garden of ash and scorched ground and this is how he finds you, so long since the fire has burned that the wind has removed all the footprints, all the heaps and scratches and grooves where your fingers dragged through the ash - where you tried to put it all back together. No proof that you tried to fight it, that you tried to mend.

Wordlessly he settles beside you, plumes of ash rising as he sinks to the ground, arms cradling you before you can turn to him, dragging you into his lap. The space is made for you and effortlessly you find your spot against him, bury yourself against his chest, inside his arms, press yourself as close as you can in hopes to make it all less real - less painful.

His heart beats like a war drum in his chest, your heart pounds on like a rabbit, rushed and frightened.

You have no heart to sign him what happened, hands cramping by the way they dig into his clothes, pull and tug on him as if you could hide inside his very heart.

“Are you hurt?,” he ask eventually, a deep rumble and you manage to shake your head, then try to make the agreed sign for Uraume. Frozen Child.

He presses a kiss to your forehead, lingers and he’s so gentle that it makes you hiccup, a sob tearing from your throat again.

So, Sukuna simply holds you, sways you like a babe from left to right, holds you until you grow limp and heavy and tired from sorrow.

“I’ll kill them all,” he promises you. You have no strength left that all you ever asked for is peace. Not war.

VII.

The estate is too large to hold you. Like water you slip through all the cracks, like ash you settle where you’re unwanted.

You know Sukuna meant well when he moved you. Away from your childhood, your farmhouse, your loss. But your new home is massive. There’s a shrine at the edge of the property, a bathhouse, the main rooms so large you feel like a speck of dust drifting about.

Sukuna wants staff. Maids and guards and people you don’t know, don’t trust. You tell him to live his dream but he can see you’re not a part of it.

The fight that follows is vicious. Leaves your wrist twisted and swollen, his ego bruised.

You leave for the smaller pavilions, following the long corridors and leaving the buzzing heart of the residence behind.

You claim one of them, furthest from the courtyard, close to the pond, the small bridges, another, smaller maple tree where you can open your windows. It feels like home when nothing else does, like the ancient one that stood tall and protective at the farm. Here, the leafs are even darker, like the blood that dries on his blades.

Uraume is the only one you let close.

The staff tries, they do. Servants try to appease you with small gestures. People cook the food you enjoy. A maid lays your clothes out every day and Sukuna’s smell vanishes even quicker from the fabric. Each day, they force you out of your suffering and isolation into a world you want no part of. They try to make your life easier when all you want to do is make it yours.

By now, Sukuna is more often gone than not.

There’s only two ways to survive the King of Curses. Worship or Death.

The shrine by the street groans under the weight of offerings. Candles always lit, incense sticks making the air waft about like fog, heavy and reverent.

Someone carves a statue that does him no justice. Someone carves one that does. You let it be moved into the garden where you see it from your futon if you leave the doors open.

At one point, you cut the paper from the wooden frames so you can see his stone face whenever you rest.

You yearn for him, touch yourself while looking at the stone that resembles him so much, unmoving eyes that always stare and you know that he’ll never just be yours now.

The world has grown too small for him and while he keeps you safe and hidden, surrounded by guards that never sleep and walls not even kudzu gets to climb - in a tiny but safe haven - Sukuna dominates the world.

You’re not naive enough to think he doesn’t take other women while he’s gone. He’s a man and he’s powerful and these two factors are all you need to know to be aware of the possibility that strangers warm his bed at night. Somehow, it leaves you unbothered.

This was never about sex.

This is about body, mind and soul and you know that whatever woman or man he invites in his chambers, he will send them away again.

You’re the only one he will return for. Eventually.

Hopefully.

VIII.

When you wake, he’s already above you - massive, blocking out the moonlight, his lust hot and heavy against your belly.

For a moment, you do not recognize him. The smell of fresh linen and soap instead of blood and sweat and him. His hair is still wet, water dripping onto your body. He’s washed himself, scrubbed the wrath right off his body before returning to your side.

You make a sound for him, breathe his name into the night and he hums yours right back.

You raise your hand towards his heart where it endlessly beats in it’s slow and steady pulse while your other hand grips at his hair, pulling and pressing him further down against you.

He still tastes of salt and iron.

It comes natural when your legs fall open around him, accommodating his frame.

When he slides a hand beneath the folds of your gown, you let him. Callouses adorn his palms and the contrast to your sensitive flesh has you suck in the air through your teeth. Goosebumps rise in his wake.

Sukuna is a slow lover, which doesn’t mean he’s a gentle one. Every touch is precise, brutal - each movement of his hips hard and ruthless.

Above you, he grunts, pushing his fingers into your mouth before stroking them through your folds. When he pushes into your cunt, you groan at the stretch, eyes fluttering shut.

Two of his fingers are enough to have your breathing hitch, the way he works you open with steady, endless strokes. He curls his fingers just the right way, caresses the spot inside of you that makes your vision white out.

Against your stomach, he already leaks. Sticky and warm it follows the curves of your body, tickles your ribs and your waist.

You beg with every sound you can make and his teeth find the bend of your neck, digging so deep the pain flares hot and bright. You cling to him desperately, push your hips against his hand as if it could imitate the real thing that hangs heavy between his legs. You can feel the smile that curves his lips as he digs his teeth deeper.

When his fingers leave you, you’re clenching around thin air, desperate to be filled. The sounds you make are lewd, mewling and panting as you dig your nails into his shoulders and leave trails of blood down his spine where you try to pull him closer.

The smell of iron makes him feral.

When he pushes in, he does so relentlessly and without a pause. You squirm beneath him, four hands holding your body tight - no escape as his length stretches your insides with just enough pain to make you grit your teeth. Tears prick at your eyes and his kisses turn lethal, split your lip, burn your skin. His eyes are dark as he watches your tears spill with each brutal snap of his hips.

Every time he claims you, you wish to die like this. Split open, claimed - his. He should be the one to kill you, smother you with his love, suffocate you with his lust, tear you apart as he stuffs you with his cock.

Each of his thrusts has you seeing stars, the sounds you make music to his ears. You press yourself against him in all the ways you can. Arms slung around his neck, lips pressed against his, his tongue in your mouth as if you two could become one.

He bites your lips so hard the skin keeps breaking, blood in your mouth and a flashback at it’s heels. He fucks you through it all, pounding into you until the futon shifts with his thrusts, until his face is all you see, tattoos shifting on his skin as he regards you.

You’ve never quiet figured out what this expression means. The one he makes when he takes you like this. His eyebrows drawn together, with his pupils blown so wide you barely see the red in them. Sometimes you think he will kill you and sometimes you think he will die for you.

Sukuna enjoys pushing the blood about. Paints his symbols on your skin with the blood you both draw. You always smear it over his shoulders, down his arms, across his chest and to his hips.

When there’s your fingerprints above his heart, you can always feel the tension in your body coil, somewhere beneath your navel, where heat pools so eagerly that you wonder if he feels it too, that need for him.

Because he always knows when you’re close. But you suppose he also knows in the way your breathing changes, in the way you push against him, in the way your walls cling to him as if to never let him go. That’s when his grip turns bruising, when his fingers dig into your flesh and you wonder each time if he’ll rip you apart or crumble like paper in his hold.

He bares his teeth when he comes, heavy grunts into the crook of your neck, hips flush against yours, an ache in your waist and your insides that will persist for several days. He fills you warm and endlessly and when you tumble over the edge with the help of his thumb between your legs, he smothers you with his whole weight.

You groan, exhaustion and ecstasy leaving you boneless and twitching in his arms. He always smiles then, softer, his face flushed, a sheen layer of sweat coating his brow and chest. Calls you his life, his love, his.

“Yours,” you try to sign back each time, a hand pressed to his heart where it beats just a bit faster.

His hand is large enough to cover your heart and curl around your ribs.

He kisses your tears that dry itchy on your skin. Licks the blood that has smudged and smeared and dried black.

Each time, hot and sticky, his seeds spills the moment he pulls out. And each time, he scoots back, regards you with this strange look and settles with his face between your legs.

You dig your hands into his hair, nails raking over his scalp and stare at the ceiling. You try to memorize this night. He loves you with all of him and you, you might just be the only altar he ever kneels at.

With a palm pressed firmly against your lower belly, he laps up all he’s given you. By now, it is a ritual. He fucks it into you, only to try and take it again. You don’t want to bear him children. Sukuna never asks you to. And so, he eats his seed from between your legs, feasts until you come undone again, panting and shaking where he holds you down and hums against your flesh.

Dizzy, blurred - you watch his dark eyes as they roam over your body, his erection still there, twitching and pulsing between your bodies.

Nights like these never end. There’s no sleep for the wicked, no rest for the deprived - no peace for the yearning. When the sun rises, he cleans you, swaddles you in blankets and holds you as close as he dares.

Your insides pulse with the memory of him.

Wordlessly, you two watch the darkness leave, golden rays of first light illuminating the statue outside your room, maple leafs red as blood.

You fall asleep with his hand against your lower tummy, his nose in your hair. Sweet nothings fill the air between you, whispered in the liminal space of dawn and slumber.

You think that Sukuna was never meant to create life - only ever take it. Uraume will be the closest to a child you will ever have. Maybe it’s for the best - this bloodline beginning and ending with him.

IX.

It takes him a month to declare war upon the Fujiwara Clan. Only three years to half their forces and have them scrambling, frantically hiding up north behind veils and talisman that do nothing to keep the King of Curses away.

He defeats some of the greatest names in sorcery, snuffs them out like candles. Broken wisteria sigils and severed bodies are all that’s left in his wake.

You never hear it through him, only ever hear about him, stories of merchants and wanderers and people who come to worship him at his shrine. Offerings start spilling out the building, lining the street like hopeful, eager devotees.

There is no end to his reign.

Sukuna will continue to fight and murder and torment until there is nothing left.

Visits are short, bruises and bite marks lingering longer than his touch. You mark him up as best you can, keepsakes for the road, good luck charms while he fights the world.

Recently, you’ve started to come to think of him as an Oni, strong and powerful and deadly - not one of the brutish ogres but ancient guardians. You like to think he’s here to protect you, to keep you safe from the world that’s done you so wrong.

Once you’d tried to explain it, compared one of the intricate paintings to him and he’d grinned. Lopsided and thoroughly entertained.

“An Oni? And what are you then? My own Onryō?”

It’s almost romantic, the idea that you haunt him as much as he haunts you.

Almost, as long as you don’t think too much about the idea you might the reason he’s always gone.

X.

The rule of beasts leaves your bedside empty.

Sukuna ravages Japan. And just like you feared, you are left haunting your own halls.

When you stare at the statue that stares back at you, you think of the time you first met, when you offered him a peach, juices dripping from your hands. In a way, even all these years later, Sukuna tries to repay you for that offering. Now that you can afford it, you slice a peach each day, set it out by the door, like you’re trying to feed the rabid dogs that stalk the streets at night, hoping he will find it if he returns. If it’s still there the next morning, still untouched and Sukuna nowhere to be seen, you place it at the foot of the statue, offer it up to him in all the other ways you can, try to erect your own little shrine where only your offerings count.

By now, the shrine at the road is overrun with pilgrims who come to worship a king who’s never home.

Sukuna repays you in raw meat. He repays you in dangling heads and claimed weapons. In yet warm bodies he killed in your name, kanji edged into the side of his blade.

All your life you’ve been weak for him. And when he offers you the dead, you accept them with a smile, with a hand over his chest and a mass grave of body parts in your backyard. You don’t tell him that you let the bodies be burned the moment he leaves again. Don’t tell him that the stench of rot makes your stomach twist, that the flies have you on edge, that all the death he causes has no home in your halls.

May he wage war in all of Japan, as long as your place stays clean of it.

All you ever wanted was peace. Safety. Him.

So when he returns, a slice of peach between his fingers, freshly washed and barely dressed, you get to see all the scars that have marked his body, cruel and vicious, in all the places only you should ever reach. Only your nails should ever draw along, only your lips should ever touch.

He stops in the door, a set of arms crossed in front of his chest, another at his hip and the door frame, watching you with unguarded eyes.

The flickering light makes the scars look even worse, gashes that slice up his body as if he fell victim to his own cursed technique. You hate the sight of it, a frown apparent on your face as Sukuna clicks his tongue, already shifting into something harder, unapproachable.

“Thrilling to be greeted with disgust on your face, woman.”

You’re quick to school back your expression, to raise your hands to defend yourself.

“You’re hurt,” you sign and point an accusing finger towards him.

He barks in your face, pushing away from the door to step into the room, the pavilion suddenly very small for his presence alone.

“I’m a victor, I just like to collect memories of every fight.”

“Reckless,” you chastise and he bares his teeth at you, something that doesn’t quiet resemble a grin.

“Don’t project your own weakness onto me.”

It hits like a slap, hurts like one too. Your anger flares instantly, blinding and blistering.

You notice a routine in these encounters. He returns and if both of you are unlucky enough, you won’t be asleep and he won’t be exhausted and a fight will always surge.

You call him reckless and he calls you weak.

In some sense you both truly are.

He’s starving on a hunger he will never be able to still, thoughtlessly seeking out fight after fight. And you, you are weak, in every sense of his definition, in every way he considers inferior. You are no sorcerer, you are voiceless and small and people have used and taken from you ever since you were a child.

You insult him with every gesture you can.

He waves you off instead, not even worth his anger, turns away and you turn silent once more, silenced by his choice of ignoring you, of turning his back, of looking away. So you haul the next best thing.

Your blanket flutters uselessly through the air, falling to the ground not far from you.

Sukuna laughs.

And the next thing you throw is a vase, one of the pretty ones, with paint beneath the green glaze, gifted by an unnamed follower of his and handed to you because you liked it. Not anymore. Not in this moment. Not enough to refrain.

It hits his back, right between his shoulder blades and shatters on impact. The sound is an ugly one, something that rings in your ears as the shards fall like frozen raindrops. Some are stuck in his skin where the edges brim now red.

It’s the only way you can scream “Look at me!”.

Sukuna does, turns with a snarl on his lips and a rush towards you that leaves you frozen. In a heartbeat he’s there, crowding you, your back pressed against the fragile wood paneling as he corners you with all his arms, face to face, nose to nose.

“There you go, all my attention, spit out what you have to say or leave me be.”

It’s not fear that makes you tremble, but rage. Anger. Hopelessness at the unfair prospects. At the inevitable outcome.

“You will die!”

“I’ll die when I’m done. By my own choice. Have you so little trust in me?”

You think of all the people he’s bested, of all the blood he’s spilled, all the body parts in your backyard, burned like your farm, hidden beneath shallow layers of dirt. You think of wisteria sigils and an ancient, dead tree.

“People are coming for you - me. They will find a way to stop you.”

Your anger is a bad outlet. A shallow one. The fire is bright but dies just as quickly as it surged and you’re all of his definitions of weak when you feel the tears brim in your eyes, cling to your lashes.

His anger is a bottomless pit. A well he’s drawn from all his life. Sometimes you wonder if it leads right down to Yomi, where he draws all the violence, all the corruption from.

“They worship me!” he screams in your face and you can feel the spittle hit your skin, the heat of his anger as it washes over your face.

“They don’t know you. All my life I’ve fought so you could keep yours and this is your thanks?”

Silly, you think, how in the end, you both fight for the same cause. You fear for his life, if he continues fighting. He fears for yours if he stops.

Your hands sink to your side where you dig your nails into your palms until it stings. What use is there to argue when you’re the cause for his vigor, his obsession, his inability to stop.

Sukuna seizes the opportunity, a verbal finishing blow, beating you down in all the ways he can without laying a hand on you.

“You will be the death of me, woman!”

Your greatest fear taken shape, taken sound, drowning out the world. He claims you as his cause and in that, blames you for his failure that will ultimately come.

“I only ever wanted peace for us. Safety. A place to call ours and your hand in mine.” You phrase it clumsily, hands shaking, signs sloppy as tears blur your vision and spill down your cheeks.

Sukuna coils back as if they’re toxic. He’s always been powerless against your tears, the sorrow that’s burrowed so deep, not even he could carve it out of your flesh.

From the moment he met you, you were the beginning of his end.

He invited defeat right into his corner when he took you in. He should have known from the beginning, should have known that day at the shrine or that day at the farm or that day in your room. Should have known the moment he ate like a dog from your outstretched palm, the moment he ripped out the throats of men to ensure your safety or the moment you tore the very walls down to be able to look at his face. Or at least the moment he started sleeping by the door, your soft breathing at his back, guarding you like the dog he was.

He should have known because back then, you were only children, lonely and scared in your own ways, desperate to live or at least stay alive. And in the end, he thinks, this relationship only ever had a chance because it was formed in childhood, a bond honed on shared misery and meals, knowing each other inside and out.

He’s fought your demons every step of the way and you’ve held out peach after peach for him, even if he was always willing to bite the hand that fed him.

Out of all the pieces he’s made of, you might be the only soft one he possesses.

And that realization is utterly grounding, humiliating in a way only intimate things can ever be.

Your eyes shine like the moon, glossy and shimmering, tears tracking down your face in small rivers. You’re flushed from anger, or fear, or something else entirely. He’s aways been bad at this, reading your emotions, knowing what you’re thinking.

“Have I not given you all of that and more?” he hears himself ask and sees himself reflected in the black of your eyes, a halo of moonlight around him. A demon, a monster, a beast. He looks as ruinous as he feels ruined.

Your shoulders sag.

“I never needed any of this-“ you gesture, point at the pavilion and the estate beyond it. At the garden with the tree and the pond and the statue at your back.

All his life he’s fought for you, gave you anything you could need to learn you never really wanted it. No estate, no garden, no jewelry and layered gowns. You only ever wanted him - his presence.

Anger is the only defense mechanism he’s ever had, brutality the only shield he’s ever wielded.

So he shoves you and all his shortcomings away, pushes so hard at your shoulders that the wood behind you splinters, the paper rips and you tumble out into the cold afternoon sun, floorboards creaking beneath your weight as you loose balance and land in a heap of silk and tears on the veranda.

You find no sounds and no words and no signs to tell him of your pain, your misery, your fear. The sun is bright but cold, the shadows of tree and statue framing your form like some imaginary walls and as Sukuna stands before you - tall, broad, powerful - engulfed by the light that spills through the broken wall, you see him as all others must. Untouchable. Terrifying.

He’s showing you all you need to see to know he’s angry with the world. Nothing ever helped when he was angry like that.

And this time you are cause and reason for his wrath and fear dries your mouth, settles like dust along your windpipe. What really stops him from leaving you behind? For decades he’s outgrown, outpaced you. Somehow, he only now seems to realize.

So before he can discard you, you discard him. Panic makes you irrational. The rage of a prey animal fighting for it’s life.

“Go away!” you scream in all the ways you can, angry and furious and desperate and scared, with hands that shake and eyes that say everything you cannot.

Sukuna halts, stops approaching, only stares and so you sit and watch his tattoos and scars shift over his skin as your words sink in. They are blurry from your tears, dance across his body like shadows. Even now, even in his anger, he’s beautiful.

Another push to the wall that still stands, wood groaning under the punch before he turns and stalks away and you know he will leave, will abandon you again because for the first time in your life, you told him so. Men like Sukuna can only ever calm themselves with distance and blood. So much blood.

There’s still pottery shards stuck to his back, like cut wings they protrude from his skin, thin trails of blood running down to the dimples at his back. He still has claws, still is able to bring ruin but you might just be the only rodent that ever had the chance to fight back a black kite.

Others would call it an achievement.

Why do you feel so hopeless when he steps out of sight, a trail of blood following out the door.

XI.

He’s back sooner than expected. You were ready to endure and yearn for months, the blood cleaned from the floorboards, the remaining shards of the vase laid out on a plate before his statue like it’s your attempt to offer back his wings, feather by feather.

To heal what you broke, to return what you’ve taken.

You have made not a single attempt to fix the wall. With the paper and wood now gone, your room is freezing. Early winter has yet to see snow, but there’s no warmth to find you, either. You’re trapped beneath your blankets, futon so dented that you feel like you’re laying right on the tatami. You haven’t gotten up since you offered back the fragments of your anger, chased every servant and maid away with vicious words and a blade in your hand.

It’s one of his, usually mounted to the wall in one of the greater halls, now halfway hidden beneath your bedside. The hilt is simple, the blade slightly curved. It’s the one he taught you to hold and wield and fight with all those years ago.

With his heavy footsteps echoing along the hallway that leads to your domain, you force yourself upright, body sluggish and stiff from the cold.

Your blankets pool in your lap, tomesode disheveled and reeking of the inability to move that’s befallen you the past days. You know he won’t care, won’t be bothered by your unkempt hair. If at all, he will be bothered by the fact that you’ve not touched the food you’ve been brought and the curses that most likely linger about.

You brush the fabric of your gown, run a hand through your hair and sweep a finger along the corners of your eyes and mouth.

The smile you give him when he steps through the door is an honest one, relief flooding you like the first warm rays of sun after a long winter.

Then everything stops.

It’s not Sukuna who stands in your space, but an unknown sorcerer, wisteria mon stitched to the lacing of his armor. Memories of a night in flames fill your vision as you scramble to your feet and pull the blade from beneath your futon. It clanks against the bamboo flooring as you try to drag it upwards, holding it out with shaking arms.

You have no idea how he got past the guards, the gates, the walls. Past even more guards, past your servants and maids, without a single sound reaching you. For a moment, you think of Uraume, somewhere at the eastern coast, holding their own in Sukuna’s name.

The sorcerer laughs, something cruel around their mouth and the bend of their brows as he steps into the room, corners you against your broken wall.

There must be more, you think. More who’ve infiltrated your estate and killed and ruined everything. Once again, the Fujiwara Clan takes from you.

But Uraume isn’t there to save you. Neither is Sukuna. There is your frightened heart and your quivering arms and the blade that dances before you in your trembling hands. It’s heavier than you remember. Still, you grit your teeth and threaten the man.

With the King of Curses as your teacher, you have to hold your ground. Long enough for someone to come and aid you. You have to.

So when the man before you laughs and there’s footsteps echoing through the garden at your back, through the corridors ahead of you, you snarl as best you can and take your stand.

It’s a quick fight, if a bloody one. Shortly after you take your first swing and slice one of the beautiful paintings in two, more people arrive. Fujiwara soldiers clad in lavender and black, with blades far bigger than yours and far steadier hands.

You channel everything you’ve learned over the years, think of Sukuna and Uraume as you hold your ground and strike down five of your attackers. You attribute it to luck, mostly. The blade catching between the folds of their armor, slicing through unguarded throats and wrists and armpits. They underestimate you. You surprise them.

And in the end, nobody comes to help you.

Eventually, your enemy tires of it’s game. Enough bodies have fallen, your own skin now burning with cuts and bruises, your gown sliced at the arm, your leg wobbling with some fierce, blurry pain.

He grins when he approaches you and when you swing at him, he blocks it effortlessly, no more strength in your arms, the blade uselessly clattering and skirting across the room.

You think of Sukuna, his blood-eyes and his anger. How easily he broke the wall. Eyes flicking towards your only other exit, you try to make a run for it. Knee jerking and pain shooting up your hip with each step you take, your skirts gathered in your sweaty hands.

Your pursuer is in no rush. He has to duck through the hole in your home, steps out onto the veranda with a laziness only the powerful can hold. You climb over the fence that separates you from your gardens, run through the neatly cut grass, the sandy paths. You’re not sure if it’s meant to be as you halt before the stone statue, Sukuna’s four eyes cold and unbothered as they watch your demise.

The last thing you ever did to him was chase him out the door. The last thing you ever did was done in anger, despair and fear. Sukuna will never know how sorry you are. You’ll never hold his face again, never feed him another peach, never love him in cold moonlight.

They catch you at the base of the statue, a sudden force in your back pushing you forward, head crashing into the cold stone where pain explodes white and blinding.

This is worse than the time on the road. Worse because it’s your home, the place you’re supposed to be safe.

When they hold you down, you kick and scratch and bite at them. But what’s the bite of a mouse against the talons of a bird of prey. You’re a rodent in your self-imposed prison, trapped by circumstance and destiny. Found food for predators like them.

Despite the pain and the ache in your heart, you manage to scratch him, long nails raking over his face and leaving lines of blood in their wake. He spits at you, slaps you in the face hard enough you see stars.

But the killing blow does not come. Instead, they bind your hands, gag you because you keep biting, tie your ankles together with enough pressure your feet grow numb in moments. You struggle through all of it, stare at them with all the hatred in your heart and make it an effort for them every step of the way.

One of the soldiers picks you up, knocks over the collected remnants of the vase and the platter with frost-covered peach slices, trampled beneath heavy boots. You watch their fuzzy skin break, soft flesh squished and coated with dirt.

When they drag you through your home towards the gates, you can only stare as the bodies pass you. The guards are all dead, blood leaking in puddles from their bodies, weapons discarded and broken.

When you find one of your most attentive maids, ignorant or unwilling to your stubborn isolation, tears finally spill. Her gown is torn, limbs angled strangely as her eyes stare blankly towards you. Even the red paint of her lips is smudged, dragged across her pale cheek like yet another smear of blood. You never bothered to learn her name. Now you’ll never be able to remember her properly.

The whole estate is a graveyard. Soon, your struggles die down and you’re left sobbing and hiccuping as you’re carried out the gates. They throw you over the back of a horse, limbs tingling or already numb.

“Sure it will work?” someone drawls, eyes squinting at you as you fight the nausea of hyperventilation.

“He’ll come for her. Now we just have to be patient.”

You’re sure your ribcage will crack right open, spill your lungs and heart and sorrow right onto the road below and you’ll be relieved of this horror, this terror in your heart.

They’ve realized what the two of you have only learned recently.

Sukuna will come for you. He will tear the whole world down for you, search every corner of Japan to get you back. All his life he’s done so.

A very small part of you hopes he’s angry enough to abandon you, to let the trap stay empty, let the mouse starve and move on to bigger, better prey.

You’re the only weak spot he’ll ever have and you have no choice but to let them use you.

XII.

Your prison is a temple in the middle of nowhere.

As you’ve learned over the travel with your attackers, the one who lead the attack is no other than one of the five Empty Generals of the Fujiwara Clan. You’re shell-shocked but not stupid. He’s a powerful sorcerer, clever and resourceful. His expectation of the upcoming fight is realistic, if clouded by his own idea that Sukuna would hold back because you are involved. You do not correct him. Do not tell them of your fight with his King of Curses, that the hole in your house was his doing, that he left in anger, wordless and blind.

They trap you in the main hall of the building, like an offering on the shrine, in rope and talisman. The paper tags cover the walls, the shrine itself, even your wrists as if you could cause any harm to them.

You’re not sure if they’re just careful or frightened.

Someone told them who you are. But they do not know the extend of you. You don’t give them the satisfaction of showing just how weak you are compared to your husband.

Your tears have long since dried, the cuts scabbed over, the bruises now dark and blurry, wandering beneath your skin like lazy jellyfish.

None of the people around you approach. Nobody dares to address you. Not that you could answer them - not that you would.

So you stare at the floor, intricate tatami and dust.

The temple is old, and there’s irony in it - that you first found him at the shrine and he’s now supposed to die in one.

A small part of you hopes Sukuna doesn’t care. That he won’t bite, won’t be lured into this trap set in the shape of your body.

A far bigger part begs for his presence. For his anger to flare so hot and blinding that the General and his goons will not know what hit them. You dream of his hands that always knew how to hold you together, think of his smile that drags one corner of his lip further up than the other. The soft curls in his hair after months on the road. The taste of iron and salt on his lips. The growl that makes his chest vibrate and your body tingle.

You try to tell yourself that both of you always knew it would end like this.

Either you will die here, starved to death or killed out of boredom because their target won’t come. Or Sukuna will level this temple, fight with tooth and nail and claws and anger until they will kill him. Before your inner eye, you see them stripping him limp by limp, laugh and joke at his expense while he spits and bites and fights until his heart gives out among blood and gore and your tears.

Time turns liminal.

The shrine holds no windows and with the candles always burning, the outer world is as distant as your hope.

When the first scream echoes through the building, your body has become a shell. By now, all that holds you up are the ropes, braided fibers having dug deep enough to draw blood and turned your wrists an ugly purple.

It’s a blood-curdling thing, one that starts already too high and ends too abruptly. You’ve learned what death sounds like and with the echo still lingering, you know he has come for you.

The guards that are with you glance at each other, then you. And you, you smile, overrun by relief - hope, making your painful heart flutter -, vision blurry with tears that spill heavy and hot, but you bare your teeth and smile because Sukuna has come for you. He has come to find you, safe you, hold you.

How could you ever think he would abandon you. The same boy that ate from your outstretched palm, the boy that killed for you, that hunted down your attackers, the boy that offered you severed heads and countless flowers.

Your tears taste almost sweet as you struggle once again against your bindings.

The guards hiss something, threaten you in hushed words that do not even reach you. All you can hear is the chaos unfold. More screams, the screech of weapons and beneath it all, the roar of his power, his energy - as distinctive and particular as his fingerprints.

Without thinking you start to scream. Shout as loud as you can, whatever noise you can make into the halls until it echoes like the dying cries of soldiers. You hope he will hear you, will know where to find you.

But it’s not him who finds you next, but a whole group of soldiers, lining each side of you, weapons raised, jaws tense with determination.

For a flickering moment, you fear they will be enough to kill him.

Then, the world around you shifts.

Black and ruinous it consumes these holy halls, skeletons sprouting from the ground like morbid weed. This is how you know he’s close.

You’ve never been inside his domain, never fell victim to the wreckage of it all. Panic consumes the group around you, someone coming close enough to pull you by the hair, set a blade against your throat.

The metal is cold, chases chills down your spine.

Despite the knowledge that he’ll come for you, fear reigns supreme.

It locks your body into a frozen state, where your heart hammers away as if it tries to leave you too, your lungs straining to catch up.

The first attack that slices through the air cuts two of the soldiers clean in half, severs the rope that holds up your right arm. None of them have time to scream as your hand uselessly falls to the ground, the continuous strain forcing it into a limp appendage that dangles at your side. The man behind you loosens his grip, just enough to let you make a split second decision.

Sukuna won’t be able to do what he has to while you’re in the way. They were right about that and you won’t let them find any proof of it.

So, with all the strength you have left in you, you push yourself up, throw your head back where it collides with the man’s nose, a crunch where bone breaks. It leaves a dull throb at the back of your head but you’re already on your feet, following the line of rope that still has you tied down, trying to get away from the main forces.

The General at your side blindly lunges at you but you duck, make yourself as small as possible while you hear another soldier drop with the whirring of another slash cutting through the room.

Your legs shake as you stumble over skulls and ribcages. Horns of deceased cattle poke against your legs, cutting through the first layers of your skin as you scratch past them. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you think of the livestock he used to kill, the cows and bulls and sheep and chicken - anything to keep both of you fed.

Pressing yourself to the walls of the temple, where the surface is now sticky, dripping with blood, you try not to look at the carnage around you.

He’s come to save you, to bring you back to your blankets, to the red maple leafs and the peaches you get to slice each morning. He’ll hold you when this is over, will lick your tears away and love you in the moonlight, slow and fierce and devoted.

At your periphery, the General stares with fear in his eyes. You can see how he realizes that he’s already lost, that there’s no way he’ll stand, trapped in a domain as violent as this. But in that split-second he realizes his defeat, something else flashes across his face, skin pale, lips drawn into a thin line as his eyes skitter towards you.

With one rope around your wrist still tight, you have nowhere to run.

It pulls at you as you try to dart away, a force so vicious it rips at your shoulder, has you lose your balance as the bone cracks. The pain is immense, has you whimper and stare with teary eyes at the strange curve of your arm. You’ve seen it before, if only in enemies. You had no idea a dislocated shoulder was that agonizing.

When the General is upon you, there’s nowhere to go. He slashes at you, sword held high before he strikes you and you have nothing but your good arm to raise in defense.

It hurts, enough to make you scream again, but adrenaline makes you bear it, has you grit your teeth and kick at him. Far from strong, far from enough, but sufficient enough to have him halt for but a moment.

Behind him, at the other side of the room, beneath the torii that groans under skulls not previously there, Sukuna enters.

With shadow clinging to his form, he’s a curse taken shape. A demon in his own right. His name leaves your lips without a sound, you breathe it into the space between you and watch his face contort with something only you ever got to see.

Suspended in time, there’s nothing else but you and him. For a moment, all there is are his ruby eyes, scanning your body for injury and finding them. Relief floods you, hope and sorrow and utter love for the man who chose you every step of the way, no matter how difficult you made it for him.

His own face splits with a softness he’s only ever held for you, a devotion written in blood, a love covered in teeth marks and scratches.

Then he’s swarmed, rushed by all the warriors that previously entered, cursed energies running rampant as domains are cast, techniques revealed. For a long, lingering moment, the world shatters around you.

But among it all, Sukuna’s eyes are on you. You know all you need to do is hold out a bit longer, fight for him as he fights for you so you can make it to him he can make it to you.

So when he unleashes another rain of slashes, a slice through the air severs the other rope, nicks the General’s face, a part of his ear dropping to the ground as he howls.

Without hesitation, you run towards the safety of Sukuna.

You do not feel the blade until it’s too late.

It’s a frantic attack, uncontrolled, uncoordinated. You’re not sure where he’s meant to hit you, but the blade finds your midsection and pushes through until it comes out at the other side. For a heartbeat, you see it, protruding from your stomach like some metal thorn, coated red. Then, your own momentum pulls you away from the sword, pushes you further towards Sukuna because he’s the only safe space you’ve ever known.

You do not get to make it to him.

Blood soaks your gown. Dark and heavy it drags you to the ground and you only realize you’re on the floor when your head hits the straw. It’s not hard, doesn’t even intensify the dull ache that’s lingered there since you’ve fought your way out. You hear your heartbeat, loud and fast in your ears, like a rabbit it runs to catch up to you and for a moment, you can imagine it’s Sukuna’s footsteps, coming to aid you.

Something rings across your skull, rings in your ears, your body, the whole shrine. Something that tugs on you, tears at your arms and your legs, your chest and your very heart. You don’t realize he’s screaming until your eyes find him, world on a slant, a heap of bodies in his wake as he rushes for you.

You smile at him.

He’s come for you. You’re safe.

XIII.

Sukuna is too late. The distance between you and him insurmountable as you’re cut down. Slaughtered like an animal right before his very eyes.

The sound that tears from his chest is one he’s never heard himself make before, something raw enough to crack his very bones. As they come to fight him, he cannot look away from you, dropped to the ground in a heap of red silk and blood. He’s not sure where one starts and the other ends.

So, Sukuna slices and cleaves until there’s only his scream that echoes, his scream that rattles the very shrine as he sinks to the ground beside you.

You know it’s him before you can make sense of it. Strong hands that lift and pull you close, that hold your very body together as it falls and fails all around you.

When you manage to lift your eyes from the bare chest that’s warm and familiar, the smell of him all around you, Sukuna looks devastating.

You’ve never quiet seen him like this - raw and vulnerable, soft in all ways he’s never been. Tender like a bruise as he cradles you.

You sigh in his hold, feel waves of heat wash over you as your body convulses with shudders you can’t place. Here, in his arms, you’re safe.

The mats are drenched with your blood, it bubbles between the straw as he moves and can’t find it in him to be gentle.

Your body is a weak thing, always has been, so much smaller than his, always ever meant to love and give and trust him. When he cradles your form, lifts you off the floor and into his own arms, you make a strange sound, half sigh and half hiss, pain dulling your eyes.

He knows he’s too late when the blood pools in your lap in the span of a few staggering heartbeats. Still, Sukuna tries to stem the bleeding, stop it with a hand pressed to your abdomen as he’d done so many times before, if only for other reasons. Now, there’s warmth covering his hand, a spreading splodge of blood dying the fabric of your dress even darker.

You think you hear your heart break as you regard him. Or maybe it’s his as his palm presses against you. Not sure, nothing sure as you watch his haunted eyes, blurry red as he struggles against your wounds.

His last words were cruel to you, your last act was to send him away.

All you want to do now is kiss the sorrow from his face, hold him as close as he will let you. You want to apologize for not believing in him. You want to ensure he knows you always loved him. Still do. Always will.

Your eyes flutter, search for him in a feverish, unfocused way, pupils blown so wide there’s nothing else left to stare at. Tears clump your lashes together, lips pale as you open your mouth without making a sound.

“They don’t get to take you. You’re mine,” he says, uselessly and you, you have the nerve to smile at him.

Other times, he would shake you, call you names but now it breaks him.

Your hands aren’t yours. Neither are your arms. Or any part of your body beside your stutter-heart that feels like an abrasion inside your very chest.

Lifting your hands doesn’t fail by lack of trying, but your dislocated shoulder leaves one limb discarded and dragging on the ground, the other is crushed between his body and yours, hand uselessly curved across your chest.

You try to will your fingers to move, to sign something, anything. To show him you’re trying to be sorry.

But your body fails you, again and again, it grows cold and weaker with each heartbeat, vision swimming as you struggle to keep him in your sight.

He’s always believed the world was meant to break for him, meant for him to tear it apart - a gift of the gods or the world or just pure chance. He’d reveled in it, in the power to take and to ruin. But now, here, with you in his arms and your ribcage fluttering against his chest like a frightened bird, he wishes for nothing more than to be able to mend something. To stitch your skin back together, to heal whatever the blade has cut inside you, collect the blood that’s leaving you and pouring it right back into your veins.

Never in his life has he needed to heal something, to put things back together because the only one who ever broke something was him. Now, he quietly begs for it, even attempts to do just that, pouring cursed energy into your form as if it could fix what was broken. Nothing happens beside a low groan on your part, so frail he barely hears it.

There’s a pit in your stomach, a pulsing force pressing forward, only hemmed by his strong hand.

You can feel your life leaking out of you, realize, with absurd clarity when everything else turns blurry and vague, that you’re dying.

Fear spikes.

It has your body tremble in his hold, a finger twitching but not by your will.

Panic surges like your blood and you’re consumed by the thoughts and realization of not being able to share your thoughts. He’ll never know you’re sorry. Never know you love him, with all you have you love him. You’re his.

He cannot speak as he cradles you closer, his hand against your wound and your face pressed against his chest. His heart hammers for the two of you, loud and strong and relentless and he wishes it would work like this. That something for once was that simple or just enough.

But nothing ever is in this world. He’s known it since he was a child. Violence will only ever be answered with violence and death always begets death. The weak do not survive, only the strong do and they only ever do so with brutality. All his life Sukuna has fought for his place in this world. He’d thought keeping you in his shadow was enough.

Safely tugged away in a corner of his dominion, with anything you could ever ask for, he’d considered you untouchable. Sukuna should have learned from the farm, should have learned from the whispers and the tales.

I love you, you want to say.

I’m so sorry I send you away. I’m sorry I got angry. I’m sorry.

Nothing of this is your fault. You did what you could and I was too weak to keep up with you.

You taught me to fight and to live and to love.

Stayed when nobody else did.

Promise me this won’t break you. Promise me to keep Uraume safe.

I’m yours. I’ll always be yours.

Some darker part of you, the one with his edges and his claws, thirsts for revenge.

Kill them in my name or at least in my memory. Make them pay for what they took from us. For the farm and the maple tree, the peaches and all the mice they have killed before, plug the feathers from each black kite you find until all the mice are yours.

Above you, Sukuna sobs.

He’s never cried before. It’s an offensive feeling, water leaking from his eyes, nose all congested and throat so tight he can’t speak anymore. Sukuna tries to breathe through it, hates how you get all blurry and dull when the tears cloud his vision. Even with four arms, he has no hand to spare to wipe them away.

He can see your hands tremble, knows you well enough to tell you want to talk to him, hates to realize you’re too weak to lift even a finger.

All this life of shared silence, of deft hands and a language only the two of you speak - suddenly, you’re rendered voiceless despite it all.

At the corner of your vision, darkness lurks. Like a predator it creeps closer, dulls your senses until even the pressure of his hands on your body become something muted and faint. Your eyes wander along the curve of his brows, along his sharp cheekbones to a mouth you never tire of kissing. There’s tension in his jaw, making the muscles at his chin twitch. A vein pulses at his throat, right beside the ink that slithers like a snake with each breath he takes.

His eyes are the color of ruby. Of blood and the leafs on your favorite tree. The color of love.

Death takes you quietly.

All the things you wanted to say stay stuck in your throat, hidden by cold hands.

All the things he wanted to tell you fall on deaf ears when he finally finds his voice again, choked by dread.

“I’m not angry at you. I never could be, not for long. I just needed some time, some air, some space. I didn’t mean for it to take so long. I only ever tried to keep you safe.”

He recognizes the look in your eyes, that dull stare that sees nothing at all.

Even in death, you look frightened.

“Don’t leave me here,” he dares you, spits the words in your face as if their viciousness could reach you, a command you can’t ignore, not even in death.

But your body is still, that rodent-heart of yours no longer hammering against your ribs. In stillness, in death, you look even smaller in his arms that are too large, his hands that are too brutal.

He almost drops you with the shock of it.

He’d always thought you’d be his demise, his downfall, the one who would eventually usher in his own death. He never thought it would be him.

He’d called you the death of him and he’d been yours without even realizing.

Girls like you are not meant to fall in love with beasts like him.

Haunted by your very own Oni.

Sukuna stares at the puddle of blood in your lap, where it drips, drips, drips from your silk gown into the ground, where his hand is covered in our gore, shining in the light of the flickering candles.

He’d called you his Onryō in jest. Now he begs for you to return to him. Even as a ghost, even as a demon.

“You’re mine. You’re mine and I’m yours. So come back to me,” he asks of you, shakes you gently in his arms where your body jostles around, head wobbling before it falls to the side, rest against his chest as if you would only take a quick nap.

“Haunt me, torment me, anything! Come back to me.”

There’s no breath ghosting against his chest, nothing to warm your body as you lay there, limp and lifeless.

“You were supposed to be the death of me!”

XIV.

The rivers of Japan run red.

The Land of the Rising Sun dies a slow death. An agonizing one.

A blood moon each night as the body toll rises.

You do haunt him, in dreams. There, you can speak and you beg him to join you. You feed him peaches and you hand him flowers. He watches you sing beneath a red moon and always wakes, before he can lay a hand against your skin.

Out of all the pieces he’s made of, you were the only soft one he possessed. And without you, there’s nothing holding him back. Nothing on his side, at least. Only that eventually, gradually, there’s no more people to kill. No sorcerers who challenge him, no grand clans left standing who could attempt to oppose him.

It’s a lonely place, the top of the world, the top of the food chain.

All the mice and all the black kites are gone and he can feel himself starving, on boredom and loneliness. All that keeps him running is utter hatred for the world and that’s what eats him alive.

Kenjaku finds him on a gloomy day.

Voice soft and words eager - he knows how to speak to him. Knows what to say to make him listen, to make him hesitate with killing just long enough to hear him out.

And the proposition is a good one.

Revenge never truly ends - not for Sukuna, not after you.

He thinks he might be able to join you, somewhere, wherever you are - and return when the world has healed the wounds of his doing. He’s not convinced it ever will. The Fujiwara Clan is gone, so are all the Empty Generals and the Troops in the name of the Sun and the Moon and the Stars and whatever else they threw at him.

He can come back, avenge you as long as he wants, over and over, brutalize the world that has brutalized him.

Thunder rolls in the distance when Sukuna lays down his weapons.

Forgiveness is for kinder, wiser men than him.

He’s your Oni. A monster.

A beast.

And the rule of beasts demands violence.

And as Kenjaku smiles and settles before him, Sukuna realizes that you truly were the beginning of his end.

Only you could have this impact. To be haunted by you, even in his own death. To chase you, even after life.

Only you could have ruined him so thoroughly.

And only you could push him to ruin the world in your name, so completely that one life time just isn’t enough.

[inclusivepopptimetimeplay]

SORROW AND DESPAIR

MORPHEOUS X LUCID DREAM FEM!READER

Summary: Centuries together. It feels like so little time to an endless. Convinced of eternity, only for the universe to show you otherwise. \

WARNINGS: ANGST, ANGSt, ANGST, mentions of death

Word Count : 1389

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The rain fell in thick, relentless sheets, hammering against the once-vibrant meadows with a persistent rhythm that seemed almost mournful, each droplet striking like a tiny, accusing finger against the fragile remnants of her joy. The sky, an endless expanse of slate gray, pressed down with oppressive weight, making the air heavy and difficult to breathe. Every flower that had once gleamed with impossible, radiant colors now sagged, petals blackened and curling as though attempting to shield themselves from the grief-laden air. The creatures that had once flitted about her world—bright-eyed companions of laughter, of mischief, of impossible joy—stumbled now with a vacant, shuffling hunger, their movements jerky, unnatural, the glimmer of life extinguished from their eyes. Even the streams, once crystalline and gurgling, ran thick and sluggish, carrying with them shadows of despair that pooled in every hollow. The wind carried the scent of wet earth, of decaying petals, of lost moments; it pressed against the heart with a persistent insistence, echoing the grief that weighed upon her soul. It was a reflection, a mirror, a landscape twisted not by chance but by the raw, unyielding shadow of sorrow and refusal.

He had lingered at the edge of this fallen world longer than any mortal—or immortal—should, his gaze sweeping the expanse with the patience of centuries. Each raindrop seemed to mark the passing of time itself, each shiver of the wind whispering the inevitability of what must come. Death—or the end of this particular existence—loomed with a precision that sent shivers through even him, an Eternal who had walked through every age and witnessed every conclusion. How does one speak to someone whose heart has known centuries beside your own, someone whose soul has been entwined with yours, knowing that the form in which you will return will be strange, altered, unfamiliar? How does one restore the brilliance of a world when the hand that shaped it with care is slipping away, leaving only shadow and echo behind?

He stepped forward at last, his presence parting the rain like a ripple through thick mist. She did not notice. She sat by the fractured fountain at the center of what had once been a luminous garden, knees drawn to her chest, hands loosely resting upon them, shoulders stooped under the invisible weight of endless years. The candies she had adored—frozen grapes, spun sugar delights, the inventions of her ceaseless industry—lay scattered, untouched, as if they had lost their very purpose. The factory she had constructed to supply these delights stood idle, its machinery groaning and creaking like a wounded animal, refusing to fulfill its joyful function, each unmade treat a monument to her despair. The wind picked up, stirring the ruins, lifting petals and leaves in slow, sorrowful spirals that made the garden seem alive with mourning. Even the birds had abandoned the sky, leaving only hollow silence where song had once thrummed.

“I have come,” he said quietly, voice nearly lost amid the storm, though he poured all the weight of centuries into it.

She did not look up.

His voice remained calm, measured, though within him a storm churned, roiling against the composure of the Endless. “I see what has become of this place. I see it as you do.”

A subtle tremor ran through the air. One of her zombified companions lifted its head, eyes vacant, before returning to aimless wandering. He did not flinch. He had seen countless dreams decay, yet hers bore a sting uniquely intimate, a reflection of his own undoing.

“I will not be here forever,” he whispered, softer now, a thread of melancholy woven into each word. “I will change. You must know that. It is the order of things, the turning of all wheels. You must accept it, though I do not expect it to come easily.”

She did not respond. Not a glance, not a murmur. Rain clung to her hair, veiling her face, hiding any expression he longed to see. And yet he waited, silently, respectfully, the patience of eons etched into every line of his being. Grief could not be rushed, even by the Endless.

He advanced slowly, the earth beneath him soft, soaked, yielding. Even the flowers seemed to shrink from him, curling further inward. He extended a hand, hovering just above her shoulder. “You need not endure this alone,” he said, voice fragile, almost breaking. He was not prone to fracture, yet centuries had carved vulnerabilities, subtle and deep, into him. Her sorrow gnawed at him, and he had no remedy that could truly suffice.

A faint tremor passed through her fingers—not yet a signal of returning life, but enough to acknowledge him, perhaps.

“I will not leave entirely,” he murmured, “even if the world demands it. Even if I must take a new form, I will remain.”

The rain intensified, as though the dream itself wept, washing away the vestiges of brightness into muddy rivulets. He knew he could not compel her back into light; all he could do was remain a sentinel within the storm, speaking truths she needed to hear, however bitter.

When he departed at last, it was with a sorrowful grace. She remained, left with her mourning, the ruined flowers, the idle factory, the listless companions. He passed from that dream, from that life, and the cosmos shifted. The Endless continued their eternal march, and death claimed what it must.

He returned, not as Morpheus, but as Daniel. The rebirth was neither joyous nor terrible—it simply was. He gazed upon the chaotic, fractured realms he now tended with a pang of unanticipated sorrow. Threads of forgotten dreams unraveled, fragile and shadowed, awaiting his careful tending. And among them, one remained frayed, one thread almost beyond repair: hers.

He approached it with meticulous care, guided by the experience of walking through all time, all grief, and all joy. The gates to her world were twisted, locked tight by grief, yet he entered as a gentle observer, knowing the patience required.

The rain still fell, heavy, persistent. Dead flowers drooped with resignation. Companions moved listlessly, hollow, bereft of vitality. She sat at the center, knees drawn, head bowed, shoulders hunched beneath the burden of centuries. And she did not look at him.

Daniel knelt at a careful distance. He did not touch, did not demand attention. He spoke softly, letting words drift through the storm. “I have returned. I am still me, though my shape has changed. I am here. I have not gone.”

Her fingers twitched—perhaps acknowledgment, or merely a flinch from the wind. He remained patient, silent in vigil, offering the endurance of centuries.

“I cannot restore all that has been lost,” he admitted, voice nearly consumed by the storm. “I cannot revive the flowers, the laughter, the light… not yet. But I can remain. I will remain, in whatever form is needed.”

A subtle shudder moved through her. A sigh, almost absorbed by the rain, escaped her lips. She did not look—could not yet. Grief, loss, the inevitability of what was and what would come, held her fast at the heart of ruin.

Daniel remained. He spoke little, allowing silence to weave around them, companionable yet aching. The connection endured, fragile but unbroken. Perhaps she would never smile again, perhaps she would never tend her candies, perhaps she would never walk among the vivid blooms of her old dream. But she was not gone. And he would wait. Always.

Rain fell relentlessly. Companions shuffled, flowers sagged, and yet, beneath layers of loss and shadow, a slender thread of light persisted. One day, it might bloom. One day, the dream might awaken.

For now, he sat. Watching. Waiting. Speaking softly when needed, Morpheus’ voice echoing through Daniel. The weight of eternity, the sorrow of endings, the stubborn, agonizing beauty of enduring love—he bore it all, for her, with patience older than any living being. The dream, though dead to most eyes, had not claimed her entirely.

In that stillness, in that quiet torment, they remained—bound by centuries, by love, by the unspoken certainty that neither death, change, nor despair could wholly sever them.

The storm raged on. The rain never ceased. And still, he waited, the new form of an ancient god, faithful to the last, fragile light of her heart, even if she could not yet look upon him.

[inclusivepopptimetimeplay]

Amongst the noise

Pairing: DOFP!Logan Howlett × Art & Meditation Teacher!Fem!Reader

Word count: 1101 

Written with teacher Logan in mind

---

Someone was yelling down the hallway again.

It was hard to tell who—probably a pair of telekinetic twins arguing about whose turn it was to float the breakfast plates. The walls rattled faintly with their bickering, and somewhere downstairs, someone’s laughter burst like a firecracker.

You didn’t even look up from the stack of sketchbooks you were grading. The noise was constant; it came with the territory. The mansion was always humming with life—power surges, slammed doors, bursts of energy that cracked through the air like weather. You’d learned to breathe through it.

Logan hadn’t.

He stood by the door of your classroom, arms crossed, jaw tight. The distant chaos rolled right through him, and he absorbed it like static. You could almost see the pulse at his temple.

“Rough morning?” you asked without turning.

He exhaled through his nose. “Kid tried to turn the training room floor into lava. Almost succeeded.”

You looked up at that. “Anyone hurt?”

“Not unless you count my boots.”

You smiled, soft but real. “I can make you tea.”

He grunted, but his eyes eased a little. “That stuff you make smells like a candle.”

“Exactly,” you said. “You could use one.”

He didn’t argue, which was its own small miracle

When you returned from the teacher’s lounge with two cups, he’d already settled into the corner chair—big frame folded in, like he was trying not to take up space in a room full of watercolor paintings and ceramic mugs.

You handed him the tea, still steaming. “Chamomile and sage. Good for the nerves.”

“Don’t have nerves,” he said, but drank anyway.

You laughed. “You do. You just don’t like to admit they get tired.”

He gave a low sound that wasn’t quite disagreement. Outside, a crash echoed down the hall—glass, maybe a window—and someone shouted an apology.

You didn’t flinch. “That’ll be Ororo’s class. She’s teaching lightning control today.”

“Hell of a place to work,” Logan muttered.

You leaned against the desk. “And yet, here we are.”

He watched you as you wiped a streak of paint off your wrist. You always had some on you—your own kind of battle scars. You taught art, meditation, and whatever version of peace fit inside a mansion full of mutants still learning to trust themselves.

“Kids calm down with you,” he said. “Even the loud ones.”

You nodded. “They don’t need quiet. They need somewhere safe to be loud.”

He looked at you for a moment, then said, “You ever get tired of carryin’ all that?”

You smiled without looking at him. “You ever get tired of pretending you’re not soft?”

He huffed. “Not sure ‘soft’ is the right word.”

“Maybe not,” you said. “But you care. You try to hide it, but the kids see it. You think they keep coming to you for discipline? They come because they know you’ll protect them.”

He looked away, out the window, where a cluster of students was sparring under Jean’s supervision. “I’m not the one they should come to for comfort.”

“Maybe not,” you said. “But you’re the one who reminds them what strength looks like when it’s not cruel.”

That landed somewhere deep. You saw it in the way his shoulders shifted—how he didn’t fight the compliment, just let it sit between you.

The bell rang, shrill and immediate. In seconds, the hallway filled again—footsteps, voices, laughter, the occasional burst of uncontrolled telekinesis that made the lights flicker.

A small hand knocked on the door, and a young student peeked in. “Ms. Y/N? Ms. Monroe said I should come here to calm down.”

You gestured them in, smiling. “Grab a brush. Pick a color that feels like right now.”

The kid nodded, eyes wide, before hurrying to the art table. Logan watched them dip the brush in green paint, making wild, circular marks across the page.

“You really think that helps?” he asked, quietly enough that the kid wouldn’t hear.

“I know it does,” you said. “It gives them permission to exist without being perfect.”

He tilted his head. “You ever try your own advice?”

You looked at him, and the corners of your mouth lifted—not in amusement, but in something like understanding. “Every day.”

After the student left, Logan stayed behind again. The sky outside had turned orange, and the air smelled faintly of ozone—someone must’ve lost focus in flight practice.

He was quiet, watching the last of the kids run past the windows. The mansion looked alive, its noise softened by distance.

“This place gets to me sometimes,” he said finally. “Too much energy. Too much noise. Can’t think straight.”

You poured the last of the tea into his cup. “Then you come here.”

He nodded, thoughtful. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

You walked over, resting a hand on his shoulder. His muscles eased under your touch, the tension unwinding just enough to breathe.

“This room isn’t quiet,” you said. “But it’s steady. That’s what you like. Steady doesn’t disappear when the noise comes.”

He looked up at you. “You really think I need that?”

“I think everyone does,” you said. “Even you.”

Dinner was chaos, as usual. Someone dropped a tray; someone else set the tablecloth on fire. Through it all, Logan sat at the end of the table, half-listening to Bobby and Kitty argue about who’d win in a snowball fight.

You caught his eye from across the room. He didn’t smile, didn’t nod—just looked at you for a moment longer than necessary before going back to his food. You knew what it meant.

Later, when the mansion had gone still enough to breathe, you found him outside near the edge of the trees. The night smelled like rain and motor oil.

He didn’t say anything as you came up beside him, just handed you his flask. You didn’t drink, just held it.

“You hold a lot, Logan,” you said quietly. “Not all of it has to be heavy.”

He looked at you, and there was something raw and unguarded in his face. “I don’t know what I’d be if I let go.”

You reached up and brushed your thumb along his jaw. “Maybe you’d still be you. Just a little lighter.”

For a long moment, the night swallowed the mansion’s distant hum—the laughter, the engines, the life—and left only the two of you standing there in the dark.

And though the world behind you never truly went quiet, it didn’t need to. Some peace doesn’t ask for silence.

It just asks for presence.

[inclusivepopptimetimeplay]

Hiiii can I get Plug!Ony x Black!Reader?🫶🏼

Title: “Good MF’N Gas Only”

Pairing: Plug!Onyankopon × Black!Reader

Setting: Modern AU — Ony runs a low-key, high-quality weed business

Word count : 1020

(Sand asks I’m all open)

@babykilo @5starsativa

———-🐇🐇🐇———-🐇🐇🐇———-🐇🐇🐇-

The knock came just after sunset—two taps, pause, one more. Ony’s code.

You sighed, tossing your bonnet off and checking the mirror before opening the door. He was already leaning on the frame, hoodie up, that slow grin tugging at the corners of his lips.

“Evenin’, Ms girl,” he said, voice smooth like smoke itself. “Got what you texted me for.”

You crossed your arms, trying not to stare at how the gold chain on his neck caught the hallway light. “You always say that like it’s a secret mission.”

“It kinda is.” He lifted the black backpack slightly. “Can’t have folks knowing where the good gas comes from.”

You rolled your eyes and stepped aside to let him in. Ony never came empty-handed; your living room always smelled like pine and citrus for hours after he left. You swore half your neighbors thought you ran a plant shop.

He kicked his sneakers off at the door, moving through your place like he owned it. “You cleaned up?” he teased, eyeing the freshly vacuumed carpet. “You expecting company?”

“Yeah—my dealer,” you shot back.

He chuckled, low and warm. “Mhm. Keep talkin’ like that and I’ll start taxin’ extra.”

You laughed, but your stomach fluttered. You hated how he did that—said something casual that made your pulse skip. He started unpacking: glass jars with neat little labels—Lemon Cherry Gelato, Zkittles, Gary Payton. Every time he opened one, a new wave of aroma filled the room.

You whistled. “You moving product or curating art?”

Ony smirked, cracking open another jar. “It’s both. See, this one—” he held it out, and you leaned in, catching the rich, fruity scent “—this my favorite. Smooth high, no crash. Perfect if you got stress.”

You raised a brow. “You say that about all of ’em.”

He grinned wider. “Nah. This one reminds me of you.”

That made you freeze for a second, heat crawling up your neck. You hid it by reaching for the jar. “So I’m fruity and potent?”

He leaned in closer, eyes dropping to your lips for half a beat. “Nah. I said smooth and hard to forget.”

You blinked at him, biting back a smile. “Boy, you tryin’ to flirt or make a sale?”

He laughed, deep and genuine, setting the jar on the table. “Can’t I do both?”

You tried to focus on rolling instead of his voice. He watched you work—his gaze steady, the faint trace of admiration he never said out loud. When you finished, he took the blunt, inspecting your handiwork like it was part of his job.

“Clean,” he said, nodding. “You been practicin’.”

You shrugged. “Can’t have you thinkin’ I’m an amateur. Besides you not always gon be around if I’m gonna smoke I gotta learn to roll kinda pitiful to always have to rely on someone to roll for me ”

“You said it, I didn’t” He lit it, took a slow pull, then passed it back. The smoke curled between you, soft and hazy, mixing with the sound of lo-fi beats from your speaker. For a while, you just sat in silence, passing it back and forth, watching the city lights blink through the window.

“You ever think about quittin’?” you asked quietly. “The hustle?”

Ony exhaled slowly, the smoke leaving his lips in a steady stream. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “But folks gotta eat. And I don’t sell to just anybody—only people I trust. Keep it clean, no drama.”

You nodded, understanding. The streets had changed, but the game was still the same—everybody trying to survive however they could.

“You ever think about leavin’ all this?” he asked, tilting his head toward you.

“Yeah,” you said, a little too fast. “But every time I say I will, I end up textin’ you again.”

He smirked. “So you hooked.”

“On your product,” you corrected, though your grin gave you away.

“Mhm.” He shifted closer, his leg brushing yours. “And maybe a little on me too.”

You scoffed but didn’t move away. “You wish.”

“Maybe.” His tone softened. “But I like that you keep callin’. Most people just buy their ounce and dip. You actually talk.”

“That’s ‘cause you got therapist energy,” you joked. “Low-key weed counselor.”

He laughed again. “Ain’t nobody ever called me that before.”

“Take it as a compliment. You calm, Ony. It’s like… even when the world’s loud, you don’t let it touch you.”

He looked at you then—really looked. “That’s ‘cause I found peace in the small things,” he said quietly. “Good people. Good smoke. Good vibes.”

You felt your chest tighten a little at that. You wanted to say something back, but the words got lost in the haze. Instead, you leaned forward, reaching for the lighter again. His hand brushed yours—slow, deliberate. Neither of you pulled away.

“You good?” he asked, his voice low, almost a whisper.

You nodded, though your heart was racing. “Yeah… I’m good.”

The moment hung there, suspended in smoke and silence, until he took the blunt from your fingers and placed it back between your lips, eyes locked on yours.

“Then hit that,” he murmured. “You stressin’ too much.”

You exhaled with a laugh, trying to hide your nerves. “You always tryna fix me.”

“Maybe I just like seein’ you relaxed,” he said, leaning back. “You light up better than any strain I got.”

You groaned playfully, tossing a pillow at him. “That’s corny. You corny.”

“Corny gets results,” he said, dodging easily. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

You couldn’t. You didn’t want to.

The smoke, the music, the warmth—it all blended into one slow, perfect blur. You didn’t notice when you started leaning against his shoulder, or when his arm settled around you like it belonged there.

By the time the blunt was nothing but ash, the room smelled like laughter and lavender and peace. Ony looked down at you, a small smile tugging at his lips.

“You fallin’ asleep on me?”

“Maybe,” you mumbled, eyes heavy. “You comfortable.”

He chuckled softly. “That’s ‘cause you in good hands.”

And just before you drifted off, you heard him add, low and almost tender—

“Good gas, good company. That’s all I need.”

[inclusivepopptimetimeplay]

gojo with nonchalant reader

Pairing : Gojo x nonchalant! GnReader

(Send asks I’m all open)

Gojo was a very hyperactive person. He knew it; everyone around him knew it It drew people in and pushed people away (ahem, Nanami). He was also very handsome. Gifted with the prettiest hair and the most gorgeous eyes. All in all? A presence you can’t really ignore. Love him or hate him.

Or so he thought.

He met you in his first year as a teacher. You were brought on as a teacher for the second-year students at the time. He had heard of you before, ofc, a powerful special grade with a most interesting power and domain.

The power to absorb power for yourself and turn into cursed energy. Your domain, a vacuum that sucks the cursed energy out of the victim until they cease to exist. It was a fascinating ability, and so he saw it fit to gush to you about it and ofc ask you a million questions about it.

You reacted … blasé about him. Him!!

Gojo Satoru, the honored one, is gushing about and showing interest in your ability. It shocked him. His praise is priceless; he’s the strongest. And yet there you were, sitting at your desk, grading papers, answering him like he was a nobody. So he introduced himself again,

“You must’ve misheard me, I’m Gojo. You know six eyes, honored one, the strongest sorcerer alive.”

“Yes …I can see that. Did u need something?”

He was shocked. Devastated really. No one had shown so little interest in him before (Nanami didn’t count; he knew Nanami for a very long time, and he wasn’t a stranger). It was strange.

And so he did what Gojo did. He kept coming. More grand shows of power, more explosive behavior, more well, Gojo. And with everything he brought, you just sighed, spoke to him like he was... some novice and sent him on his way, ,and that was how it was for years.

Yuuji looked at his sensei, presenting several packages of mochi and sweets to the second-year teacher who had arrived with the second-year students.

He was confused? He had never seen his sensei so desperate for attention before. It was naturally given to him, so he never really had to try.

“Hey, Megumi, tell me something … why is sensei acting so desperate?” “Huhh?”

Megumi looked over to see what his guardian was doing before sighing heavily, Yeah, he does that. He always gets attention, so when he encounters someone who doesn’t freely give it to him, he does …..this

“It’s kinda …hard to watch ….. is he like bothering them?”

“Huh? No, they love it. Believe  it or not, those two are married.”

“What!!!!! Is Sensei married? How come I didn’t know ?? To them? -he pointed- But they look so …. .uninterested.”

Megumi shrugged, “Yeah, that’s just how they are, believe it or not, they are extremely content right now.”

Yuuji looked over at the teacher's face, it was sooo…..blank. They simply took several of the packages, walked over to their student, and gave them to them, leaving Satoru on his knees, tears running down his face. “Really? I would’ve never guessed”

[inclusivepopptimetimeplay]

Lemon meringue Pt 1/3?

Summary | Fresh from Wakanda, Bucky Barnes is welcomed into Avengers Tower with open arms by Steve, where he meets the resident team chef and intelligence officer.

Warnings/Tags | Homely!reader, everyone is alive because I said so, Fluff, Angst, Winter Soldier. Past actions, safety net designation, fury being a pain in the ass, and self-deprecation

Word Count | no idea I typed this into Tumblr real quick, so it’s not proofread either. I'll put it in the doc and go over it later.

edit: did it. its 1618 words

A/n: Want something specific? Ask away, I do special readers and gender neutral readers.

————🐰🐰🐰—————🐰🐰🐰——————

The Trip to Avengers Tower was fast in every sense of the word, Wakanda’s jets being built for speed, conciliation, and warfare.

That didn’t stop Bucky from thinking it was the longest trip he’d ever had the displeasure of being on.

He was just cleared by Wakanda, a free man no longer weighed down by words beaten into his very being and commands hammered into his skull.

When Shuri had told him Steve was asking him to move into Avengers Tower, he did not know how to feel. The building belonged to Tony, a man he had wronged thrice over. Once by taking his mother, twice by taking his father, and thrice by taking a trusted friend. He didn’t feel comfortable intruding into his space like Hydra had forced their way into his, but Steve persisted and told him it was all sorted out and driven by the motion to please, as was beaten into him, he reluctantly accepted.

The jet touched down onto the landing pad, and Shuri -who personally escorted him- turned to look at him, happiness in her face along with reluctance and fear for the man she had grown to know as a dear friend.

“So, mista white wolf, here we are …out into a world where ur hands have lain many a rest …are you ready to rejoin society?” Bucky looked over at her, his eyes going back and forth between the jet hangar and Shuri’s eyes. “Do I really have a choice?”

Shuri scoffed and stood up. “‘This is not Hydra; you are a grown man, a free man, and all the choice is yours to make. If you wish to go back to Wakanda, I will turn the jet around, and we will leave.”

He looked toward the hangar and took a deep breath. There was no use in delaying the inevitable. Running away now after all the trouble was made to make him better would be a waste, so he stood up, grabbed his duffel bag, and sighed.

“Better now than never,” he was inched forward by Shuri patting him on the back, “there you are, a brave warrior, you will surely make Bast proud in your courage, come the captain awaits you.”

They both walked down the open doors of the jet out onto the large roof where Steve, Natasha, and Sam stood waiting. Two on guard and one waiting patiently for a life he thought gone. A life that tethered him to a world long past and a life that gave him everything.

Shuri walked up confidently to the three heroes, a smile on her face, “You three look very serious for such a joyous occasion, but everyone has their own light, I suppose. Now, as promised one Sgt James Buchanan fully healed ….of hydra I mean he is still severly damaged- she suddenly became very serious looking all three in the eye- I am leaving him in your care …you  best take care of him you hear?”

Steve walked forward with a look of determination and gratitude on his face, “Thank you, Shuri, and it goes without saying that I will take care of him.”

She scoffed and smiled, “Yeah, you better-she then turned to James and gave him one final hug- you take of yourself now, James. I am one call away, don’t hesitate.” Bucky stiffened, still not used to such a caring touch

“I will thank you, Shuri. “You four take care now, eat well and get lots of sleep,” she walked back into the jet, waving as the hangar door closed behind her.

The atmosphere became tense as Bucky stood there facing the three Avengers nothing to be said from his side, and nothing to be said from Sam and Natasha either. He could feel Steve’s eyes on him, and he started fidgeting out of nervousness.

Sam abruptly turned around and walked off the roof, Nat following him, leaving the two super soldiers behind.

“Bucky …..it’s good to see you” “yeah, likewise…I guess”

Steve walked over and hesitantly threw his arm around his shoulder, feeling the tension in Bucky’s body. “Don’t worry, I won’t let anything happen to you here, I swear it on my life.  Come, let’s get you settled.”

The two men slowly walked off the roof and into the elevator to go down into the building. Thick and uncomfortable was the silence between them as Steve stole glances at his once mighty, now empty best friend.

80.

75

60

55

42

30

24

22.

The 22nd floor is where the elevator stopped, opening up to a large living room with open windows to show the New York skyline. The first thing that hit Bucky was the smell of food.

The smell of herbs and spices, meat, and baked goods perfumed the whole floor, hitting him in the face. How long had it been since he had a home-cooked meal? He couldn’t remember, not that he remembered much anyway.

The two men stepped into the open floor, Sam and Nat already sitting in the conversation pit alongside a comfy Wanda, a chatting vision, a Jenga-playing Clint, a book-reading Bruce , and a Poptart-eating Thor. All heads shot up to look at the two men who entered the room.

No words being said was the worst turn the situation could have taken. He expected dirty looks, words of protest, rage, of disdain. But there was none of that. Only silence.

Steve cleared his throat and went to open his mouth to speak, only to be cut off by a voice from the very large kitchen. “Not a word, Rogers, go sit down,” a female peered through the doorway, Apron on, wooden spoon in hand, covered in flour.

Steve, without a word, went to sit on a love seat in the large pit, leaving Bucky standing there without direction. He looked over at the female who gazed upon him like a scientist looks at a microscope….

“James ..welcome to Avengers Tower….come, I’ll show you your room.” She placed the spoon down and walked away towards the halls, a silent yell for him to follow. He gazed over at Steve, who nodded towards her, and he reluctantly followed.

The halls had paintings of fields, foods, and animals plastered over the walls. 5 rooms. They walked past 5 rooms before they stopped, and she opened the door at the very end of the hall.

“This is your room. It has everything you need. Except for food. You won’t be forced to do anything. We have a therapist in the building if u ever so wish ….the gym is on the 24th floor …and anything you want you just have to ask friday. You can get yourself settled and lunch is in ..-she looked at her nonexistent watch- 5 minutes ..do what you will”

She left him there. He was confused. Were they not going to tell him what to do? They were giving him space, at least he thinks that’s what they are doing, giving him a choice …. it was nice.

The room was large. A bed, its own bathroom, large windows with dark curtains, a bookshelf with 40s books? And a TV from the 40s. The room was made for his enjoyment,to be a place of comfort.

It was weird. Going from a large iced container to a warm, spacious room. It was almost intimidating. For 5 minutes, he wasn’t sure he was going to go.

The avengers ate, drank,and filled their stomachs. The silence between them was noticeable but not acknowledged.

“So……we have a serial killer in the building.” “Sam-” “No, don’t Sam me. That guy almost killed me, or did we all forget? What am I supposed to do ?play buddy-buddy with him?” “I need a drink.” “It’s 11:45 am.” “Hardly matters. I’m Asgardian, I live long.”

They argued against themselves as the woman stood leaning against the counter, eating a piece of pie, the insistent ringing of her phone -fury, no doubt calling to nag her into next week- getting on her nerves. She sighed and placed the plate down.

“Sam, you have your own floor, you don’t need to see him. No one is saying you should forget but do bare in mind he was mind controlled by a bunch of Nazi egomaniacs, Thor our alcohol has no affect on you nor does time really but it’s too early if you want to drink return home-, Bruce you can get back to your lab please bring Tony lunch, Wanda yes you can go into my room no you cannot touch my hair dryer because you don’t know how to use it. Vision …..Go in there with her, I guess. Clint I don’t know, go people watch. and Steve….you can stay. I have a formerly brainwashed man 5 doors down, frightened. I don’t need the bickering, not on this floor. Take it somewhere else. Nat, please bring that pie to Pepper, thanks, management. Now, all of you, skadoosh.” She shooed them away with her hands, everyone dispersing, leaving their plates and the argument behind.

[inclusivepopptimetimeplay]

Want something specific? Ask away I do special readers and gender neutral readers

mediaㅤ: dc/mcu, dexter, fnaf, the marauders, Harry Potter, law & order svu, GOT , HOTD, Anime, Supernatural, the boys , CW shows, etc

What I write

Fluff

Angst

Everything in between

Test example to see how I do

Tumblr is a place to express yourself, discover yourself, and bond over the stuff you love. It's where your interests connect you with your

What I don’t do :, mxm (ion know nun about that sawrii I can only write from a female perspective and try to make it gender neutral) smut

What I WONT do : any dark fics, dark kinks …keep daddy kinks , pet play, hybrid , omega verse, dbf where the character watched the reader grow up , Grape, step , cheating (my chest hurts thinking about it 😔)

What’s the difference ?

Dont : probably never wrote before ,wouldn’t wouldn’t write it for myself, but I am open to doing it if I like the ask or if it’s something u really want

Won’t: ill never write it. Ever. Its either morally wrong, I’m uncomfortable with it, it’s something I don’t like , or I’m traumatized from it (looking at u omega verse. too many overlooked tags 😔)

[hel1nn]

Saw this adorable cutie while scrolling on Instagram,her name is leen and she's two years old her Instagram account is full of her adorable cooking videos. My heart melted when i checked her profile she's so precious may god give her and other Palestinians the peace they deserve,if anyone can, go and donate her i will put a screenshot of her account and put the link of her account below or if u cant then pls reblog this post

The account

Please reblog this post. Follow her,share her content,it won't harm u in any way 🩷

Update: Whoever is here help the lovely women in the comments of this post,donate her if u can and if not then share about her situation ♡

[easyvirgin-deactivated20160413]

happy Thursday the 20th

[askjennaflorida]

I’d have to wait months or even years for another chance to reblog this, so why the fuck not?

[mx-mythical-deactivated20260319]

next days you can reblog this on a Thursday the 20th

August 2015

October 2016

April 2017

July 2017

September 2018

December 2018

June 2019

February 2020

August 2020

You know, just in case you wanted to set your queue for the next 6 years

[tricornking]

Last one till June 2019, get it while it’s hot!

[hal-s]

May 2021

January 2022

October 2022

April 2023

July 2023

June 2024

February 2025

March 2025

November 2025

[hadeelfamily]

Help My Two Daughters Escape From Gaza War

Hello everyone..

I am Hadeel Mikki from Gaza, Palestine and this is my husband Waseem Mikki, my daughters Mira and Nadia, My mother Tahani Mikki, and my two brothers.

Donate to Help My Two Daughters Escape from GAZA WAR, organized by MOHAMED E M Mikki

Hello everyone.. I am Hadeel Mikki from Gaza, Palestine and this is m… MOHAMED E M Mikki needs your support for Help My Two Daughters Es

Here is our story - Ever since the morning of the 7th of October, none of our lives have been the same. Everything in our lives has been disrupted. The first night since the beginning of the war, our home got partially destroyed because of a very close Israeli strike.

Despite the damage, we stayed home for another two weeks until suddenly and without preparation, we were told to evacuate our homes and we’d be in danger. From this moment our endless journey of suffering and pain began.

Throughout this journey, we later Knew that our home of three floors where my family and my uncle-in-law family live. My uncle family of 5 members did not leave our home and it has got bombed directly and completely destroyed and all of them were martyred.

My father-in-law his heart could not bear all this pain and all this grief; so he got sick. He found himself living the darkest of realities and through the scarcity of medicine and lack of medical resources in the hospitals, he passed away.

My husband, Waseem, was very sad, and my daughters missed their grandfather, who used to play with them and bring them toys.

The situation was very difficult for my children, and my eldest daughter, Mira, kept crying and wanted to go and see her grandfather, and she did not realize that he had gone and would never return.

So we moved in with my husband, children, and I, full of great sadness, with my mother and two brothers, who are the only survivors of my family; They are all that I have left, and I hope that we will all escape with our lives outside of war and destruction, and that my children will survive. We do not want to lose them.

Our future has become unknown, our present is unbearable, unlivable by human standards. We’re stuck in a harsh reality each moment. We live in a constant state of sounds of explosions, bullets raining down on us, artillery shells, and warplanes dropping destructive missiles on us every day.

In addition to our ongoing suffering to this day: lack of resources, humanitarian aid, medicine, and food. We can barely find food for my girls, as they eat one meal during the day and spend the rest of the day crying.

This is my daughters enjoying a life before 7th October.

But now my princess Mira stay alone all the time remember her previous life, her school, her friends, our beautiful life, and all places we were visited with Mira and Nadia as a beautiful family and still cry I need my school, I need my friends, I need my toys.

This is the cry of a mother and father. We hope that our children will be given the opportunity to live in peace and security and have access to food and a safe life like the rest of the children of the world everywhere.

Now I am pregnant in the 4th month , and I don't know how I will get the baby, there is no hospitals , no pregnancy care , no food , no clean water, so I am worried about this pregnant with these circumstances.

Maybe this fundraising effort is like a beacon in the darkness, our sole source of hope that we hold onto tightly. I urge the world to listen to my plea and the sorrowful cries of my Gaza kin. We desperately require the helping hand that can dry our tears and lead us to safety.

Your contribution is more than just money; it's a chance to reconstruct life and illuminate a brighter future. Join us in shaping a tale of hope, as we rely on your support to begin afresh.

The purpose of the fundraising campaign

The objective of this fundraising drive is to secure the passage of my family, comprising my husband, two daughters, mother, two brothers, and myself, through the Rafah Crossing to Egypt. Presently, this journey necessitates £5000 per person. This campaign stands as our sole opportunity for survival, and I earnestly implore your aid during this pivotal juncture. Rest assured, I will furnish you with a detailed breakdown of the expenses, vowing transparency, and lucidity throughout.

Donate to Help My Two Daughters Escape from GAZA WAR, organized by MOHAMED E M Mikki

Hello everyone.. I am Hadeel Mikki from Gaza, Palestine and this is m… MOHAMED E M Mikki needs your support for Help My Two Daughters Es

Breakdown of Expenses

• Rafah/Egypt crossing: €5000 per person (a total of €25,000 for five adult family members)

€2,500 per child (a total of €5,000 for two children family members)

• Minimum living costs: €5000

Vetted by:

@90-ghost

Help My Two Daughters Escape From Gaza War

Hello everyone.. I am Hadeel Mikki from Gaza, Palestine and this is my husband Waseem Mikki, my daughters Mira and Nadia, My mother Tahani

@northgazaupdates

Help My Two Daughters Escape From Gaza War

Hello everyone.. I am Hadeel Mikki from Gaza, Palestine and this is my husband Waseem Mikki, my daughters Mira and Nadia, My mother Tahani

Thank you all for your kindness and support...

Hadeel Makki

[hadeelmekki]

Please reblog the post about my campain, You will find out on my profile

Every reblog can make a difference in my family's life 🙏

[eastofedeanarchive-deactivated2]

are there really people who dislike dean? like, that's dean winchester. that's the guy who knows every scooby-doo episode. that's the guy who loves apple pie and burgers. he's a bit of a clean freak. he is scared of flying. he is a great brother. he's good with kids. he loves rock music. he can cook. he wants to help people. he is a (girl) dad. he is the sun and a beacon of hope for people in need. he is the best at his job. he loves his mom. he is a mother. he is connection and he is compassion. he is the narrative heart. the show stars and ends with dean. all because he cared, all because he loved and loved and loved. dean who feels things more acutely than any other human. dean who's done everything for love. dean who is the most caring man on earth, the most selfless, loving human being. if you don't like him look inwards.

[shymagnolia]

so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god

[shymagnolia]

okay so i just got my dream job??? a week after applying to it?? and now i’m thinking….maybe this is the good luck post

[flagellant]

…..not even six hours later i got an offer of a well paying full time long-term job with free room and board in queens in nyc, allowing me independence and a way to escape an abusive situation and an unhealthy environment

likes charge reblogs cast, folks, this is the good luck post

[coffee-or-hot-cocoa]

i need all the help i can get for finals

[finnglas]

Hey so

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know. 

This might be the real one, y’all.

[eleanorreadsandwritesromantasy]

At this point literally anything helps.

[mango-mingi]

For my upcoming mid terms, semi finals and finals. Please.

[kimlockholmes]

Eh fuck it let’s do this not like i’m gonna lose anything anyways