Chapter Text
She opens her eyes with the taste of blood in her mouth and giant hands crushing her. (Where am I?)
The vastness of her endless slumber ripped away from her. The pit in her stomach deepens. (Who am I?)
The cold discomfort of a second soul intertwined with her own makes itself known. (Who is that?)
She can’t breathe.
She can’t move… can’t she?
She can move.
She can move!
“I CAN MOVE!” she cries with a joy she only achieves in the heat of combat again.
Her cursed energy leaps to her call, roiling and thrashing around in her body like a caged animal, demanding to be set loose against whatever's closest. (What greatness it is to wield my technique again, and what a gift to have such a willing curse for me to exercise this power on as I wake)
“Cleave.” Purple blood coats her new body as the ugly beast in front of her explodes violently at the hands of her technique, diced apart in an instant. She can’t help the manic laughter that spills from her mouth after feeling the curse spilled all across her body. (I can feel again!)
“At last! A body of my own!” The skies above are so beautiful and clear tonight. (Strange. I remember there being to be more stars in the sky on nights like these.)
She can feel the wind caress her skin, the fabric of her strange garments flapping in the wind. She can feel the evening chill in the air, nipping at her hands. (I feel so alive.)
There’s no smell of rotting flesh in her nose. There’s no blood on her tongue. Already, the curse’s blood she spilled over herself has evaporated into the night. (I am clean.)
She feels her cursed energy swirling around her, coiling in on itself as it clings to her skin like armor, stronger than any steel but lighter than a feather. (I feel safe.)
“What a beautiful sight I awaken to!” (I’m not alone.)
She turns her head, and sure enough, her intuition proved correct. There was a boy sitting nearly collapsed on the ground, shadows pooling strangely around his feet. (A Fujiwara? They did specialize in shadow-based techniques.) “What are you doing here, Fujiwara? You look injured.”
Her eyes widen slightly as she recognizes exactly which technique this child has. (Ten shadows, really? that immesurable disappointment of a technique managed to not die out in my age of death?)
The young boy’s eyes widen with fear as she sweeps in front of him in a single fluid motion and places the pads of her(?) fingers on his chest, the warm white glow of reverse cursed technique engulfing the boy’s body. “Child, are you alright? It seems foolish for you to face such a curse with no backup.” (Why does he look so scared? Oh, yes, my cursed energy.)
The moment she suppresses her aura, the Fujiwara child takes several deep shuddering breaths. (It seems the pressure of my cursed energy was too much for the child.) “Child-”
With no warning, her hand flies up to her neck. What? (I’m not doing that.)
Her eyes go wide as saucers. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing with my body?” (That’s not my voice.) No. no. no. Please no, anything but this! (I don’t want to go back!)
She feels her eyes start to slip shut, a foreign and invasive feeling tugging her out of control. (Not like this!)
(I want to feel the sun on my skin, I want to feel the grass around my ankles, I want to feel my body wreathed in cloth again, I want to lay on a bed of gold like he used to, I WANT TO BE FREE!)
(She falls.)
She wakes up on a bed of gold, with the sun shining down upon her, her body wrapped in familiar silks, a paradise garden of spider lilies and white chrysanthemums stretching infinitely around her. (I still have a body?)
No she doesn’t. She quickly realizes that, despite this place’s immense beauty, she is a prisoner here. (Can I still see?)
She realizes that she can, despite not being able to control her(?) body, she can still see from its eyes and hear from its ears. (I need to calm down.)
Deep breaths. She tries hard not to think about how close she got to having her own lungs to breathe from. (But these lungs are mine, I can breathe down here.)
Get your bearings. Look in the reflection of his palms. What do you look like? (Who am I?)
The reflection staring back at her has four red eyes, two facing forward with the secondary ones facing outwards, granting her 270° vision, two arms with birthmarks beneath the armpits, two mouths, one on her face and the other on her belly, and tattoos all across her body. (Just like before. I'm back here again, like I was when I was with him.)
She cards her fingers through her flowing hair that reaches the small of her back to calm herself. (Pink, with brown roots, just like his. Just like mine)
Slow your breathing. Calm down. Panicking solves nothing. (It’s my body, mine , not his .)
Her heart beats slower, panic slowly subsiding from her mind. She looks down at her(?) clawed hands, puncturing her skin with them. (I feel the pain. This is real. I am real.)
(I am real.)
In this place, this body is hers, outside of here, she’s trapped in her vessel’s body. (Where is here?)
She’s clearly in her innate domain right now, after being kicked out of the body she woke up in. Her memories are a total mess and she can barely put any of her experiences from her past life together, let alone any of the ones in this one. (Some reconnaissance might help with that.)
Electing to expand her senses, she tries to figure out if she’s still in the same body she woke up in.
“-I ate it,” she said. Wait, no, not her, his body said that.
There’s a man in front of her with white hair and a very young face wearing a blindfold, seeming to almost stare through it to look at her. “For real?” the man says.
”For real” The body and the Fujiwara chorus.
“Does your body feel okay?” The man asks her body. (Why does he look so familiar?)
“Yeah, I feel fine,” her vessel responds. (I don’t feel fine. Our feelings are different, because my vessel is not me.)
“Can you switch with Sukuna?” She feels herself pale in her innate domain. (He’s here?)
The next words her body speaks confuse her. “Who’s Sukuna?” (How does this child not know who Sukuna is?)
“The name of the guy who’s finger you just ate? Y’know, the guy currently bouncing around in your head?” She breathes a massive sigh of relief at those words. (It’s just me, not him. I’m not my vessel, and he is not me.)
“Ooooh that guy? Yeah he hasn’t really done much, thus far he’s just been panicking in my head, it’s kind of annoying to be honest.” She feels indignation rise in her chest, but she artfully pushes it down in favor of sating her curiosity. (Who is this child to be able to restrain my power? Even the angel's technique could not resist me for long.)
“I doubt Sukuna appreciates that comment, you know?” (I most certainly do not.)
She tries to get a feel for the tall man’s cursed energy. It feels electric and overpowering, like the smell of ozone left in the air after one of Kamutoke’s thunder strikes. (I’ve felt that cursed energy before, and I’ve seen that face, but where?)
“Yeah, it felt like he got really angry for a second there. You wanted me to switch with him, right?” (That’s where I’ve seen that face before!)
“Yeah!” He says cheerfully. “Just for a minute though, then you can take control back.”
She feels her soul being tugged back into the front of her vessel’s mind, and the phantom sensations of her limbs becoming real as she finds herself standing before the tall man with a smug look on her face. “Greetings, Sugawara.”
That seems to give him pause for a second before he breaks out laughing. “You’re about a millennium too late for that. We haven't been Sugawara for a long time. I’m Gojo Satoru, the strongest sorcerer.” (How embarrassing. A thousand years of death and I expected nothing to change?)
She probes for information from the white haired sorcerer. “But you still bear the eyes, even to this day, correct?” (I have to check that he’s telling the truth.)
“Yep,” he says, popping the p as he slides the blindfold up his face, revealing those impossibly blue eyes that fought so desperately against her. “So, care to tell me about any evil plans you may have? Got any particular children you’re looking forward to killing?”
She can’t help herself, she laughs heartily. “Ah, no such thing, Gojo. I must admit I am glad to see that the Sugawara bloodline has managed to wind its way throughout the ages without dying out. Though I have to say, these must be strange times, since I have awakened to see the descendants of Sugawara and Fujiwara standing side by side.” (He’s most likely just checking that my host can control me. If only he couldn’t.)
Gojo’s expression twists into something between disgust and discomfort. “Eugh, don’t talk like that, you sound like the elders.” (The sharp wit of the Six Eyes has not changed, at the very least.)
“How entertaining you are, Gojo Satoru. I like you already.” She felt a tug on her soul. Panic grips her for a terrifying moment before she remembers that it’s not him who’s pulling her back. “What a shame, my time is already up. I hope to speak to you once more soon.” she said, the bewildered expression on the Six Eyes’ face fading away as she returned to her innate domain.
“What an entertaining awakening I have had,” she says to no one in particular. (My awakening, not his.)
The empty fields of her domain stay silent, save for the faint rustling of flowers in the wind and the crackle of pebbles being kicked up by her wandering.
She feels a sudden jolt, peeking out her vessel’s eyes only to find them closed. (Oh. I suppose that Gojo sorcerer knocked my vessel out.)
She tries taking her vessel over as he slept, but somehow she remains sealed in her domain no matter how much she tries to escape. (What is giving him the strength to hold my soul in place?)
After recognizing the disappointing futility of her attempts to escape her prison, she thinks it best to take stock of her situation in this strange era she had awoken to, organizing her thoughts and circumstances into a list. Her findings are as such:
1: During my stay amongst the dead, my soul was split in twenty pieces and stored in my fingers.
2: This body’s constitution is incredibly unique, being almost reminiscent of his .
3: I have been dead for over a thousand years at this point, and have awakened to a very different time.
4: The Fujiwara child bears the 10 Shadows technique, and that Gojo shares techniques with Sugawara no Michizane.
5: Somehow, this body bears his technique, despite him never having any children to pass it on.
“Kenjaku, your schemes are truly despicable.”
“Huh,” Gojo remarked as he caught the vessel’s falling body, “Y’know, I’ve been imagining what meeting the King of Curses would be like for a while now, and I can’t say I expected that this what he’d be like.”
“I expected more screaming bloody murder from him,” Megumi said with a frown. “Something feels very… off about Sukuna.”
Gojo laughs, retrieving his souvenir bag from his student. “You can say that again! If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he almost seemed kind.”
The younger sorcerer gets to his feet. “Sukuna healed me, you know?”
Gojo, caught off guard by his student’s words, spits out his drink. “Sorry, Sukuna did what?” Even Gojo can’t do that, and he’s the strongest.
“He healed me. It almost felt like when Shoko does it,” Megumi reiterated.
“It seems like Sukuna has many hidden talents.” Since when was Sukuna able to heal others? It doesn’t surprise him that Sukuna knows how to perform RCT—he didn’t earn the title ‘King of Curses’ for nothing, after all—but being able to perform it on another? Unheard of.
Megumi remains silent for a moment before returning to his senses. “They’re gonna try to kill him, aren’t they?”
Gojo snorts. “Yeah, probably. Why, you want me to save him?” Truthfully, he's very curious to see where this will go.
Megumi looks away. “...Yeah. Sukuna’s the one that deserves it, not his innocent vessel.”
Gojo raises his eyebrow under his blindfold. “That a request from my student?”
“It is,” replies Megumi with a sigh.
“Consider it done!” Gojo replies with his usual cheer.