immediately after an interaction: i have GOT to get more normal oh god i need to get more normal immediately i have to get more normal or they're going to hunt me down they're going to hunt me down and flay me for sport
during an interaction: and why not put a little spin on it? why not add some conversational zest?
“Yes yes, your religion (one that isn’t Buddhism) is valid, very real, all your Gods all exist :) yes, yes, the Christian God is real— yes yes, Krishna and Rama and all the other Hindu Gods and Goddesses are real, yes yes— oh, those other Gods you say? We believe in them too! They’re real.
— But just know that your Gods all worship our Buddha :)”
the strongest sorcerer of all time refuses to have a weakness...even if it's you
synopsis: ryomen sukuna is not meant to have feelings for anyone. let alone the best friend sleeping in his bed, the single person in this suffocating estate who isn't scared of him. from starving to being double stuffed, you stayed by his side throughout all of it. so why can't he seem to do the same for you?
pairing: heian era!Sukuna x f!reader, Choso x f!reader
wc: 10.7k
content: mdni!! heavy angst and smut!!!! character death, regression, blood/violence, true form sukuna, he's a real asshole guys lmfaoo, mean and possessive sukuna, fingering, titty sucking, unprotected piv sex, anal sex, double penetration (each hole), creampie, accidental pregnancy, sukuna has ISSUES, reader loves him anyway, emotional hurt, no comfort, sukuna crashing out, sweet choso is also here, garden sex, mentions of marriage, happy ending for reader
a/n: this is a commission by my sweet amazing angel @martianzmars !!! love you cutie pie :3 the sukuna art is by @winterrbluess <3
What was the worth of a flower?
It faded. Wilted. Petals falling off with time if they weren’t trampled on first. They didn’t last. Just another weak, fragile thing that sprouted only to die.
“Why?” He plucked off a delicate petal, nose scrunching in disgust.
You frowned at him, and he passed the detestable thing back to you. Swallowing his scoff and spreading his thighs further apart on his throne, propping his face up with one of his arms. Must you end the day with some boring fight over a petty thing like that? He watched the way your fist tightened around the crooked stem from the corner of one of his bottom eyes.
“It’s medicinal,” you muttered, gesturing to the cut on his arm.
He rolled his eyes, flexing his bicep before letting his own energy wash over him, healing himself without even an ounce of exertion.
He didn’t need some puny, pathetic flower to do it for him.
Didn’t need your help.
What would it take for you to realize that?
You weren’t kids anymore. Not twelve years old, skin and bones, needing you to collect herbs and wildflowers to cure him from some cold or sickness. Both of you had grown up.
And yet, you were still here, still following him, trailing after his path of destruction, holding onto his sleeve. Because you needed him.
That was just the way it was.
“My lord, you still have-”
He shut up his aide with a single wave, grinding his back molars as he waited for the next person to enter the throne room. He resented his title. Resented the room itself.
They were supposed to be a symbol of his strength, things he was given simply because he scared people. The men with money shoving material possessions, lands, titles, women, whatever they thought would satiate him, offering up their servants and daughters alike if it meant their heads would be spared.
Sometimes it did.
But others weren’t always lucky. And his mood was, ah, how did you put it?
Fickle?
His flames shifted with the wind.
And your attitude this afternoon wasn’t helping.
You dismantled the rest of the flower yourself. Moodily perched on the edge of his lap, distracting him while he tried to listen to the whines and pleas from his subjects. They always had something to complain about, even when they got on their knees trembling to ask him for more.
These days, you didn’t even look up when he slaughtered them. Just twirling the stem between your fingers as the blood hit the floor.
Your mouth was moving, like you were speaking, but no words came out. Pouting a little, your brows pulling together as you pried the last petal off and let it hit the ground.
“What are you doing?” He grumbled, and you shrugged your shoulders, not looking back.
“Playing a game,” you responded softly, barely reacting when one of his free hands grabbed your waist through the top layer of your kimono.
He grunted his disapproval, but you didn’t flinch.
The rest of the world was terrified of the four-armed monster rumored to butcher and burn those who dared to cross him. Serve their bodies up on a spit roast.
He said they hadn’t experienced true hunger if they condemned him for a little cannibalism.
You didn’t fear him though. Saw past the scars and disfiguration that made even those beneath him turn and whisper.
“What kind of game?” He tch-ed, tempted to take the plain stem now from you.
“I asked if you love me,” you admitted, and he couldn’t decide if this was some crude attempt at teasing him. His fingers sank deeper into your side, pulling you deeper into his lap.
He nodded towards the scattered petals on the floor, the blood slowly spreading and threatening to seep into them. “What did you land on?”
“You love me not.”
Sukuna’s mouth twitched at how you said it. As if you gave an idiotic child’s game weight.
But he didn’t protest. Didn’t say no or scoff.
Instead, he pried you off of him, placing you on the floor, barely bothering to check that you wouldn’t be stepping in blood before he started towards the exit.
“Kuna,” you started in a soft voice, the irritatingly intimate making him freeze for a split-second, enough that you corrected yourself. He'd only criticized you for it once, snapped at you to refer to him properly when he was at his court. “My lord.”
“My chambers tonight,” he announced, not looking back at you.
There was a rhythm to the routine. A monotony he found dull and draining, a familiar itch creeping under his skin at staying here this long. He wanted back out in battle. To find some other sorcerer claiming themselves capable to cleave down.
He made up his mind during his next meal, stuffing his mouth full of meat, fork stabbing clean through the fine cut of someone he never got the name of as he planned out his next departure. Some irritating white-haired woman kept trying to talk to him from across the table, claiming to be from some clan he couldn’t care less about.
An advisor tried to quell his annoyance, but it was like another bug in his ear, whispering that she could be useful as a concubine, as if Sukuna gave a shit. A flick of his fingers was all it took for the room to finally fall silent – even if the wall was now splattered with blood.
Perhaps they should be grateful he gave them messes to clean. Stable employment meant they wouldn’t starve. That their children wouldn't.
Not everyone was so lucky.
You kept eating next to him, taking a long sip of your wine before excusing yourself a few moments later, leaving without looking over at the still body in the seat next to you. You weren’t apathetic like him, but you would hold your tongue no matter how much his anger hurt you.
Did it splinter your soul to see him kill?
Sukuna had no way to know.
Conversations weren’t something so commonplace between the two of you anymore. So much had changed, enough that he tried to convince himself that you were simply a body that he shared his bed with.
He disliked the other concubines. They always expected things from him. Wanted clothes or jewels or power. Occasionally, he considered making you his wife, if only to put the others in their place.
To remind them that they would never occupy the space by his throne. That they would never have children that would sit on it.
His new advisors, these men who swore they had intelligence simply because they were schooled, they all urged him to. Begged him to select someone from a clan to have a child with, for his legacy, but he refused.
Why would he want a child? Especially one that would be like him?
He’d carve out his own legacy.
You were waiting for him by the time he returned to his room, cross-legged on the floor, squinting at a poetry book. Neither of you had learned to read as a child, but he’d begrudgingly hired you a tutor – and just happened to sit in on your lessons to learn himself. Supervising, he said. You didn't argue otherwise, even if your brow subtly arched up at his looming presence, his bottom set of arms folded across his chest while the tutor instructed you on how to write, teaching you everything from haikus to the hidden meanings in famous poems.
Sukuna had found it unfortunate when he had to kill him, but it wasn't his fault that the fool had tried to put a hand on your waist, no matter how innocent he claimed it was.
You had been mad at him though, huffing and shutting yourself in your room for four days before you started speaking to him again.
Calling him a child, like you weren't the one clinging to this life he created.
“What are you thinking about?” You asked, drawing him out of another pointless memory of the past.
“You left dinner early,” he dismissed your question entirely. He didn't want to answer it. Why dredge up another reason for you to be annoyed with him?
“I prefer to eat without the smell of iron,” you said, in that measured voice of yours, playing this game of skirting around the real subject.
“You used to eat dirt,” he pointedly reminded you, and you threw your book at him. A rare reaction, your hurt flickering across your face for a few fleeting seconds before you shut back down, maybe remembering that he beheaded a woman for much less hardly fifteen minutes ago.
“You ate bugs,” you argued, brows furrowed in frustration before you glanced away from him.
“And now we both get full meals that you don't even finish,” he sharply replied, the edge to his voice echoing as you flexed your jaw, forcing yourself to not respond to him.
A poor imitation of the meek submission the other women who flitted around in their fine kimonos were well-versed at.
“My apologies, master,” you eventually murmured, your mockery not going unnoticed as you lifted your chin to look up at him from the floor. Dragging your eyes over his bulky frame, muscles stretched taut over bone, skin littered with scars and tattoos.
And still, you stared like he was just the weakling he used to be. That faint flicker of sorrow persisting even when he had practically handed you a soft life on a silver platter.
Sukuna scoffed, squinting before he begrudgingly took two steps forward, beckoning you to stand with a single gesture.
You obeyed. Dusting off the skirt of your robe as your hand reached for the tie – but Sukuna beat you to it.
Skin slowly exposed when he peeled off every layer, removing piece by piece until you were completely bare for him, the light and shadows from the flames dancing across the shape of you while you stood still. Waiting for some appraisal, for him to do with you as he wished.
Your position was always defined by him after all. As his friend or his fuck.
He tossed you onto the mattress, his top set of hands pinning your thighs to your chest, watching your eyes widen as his own loosely-fastened robe hit the floor.
Love was a waste.
It meant nothing.
You said it to him once, declared it under the moon, knees curled against your chest as you looked at him like that. But that had been before. Before the estate and the esteemed treatment that came with a title and land and leverage on all the people that previously treated him with disgust. When it was still simply you and him surviving.
He didn’t say it back. Didn’t do anything other than grunt, tempted to call you a brat for saying something so stupid.
“You're rather distracted tonight,” you murmured, fingers frozen just before they could touch his face. He flinched from it – pulled back before you could make contact.
“You’re irritating today,” he grimaced back, even if you were the least annoying part of his life. The only thing that wasn’t dull and dreadful. The only one that actually made him feel alive.
He waited for you to whine that he didn’t really mean that, but your eyes just searched his for silent confirmation.
You knew better than to expect him to say it out loud.
And despite that (pretty) little pout of frustration flitting across your face, you were still wet when he dipped a single finger into your dripping warmth.
All your feelings fading into the mush of pleasure, eyes rolling back with a simple crook of his thick finger, lazily swirling it around to see your reaction. Not much could compare to the adrenaline of a fight, of sorcery and raw strength, but a faint shiver of exhilaration ran down his spine at the sight of you arching your hips up to make sure he was knuckle-deep, lips falling in a lewd moan as he added another digit.
He ignored it though, shoulders stiff as your walls tried to clamp down on him.
“Were you this wet when you were on my lap?” He dryly mocked, not particularly caring how mean you might call him for teasing you later.
You always forgave him.
Whatever he did, you found a way to justify it.
You weakly nodded, chin tilted back in the air as your lashes fluttered, gasping for air that didn't seem to go in.
“Answer me, brat,” he grunted.
“Yes, m-my lord,” you moaned, and it was only when they parted he noticed your pretty lips painted the same shade as his hair.
“Sukuna,” he snapped, sick of correcting this stubborn new habit of yours. Sure, it had been who insisted on it in the first place, but it was annoying to remind you of what you were and weren't allowed to do.
You swallowed hard enough for him to notice, but you still didn't say it.
Held your mouth closed, and he begrudgingly closed the gap to crash into it, claiming it in a greedy kiss, his tongue in your mouth while you threw your arms over his shoulders. One hand ending up in his hair, scratching at his scalp the way you knew he liked, even if it was another thing he'd never admit out loud.
You tried to wrap your legs around his waist, to push back against the palms still pressed against your thighs, but he didn't let you budge, refused to allow you to try and lock him in some more personal position.
For all the times he'd been called a freak, a curse, for these four arms, there were many more he found them quite useful.
He crooked his fingers deeper, harder, and your body was tensing automatically, your focus fading as you discovered yourself lost and floating in the force of his strokes. Your features softening, catching a fleeting hint of a smile before you were squirming again in his grip.
Using your body to beg him for more.
Sukuna did what he always seemed to do. Oblige you.
Pulling his fingers out the second he thought he stretched you out enough, although it was always a tight fit when it came to him, but he paused, collecting your slick and rubbing it across your puckered hole in preparation for his real main course.
You were the only thing he wanted to devour tonight.
Drinking up the way you whined, wiggled your hips as he dipped his finger deeper in your ass, pushing past the initial resistance to open you up. Taking his time before adding another one, keeping a keen eye on your wrecked expression.
“S’torture,” you slurred, weaking moving your arm trying to grab one of his cocks and guide it to your entrance. “Wan’ you.”
Drunk on him.
He snatched your wrist before you could touch though, letting out a low growl before dropping it over your head.
“Then beg,” he mocked.
“Please,” you immediately whispered, eyes wide and wavering. “Please, Kuna.”
Sukuna couldn’t stand how much he felt like a slave when you spoke like that, lips pretty and pursed and painted that infuriating fucking color.
He dragged his fingers out with a heated huff, wiping them on the sheets and glancing down to see how wet you were for him, glistening in between your thighs as he kept them pinned in place.
“Brat,” he dryly name-called, but his top cock was already throbbing as he slipped it through your soaked folds. Your fingers rushed to tangle in his hair, brushing it back and holding it from his face like he wasn't about to turn you into even more of a blabbering mess.
Glossy eyes hazy with arousal, anticipation as he slipped inch by inch inside, his other cock throbbing, aching to feel you too. Veins pulsing, abs tensing as he felt the sinful way you squeezed and sucked him in.
“Hngh,” you groaned as his bottom tip started to grind against your ass, already starting to feel full as the first one found that spongy part at the back that left you scrambling for your senses.
“You're a wreck,” he tch-ed, like he wasn't already resisting the string tugging tight in his own stomach, restraining himself as his second cock finally slipped inside you, the slow burning stretch leaving you frozen, shuddering as you tried to take him without falling apart.
“Y-you,” you gasped, lashes fluttering, stray tears collected in them as he pulled out just to push back in a rough thrust that made a soft squeak escape instead.
“Finish your sentence,” he murmured, dark and dangerous. He wanted to bite. To sink his teeth into your skin until it left the kind of bruises that would mark you as his to everyone who saw.
“It’s your fault,” you huffed, half a whisper, half a whimper.
Sukuna scoffed, rolling his eyes and his hips, stuffing you too full to speak.
One of his hands groped at your chest, grabbing and squeezing, watching them bounce in time with each thrust, leaning down to wrap his mouth around your peaked nipple. Tongue swirling over the top, sucking hard, toying with you while you unravelled underneath him.
You tugged at his scalp, but he was too focused on his current task, lapping and licking at the hardened bud, feeling the soft tissue of your tits while your cunt clamped down around him in response.
Making all sorts of noises that were hardly coherent, moans that hung in the air, the light of the fire dancing across the walls as he fucked you until you forgot all about your attitude earlier.
His fourth hand flitted between your thighs, finding your clit with ease. Sukuna knew your body inside and out. Memorized without making an effort too. He supposed it was simply time.
Rubbing rough circles over that bundle of nerves, well-aware what you liked, what was too much, what would make you whine and cry and try to wiggle free. Although, right now?
Double stuffed with that dreamy look in your eyes, half-lidded and hopeful as you stared up at him while he took you in both holes?
You would accept anything he gave you.
Painting patterns he'd done a thousand times before across that sensitive spot, pinching and playing with it until your thighs were trembling, toes curled as your lips were stuck permanently parted in a broken plea of his name.
You came so easily, he almost found it cute. That soft mind of yours melting with sloppy thrusts, stuffed too full to so much as think while he fucked into your stretched-thin holes, molded into the shape of him. Wrecking you with the way his hips slammed down, threatening to bruise your fragile body.
But you took him how you always did.
With greedy moans, nails raking down his shoulders and slicing through his skin. A little allowance he still gave – one he waited to heal until the morning after every time.
And then he was snapping too, warm ropes of cum spurting out and filling you up, his abs tensing before the abrupt release, his breath briefly growing ragged as his chest heaved.
Most of the world was ugly. A disgusting, boring place he couldn't stand being stuck in.
But the sight of you as he pulled out, dripping with his seed, kiss-bitten and barely held together, shivering as you struggled to catch your breath, well, it wasn't awful.
He didn’t mean to cum inside of you.
A simple accident. He stared indifferently at the cum leaking out onto the sheets, a prick of annoyance setting in at the thought of needing a servant to come change the bedding again in the morning.
It wasn’t the first time he slipped up. But you both were fairly certain years of starving had left you barren. Unable to conceive when you couldn’t even menstruate properly even now.
There was a time when he didn’t think you’d even survive this long. Nights that he was convinced morning wouldn’t come.
Where the snow had collected in your hair and ice clung to your lashes, where he couldn’t tell whose wounds were worse, watching you shiver and shake and cry for someone he could never be.
But it never happened – and you were here now, shivering underneath him for entirely different reasons, sweat making stray hairs stick to your forehead as you belted out one last whine of his name.
He let go of you, dropped your legs, untangled you from his body. Standing up as his cocks still sprang up in the air, rolling his shoulders back as you tried to sit up straight, clearly sore judging by the way you shuffled and readjusted.
“Lay down,” he ordered, but you got down on your knees in front of him anyway. Took his top cock in your smaller hand, still covered in cum and slick, gingerly licking it clean before he pulled you off by your hair. “Do you ever listen to me?”
You pouted at him, but you obeyed this time, pushing off the floor with your palms and crawling back into his bed, pulling the blankets over your bare body.
Sukuna grunted, using a discarded piece of his own clothes to clean himself off, unable to stop his lower eyes from snapping out to watch you while you tossed and turned, impatiently waiting for his return.
Irritation bubbling back up at your wide-eyed stare, how you bit your lip at him before squinting, not saying anything when he yanked the covers back and got in too.
He never understood what was going on in that head of yours.
“Perhaps we could take a walk around the garden in the afternoon,” you hopefully suggested, your fingers hesitantly interlacing with his, readjusting to lay closer to him. He let you do it. Indulged you when you squeezed his scarred and calloused palm.
“I leave tomorrow,” he informed you, his mouth twitching down as your face fell.
He didn’t have to, he supposed. The world revolved around his decisions – he forced fate’s hand.
“How long will you be gone?” You asked under your breath, your hand slipping away from his to fix a loose strand of your previously pinned-up hair. He rolled away from you, the disappointment in your eyes bothering him like some shallow cut that refused to close.
“A couple weeks.”
It ended up being closer to a couple months.
Days spent on battlefields, nights staring up at star-dotted skies or at the ceiling of his tent. His name, which used to only be spoken in hushed whispers under your breath, was now known across the land. Scarred into the people who lived on it.
He returned to his estate with blood staining his robes, sweat sticking his hair to his forehead as servants rushed out to greet him. A handful of concubines he couldn’t remember the names of stepping out to stammer greetings.
But you weren’t there.
Not outside. Or in the entryway.
The bed in his chambers neatly made and markedly absent of the one person allowed to stay there when he was gone. And when he stomped across to your wing and threw open the door to your room, it was empty too.
He sent a goddamn letter before his arrival. Everyone here had to know by now he returned home.
Were you hiding from him?
It wasn’t like he wanted a fucking kiss or fuck.
But Sukuna didn’t tolerate disrespect. Couldn’t.
For as much as he disregarded court etiquette when it came to you, he would be a fool to miss the strange tone the sparse letters you’d been sending to him had begun to take. No longer begging him to return promptly, but telling him you didn't mind his delays. That everything was fine here, no need to rush back to his throne and the woman waiting for him on it.
If everything was fine, where the hell were you?
He could still sense you, still feel you somewhere close, unable to discern exactly where you were. Following the faint presence of your energy, tugging it like a line until he was in the gardens. Trailing down the winding path, leaves scattering by his feet as a chill bristled over his skin until he found a little alcove that was easy to miss, your body curled up on a bench, like you were taking a nap.
“Wake up,” he snapped, tempted to shake you awake as you sleepily rubbed your eyes and started to blink up at him. His mouth opened, ready to snarl something about you catching a cold out here like an idiot with no blanket or cover, say that you knew better, but for once in miserable existence, he was stunned into silence as his senses picked up on a second energy signature swirling around and clinging to your skin.
No, inside of you.
“You’re pregnant,” he accused, staring at your stomach while something unfamiliar stirred in his own.
“It’s-” You weakly started, trying to explain, but he silenced you with only a single hand held up while you made yourself sit. Exhaustion was obvious in the rings under your eyes, your fingers shaking as you fiddled with the skirts of your robe, deliberately loose to disguise the growing bump beneath it, surely.
He was going to behead whoever failed to inform him of this.
The personal servant he assigned to you had to know. The chef too, if he was cooking the proper food for your new needs. And his unborn child’s.
“Your hands work just fine,” he sneered, nose scrunching up as something inside him twisted. He never wanted an heir. Never wanted to bring another curse into this world. How many fucking times had he told himself that? But this baby was yours too. “Why did you not write to me?”
“My lord,” you began again, but you offered no real explanation. “I-”
“You what?” He barked, brash and blunt.
Sukuna couldn't fucking believe it. That you would do this to him.
Not even a single letter?
Was he not worth the truth to you?
He expected this cowardice from the other useless creatures in his court. But you had to know-
“I wasn’t sure how you’d feel,” you admitted, looking down at his feet instead of his face. “I was scared.”
Sukuna nearly laughed.
You were scared of him.
He supposed it was only inevitable. How much blood had you seen him shed? How many lives had he snuffed that you bore witness too?
And now you suspected he was going to take the life of your child. His own flesh and blood, the baby that sprouted inside you, and you were sure he was going to hurt it. Did you think he was going to hurt you too?
“Did I not make a vow to keep you safe?” He hissed, reminding you of the only oath he’d ever taken.
Maybe you were both barely big enough to know what the weight of that would mean, but he held true to his word. Asked the world for enough strength to protect the only person who saved his life, to return the favor, although you surely regretted the childish decision now to offer a starving boy the last of your food when he'd grown up to be the man he was today.
The first time he met you, he tried to kill you. Robbing graves and eating remains, barely scraping by when he saw you under a tree, curled up on your side and clinging to raw roots. He bit you, buried his canines in your exposed shoulder, drawing blood while you startled awake. Your small fists whacking him as hard as you could, fat tears rolling down your cheeks as you tried to fight him off. He'd been too exhausted to keep trying, huffing and letting go of you while you whined and asked him why he did that. And still, despite your wet face, the fresh wound, you still offered him your foraged meal, murmuring that he looked like he needed it more than you. He washed it down with the blood on your skin, dragging his tongue over the bite mark while you winced, tasting the salt on your face next.
You didn't stop him.
Started stealing more food, just enough for both of you to survive while he tried to get stronger.
Tied together by circumstances, intertwined by some pathetic twist of fate, two parent-less children uselessly trying to take care of each other.
But still, you were still alive, weren't you? Even when you didn't like what he had to do to ensure it. The times he had to peel the bark off trees and demand you eat it, days where you got hurt trying to defend him, forced to shake your shoulders and keep you awake, shoving down his anxiety that you’d drift off and die.
This, too, was for your own good.
You called him every name you could think of, weak fists hitting his back, telling him to put you down so you could talk about it, as if you hadn't tried to hide it.
What was there to say?
You knew as well as he did he was not a kind man. Maybe you had been made for motherhood after all, but he had not been cut from a cloth destined to be a father.
But he had a vow to uphold.
And you would have a thousand targets on you once word and whispers spread of what you were carrying. Whom.
Locking you up was his only option.
The room was on the other end of the estate, one kept under careful watch by the few people who had been around long enough to know better than to cross him.
You pounded against the door at first, protested that this wasn't fair, like anything in either of your lives has ever been.
A servant would test your food for poison, bringing meals three meals a day while you whined about feeling like a prisoner. But your stomach started swelling with the weeks, a small bump taking shape, your hand reaching out to rub it when he came to visit or the rare occasion he spent the night.
The anger was still blooming under his skin, silent rage burning when you frowned at him, as if he wasn't doing this for you.
He still fucked you, pressed your body into the bedding and claimed you as his, even if it wasn't the same. Your body was changing, your words wilting as you complained about not being able to see the seasons shifting, the garden blooming, missing the weather and the warm sun.
You had him.
Why was that not enough?
A neighboring clan invited themselves over, forcing him to play host while he ordered everyone to stay hush about your current condition, ignoring your pleas begging to attend just one dinner, despite his irritated promise to see you afterwards.
Except – while the festivities were still ongoing, he came to bring you food he personally selected, you had managed to sneak out, slipping past the pathetic guards, or maybe sweet talked them through a sliver of pity to allow you to walk through the garden at the worst possible time.
He stormed through, stomping as he made a mental list of men who wouldn't make it to the morning, sharp eyes scanning through the winding pathways and rose-lined trellises, searching for your energy amongst all the sorcerers here.
Bumping into a scrawny dark-haired man in the middle of the path, vaguely recognizing him as the Kamo head’s eldest son, the stupid startled expression that flashed on his face before he started stammering something about getting lost only making Sukuna scowl before he snapped at him to return to his father before he sent him to an early grave.
He didn't give a shit if there would be retribution, if his threat would amount to something more, his throat constricting and closing at the idea of some other stranger stumbling across you first.
Ripping down a trellis to break through the path, pushing through only to find you bent over and plucking a flower, recoiling at the sight of him when you glanced over your shoulder.
Guilt.
Written all over your face, in the way your mouth preemptively opened, ready to offer a weak excuse for something simply inexcusable.
It wasn't just you that you were putting in danger.
He dragged you back by your arm, tugging you through dimly-lit halls, your soft voice not reaching his ears even when you attempted to explain yourself.
It was only when he slammed the door shut and let go of you in your new chambers, your kimono doing nothing to disguise the clear outline of your stomach that he paused.
“I wish I never met you,” you whispered, pained, pulling away from him while his mouth twitched.
“You’d be fucking dead,” he bluntly said, his dinner churning in his stomach, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.
“Maybe I would be better off,” you spat back.
He rolled his eyes, shaking his head as his thin tether to sanity threatened to snap.
“You’re-”
“You're punishing me,” you pointed out, interrupting him with a finger pressed against his chest where his heart would have been. It didn't feel like he had one anymore.
Maybe he was.
“I'm leaving.”
Why should he stay?
You were ungrateful. Maybe some time apart would make you remember how fortunate you were to be in this position.
Maybe going back to picking off sorcerers would burn off some of the betrayal, dull the blade of rage he felt every time he thought of this situation you were both stuck in.
He didn’t mean to be gone so long.
But there were battles to win, blood to be spilled. And it did make him feel better to see the bodies strewn on the ground, to climb up to the top of the world and look down on everyone else when he used to be at the bottom.
The letter came late. Too late for him to do anything actually worth anything. His estate had been besieged. Surrounded and cut off, only able to send out this single communication from one of the few servants that slipped out during the attack.
It seemed the Gojo’s had been waiting for the right moment to strike.
He didn’t rush back.
Maybe he should’ve. It wasn’t that he had confidence in the soldiers stationed there, in his own forces, but he thought he selected ones with any competence to know what to do. How to handle invaders – even if they were powerful sorcerers.
He took his time fighting his way there, slowly sending sorcerer after sorcerer to early graves. He was the strongest after all. Would go down in history as a monster instead of a man.
Not a single wretched soul was spared.
Although his own soldiers were picked off along the way, he kept moving. One foot in front of the others, carving a path back to you. Back to the small world he'd made for himself.
Slashing and cleaving through them, scoffing at their bold professions of how they’d be the one to take him down. They never were.
It began to get boring.
Monotonous when all it took was a few moves to leave them a whimpering bloody mess on the ground.
He figured the head of the Gojo clan would be waiting for him, probably poised and planning out some grand fight while he tried to wait out and starve everyone inside the estate. Let them grow weak enough they wouldn't be able to do anything to support Sukuna when he arrived.
But he never expected the white-haired asshole to be sitting outside of his gates, casually leaning against it and flipping through the pages before he glanced up with blindingly blue eyes.
“Ryomen Sukuna,” the fabled six-eyes user greeted him, a casual smirk curling up on his lips as his sharp stare dragged over him. He was still covered in scrapes, mere flesh wounds, but the man just grinned brighter, tossing the book to the side and standing up.
No servants. No guards.
Birds falling silent and the chittering of bugs fading to the background as he stared down the only person bold enough to try and take his place by force.
Sukuna wasn't in the fucking mood.
He hadn't been back in months, and this was his reward? There would probably be repercussions that came with killing the Gojo brat, but he was asking for it.
The freak didn’t even attempt to move out of the way when he sent the first slash, just taking it, but it didn’t even touch him.
Sukuna couldn’t help but laugh, amused at the prospect of putting down someone like him. Of an actual challenge for once.
Trading blows, dodges, gritting his teeth to push through the pain when a blow hit him only to grin when he managed to break through the technique that had been protecting his opponent, watching the cut blemish his previously clear complexion.
“I met your wife,” he called out, not even flinching as he wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. “She was pretty. Even with the baby.”
Sukuna saw red. Heat soaring through him, rage radiating through his veins. The fucker had to be lying. Maybe he heard of the baby through a servant he captured, but he had gotten it wrong. You weren’t his wife. Sukuna almost spat out something out that he would surely regret. That asshole didn’t need another reason to go seeking you out. To turn his attention away from Sukuna and to who was inside of the gate.
“You just missed her,” he continued, clearly mocking him, hands moving up, about to throw another attack before Sukuna sent another cleave he expertly maneuvered away from, the gate behind him splintering from the force.
“Shut up,” Sukuna hissed, knuckles clenching as he held them up, but his brain was faltering, failing to come up with what he needed to do when his thoughts had started to uselessly wander.
The fun he’d felt at the start was gone. Replaced with something raw, like every movement he made was stepping on glass, shards of it stuck inside his throat as he was caught off-kilter.
“She begged, you know,” he added. “Said you'd come back for her.”
The next few seconds were a broken blur. Throwing all of his cursed energy into a move, just a little too late to realize the white-haired man across from him was doing the same.
It was the aftermath that was clear. The slashed body cut in half in front of him, the blue eyes staring up at the mirrored sky, seeing nothing after a spoiled life of getting everything. Blessed to never know hunger or pain or suffering like him or you had.
And still, Sukuna knew he was dying too.
Even if he didn’t quite believe it. Couldn’t wrap his brain around the gaping hole in his side, his energy draining as he stumbled forward through the broken gate only to discover blood-soaked halls inside.
It wasn’t a siege. It was a slaughter.
Sukuna had done more than his share to see it for what it was. They were never trying to get his attention by holding his people hostage. They knew he didn’t care. So the clan killed them anyway.
He wasn’t sure when he started running, how his body was even capable of moving, but he had to see it anyway. Confirm what everything in his body was telling him when he couldn’t feel you anymore.
Your guards were gone.
The door was cracked open, his hand impulsively shooting out to shove it the rest of the way, as if he couldn’t smell what was inside.
But you were on the bed, curled up on your side, and he could almost believe for a second, you had been spared. He knew the truth though.
There was only death here.
Rolling you over to see your face, black encroaching on the edges of his vision as his body threatened to give out, blood dripping from his side down to the floor, onto your bed. The light had left your eyes. Nothing else there for him to find in there except a single unspoken accusation.
You're late.
He didn’t have enough cursed energy to repair the damage to himself.
But what was there left to live for anyway?
Warmth.
Hands that didn’t quite fit in his, boney fingers clinging to his palm, too little to belong to anything except a child. For a brief moment, he thought it was yours. His.
It couldn’t be. You were dead – and so was the baby growing inside you. It was impossible, and still, his mind betrayed him. Spawned treacherous images of a tiny thing that looked like you, annoyingly clingy and cute.
His eyes opened, still thick with sleep, blinking slowly as he tried to discern dreams from reality.
It wasn’t your child.
It was you.
Younger, your eyes still shut, lashes fluttering just slightly as he realized when this was. Where you both were.
Back in the old village, in the husk of an abandoned home, where you slept on a makeshift bed of straw and tattered blankets he’d stolen from someone’s trash. Dirt in your hair, shivering before you snuggled closer, exhaling softly as your head rested on his chest.
Breathing.
What sick joke was this?
There was nothing he’d done in his life to deserve a second chance. Was it some kind of hell to repeat his shitty life, cursed and condemned to a similar fate?
He let go of your hand, sitting up to shake your shoulders harder than he should, watching you startle as you weakly opened your eyes. Focus slowly aimed on him as your brows scrunched together, fingers tightening and grabbing his shirt.
“Mm, Sukuna?” You croaked, voice hoarse.
He blinked.
Laid back down, head throbbing as his dry mouth reminded him that he needed water. You were slow to move with him, body still heavy with exhaustion before he pulled you down again.
“Go back to sleep,” he grunted, pressing your head back down against him. Running through the possibilities, wondering if this was just his life flashing before his eyes, a memory he’d forgotten.
But it felt fucking real.
You went stiff, trying to peek up at him, but his palm pressed down on your hair, refusing to let you budge.
Had he really regressed? The clock turned back to a winter he hardly remembered?
“What’s happening?” You asked, but your words were small, muffled into his shirt.
“I’m just tryin’ to rest,” he grunted.
Dozing off without meaning too, something about the pressure of you on him, the faintly familiar feeling of you curled on his chest dragging him into dreams. He didn’t think he’d wake up.
But he did.
And he was still here with you, children once more, condemned to scraping through trash and digging up graves and bugs to fill your stomach. He loathed this weak body of his. The scrawny arms and legs that could barely make it more than a few miles in a day.
You were quieter than he remembered.
More self-conscious, more serious, your smile not quite reaching the same spots on your face. Somehow clingier at the same time, softer with him, not arguing nearly as much anymore over who got to eat what or nagging at him for being reckless. You held on tighter to him in the evenings, pulled him closer, picking flowers you knew he couldn’t appreciate. Pressed a chaste kiss against his forehead, whispered the word friend like it was something intimate. A glimmer of adoration he didn’t deserve still glittering in your eyes.
Would it still be there if you knew where you were both headed?
What had happened before? How you wasted away waiting for a monster who didn’t show up in time? Died for him?
Everything kept happening the same way it had before. You, stealing whatever food you could, narrowly avoiding getting caught and coming back to him with chilly hands and shaking limbs, affection in your words, rare laughter ringing in his ears long after it slipped from your lips. Him, struggling to get stronger, to feed the cursed energy inside him and train on a mostly empty stomach.
He woke up once to you staring at him in the middle of night after going hunting for two days on his own with two measly fish to show for it, your fingers delicately tracing the shape of his jaw before you froze, that funny flicker of guilt in the lines of your face.
“What are you doing?” Sukuna grumbled, unable to work up more than a weak glare.
“Missed you,” you muttered softly, dragging your small thumb over the deformed half of him, just underneath his eyes.
“It was only-” He started, stifling a yawn as you yanked him into you this time, your fingers sliding around to guide his head into the crook of your collarbone, despite the terrible pillow it made.
He fell back asleep there anyway.
Before he realized it, a whole year passed, then two, the seasons changing and shifting, your presence a constant pull by his side, and yet, one he refused to lean on.
Sukuna hadn’t learned his lesson.
Rejected what the world might be trying to show him as he insisted you eat the past-ripe crop while he stuffed himself with the one thing you still refused to take so much of a bite of. You were still clinging to humanity he no longer felt any kind of connection to in his second life.
“This place is wretched,” he muttered the next morning, shoving what few possessions he had in his sack. You were sorting through herbs you collected, not even glancing up when he spoke. Just silently stacking them, barely fucking reacting.
He huffed, loud enough you had to look. “Hm?”
“I’m going,” he insisted, remembering the first time you had this conversation. Where he announced that he wanted to go, wanted to leave this pitiful village and all the awful people in it. You grabbed him, whined about how dangerous it would be before caving in and clinging onto his hand as you asked to come with him.
He had grumbled, shrugging his shoulders, letting your clumsy feet trail after him down a dirt path.
Besides, there was no reason for him to stay here now either.
Why bother reliving the next few years of starvation and scraping together enough for both of you to survive?
“You’re leaving,” you echoed his sentiment, and he shoved down the uncomfortable suffocating feeling settling in his chest.
“There’s nothing for me here,” Sukuna somberly spoke.
You stood up, staring at him with an expression he didn’t understand. Arms folded across your chest, your lips pressed together in a thin line, ready to watch him walk away. Eyes hollow, daring him to say something else, to do something else. To not leave you alone like this.
Why weren’t you begging to go with him?
Tugging at his clothes and trying to convince him to take you too?
He could ask you to. The question was on his tongue, all it would take was a couple words. To grunt out a ‘well?’ or ‘come on’ and surely, you would listen. Would rush around to collect what little things you had and chase after him.
Sukuna’s throat was closing up, constricting tighter with every strained second of silence.
But he didn't say anything.
And all you had to offer was a little tilt of your head and a sad smile, swallowing hard before you said something he almost hated you for.
“I was happy.”
So he left like he said, stepped out and didn’t look back, scoffing under his breath once the village was out of sight that you’d come running sooner or later. Scramble to search for him, face the fact that you wouldn’t be able to survive without him.
What the hell had you even meant?
The only thing here was misery, curdling and coiling, trying to claw and claim his life and yours through starvation and sickness. In the scowls and stones thrown at him for simply having the misfortune of being born. What was there to even be happy about?
He pictured you huddled by a dying hearth, hands held out and shuddering, shutting down the thought before it could curse him.
Sukuna gave it a month before you realized you made a mistake.
You still needed him.
It was never him that needed you.
Getting stronger was easier when he didn’t have to look after you anywhere. Without needing to play babysitter or make sure you didn’t end up in the line of fire during fights. He fended for himself just fine.
Time slipped by faster.
He had more important things to focus on than the weather, redoing all those years of training with expertise from experience, forcing his body to catch up to his brain.
Eventually, he found a companion in a child he stumbled across. A sorcerer who couldn’t quite control their potential yet, but suited his needs just fine. Could cook for him, store food too. They were far more fucking obedient than you were, listened intently when he barked orders at them.
Uruame wasn’t you.
But he didn’t miss you.
He was fine living like this. Slaughtering without discrimination. Growing stronger far faster than he did in his last life. Avoiding the same petty mistakes that had resulted in injuries, acutely aware of the fact you weren’t there to nurse them anymore.
Honestly, other than that, he hardly thought of you at all.
Sometimes, he’d see you in his dreams, the older you, but rather than stuck in that small room, you were laying back in his chambers, one hand on your stomach, a lazy smile on your face while you read a book.
Or he’d wake up in the morning, reaching out for a hand that wasn’t there.
You probably weren’t even alive anymore.
In an unmarked grave or tossed out in the woods. Maybe you managed to get a job as a seamstress, or found a clan or lord to work for as a servant to stave off fate without him.
People were starting to whisper his name now, things getting thrown his way again now, fear sweeping across the land of the four-armed freak out for blood and bodies. If you wanted to find him, you certainly could.
So really, Sukuna had no reason to return.
Perhaps it was morbid curiosity, scratching an itch he’d been ignoring for what? Nearly ten years now? A decade had turned him from a skeleton to a curse, made more of muscle than anything else, his bulky frame far more menacing than it had been even in his last life. Well-tuned, energy coiling around him as he walked down familiar paths as he found himself standing on the outskirts of the place that had never really been home.
It looked almost the same.
And yet, the only thing that mattered was missing.
The frame of the place you both used to sleep under had caved in, the thatched roof fallen into a pile of debris, the rest of the houses intact. Their inhabitants cowering inside as he prowled down the street, glaring as he felt the world still.
Uruame was standing by his side, head bowed slightly down as they assessed the situation.
“Would you like me to go door-to-door?” They asked.
“Fine,” he tch-ed, shrugging his shoulders, his robes hanging loose as he walked ahead without them. There wasn’t a single trace of your energy. No sign to be found.
An elder stepped out, aged wrinkles doing nothing to disguise the tremble in his mouth as he welcomed the monster that had been born here so long ago.
“Ah, welcome-”
“Where is she?” He snarled before he could finish.
“Your friend?” He feigned innocence, taking pride in his position as if it meant anything when a single sweeping motion of Sukuna’s fingers could cleave through his skull if he chose. “Ah, I believe she left, what was it? Two springs ago?”
Tilting his head to the side, pretending this was a friendly conversation rather than his last words.
“Left?” Sukuna repeated, scoffing at the fucking notion you would just go.
Sukuna would search every home and rip every meager fucking foundation from the ground before he believed that you left.
“She didn’t say where-”
Blood was strewn against the mud wall of a home behind him, a scream ringing out from someone watching.
This was just a waste of his fucking time.
He burned every house down. Left the village for the third time in his life in ashes, dark rain coming down as the smell of meat burned his nostrils.
That would catch your attention, remind you that he existed if the elder had even been telling the truth. Sukuna considered the chance he was lying, that perhaps you had passed away long before he'd ever stepped foot back here on this pointless endeavor and the man had foolishly attempted to save everyone else by making up some story about you leaving.
But you didn't show up to scold him.
And eventually, the memory of you started to shrink. Maybe it was shoved down, forced under the surface while he focused on what he told himself was important. Defeating all the sorcerers he had so long ago, settling his score with the Gojo clan by catching them off-guard this time, razing their estate and refusing to spare so much as a single servant while the fear sparked and spread across the countryside as the cowards crawled into their shells and threw whatever they thought would satiate him out.
But not everyone was terrified.
The Kamo clan was just as interested in him in this life as the last, the head of it inviting him over for a proper tour of their own sprawling compounds, one Sukuna only begrudgingly accepted.
The man was strange, stitches etched across his forehead, but he agreed with Uruame's opinion that he might be useful in the future considering his output of cursed energy, so he tolerated his presence.
A potential future partnership.
He loathed to think that he needed a partner at all.
But even Sukuna had the sense to see why an ally like him might work out in his favor someday.
Despite how much he loathed this forsaken estate.
It was lavish, annoyingly so, traditionally designed and upholding the pillars of a lifestyle Sukuna still felt repugnance towards.
His partner refused to shut up, insisting they continue this irritatingly long conversation through their gardens, Uruame dutifully opening the door and taking notes for Sukuna as he nodded along to whatever he was spewing now.
Sprawling flower beds and arches adorned with roses, studying thorny stems wrapped around the trellis, a strange urge tempting him to pluck one. A faint memory started to float up, a name that plagued his dreams, but then he heard something he’d almost forgotten.
A pretty laugh. Soft and sweet.
A dessert he hadn’t tasted in so long, the taste was lost on him.
But he recognized it instantly.
He tried to ignore it. Focus on the boring political spiel he came here for, to shove it down, telling himself it had to be his imagination. A fractured remnant, dug up by these stupid fragrant flowers.
Until he felt it.
Sensed your presence, his head snapping in that direction to spot a picnic blanket spread out on the bank past a small koi pond. You were here. You were happier.
Dressed in silk robes, smiling as you popped a strawberry in your parted lips, the juice dripping down the corner of your mouth. A thumb reached out, dragging over it to keep you clean, and he repressed a sudden surge of pure rage.
Anger simmering at someone touching you like that, daring to put their filthy hands on what was his, his seething stare shifting to see some dark-haired man, a black tattoo stretching across the slope of his nose, brown eyes only focused on you.
He knew that face, even if it was just a distant image of a night he'd rather forget. The night you snuck out, the one from the gardens before he found you.
Kamo noticed his stare, chucking softly.
“That’s my son, Choso, and his fiancée,” Kamo informed him, nodding towards the two of you. “Would you like to meet-”
“No,” he interrupted, scowling at you playing house.
So this was where you found yourself?
Cozying up to the Kamo clan to secure a future for yourself? Instead of choosing him?
He wanted to laugh. Actually, he wanted to murder that runt, and then-
“He’s actually a few years older than you, but I doubt…” Kamo continued, and Sukuna felt one of his fists reflexively start to take the shape to send a slash his way, only quelled by that annoyingly bright giggle of yours as he brushed a finger over your lips. You fucking licked it. Running your tongue over his knuckle, reaching up to grab his hand and hold it there.
You left him for this?
Walked away from him to become the next womb for the fucking Kamo clan?
Too enraged to even realize he was the one who left you, all his muscles too tight, too tense, cursed energy flaring up as he fought to keep it under control here.
“Are you alright?” Kamo carefully asked, brows knitted together as Sukuna’s jaw flexed tight.
“Yes,” he managed a one-word reply, turning his head away from you.
Were you pretending he didn’t exist now? Was he a chapter in your story that you were choosing to forget?
His focus had shattered.
Fractured into something he couldn’t scrape together, his thoughts lingering on that infuriating expression of yours. For once, he was stuck on what to do. A possessive thing inside him curdling and demanding he take you back here and now, cut off every damn digit that had touched you.
But the splintered remnants of his reason reminded him that he was supposed to be here to form an ally.
Which probably wouldn’t appreciate him snatching his heir’s bride.
It made Sukuna fucking sick to think of you as another man’s wife.
One of Kamo’s assistants scurried up, bowing his head deeply before muttering something to his master. His face scrunched up, and he shook his head before looking up at Sukuna apologetically, “Would you excuse me for a few minutes?”
Sukuna only tch-ed, waving his hand as he glanced around the suddenly suffocating arched walkway of the garden.
“Feel free to look around as you please,” he politely said, but he didn’t miss the cruel glint in his eyes before he walked away. The look of a man who knew too much. Bored enough to enjoy other people’s misery.
Sukuna tried to walk away.
To continue down this path he’d picked, to push you and your pretty laughter back out of his mind. But it curved in on itself, and here it was again. There you were.
He couldn’t stop himself from looking.
You were sprawled out, hair in the grass, giggling happily at the boy in front of you. Sukuna thought he’d seen every expression of yours. Sad, starving, smiling, he was sure he’d known all of you.
But you never looked at him like that.
So free.
Unburdened, unbridled by what, exactly? Him?
“You’re beautiful,” you murmured to your groom, grinning as he gripped your legs and hooked them around his waist. Your robes mused, pushed up to reveal plush thighs, soft skin that still made his mouth water, spit pooling in the back of his throat as this fool failed to appreciate-
“I could live a thousand years and I would trade them all just for this moment to last,” he spoke quietly, his chest rising and falling too fast, like he had to hurry to get the words out. Assured, the kind of certain Sukuna wasn’t sure he ever gave you.
“Would you?” You teased, one corner of your lips curling up higher than the other, clearly past pleased.
The man, this Choso of yours, nodded, acting like a loyal knight as he craned his neck down to kiss the tip of your nose. You wrapped your wrists around his neck like he was some missing puzzle piece, fiddling with the ends of his hair as you sighed with contentment.
“Tell me more,” you requested.
Sukuna didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to hear this poor excuse of poetry and confessions as he watched from the sidelines like some sick voyeur, all four eyes stuck on the familiar curves of your body as your betrothed shoved your clothes to the side to shove himself in you.
Could it even be considered fucking?
All slow and tender, treating you like some fragile thing that might break, rocking his hips against your body as you dug your heels into his back. Kissing your mouth instead of sucking on your tits, caressing your exposed skin rather than holding you down.
And yet, you were making more sounds with him than you did with Sukuna, tiny whimpers that hung in the air, moans that ended up muffled in that bastard’s mouth. Writhing and wiggling your hips like he wasn’t an amateur.
“I would do anything for you,” he whispered, and Sukuna nearly snorted, sure that he had no idea what anything really meant. Would he starve for you? Kill for you? How far would he go just to call you his?
Because right now, Sukuna was considering stomping over and cleaving him into his next meal to make sure he’d never be able to see you again, and he was fairly certain that your Choso couldn’t say the same.
“All I want,” you purred, eyes opening slowly and fluttering, flooded with pleasure Sukuna unfortunately had to face he did miss. “Is for you to stay with me.”
You didn’t even know Sukuna was there, and yet it still stung.
Felt like an arrow aimed directly at his heart.
“Of course,” Choso answered easily, head bobbing, dark strands hanging down as his next thrust left you tossing your head back.
Sukuna would do anything for you. But he just couldn’t get himself to be there.
“I love you,” he moaned, rutting harder, even faster, your thighs locking him into place as you giggled at his expression. Sukuna stalled, staring uselessly at the moron’s cock drunk confession.
“I love you too,” you sweetly whispered back, brushing his hair back from his face.
He had to step away before he saw anything else.
Before he got to watch the man cum inside you the way he used to, before he made another decision that would destroy his life – and yours.
Sukuna didn’t know peace. He never had any to offer you.
When he stepped back, he had the misfortune of stepping on a tiny twig, as if his afternoon wasn’t awful enough.
Your head snapped up first, your eyes locking onto his, and he saw the recognition before the guilt. How you held your breath, the light dissipating from that warmth you radiated as if his shadows swallowed you whole.
And he didn’t know what gave it away, what little detail in your face did it, but he realized something he failed to fucking notice for far too long.
This had never been his second chance. This was yours.
He had never deserved it. Or you.
You knew it too.
The universe tried to spare you, and he got tangled up in it. Your soul and his were still tied together even when the world attempted to give you a new life.
