Chapter Text
The iron taste of his blood is heavy in his mouth. He was going to die but at least he was taking that damn brat down with him. Those eyes glare at him, softening for just a second. Yuuji’s mouth opens to speak but there’s only a rattle of breath as air exits his lungs. Sukuna could feel his body dying, it wouldn’t be long. It was creeping fast, edging his vision in black. Yuuji’s eyes are bright and aware only for a second before the light goes out completely. Sukuna might have lost but it was victory enough to know he outlived that insufferable brat, even if it was only by a few seconds. He shuts his eyes and things go dark around him. Everything stops.
Only it doesn’t, his eyes open and are bubbling with hot tears. He can barely see through them but he’s able to make out the toppled-over bike. Training wheels were half-heartedly discarded in the grass. It felt like his brain was still rattling in his skull. His body was all wrong, he was a child, no older than five. Everything is so small and soft, his fingers are nubby, and his knees are decorated in space-themed bandages. A woman hurries over and despite all this time he never forgot her face. “Mom…” It slips out before he’s choked off with a sob. Crying hurts, he couldn’t remember the last time he cried, and he’s not sure if he ever did. It makes his throat feel tight, and his lungs burn. His child body is unable to handle such a minor topple.
When she reaches for him, he flinches, remembering how she used to hurt him before he was strong enough to do something about it. The woman who birthed him had not been kind to him. He was unwanted, a blight, forced onto her by a man he would never know. She hated him and made a point of reminding him of his worth to her. He wasn’t always powerful or the strongest. Sukuna worked for it, earned it, and happily used that power in whatever way suited him best. He’s been a child before. When she gets closer he holds his arms to shield his face, wishing he had his other set to protect his new soft body.
“Oh baby…let me look.” She kneels down and carefully parts his hair to look where he hit his head. Her hands are soft, not the dry hands of a starving girl working the fields, this woman has her face but is soft. She smells like fresh bread and clean linen and her lips touch his forehead in a comforting gesture. The confusion of it makes him stop crying. “We’ll get some ice on that.” She then lifts him and Sukuna clings to her. It’s then that he notices the shape behind her. The damn brat was younger but he could never forget that face. Yuuji stares up at him, eyes bright, his knees also covered in matching bandages.
His hands are balled into his shirt and his lip is pouting. Even now he looks every part of a brat. Sukuna glares the best his new young features will allow and clings to this kinder version of his mother. “I told him to wear his helmet, mama.” This Yuuji says, a baby tooth missing and a half-grown adult tooth in its place. The woman shushes Yuuji with a hiss through her teeth and Sukuna realizes that they share this woman. She’s not his mother but theirs. It takes him a moment to realize what’s happening. He’s been reborn. The blow to his head returned his memories. Yuuji’s mouth opens to protest but her eyes narrow on him. Their mother shushes Yuuji before another word can leave his ugly mouth. Her hand rubs circles into his back as she carries Sukuna inside. The house is a modest one on the small side, but it was cluttered in a way that wasn’t messy. Sukuna looks at the pictures as he’s carried to the kitchen.
There’s no father in the pictures. Only this woman and two twin boys. Sukuna stares at his new face, he looks just like Yuuji, although they’re easier to tell apart in more recent pictures. Sukuna’s new child body is chubbier than Yuuji’s, the mothy pink of his hair is ever-so-slightly more brown, Yuuji’s eyes are amber, and Sukuna’s eyes are more of a dark gray. He's shorter. That much he learns from the chart on the doorway to the kitchen. Yuuji was a whole inch taller, fucking bullshit, how was that fair? Yuuji had followed them inside the house but he didn't enter the kitchen. He peaks around the corner.
His mother has him hold the ice pack to his head as she phones a doctor. The ice does little to soothe the pain but it helps with the swelling. Sukuna stares at Yuuji and he stares back. The five years before getting his memory back feel like a dream. The memories are clouded in a haze that makes it hard to recall details. They were twins in whatever world they were reborn into. He might have laughed if his head didn’t hurt. There are memories in his head from before he hit his head. Those memories felt like trying to recall a dream. The details were there but lost under a haze. Sukuna closes his eyes as he tries to get his bearings. There were a lot of questions but his head couldn’t handle it. He wasn’t an adult anymore. Sukuna was five and his mind wanted to work like he was five. It was struggling with all his emotions he no longer could regulate.
There are a few things that he knows for certain about this new life. The first was that he couldn’t see curses. It’s possible they were born in a world where curses didn’t exist. It was impossible to know for certain. Yuuji died first so it made sense he was born first.
Sukuna isn’t listening to her call. He can feel himself getting overwhelmed, his thoughts too big for what his brain could handle. It’s been so long since he was a child. Was it always like this? Why couldn’t he remember? He could remember his mother and she died when he was still small. Sukuna stares down at his hands, opening and closing his fists. His mother hangs up the landline and sighs, holding her arms open so he can grab onto her to be carried. “Yuuji go get in the car. The doctor wants to make sure your little brother doesn’t have a concussion.” Her voice sounds tired but her hand rubs his back. Sukuna flinches again, waiting for her gentle affection to turn, but it doesn’t.
The doctor confirms that there’s no concussion, just a nasty bump, and she hands Sukuna a blue lollipop ‘for being a brave young man’. He wrinkles his nose but rips the plastic off and pops it into his mouth. The artificial blue raspberry flavor would have disgusted him before, but his new body surges with joy at the taste. Yuuji gets a lollipop too, his orange, but he tucks it away in a pocket.
Back at the house Sukuna soon finds out that they share a bedroom. Their beds were on opposite sides of the room, toys scattered between them, and a shared large dresser under the one lone window. Just like the bandages on their knees the blankets and decorations are space themed. Yuuji sits on the moon theme rug, pushing the firetruck around, as Sukuna disappears into the kitchen. He can’t remember where things are so he just starts pulling drawers open. The knife block is on the counter but it’s outside his reach but it doesn’t matter as he finds something else he can use. His small hand closes on a pair of sharp kitchen shears. Sukuna refused to live this life with Yuuji.
Returning to the bedroom he stares inside as Yuuji continues to play. The original would never turn his back to him like this, the real Yuuji would sense the blood lust, but this imposter didn’t remember anything. Living with the reflection of Yuuji felt worse somehow. Killing him would be doing a service. Sukuna steps into the room without much thought other than to kill. There’s no hesitation as he drives the point of the scissors down into Yuuji’s neck. The blood sprays out when he yanks the weapon back. Yuuji’s hand looked so small as he reached to press the wound. It all but vanishes into the fountain of crimson. Sukuna only stabbed once but he successfully punctured an artery. It wouldn’t take long for Yuuji to bleed out.
Raising the scissors again he plunges them through the hand and back into the puncture. “Do you remember?” He asks but when Yuuji’s mouth opens it only bubbles more blood. Did all five-year-olds have this much blood? Or did it only seem like a lot because of how small he was now? Sukuna doesn’t think about that as long as he stabs again. Yuuji’s body stays upright until the fifth blow. Sukuna was panting hard already, but he pinned the body down, sitting on the low of Yuuji’s back.
One of his hands presses to Yuuji’s shoulder as the other continues to stab. Killing is harder, the scissors don’t go as deep as he would like. He’s not strong enough. His muscles ache with each further stab. When the scissors finally fall from his hand he’s shaking. Shivering as if he was cold. His body would stop shivering, and his lungs burned in their effort to breathe.
It was just one more thing his child's body found overwhelming. Tears start falling and Sukuna can feel his nose instantly clog with snot. Crying quietly is impossible, the noises that leave his mouth, the whaling hiccuping sobs, are involuntary. He hates being a child. His mother freezes in the doorway, her dark eyes wide in horror, and her hands frozen mid-dry on her apron. When she melts, her frozen states no longer keeping her in place, he shields himself. He was just a child, there was nothing otherworldly about his body, and he had the strength of an unathletic child. He could kill Yuuji but he couldn’t kill her.
“What did you do!?” She plucks him off Yuuji and holds his shoulders. He still shields himself, waiting, unable to stop crying. “Shhh shhh, it’s okay baby. I’m sorry for yelling, it’s going to be okay. I got this, mommy will fix this, shhh shhh.” She pets his head, even though he’s covered in blood. The first thing she does is cover Yuuji’s body with her apron. Her hands are shaking but she moves quickly. She sends Sukuna to the bath to clean up. He fills the tub and climbs inside, the water quickly turns pink. He stays there but the bathroom is by the backyard. The thin walls allow him to hear the shovel slice into the earth and the clang of each rock it hit.
Wrapped in the towel he stands in the back doorway. The hole is deep, her hair clings to her face, and her skin is shiny with sweat. His mother walks past him, patting his head. Yuuji’s body looks so much smaller in her arms and she has him covered up. Blood has soaked through the apron. Sukuna watches her bury Yuuji in this makeshift grave in the backyard. Her breathing is hard as she uses the shovel to drop the dirt into the hole. It doesn’t feel real. Sukuna keeps expecting to wake up and find himself back in the thralls of battle. Biting his cheek he grinds his teeth down until he can taste blood. He doesn’t wake up and he grabs her pant leg and presses his face to her.
His real mother never loved him. This woman who shares her face was covering up the murder of her other child for him. For reasons unknown to her, one of her twins had killed the other after getting a little bump on the head. Instead of doing the right thing she was protecting him. Nobody has ever done anything like this for him before. She never asked him why, not once, she just hid the evidence. In the weeks that follow she plants grass over the dirt patch. The rug is burned and she cleans the floor repeatedly. Not once does her affection ever waver. At night she tucks him in, reads to him, and kisses his forehead. It’s like nothing happened and the second bed was just there.
They had few neighbors so nobody seemed to notice one less twin was running around. After a while, once the grass she planted blended seamlessly with the rest of the small yard, she called to report her son missing. Sukuna is impressed with how she’s able to lie over the phone, sounding like the perfect concerned mother, and then go back to being stone-faced once she hangs up.
His mother coaches him on what to say. “You and your brother were playing in the woods, hunting beetles because you two thought it’d be funny to scare mommy. He ran off and you haven’t seen him since. Remember baby you have to act like this happened today.” She tells him again before running her hand over his cheek. Sukuna squeezes his eyes shut as she kisses his forehead.
The police come and Sukuna answers their questions, his lies believable, he even swings his legs and acts the role of a child. He easily pretends to not understand the seriousness of this situation. Pouting and crossing his arms, acting like he was mad that Yuuji was playing hide and seek without telling him again. The officer gets his mother’s permission to show them where in the woods he lost sight of his brother. He picks a part that has a hill, one a five-year-old could easily vanish over. Sukuna looks up and stares with big eyes at the officer. “He isn’t going to get in trouble for hiding is he?” The question, innocent enough, makes the officer ruffle his hair. The police never find Yuuji and his mother plays the part of concerned mother perfectly. She goes on the news, there are posters, and groups made.
Sukuna grows up, he goes to high school, and he gets a part-time job to pass the time and make some money to help his mother with the bills. He’s walking home from the job, trying to get to the bus before the rain could start up. Sukuna has earbuds in listening to music, and he kept his taste for the classics, although he also found himself drawn to city-pop songs from the 80’s. A fact he’s kept secret from the other boys at school. He wasn’t a chubby kid anymore. After murdering Yuuji twelve years ago, Sukuna started playing sports. In high school, he joined a martial arts club, and they did competitions, Sukuna often brought back first-place prizes for his school. There were scholarships in his future.
It’s different. Before he was so bored but now he was given this second chance. Things aren’t easy and he gets to start from scratch. While he was good at competitions, he didn’t always win, and the history of this world was different. There was much he had to learn. There were new challenges to keep him entertained. Maybe he could enjoy being human.
Headlights illuminate the sidewalk and there’s a loud screeching of tires behind him. Sukuna could hear it over the strumming of a zither. The car is still going too fast to stop, the bottom scraping against the edge of the sideway. It hits Sukuna, his body hitting the windshield shattering the glass, the momentum sending him rolling limp like a rag doll over the hood. It’s dark when he hits the sidewalk, skull cracking open against the cement. Death is not instant but he’s not aware of the moment it ends. It snuffs out there on the sidewalk, the rain starting but he feels none of it. When he opens his eyes they are full of hot wet bubbling tears. Blinking them away he looks down at his hands, his small child hands, and he screams. There’s a throbbing in his head. It’s the same scene.
The bike training wheels are in the same spot in the grass. His mother checks his head, saying the same line, kissing his forehead. Then there’s Yuuji. Sukuna glares at him, rage blinding and he stomps his foot. “No! No! No! No!” Sukuna shouts, trapped with his emotions outside his control again. He hated being a child. Being this small and this helpless was horrible. His mother holds him back and he jerks towards Yuuji.
“I told him to wear his helmet, mama,” Yuuji says and Sukuna clings tighter to his mother. Sukuna’s jaw clenches and he hides his face in her shirt so Yuuji can’t see him crying. “I told him….” Yuuji adds when this time around he’s not shushed by her. The doctor's appointment repeats. Again he’s given a blue lollipop and Yuuji gets an orange one. Sukuna doesn’t kill him when Yuuji’s playing. That orange lollipop later turns up on his pillow like a peace offering.
In the morning Sukuna gets his hands on a knife. It was in the dishwasher and still had flakes of food on the blade. Yuuji sleeps in and Sukuna enters the bedroom. He grabs Yuuji’s hair and pushes his head forward. Pulling the head back was the wrong way to slice a throat, the bone protects, but pulling forward makes it easier to cut him in a way that will bleed him out. Yuuji dies without a sound. Looking down at the knife, Sukuna turns it towards himself. Palms sweat as he holds the handle with both hands. The pain makes him scream, this body sensitive, and before he can give up he pushes the knife deeper and slashes.
Dying isn’t quick. His mother finds him and calls for help, her hands pressing to his stomach. It's hard to tell if she's trying to stop the bleeding or push the part of his exposed stomach back inside. The pain makes him squirm in her hold and he tries to push her hands away. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. Sukuna feels something wet drop to his face. When he looks he sees that she’s crying. Crying for him. Sukuna's chest gets tight and air exists from his lungs in one wet exhale. Things go dark.
Blinking his eyes open, they're full of tears, and his head throbs in pain. Sukuna could have screamed but he didn't. There’s a lump in his throat and he blinks. He's back on the sidewalk, training wheels in the grass, a goose egg on the back of his skull. His mother kissed his forehead just like last time. He grabs onto her, not fighting his childish instincts, and sobs into her shoulder. "I hate it," Sukuna tells her, he hates being a child. It felt like a bad dream and he was in a daze. As she picks him up he can hear it.
“I told him to wear his helmet, mama.”