Chapter Text
Ryomen Sukuna
Awakening felt like a car crash.
I’m talking full on semi-truck smashing into a station wagon carrying a family of four car crash.
And I was the family of four.
As my vision resolved into shapes instead of too-bright blurs, I blinked a couple times, only to realize with some discomfort that I was blinking four eyes at once.
About a second later, a second realization hit me. Like the semi-truck from earlier.
Four eyes. Waking up in an unfamiliar place. Standing in front of a…
Oh, god.
I sucked in a breath.
“[Dismantle].”
A voice that wasn’t mine spoke.
My hand waved on instinct, a gesture born from decades of muscle memory that I shouldn’t have been able to access, and the monster in front of me was… Dismantled. Dozens of perfectly-square chunks fell to the ground, impacting hard concrete with meaty thwacks that had me fighting to keep my lunch down.
Everything was too rough, too hard, too wet!
I felt my lungs gasping for air as I lowered my hand. This could not be happening to me. This could not be happening to me! I had a life, friends, family, a body I could convince myself not to hate!
For a second, I stood there, watching purple blood trickle into the concrete with four hollow, dead eyes. I was standing here, in the body of Itadori Yuji, in the… what, soul? Finger? Of Ryomen Sukuna. I would never see my family again.
This wasn’t some sick dream, it was just all too… real.
The sickly smell of Curse blood told me that much.
I looked down at my hand, my clawed hand, and tried to ignore the stab of hurt that lanced through me at the sight of “my” masculine chest. Of course I didn’t have the luck to get handed a decent body on a silver platter. I would have taken anything, even my old body, but no…
Itadori Yuji, firmly-masculine 15-year-old, was my Vessel.
Before I could do much more than stand there feeling sorry for myself, someone… spoke.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing with my body!?”
The voice echoed inside my head, all indignant and up-in-arms. I felt muscles clench under a command that wasn’t my own, a muscular arm rising up to grab me by the neck.
“Ghk-!” I grunted, realizing somewhere in the back of my head that this was Yuji, taking control just before my eyes closed and everything tilted on its axis. All at once, I wasn’t standing on the roof of a half-destroyed school building. Everything darkened, only to be re-lit with a hazy red glow.
The concrete beneath my feet was replaced by a pile of bones that quivered uneasily whenever I shifted my weight. Even my outfit was different, though I probably should have expected that. A white, flowing kimono replaced Yuji’s casual clothes, complimented by a pair of wooden sandals replacing his raggedy-ass shoes.
Though… my chest was softer, more pillowy in this robe, and I couldn’t feel a certain presence between my legs. Was it possible that this “mental body” of mine was… properly mine?
I twirled a lock of pink hair absently, noting it as yet another one of the changes. This hair was even longer than it had been in my past life!
“Don’t move! You’re no longer human!”
I could faintly hear the voice of Fushiguro Megumi - don’t think about the implications, don’t think about the implications, don’t think about the implications - through the muggy air of the Domain, as if muffled by a layer of water.
“Itadori Yuuji, under Jujutsu Regulations, I will now execute you as a curse!”
Oh, that wasn’t good.
With a numb sort of calm, I sat down on the bone pile and sighed.
Even with a nice body, this was a shitty reincarnation.
—
“What’s the situation?”
The nonchalant greeting shocked Fushiguro Megumi out of his stance, and he looked over at the Strongest Sorcerer with wide eyes, “Gojo-sensei?! Why are you here?”
“Hey.” Gojo gave him a jaunty wave, ignoring the bewildered look from Itadori in favor of speaking to his student in an upbeat tone, “I wasn’t planning on coming, but man, you’re roughed up!”
After taking a few hundred pictures of Megumi’s condition with his cellphone, he heaved a long-suffering sigh, “The higher-ups wouldn’t shut up with a Special Grade Cursed Object missing, so I stopped by while doing some sightseeing. So, did you find it?”
Itadori sheepishly raised his hand, “Um… sorry, but I ate it.”
For a second, Gojo was silent, then he said, “For real?”
“For real.” Itadori and Megumi echoed.
Gojo stepped forward, tilting his head almost horizontally and peering at Itadori’s face for a couple seconds. Megumi knew the Six Eyes could detect almost anything to do with Cursed Energy, but it was still a bit weird to see a grown man staring so closely at a teenager.
With a sigh, he rose to his feet and futilely tried to brush some of the dust off his knees. These uniforms were the worst, always trapping dust and grime…
“Damn, it really did combine with you!” Gojo chuckled, “That’s hilarious. Anything off with your body? Sudden urges to grow extra limbs? Any taste for the flesh of the innocent?”
“Uh, not particularly.” Said Itadori, giving his arm a curious look as he flexed his hand a few times.
Humming, Gojo asked, “Can you swap out with Sukuna?”
“Sukuna?”
“The Curse you ate.”
“Oh… Yeah, I think I can.”
—
I squeezed my eyes shut, hugging my legs to my chest and trying not to let tears escape.
Yuji was about to chuck me into the driver’s seat, which meant Gojo was about to kick the shit out of me, which meant I was probably going to get us both slated for execution. Who cares that Gojo was gonna get it postponed!? Those damn higher-ups would just have us killed either way!
“Oh, god…” I mumbled, tugging on my hair, “I don’t want to die… I don’t want to die…”
“Yo, Sukuna, you wanna come out?”
“NO THANK YOU!” I shouted, valiantly suppressing the quiver in my voice.
—
“Uh… Sukuna says he… doesn’t want to?” Yuji scratched his head, bewildered.
Gojo blinked.
Then he blinked again.
“You know, I didn’t really account for that.” He said matter-of-factly, “How about you try to convince him? I’m kind of interested to see the King of Curses for myself…”
“Alright…” The strawberry-haired teen nodded apprehensively, then began concentrating again.
—
“Are you, uh, sure you don’t wanna come out? There’s this weird guy with a blindfold who wants to meet you.”
I thought for a second. If Gojo couldn’t say that Yuji could control me, he’d have to kill us. If I came out but didn’t do jack shit, maybe they’d be a little cooler with me? Then they could postpone the execution and I could just curl up in a little ball like a bitch and maybe we wouldn’t die because Yuji’s really a driven young man so-
Shaking away my racing thoughts, I took a deep breath and declared, “If he promises not to attack me, I’ll come out.”
“Alright! No hurting anyone, right?”
“I don’t want to get either of us killed.” I sighed, running a hand through my hair and trying to think about how OGkuna would word it, “And I don’t think you want to die either… right?”
“Well, no… not really.”
“Then put me on.” My tone was hollow, resigned.
From one moment to the next, the Innate Domain dissolved around me. My eyes opened to the dark high school rooftop once more, and I blinked a few times while looking around.
…Yep. Still a dead Curse, still a knockoff Sasuke.
The only addition was the albino paintbrush standing in front of me with a smug-ass look. He looked practically coiled for a fight despite the casual demeanor, and I took a step back at the Cursed Energy radiating from the motherfucker. God, even with my barely-absorbed muscle memories, I could feel the danger radiating from the absolute monster that was Satoru Gojo.
For a second, I met his… blindfold? Gaze? Whatever.
Then I sucked in a breath and blurted out the first thing that came to mind, “I’m gay.”
“Wha-!?”
The world dissolved again, and then I was sitting atop my bone pile like nothing happened.
A long whine escaped my lungs, and I found myself regretting every single one of my life choices.
—
After a second, Gojo burst out laughing, “The King of Curses is a riot!”
“Gojo-sensei…” Megumi sweatdropped, holding the mochi bag in a limp grip, “Try to take this more seriously…”
“I can’t help it, Megumi!” He wheezed, straightening up and running a hand through his hair, “Man, when I got the call to come out here, I wasn’t expecting this!”
With a nonchalant gesture, Gojo tapped Itadori’s forehead and sent the tiniest pulse of Cursed Energy into the teen boy’s head. His body went limp like a sack of bricks, and the so-called teacher effortlessly hoisted him onto his shoulder with a jaunty, “Well, assuming he’s not possessed by Sukuna when he wakes up, he might have some serious potential as a vessel. Question for you, what do you think I should do with him?”
“Under Jujutsu Regulations, he must be exorcised as a Curse…” Megumi grimaced, “Even if he’s a potential vessel who can control Sukuna.”
The teen was silent for a second, hands clenching at his sides.
“But I don’t want him to die!”
—
When Itadori Yuji opened his eyes, he wasn’t quite sure what he expected. Perhaps a hospital room ceiling, or his bedroom at home, or even just some dingy alleyway with all of his valuables stolen. What he definitely, absolutely, 100% did not expect was a pool of blood surrounding a fuck-mothering bone pile.
A pile of bones.
Bone Pile.
Yuji blinked, then rubbed his head a few times.
“...Am I dead?” He wondered aloud, looking around the formless hellscape for anything that might have once resembled a landmark at some point in its existence.
Unfortunately, there was nothing but the Bone Pile.
“I’m dyiiiinnngggg… I hate this place…” A voice moaned from the top of the Bone Pile, and Yuji realized abruptly that there was a prone shape up there. Was that… Sukuna? Ryomen Sukuna, the Special Grade Cursed Object?
“Uh, hello? Sukuna? My name is Yuji Itadori!” He called out, sloshing his waterlogged feet towards the bone pile haphazardly, “Are we, like, cool?”
“Oh, shit, you’re here!?” The voice distantly exclaimed, a white-robed figure rising to their feet and stumbling over to the side of their throne-thingy.
The following events seemed to happen in slow motion.
That robed figure, Sukuna, the King of Curses, tripped on a loose bone. A skull went flying off the Bone Pile, and Newton’s Laws promptly came into full effect. Sukuna flopped forward with a strangled cry, tumbling end over end half a dozen times before faceplanting in the shallow pool of blood-water.
Yuji stared, eyes wide, at the prone form of the dreaded King of Curses.
A weak sob escaped the Curse(?)’s mouth as they curled up into a ball and visibly held back tears.
“Um… are you okay?” He hesitantly asked, kneeling down beside the shuddering body.
They slowly shook their head, half-drenched pink hair swaying with the motion. Yuji’s heart clenched at the pitiful sight, and he began wrapping his arms around Sukuna. Slowly, so as not to startle the poor thing, he squeezed them into a warm hug.
“I… uh, dunno what you’re going through, but… I’m here. We’re in the same boat, I guess, so if you need someone to lean on, you can count on me!” He declared, and that must have been the final straw, because they burst into tears and threw their arms around his torso with a death-grip tighter than steel.
Yuji’s expression softened, and he quietly petted the sobbing Curse(?)’s hair as they sobbed out a stream of anguish and fear. If this was supposed to be an evil monster, he wasn’t seeing it. No, this was more like a traumatized little sister.
“It’s all gonna be alright.” He whispered.
And if he had anything to say about it, nobody was gonna hurt his new imouto.
…Official recognition pending.