KUROTSUCHI WEEK
DAY 2 (belated)
Young man before Maggot's Nest/Maggot's Nest
Sorry I am late, couldn't finish this yesterday.
BORN IN DARKNESS
Summary: Headcanons that became a short drabble... that then turned into a weird kind of fic, kinda.
Mayuri's youth, descent into madness and rebirth
Tw: trans Mayuri, mentions of blood and gore, mentions of surgery and complications of surgery
Wc: 2.1k
Link to Ao3
Kurotsuchi wasn't his name.
Not back then.
Born last to a minor noble family, he had five older sisters and a mother who prayed for a son that would never come. Not the way she expected anyway.
As for his father, Mayuri could count with one hand the number of words he ever spoke to him.
He grew up bored, understimulated, and was promptly labeled lazy.
Mayuri Kurotsuchi, lazy...
I know, it seems impossible for such a busy bee, but remember, back then that wasn't his name.
When he was a little older, 6 or 7 years of age and allowed to wander on his own, he finally discovered the meaning of passion. He developed a voracious curiosity that consumed everything in its path. He observed people as they walked past, as if they were a different species he could only understand from the outside. Their motivations seemed so vacuous, uninteresting. How could anyone saunter meekly down the path made for them by others without straying towards the many wonders uncharted? Did they not hear their calling? Did they not feel their pull?
Experiencing life, in its most literal sense, was Mayuri's greatest joy. Delving into the secrets of nature, getting lost in the woods, watching the ants carry heavy loads for hours without tiring, and the birds build their nests in twigs and straw.
But observing was only the first step. Then came poking and proding, a myriad questions that brough forth challenges and scenarios. How will this creature react if I put it in front of this other one? Will they fight? Ignore or devour each other? Ah... fun!
His hands deep into the earth, wet, cold. Touching and squeezing, fingers running along textures rough and smooth. Dissecting half-eaten carcasses to discover their insides, cutting, licking, tasting plants and fungi...
Despite the rashes and intoxications... it all amused him to no end. Nothing could stop him from wanting more answers for the questions never ceased multiplying inside his head.
As interesting as the outside world was, the inner universe of books called his name soon enough. He coveted their insides and excelled without effort, what took others years to learn, he mastered in days.
Basic education was imposed on him due to his status, and further academic pursued denied due to his sex.
But that never stopped him. He was small, skinny and fast. The perfect combination for a thief of knowledge. At night he would slip past the doors to the library and pore over heavy tomes until his eyes turned red and dry and his brain buzzed in ecstasy.
Mayuri was different. Other. He knew it from the very start. His peers couldn't understand his words, and he couldn't comprehend their motives. The adults were mildly stimulating when debating thought-provoking topics... but became awfully dull after Mayuri proded for more depth.
At the age of twelve, when the demands and expectations of womanhood became inevitable, and an arranged marriage loomed ever closer, he took his scant belongings and left his parent's home. No one thought to search for him. They probably agreed he would have made for a very poor bride anyway.
It was during his time roaming the Rukongai that he learnt he was strange in yet another way. He felt hunger. Not an issue seen often in the commoners around him.
What skills had been advantageous for stealing books allowed him now to find sustenance, but they also placed him at a disadvantage when caught or confronted.
Mayuri wasn't a great fighter, not in battles of brute strength anyway.
He had to develop other ways to win. So he became cunning, clever, sneaky. After all, getting dirty was never a problem for him.
As he grew and faced new challenges, so did his reiatsu and his control over it. But he always chose to avoid senseless brawls if possible, he had much more fascinating uses for his time.
In his quest to prevent further squabbles, he managed to weasel his way into a small apothecary, and convince its elderly owner to let him work for her. There he learnt the art of blending chemistry with botany to develop new and wonderful substances that could cloud the mind and alter the most complex physiological processes.
He developed a reputation as an inventor of trinkets and remedies. Some of which remedied the existence of particularly bothersome people and only needed be used once. The beaten and bullied gathered en mass e at his door to find respite from their aggressors and line his pockets with gold.
It was during this period that he began experimenting with oils and pigments. He always knew presentation was a performance, a ritual of deceit. Like Kabuki actors who painted their faces to portray their characters, so people wore facades made of shadow and guile to achieve their means. It was the most gloriously cathartic experience for Mayuri to discover that staining his skin in black and white allowed him to drop his own mask and be unapologetically himself for the first time in his life.
For a long period, his life was good. He learnt and evolved and enjoyed what he did. And then... then he met her. A goddess of death clad in shining down.
Senjumaru Shutara sought him. She wanted to meet The Chemist she had heard so much about.
Standing in her presence, knees buckling under the heaviness of her might, sweat dripping down his temples followed by her unwavering stare... it was the very first time Mayuri understoond he wasn't the superior being in the room. It was an odd feeling being seen by one such as her. Dangerous. Addictive.
The Great Weaver, known throughout the entire Soul Society for her incredible skills. An ageless, all powerful being, shortlisted to become part of Squad Zeron one day... she wanted him to work for her. And despite knowing it to be most unwise, he simply couldn't say no.
Under her guidance, he joined the recently created Shinigami Academy, graduated with ease, and joined the Gotei, becoming part of her group of proteges.
She opened his mind to endless possibilities, to resources, abilities and influence he could have never dreamed of. It wasn't long before her love of self-improvement and gold rubbed off on him. She became his mentor, his mistress, his obsession.
Time lost all meaning when they were together, working the nights away, pushing each other further towards greatness and away from the light.
She held the first scalpel that ever bit into his skin, and dragged it across his chest to leave the first scars he never wanted to erase.
Their research escalated quickly and went beyond anything that had ever been done before, together they flirted with the line between morality and pragmatism, revelling in their achievements.
Was it infatuation that kept him awake at night and dreaming about her in the day? Was it love?
Mayuri would never find out.
As he would never find out why her name was never on their studies. Was it her way to commend him for his prowess? It if was, her flattery was his damnation.
The day after she ascended to the Heavens to sit to the right of the Soul King, the minions of Hell came to drag him into darkness.
They'd gone too far. Their experiments broke the very important rules of the Sereitei. Only it wasn't them, because it was just his name. Accused of playing god, of trying to bend the laws of nature, Mayuri was sentenced to live amongst Maggots.
If she cared, she never let it be known.
Mayuri hated her.
Hated her for her betrayal, for the longing, for the taunting lull of her voice still ringing in his ears, makin him want to shove his fingers into them until his eardrumbs tore.
Like many before him and most after, Mayuri lost his mind in there. He cried for many moons, cursed and ranted to himself. He forgot his own name and that of his forebears and ripped flesh from bone in endless bouts of madness until his blood was spent.
No one helped him. No one. He was forsaken. Alone. No one came to his aid. No one even came to visit.
No one except for one. A jailer. Tall and blond and exceedingly annoying.
A jailer that found him delirious on the cold floor of his cell, feverish with blood loss and sepsis.
A jailer that healed the holes at the side of his head, returned him his hearing and left him maimed.
Mayuri remembered regaining his conscience, looking up at sombre green eyes, as the blond recited his enchantments over and over. An irresistible urge spread from the tips of his fingers to the back of his neck, raising goosebumps along his arms. An exquisite urge to gauge those pity-ridden eyes right out of his skull.
The jailer spent an inordinate amount of time with him after that day, sat crosslegged on the ground right outside the bars. He brought him food and drink that was left untouched, but also games, puzzles, mathematical paradoxes...
Yet Mayuri knew an experiment when he saw one, even if this time he was the subject.
The jailer was smart. Too smart. Like Mayuri, he seemed bored, understimulated despite his freedom and he seemed to have made it his life's purpose to stop him from dying.
He relentlessly visited every day, even if Mayuri never replied, even if he didn't acknowledge him. He sat there and talked to himself, made silly jokes and laughed at them, worked on his own research and fed Mayuri tiny morsels of information intended to pull him out of his shell bit by bit.
As the years passed, Mayuri's heart began to beat again, and the darnkess receded ever so slightly. Enough to let him feel a tiny sliver of glee whenever the jailer came to visit. Enough to let him speak again and help him with his projects.
He had been right, Urahara was smart. His work was complex and exhilarating, and Mayuri found himself absorbed by it. Gigai and gikon. Mesmerising. His mind flooded with dopamine once again, trapping him in a new obsession that would last for years to come.
Urahara saved his life simply by being there. Offering his company, irritating as it might be, gradually pulled Mayuri out from his despair. That's why Mayuri could never forgive him. Not for helping him, not for posing as a friend and definitely not for leaving him.
When he ascended through the ranks of the Omniskido, Urahara stopped visiting.
He didn't need Mayuri anymore.
It seemed to be the theme of his life, holding people's interest only for as long as he was of use. Once they had what they came for, it was as if he never existed.
First Senjumaru, now Urahara...
From every stabbing wound to the chest, Mayuri grew colder. More independent. More detached. He convinced himself he had to.
And his craving for a real connection grew and twisted until it birthed a perversion. That of creating someone who was at his beck and call, someone who would never not need him. Someone who could never leave.
In complete isolation, Mayuri wished again for death.
Unlike everyone else, The Itch wouldn't leave him. The unbearable restlessness that never slept. The boredom that turned his mind inside out. It made the very sound of his breaths a torture. And had he been able to reach inside his chest, he would have ripped his lungs right out from his ribcage.
But somehow yet another creature caught his attention. A little boy. Clever. Quick.
He slipped past the bars of his cage when he was being chased. Chased for his size, for his smarts, just like Mayuri had been when he was young. In the safety of his shadow, he worked in silence, trapping and tinkering with small creatures that lurked in the dark.
It was then that Mayuri realised, there would always be someone in need of him.
It was in the depths of the most terrible institution in the Sereitei that he was born again. He rebuilt himself piece by piece, limb by limb. Like a masterpiece only made better through kintsugi, he covered old scars with glistening gold and painted his skin bone white and soil black.
He became who he was meant to be. Metamorphosis.
A new name, one that would bring fear to the hearts of even the most seasoned warriors. A name that would make him into the man he was always meant to be. The Genius. The Madman.
Decades later, the jailer would come back, a white haori hanging from his shoulders, to make a proposition.
"If I were to die, it would all be yours."
Mayuri couldn't help but laugh.
He had been right.
He was needed again.
And this time,
He was going to take back everything he was owed.
