"There is an ocean of silence between us
…and I am drowning in it."
―Ranata Suzuki
Zenin Estate, December 20, 2018Nadja takes her claim on top of Sukuna, straddling his hips, which may as well be her throne despite her disinterest in ever being a queen. His lower hands immediately settle on her hips, cupping the glorious curves of her rear and giving them a firm squeeze in greeting. One of his upper hands is occupied examining one of her blades, a slender one-sided blade honed to an edge as fine as his cursed technique. It glints in the firelight, and Nadja keeps her eyes on his, the main which are focused on the play of the knife in his hand, and the lower set on her.
There is no surprising the King of Curses.
"Are you still afraid of me?" Sukuna asks in a bored tone, but Nadja can hear the blur of pleasure in his voice. They've been making love most of the afternoon. The hands on her hips pull her forward, forcing her thighs wider as she is forced to straddle the mouth on his belly. She gasps when the lips part and she can feel hot, moist breath on her bare cunt.
Fuck.
"I was never afraid of you," she murmurs, tilting her head. Sukuna is twirling the knife with a consummate precision, a skill from a life a thousand years gone by. Since perfecting his jujutsu, he has had no need for edged weapons, but Nadja's arsenal has always fascinated him. He has never seen her use anything else in all the time he has known her.
"Oh?" Sukuna's voice is amused. "Then why does your soul tremble in my presence? I can feel it."
The mouth below her grins, the tattooed tongue takes an experimental swipe, parting her easily and making her gasp and tighten her thighs around him. Sukuna smirks in smug satisfaction.
"We spit in the face of the gods every day I do not kill you, Sukuna," Nadja replies, and he pauses, all four of his eyes now focused on her. She reaches down, traces the black in limned into his skin. The muscles tense beneath her expert touch, and the tongue continues its tireless effort, swiping slowly back and forth. Nadja's soul isn't the only thing trembling now. Sukuna can feel the slick heat of her dripping onto him as he continues to torment her.
He brings the knife to her throat and watches as that predatory mien returns in a heartbeat. Suddenly there is tension in her, leashed and coiled in on itself like a spring condensed to its absolute limit. Sukuna chuckles, the mouth on his belly meeting her cunt in languorous kisses. He can feel the tension in her building, promising violence or the dissolving force of an incredible orgasm.
Sukuna trails the knife down slowly, gently so as not to part her beautiful umber skin. He traces the contour of her collarbones, the swells of her breasts, and laughs when she arches as he pricks her nipples gently with the tip of the blade. It is fascinating to use her own weapons against her in this way.
"The pair of us are at an impasse, hm?" Sukuna asks. Nadja's hips begin to rock against his belly's mouth, the soft sucking and slurping sounds filling the silence. The knife trails down the taut planes and curves of her belly, towards the source of those erotic sucking sounds. His lower eyes flick down briefly to take in the sight of her cunt practically drooling over his mouth. His hands on her hips help guide her even as she lets out a keening moan, throwing her head back.
"Yet," Sukuna says, tracing the sensitive region around her cunt with the blade, mindful of her undulating movements. "I cannot take your life either, can I?"
Nadja looks down at him, her angelic face framed by a cloud of black curls, and for a moment he thinks she is worlds away, but he sees the clarity in her gaze.
"Come for me," Sukuna orders, and she does for the simple fact that he told her to, even though she wants nothing more than to prolong this pleasure a bit longer. He always knows how to make her heart race in so many new ways. She shivers as his tongue laps up every drop of her mess, makes a bit of a mess of her some more, and he tosses the blade aside, drawing her down into a four-armed embrace.
"I would let you," Nadja whispers, pressing a kiss against his mouth, her hair falling around both of them, curtaining them from the outside world. "I would let you because I love you."
Sukuna holds her close, an easy feat because Nadja seeks that closeness without shame, now.
She is in love. How foolish, he thinks. How foolish, and yet his pulse races at the words he's longed to hear since the first moment he took her into his arms a thousand years ago.
How foolish.
Zenin Estate, December 24, 2018
It is dark by the time Sukuna returns to the Zenin Estate, his heart crushed in so many ways that he thinks his soul spills out of the cavity Satoru put in his chest, and every part of him hurting in ways he had forgotten were possible. Gojo Satoru was a magnificent opponent—is a magnificent opponent—in every sense of the word. Twice-blessed with gifts beyond the comprehension of the average sorcerer, and so like him that Sukuna wonders if he hallucinated the entire ordeal. He longs to match himself against the brat again. His daughter's choice to love him is understandable, he'll give her that much.
The sheet-covered remains of Nadja's corpse are heavy in his lower arms, and if his heart were still intact, it would break anew. It feels like it's been shattering endlessly inside his chest since that awful, awful moment. His ears are filled with the sound of shattering, and Nadja's choked gurgle as she tried to say his name.
This is the third time Nadja has hurt him in the only way he cannot protect himself from, and worse yet, she will never wake for him to shake the answers from her. She will never wake again. He finds the Zenin morgue, lays her down on one of the cold metal tables. He won't take the sheet off—he can't. He doesn't want to remember Nadja frozen in death, no matter how many times it had come by his hand. This one is real. This one is permanent.
This one hurts.
Sukuna has spent a majority of the ages in a state of distant awareness through the severed parts of his soul around the country, and in that time, he realized that one darkness was like another, only because he had nothing he left behind, and everything to look forward to.
I would let you.
And she had.
Sukuna is not sure how long he stands there, holding a dark vigil over Nadja's body like some disturbing eidolon. His gaze focuses on the bloodstained sheet, and he can make out her shape beneath it. His fugitive of heaven is dead. The realization hits him again and again as he strains his senses to their limit for a sign of breath, a whisper of a pulse, knowing he is being greedy, knowing he risks cursing her soul.
Part of him wants to curse her, if only to never be parted from her again. Take her into himself, consume her, and never let her go as he should have a thousand years before. He should not have let her go, should have done more to make her stay; to convince her—
Eventually, however, his torment is silenced. There is only a vast ocean of nothing, calm and deceptively serene. In that silence, in that serenity, he must trust that her soul is on the Wheel again. He has to hope he can find her again and tell her that he never meant for their story to end this way. But it could not have ended any other way, could it? He is a curse, and she the instrument of Heaven sent to pierce his heart.
Well, you've accomplished your mission, haven't you? He thinks bitterly.
Sukuna opens his eyes, the lower ones cutting their gaze toward the door.
"You'll have no better opportunity to come for my head, whelp," he says, his voice flat and inflectionless. He sees his daughter step out of the shadows, tall and proud and world-weary. He does not turn to face her, even as she comes to stand by his side, her eyes on the bloodstained sheet on the table.
"Any other time I would relish the opportunity," Sundari says, and Sukuna hears the husk-hollow strain in her voice. She's been weeping. "But that's not the only reason I'm here."
Sukuna reluctantly tears his gaze from the woman who should have been his wife, and stares instead at the culmination of them both, distilled into the strong and insolent brat brimming with so much potential it gives him pause.
"What do you want?" He asks. He already knows.
"I want to bury my mother," Sundari says, and her voice is toneless, empty as if everything inside of her has been scraped out. He feels very much the same. "And then I'm going to kill you."
It doesn't sound like a threat, and Sukuna refuses to take it as one. There is no anger in this space, no hatred, not even love.
Only the cold, ceaseless maw of grief, gnawing at both of them, growing fat off of their loss.
"Ready when you are, whelp," Sukuna snorts, and he swears he can almost hear Nadja's simmering and amused laughter in the negative space where she should be standing with them. Sukuna finds it unnecessarily cruel that the only time he has the closest thing to blood and covenant as he dares, is when one of them is dead and the other has decided to kill him. How cursed is he that even this small bit of humanity is ruined by his very touch?
In his mind's eye, he sees Nadja dying over and over again, cut down by his hand. He feels the thrill of victory seeping from him, and Satoru's shocked expression as he's covered in her blood, holding her up as her soul flees her ruined body. In his mind's eye, this moment is refracted and replayed over and over, endlessly with no resolution in sight. He knows this is also a side-effect of bearing the weight of Unlimited Void. If Sundari chooses to make good on her promise she will undoubtedly kill him. He will make her work for it—his pride demands nothing less—but grief makes him weary and his fight with Gojo took more from him than he'll ever care to admit. He almost wishes she would at least try.
And yet, the pressure of her cursed energy is steady, even as grief eats her as surely as it eats him.
Sundari reaches into her pocket, withdraws a small silver case embossed with filigree. She opens it and produces a single, rolled joint. Without waiting, she lights it, taking a deep inhale.
"Fuck her for dying like this," Sundari says suddenly, her voice cloudy as she exhales smoke. Sukuna's eyes narrow. Ganja? With surprising speed, he snatches the joint from her, takes a drag himself. If they aren't going to fight about it, he might as well partake. If for nothing else but to take the edge of the pain from the hole in his chest. Begrudgingly, he passes the joint back to Sundari, who takes it.
For a long stretch of moments, they simply stand there, letting the weed hit them. It hits Sundari faster, and Sukuna feels his frayed nerves settling and smoothing over. Even the grief in his soul feels somewhat less consuming. Perhaps his daughter has the right idea after all.
"It wasn't supposed to happen this way," Sukuna says slowly. "I never intended to kill her. I never even thought I would be able to. That slash was meant for Gojo Satoru. And after—"
"I know," Sundari says, taking another drag before passing him the joint. "That's why she intervened. I don't think she thought it would kill her either."
They are silent at that. Sukuna is angry, now. If she didn't know if that slash would kill her, why would she—
Ah. Of course. She is—was—familiar with Mahoraga, even before the shikigami was yoked to the Zenin Clan. The shikigami had given her a piece of itself in the form of a cursed tool, allowing her to see and track cursed energy. Sukuna admitted it was a brilliant little tool, and she'd cleverly concealed it behind an eyepatch made of cursed seals to hide its cursed energy until she was ready to use it.
She knew what Sukuna's strategy had been the moment she saw the wheel appear over his head. Sukuna goes over the battle in his mind. She couldn't have intervened during the domain clashes, or she would have been killed by his domain since it attacked everything in range whether or not it had cursed energy. She'd waited until Mahoraga's adaptation was sure before she acted, and neither of them had been in the shape to sense her until it was too late.
And Sukuna severed her divine soul.
His lower hands ball into fists beneath his haori's massive sleeves, his brow furrows, and the bridge of his nose wrinkles as he battles the tide of his emotions to a pained and steamy gridlock.
"Did you love her at all?" Sundari asks quietly, her gaze still on the bloodstained sheet. Neither one of them want to lift it. Neither one of them wants to see her that way.
Sukuna thinks about the question, thinks about the time in which he and Nadja had been their happiest together. She'd haunted his temple like a deadly apparition, a slip of a woman with the strength to rival a herd of elephants, and a ferocity that matched his own. He thinks about that first winter night when she first came to him, and how they'd toyed with one another, endlessly fascinated.
He thinks about the look of her in the hot spring, when she moved with a serpent's lissome grace to come to him as surely as if he'd summoned her from the steaming waters. His.
And the nights that followed: the joy, the laughter, the blood, the fighting, the arguments.
The joy, the joy, the joy.
Yes. Yes, he'd loved her. His funny, deadly, beautiful, seductive divine-sworn fugitive of heaven. He'd loved her in the only way he understood how to express his love: through strength. And if he learned to love her tenderly; to be soft with her in the night's depths, whose business was it but theirs? But it isn't just anyone asking if he loved Nadja Hikmat, whose vividness had ablated his iron heart to rust: it's Sundari. Their daughter. The baby he'd told Nadja he wanted with her because he could see no one else worthy of bearing him an heir.
Sukuna meets Sundari's gaze, saying nothing. The answer to the question is too vast for mere words, but too simple to leave unsaid.
"Yes." It is all he can give her; if he gives her anymore, he will pour out all of himself and there will be nothing left for him to savor as the wound a thousand years gone by bleeds from the fissures Nadja's death has left behind. He says nothing as tears silently roll down Sundari's face. She seems to get ahold of herself when she notices him watching her, blinking rapidly and dashing them away; sniffling before that fierce determination cements itself on her face. Sukuna takes a deep breath. It will still be some time before he can recover his burned-out technique. His head is pounding, and his thoughts feel cloudy, the results of Unlimited Void.
"Let me take her home," Sundari says, willing the warbling note of grief from her voice. It bleeds through anyway, thick and cloying and threatening to choke them both. "Let me do the final rites and let me light her pyre. She deserves that much. She's not yours to mourn."
Sukuna bristles, his eyes flaring brightly. "She was always mine, whelp," he growls, a warning in his voice and a threat not far behind. "Even when she ran, even when she hid you, she was mine. She was made for me."
"She was made to kill you," Sundari snaps and Sukuna's gaze cuts to her sharply. "She was a dagger throw through time aimed at your fucking heart. She wasn't made to love you."
Sukuna chuckles. "And yet, she did. Does that make you angry?"
Sundari's mouth opens and then closes sharply with an audible click of her teeth. Sukuna isn't done being cruel, because it is all he knows: he hurts, and so too must the world around him.
"If your mother hadn't loved me, and I hadn't loved her, she would have stayed and fed you to me," Sukuna says with a grin. "I would have devoured you still fresh from the womb, blood and all. If she hadn't loved me and I hadn't loved her, she would have torn you out herself rather than ever let my seed take root inside her."
Sundari's eyes are wide.
"You're a horrible fucking person, you know that?" She grouses, and Sukuna realizes he finds pleasure in this. This is the reaction he's used to; this is familiarity. Anything but this hollowing spear of incomprehensible grief in his gut. "Maybe she loved you, but you didn't love her. Loving you destroyed her."
"What's stopping you from carrying out your vengeance, whelp?"
Sundari hesitates, her hands flexing, her cursed energy flickering like a disturbed flame in a sudden gust of wind, but her lower eyes flick to the corpse of Nadja before them. Sukuna follows her gaze, and he feels something foreign and spindly behind his eyes, making his stomach twist into knots. Of course. He takes a deep breath and exhales, schooling himself to calm. Sundari does the same.
"She'd probably think it's funny, us fighting in front of her dead body like this," Sundari says. Sukuna thinks of Nadja and her smug smirk, hiding a dainty laugh behind her hand like some amused courtier. Yeah, she would think this was kind of funny. The ganja helps support this theory. He allows himself a dry chuckle.
"Sukuna," Sundari says but at his sharp look she looks slightly chastened. "Dad. Let me take her home. You know it's the right thing to do. If you do like, one right thing in your life, let it be this. She deserves a proper send-off."
Sukuna doesn't want to give her up, not because Sundari is his enemy [and he is not so sure of that either, but because if he does then he will have nothing left of her. Nothing that was as immortal as she had been. What changed? Why had she been cut down? He hadn't even been aiming for her. He had assumed her safely ensconced elsewhere. He told her he'd find her after he'd finished killing everyone else…save Sundari. That had been his promise to her.
And now she is dead.
"We will cremate her here," Sukuna says and at Sundari's mouth opening to protest, he holds up a forestalling hand, crossing his lower arms in pensive thought. "The others do not—did not—know her as we did. What connection she has to them is tenuous at best. But you are her daughter, and she was my…"
My wife. At least, she might have been had she not fled him. How different things might have been had she stayed. How different he might have been had she stayed. Why did she leave him? Damn her.
Sundari swallows and nods, understanding. A private ceremony, then, with the only people alive Nadja could call family. Sundari thinks of Yuji, Yuta, and Maki, knowing that they had grown attached to Nadja in their own way while training under her. But still, she understands her father's meaning. If Nadja is to be sent off, it must be by blood, not covenant.
Together, Sundari and Sukuna prepare Nadja's body for cremation. It is silent work; bitter work; and they say nothing as they stitch her body back together by hand, each carrying the lodestone of grief in their hearts as they build her pyre and place her upon it, clad in funerary white. Sukuna hates how peaceful she looks in death because nothing will open those beautiful eyes again. Nothing will curve those pallid, ashen lips into a smile ever again.
There is only this ocean of grief between himself and who he must become to finish what he's started.
"Can you open the Furnace?" Sukuna asks when they stand before Nadja's pyre. Sundari swallows.
"Not yet," she whispers. Sukuna shrugs out of his black haori, handing it to Uraume, who holds it solemnly. Sundari hasn't spoken with them extensively, but they have been deferent to her once realizing she is Sukuna's daughter. In another life, they might have been her tutor and attendant. Now, they are simply another enemy locked in a truce of complex circumstances.
Sukuna does not scold Sundari for her lack of ability, not like he did in Shibuya. He understands now what was done to her was more than just a sealing. Her very Self had been fractured and sealed away. He knows she can open the Furnace, but she has not tapped into that part of her abilities yet, and he is still too weak to do so himself.
That is why he arms himself with a bow and arrow, its tip dipped in pitch. Sundari lights the arrow with a match. She watches her father draw the bow, his shoulders perfectly level, his eyes focused, his breathing stilled as he takes aim. He looks like a deity out of the old legends, four arms and two faces, his visage serene as he lets the arrow fly.
Nadja's pyre goes up in a blaze and Sundari almost loses her nerve, but there is still more to be done.
She forms a mudra with her hands and begins to chant the sutras to ensure her mother's soul is consigned to Samsara once more, to be reborn in a better life. It is what she hopes for, at least. Sukuna watches as she does this, marveling at how she channels her jujutsu through foreign words and hand signs.
He cannot help but be proud of her, and of Nadja for seeing to it that their daughter flourished into someone strong and independent. Sundari is a miracle, but Sukuna knows that come dawn, they will see who throws truer: the original, or his scion.
As the pyre blazes, sending embers into the dark, moonless night sky, Sukuna retrieves his haori and puts it back on. Sundari watches as the pyre burns, strangely at peace. There is only a solemn silence, now, as father and daughter watch the woman they love burn.
"Sukuna-sama," Uraume murmurs, and his lower eyes shift to them. Uraume bows, eyes downcast. "Will your honored daughter be staying the night? I can prepare a room if need be."
"No," Sundari says curtly. "I'm just here to get mom's ashes and bring them home."
Sukuna doesn't want to know why her words sting so badly. He clenches his jaw to keep from reacting. Sundari isn't looking at him, all four eyes focused on the flames of the pyre, which collapses in on itself as it is reduced to ash.
Later, when the fire is out and the remaining embers have died, Sundari and Sukuna pick Nadja's bones from the ashes. Uraume has been sent to fetch something that can pass for a suitable and secure urn.
"You can keep half," Sundari says, her voice drained and weary. "It's more than you deserve, but she loved you despite everything. And I like to think in your own fucked up way you loved her too. So keep half."
Sukuna snorts. "You're awfully magnanimous, daughter. Why the sudden change of heart?"
Sundari's lower eyes are on the task at hand, but her main eyes look up at him and he sees the accusatory intent there. Ah, yes. At the end of the day, Nadja's death is his fault. Sundari is a creature of retribution, and he has taken the only being who shares the burden of immortality with her. She will outlive her comrades, even the Six Eyes she loves so much. And she knows at the end of everything, it will just be her…and her father who cannot truly die either.
What a cursed and bleak future. In another life, he can see himself as the father she deserved, and the husband worthy of his divine lover's spirit.
Uraume returns with a black urn, and Sundari begins to scoop the ashes into it.
"My condolences, my lady," they say in that gentle voice and Sundari doesn't have it in her to hate them. Uraume is her father's loyal companion and servant, but there's something about them that is…she cannot bring herself to hate them.
"Thanks," she mutters. "I hate war."
Sundari catches Uraume's pale gaze and sees a trace of sympathy within the normally cool and distant depths.
"I hate it too," they whisper. "But it cannot be avoided."
Sundari looks down at the urn in her hands, the divine and preternatural greatness of her mother reduced to ash.
"Can't it?" She asks. "What even is the point of it all?"
To that, Uraume has no answer, or rather, they remain reticent.
"It is not for me to dictate to Sukuna-sama," they say instead. "However, he has requested that you join him for a late meal. You are also welcome to stay here and travel in the morning when you have rested. I understand this has been a difficult day for you both. It may be that a hot meal and a good night's rest will serve you both for the challenges ahead."
Sundari huffs. So perfunctory and professional. Like a little assistant. One wouldn't think Uraume a life-sworn companion, but a mere underling were they not privy to how Uraume seemed to know Sukuna's mind before he even formed thoughts. Sundari sighs, wondering if it will matter.
"Yeah," she mutters quietly. "I could eat."
Uraume offers her a small but pleased smile.
"Very well," they reply. "I will see to it that all is in readiness. You may join your father in the gardens should you wish. And I can store the urn—"
At Sundari's startled and withering look, they stop speaking, sensing her irritation and anxiety.
"Of course. Please, forgive me for being so thoughtless. I did not mean to insinuate anything. Only that you would want the urn stored during the meal."
Sundari seems to relax. "Yeah…yeah since I'm staying the night, I guess so."
Reluctantly, she hands the urn to Uraume, who ghosts from the room, leaving a lingering chill where they once stood. Sundari feels lost, and she searches her memories for comfort, finding only jagged bits and pieces of a mind toyed with by a sadistic sorcerer. She can't even remember Vanhi's face anymore, and her death had triggered a rage and grief so profound she'd left an entire town full of corpses in her wake.
What will she do now that her other mother—her true mother—is gone; cut down by her own father, no less?
Sundari doesn't know, and her mind shies from seeking an answer. She leaves the room, trying to summon her appetite as she enters the main dining chamber. It is a traditional setup, with a low table, and cushions for sitting on the floor. Sundari spies her father—impossible not to, he's so massive—seated already, pouring himself warm sake, his expression pensive and shuttered. His lower eyes flick to her, and she sees something in his expression shift…almost daring to be soft…or surprised?
"You decided to stay after all," he says, offering a thin and half-hearted smile. Sundari doesn't return his smile, sitting across from him in uncomfortable silence.
"Yeah," she mutters sullenly, the ink stripe along her nose crinkling in a frown that Uraume has seen countless times before on Sukuna's own face. Seeing him in his true form and his daughter across from him, the resemblance is unmistakable. Even their cursed energy burns with the same oppressive malevolence, though hers seems…softer, somehow. "I guess so. And I have your word this is not an attempt to play me false?"
Sukuna's crimson eyes widen slightly and Sundari suspects that she has done what few can claim and hurt his feelings. She feels a twinge of regret. They are mourning her mother, and she can only think to be petty and cruel. Even he has stowed his usual dismissive vitriol in favor of a tenuous but sincere truce.
"No," he says. "There is no reason to, really. I have no quarrel with anyone."
"Except Satoru," Sundari says in challenge. Sukuna tilts his head slightly, making a quiet hum in thought.
"I've no quarrel with him either," he says at last. "Not truly. But he is an arrogant brat, and it would please me to lesson him in why hubris will be his undoing by simply…undoing him." He grins and chuckles, amused by his own dry wit.
Sundari stares at him, incredulous that he can be so callous. "What's your endgame? Seriously. I've been racking my brain trying to figure out your motivations but none of it makes any sense. You say you've got no beef with anyone—including Satoru—but you're going to kill him for…being cocky? That's stupid."
Sukuna narrows his eyes. Sundari frowns and continues.
"No, this is so stupid. It's childish. Why are you like this? I'm your daughter and I'm not even like this. This can't be part of your curse because why am I not lashing out at everything around me?"
Sukuna does not say anything, but Sundari feels the sudden weight of his cursed energy and his gaze. Before he can answer, however, Uraume arrives with trays to serve their late meal. It's simple fare—comfort food, really—a hearty vegetable soup cooked in beef bone broth, and chunks of braised beef. Sundari finds that once she begins to eat, her appetite gets the better of her and soon she's asking Uraume for seconds and complimenting their cooking.
Sukuna hides a smile in his next sake sip.
"Your existence is a miracle, Sundari," he says suddenly. Sundari pauses mid-bite, and her chopsticks nearly clatter onto the table.
"What?" She asks, her voice tremulous. Sukuna sips his sake. His resistance to poison and disease makes the alcohol slow to circulate his system, but he can feel the comforting warmth in his belly.
"When I asked your mother for a child, neither of us thought we'd be successful," he tells her. Sundari's brows furrow. Her father seems almost shy…sheepish? It is something to see the infamous King of Curses be somewhat out of sorts. Nadja wasn't even his wife.
"I told her to wed me before her damnable divine mandate marched her off to gods-knew-where," Sukuna continues. Sundari resumes eating. She's listening, now.
"I'd spent all summer campaigning, playing godling to witless peasants and sniveling government officials. And the Fujiwara were breathing down my neck because I was taking over more territory than they were comfortable with. So, I asked your mother to accompany me on one final mission. I did not know at the time that she was pregnant with you. She acquitted herself well on that battlefield, and even slipped away before I opened my domain and finished it."
Sundari listens, setting her bowl down. She has a feeling that Sukuna has breathed not a word of any of this to a single soul in a thousand years. Unless Uraume was privy to a side of her father few ever were. Save her mother.
"We returned victorious and celebrated. We were to be wed three weeks after. Your mother stole off into the night three days after, and I never saw her again until that night in Shibuya. Even as disembodied Fingers, I never sensed her presence or what should have been yours. It was as if she'd died in truth."
Sundari swallows hard. She understands now why her father and mother reacted to one another the way they did.
He had been heartbroken. He wouldn't say it—probably couldn't even say it or recognize what it was—but Sundari had been in enough relationships to see heartbreak and recognize its ghost in her father. Her mother had left without a word, and hidden in India for centuries to raise her, and she remained as ignorant as a pig farmer to Sukuna or the legend he was.
"She…" Sundari doesn't know what words she can say to defend a woman no longer alive to defend herself. "I didn't know, dad. And it's not like you have the best reputation for me to come running to find you."
Sukuna smiles thinly, but it never reaches the crimson of his gaze.
"No," he says softly. "I suppose I don't. Still, it was unfair of her to hide you from me. I would have liked to…" He trails off, looking away, as if he is staring at some far-off point in time and space. Sundari swallows again, then pours herself a cup of sake.
"I suppose it no longer matters," Sukuna says at last. "We are here now, at odds."
Sundari sets her cup down with a definitive clatter.
"We don't have to be!" She snaps and Sukuna's gaze sharpens. He doesn't lift a hand to harm her, though, and Sundari realizes that he must have undertaken a binding vow to prevent impulsive outbursts. At least with her…for now.
"We don't have to be at odds, dad," Sundari says, and Sukuna raises his brows in twinkling amusement. "I don't know what this compulsion is you have that drives you to destroy everything and everyone you come across, but it doesn't make sense to me. It feels…" She struggles to find the word, fidgeting and resisting the urge to get up and pace.
"It feels like rage," she says softly. "It feels like there's some ceaseless fury inside you that you keep…spitting out in all directions. I saw what you did in Shibuya. I saw what you did to…"
She doesn't say it, and she sees the muscles of Sukuna's jaw tense, sees something flit across the human half of his face that can almost be mistaken for guilt.
"What will do when you've destroyed everything and everyone around you, dad?" Sundari asks. "What will you have after a thousand years of waiting?"
Sukuna decides he's heard enough.
"Enough," he says, the weight of command making his deep voice resonant. Sundari startles, all four of her eyes widening slightly, but says nothing. Sukuna rises from his seat with unnervingly smooth grace belied by his size, looking down at her.
"You should head to bed and get your rest. You'll need it for your journey back to your companions and the fight to come. You will be my enemy come morning."
Sundari draws back as surely as if he has slapped her. Then, she recovers, climbing to her feet to look at him, trying to will away the tears threatening to well up in her eyes, and the burn in her throat that wants to become a sob.
"You are still my enemy tonight, dad," she says, her voice wavering. "But even enemies can show compassion for one another. You just killed my mother in front of me. The least you can do is hear me out."
Sukuna doesn't like this. Doesn't want to be reminded that his hand struck down the woman he's chased across the sea of time.
"I have heard you, daughter," he says, and there is a weariness in his voice that feels as ancient as memory. A bone-deep ache born from grief. And rage.
"I have heard you and your mother both, and I'll hear no more. Go to bed."
Sundari can taste the heartbreak in his voice, buried beneath a thousand years of exhaustion and ennui. Neither of them wants to confront the fact that they will never hear Nadja again. Sukuna doesn't look at his daughter as she leaves the room, taking what's left of Nadja's memory with her.
The room feels colder.
"There are neither the strong nor the weak.
Can anyone say that the weak do not suffer more than the strong?"
― Shusaku Endo, Silence
Zenin Estate, December 25, 2018Sundari steps out into the gray and muted dawn, her mother's urn in her hands. It hasn't been long, but the sickly malaise of the Zenin Massacre mixes with her father's cursed presence and makes her queasy. Dinner had been difficult for more reasons than the obvious, and sleep came in fitful spurts. She feels agitated and unrested.
She makes it to the soribashi before she feels her father's gaze boring into her back. She briefly shuts her eyes, taking a deep breath.
You will be my enemy come morning.
You are still my enemy tonight.
She barely has time to react before she moves. In a blink, the soribashi shatters into kindling, partly from Sundari launching herself into the air, and mostly from Sukuna's Dismantle. Sundari's path is arbitrary, and she moves with an acrobat's explosive grace, fleet and sure of foot, buoying herself with her own immense cursed energy. She rolls out her extra arms, tucking the urn under one as her belly splits into an additional mouth, chanting sutras as she ventures deeper into the forests of the Zenin estate grounds.
Sukuna is on her heels in an instant, and she barely has time to stuff the urn in a knothole of a mighty oak before she turns to meet him.
He's big. Bigger than she expects him to be. He looks frightening in the broad light of day as opposed to the contemplative effigy he'd been under the glow of lanterns and the fire of Nadja's funeral pyre. Sundari has always been the tallest woman in any room—and the tallest person, really, until she met Satoru—but her father is a titan, and every blow feels world-shattering even when she blocks them. Sundari has fought Gojo Satoru as much as she's fucked him, and it's the only thing she can compare it to. She wonders if he held back.
Her father accords her no such niceties, blood or no. The one he loves is dead, and there is only her likeness in the contours of their daughter's face, and cold fury in her eyes, so much like his own.
Eight arms wage war in the dawn, each blow setting the trees to shuddering, their cursed energy lashing out like cyclonic storms, curse against curse.
Sukuna can scarce believe it, really. Here, the child he demanded of Nadja, and the only remaining vestige of her he has left [because what can he do with ashes, truly]. She bears his curse and bears it well. Sukuna despises her for the years he never got to know her. What circumstances shaped the steel of her soul? Had she been loathed as he was? Does his curse twist in her guts as they do in his own? What put that fire in her eyes? Is it his blood or is it her own flame, destined to burn brightly against the darkness of his legacy? Sukuna has so many questions, many that cannot be answered, and many more that no longer matter.
He told her he would kill her, and Sukuna keeps his promises.
But she is a magnificent thing, he thinks. He is proud of her as she misses a strike with her fist, but extends her claws to rake at his throat, shearing away his cursed energy to devour it. He has plenty to spare.
He is proud of her, when she blocks two blows aimed at her ribs, and shifts her secondary mouth to snap at his hands before returning to her belly. She uses the curse of their physiology with an enviable skill. His daughter is strong. Gods above she is strong, and she is willful and stubborn, spitting blood when his blows take her across the jaw in a shower of black sparks. She stumbles but recovers instantly. His wolf of a daughter is a tenacious fighter, like him. Like the fucking brat who once caged him.
So, her life wasn't always easy. She has the grit of a survivor in her soul, and Sukuna wonders if Nadja was hard on their girl.
Their girl.
Sukuna's fists spark black again as another blow lands, and Sundari tumbles, shattering trees along the way. She processes the pain, having reinforced herself with cursed energy, but the black flashes ate through, and she can feel the internal pain as blood trickles from her mouth.
Sukuna stands over her, his face as impassive as a god's.
"You chose this," he says, his deep voice cold.
Sundari spits blood at him, climbing to her feet, and beginning the battle anew. Her reversed curse technique cycles through, and she notes the hole in his chest where Satoru landed a black flash.
"Having a bit of trouble there, old man?" Sundari taunts as they circle one another like a pair of jungle cats preparing to spring.
"No more trouble than you're about to have, whelp," Sukuna replies and makes a mudra with one hand.
Sundari's eyes go wide, and she forms a mudra, preparing to counter. The mouth on her abdomen chants, and she mouths a single word with her main mouth:
"Now."
Sukuna is not a man who is often surprised, nor has he often been taken by surprise. He can count on at least two hands when he has been genuinely shocked. Meeting Nadja had been one of those moments. Finding out they have a daughter is another. Discovering Megumi Fushiguro was still another.
His daughter playing against the few emotions he had left and staging an ambush is this one.
He shifts, bringing his hand up as Yuta's katana connects with his forearm with a metallic screech as Sukuna shields himself with reinforced cursed energy. His face is contorted in a rictus of rage and fury, and Sundari finishes her sutra in time to restrain him.
Alright, Maki, she thinks, let's see if my mom's lessons stuck.
Maki descends like an angel of death, and in the sea of cursed energy she is a shark cutting through its waters, invisible and ferocious and hungry. In both hands she brandishes Sundari's trishula, Lalita, and the look on Sukuna's face is one of horror.
Maki will remember this moment for as long as she lives as she hurls the trishula with horrifying accuracy. Sukuna fights against his daughter's binding sutras, but without Mahoraga he must rely on his on-the-fly analyses of her techniques. He deduces that this is some manner of barrier technique. He has to feel where it connects with him in order to take it apart.
There. Right at the border between his soul and Megumi, who lays curled in the darkness, unmoving.
Sukuna inhales and severs Sundari's arms with a flick of his fingers. She doesn't even cry out, her breath stolen from her in shock as she struggles to heal as Sukuna breaks free.
Lalita strikes the empty spot where Sukuna once stood, and Maki lets out a hiss before she draws the Split Soul katana in time to block Sukuna's next attack. They crash into the undergrowth, the sound of cursed steel grinding against Sukuna's raw cursed energy tearing apart what should have been the serenity in the forest in the morning.
Yuta lands, sprinting to Sundari, who bears scars where her arms have regrown.
"Hikmat-san," Yuta says, unusually intense. "Are you alright?"
Sundari frowns, her four eyes focused on the battle that has moved away from them.
"Yeah, I'm good," she mutters. "What a fucking dick."
Yuta agrees, though he still feels bashful admitting it. He is Sundari's father, after all, despite her own misgivings and lack of care for how she addresses him. He just counts himself lucky that she had the good sense to call them in on her way here. With Gojo out of commission, it's on them to finish what he began. Yuta has trained with Sundari for weeks and is intimately familiar with how to use his cursed energy efficiently.
Maki's blade collides with Sukuna's claws in a shower of sparks.
"You think you're just like her!" He snarls. "But you're only human! Only flesh and blood with no divinity to protect you!"
Maki has never wanted to be like anyone. She's only ever wanted to be better: and she is. There is no barbed chain of love to stay her hand, to cloud her mind, or weigh down her heart. Maki's mind is quicksilver; a slipstream of instinct honed by years of determination, drive, and devastating focus. Every blow is the killing blow, every clash makes it clear that while Nadja was devoted to never killing Sukuna if she could help it, Maki has no such reservations. Her heart is laying amidst the ruin of her clan, buried with her twin. Love does not live here.
She is not like Nadja. She is just like Nadja. She is better than her predecessors.
"And you think we're going to just let you go and meet her! You're going back to hell, Sukuna!" Maki says back, her voice cold as the sword cuts through the shield of his cursed energy, sheathing itself in the cavity in his chest. Sukuna coughs wetly, his senses singing with the familiarity of loathing. This is familiar. This he can do.
Snck-snck-snck.
A sound like scissors slicing through fabric or paper, and Sukuna swears he sees the ghostly trail of dotted lines across his vision.
Snck!
He feels like he is being torn apart, and he realizes with a bitter irony that this technique is his…or a take on his, at any rate.
Insolent fucking brat.
The border between his soul and Megumi's frays at the edges, and he feels the boy stir, like any pitiful creature fed scraps of false hope. But Sukuna has not survived this long for lack of tenacity. The brat's newly acquired cursed technique may cut at the soul, but he'll need a lot more power before he can begin to loosen his grip on Megumi's entire being.
And he will make sure they are all bled like pigs in a slaughterhouse long before he lets that happen.
Sukuna makes a binding vow, feels the chains linking around his soul as the conditions are laid out.
The brat's hand comes for his heart as he lifts one of his remaining hands, looking down at him.
"Yuji!" Sundari screams the boy's name as Sukuna says, "Ryōiki Tenkai…"
There is a sound in Sundari's ears like the distant, discordant and brackish ringing of temple bells. Hollow and raspy and coppery. There's an acrid burn on her tongue as she realizes what's happening, why it feels so familiar.
"Yuji!" She screams. "Run!"
Sukuna's domain, Malevolent Shrine, is one of the largest domains ever encountered. Worse yet, Sukuna has accomplished the feat of casting it with no barrier, bringing it to existence without enclosing it. Sundari has had time to study since Shibuya and she concludes that a binding vow is why there is a path of escape, which is no path at all, but a slaughterhouse.
The shrine manifest behind him, true to its name, menacing and evil. The singularity of his cursed energy grows dense as the radius of his domain begins to come to bear in every direction around him.
Sundari reaches Yuji first, her lower hands casting the lotus mudra.
Lakshmi's Lotus.
The barrier blooms around them both as Sundari shields Yuji with her own immense power.
Sukuna's domain seals its radius with a high keening sound, and the brackish discord of malevolent temple bells accompany the hissing sound of endless slashes raining down, turning everything to mince.
Lakshmi's Lotus holds, and Sundari pours all of her power into maintaining the barrier, watching as Sukuna's power tears the petals apart, layer by layer. Yuji clings to her, wishing he could help, praying that they can outlast the duration of the domains relentless attacks. They are torn bloody, but Sundari knows what she must down, shifting the gears and flow of her cursed energy.
Can you heal others?
As they are torn apart, Sundari reforms them. Again and again, the agony of being sliced to bit and being reformed by reverse cursed technique until finally, the hissing stops, the temple bells fade, and all that is left around them is desolation. Everything has been destroyed: the forest, the compound—
The forest.
Sundari remembers her mother's urn, and suddenly her cursed energy spikes as Sukuna spreads his arms. He hasn't dismissed his domain, but Sundari doesn't care, because her fury and rage burn with the same radioactive fury of a neutron star. Yuji looks up in shock as Sundari's found hands open, and he sees what he is sure are flowers of fire blooming in her palms.
Sundari's eyes glow white as she opens her mouth, and cursed energy empowers a single word.
"開"Sukuna's eyes go wide as Sundari opens the Furnace before him. Flames from the First Fire—the spark that breathed life into all things—dance in her palms, and he understands why his daughter was worshipped as a goddess. But scenting new blood, he grins with malicious glee.
"Now it's interesting!" He cries, and watches as Sundari moves with a dancer's effortless grace, and a preternatural speed. He is shocked when her fist destroys the Malevolent Shrine in one blow, dismissing his domain and freeing her friends from its effects in a shower of flame. Sukuna has never seen anyone else wield this technique as it is his own. But Sundari is his blood, and he has known it was engraved on her from the moment they met. He could see it in her eyes, which even now burn with hatred for him.
The flames do not dismiss after the initial blow, and Sukuna realizes she can wield them as continued weapons. He also knows the amount of cursed energy needed to maintain the divine flames is astronomical. It is why he imposes the binding vow to only use it in the direst need. And here is his daughter, treating it like a plaything. How insulting.
But every hit is devastating. What Malevolent Shrine did not shred, Sundari's Kamino technique burns, and she is wild and angry and enraged like before she was sealed. She will stain this ground with her pain for Sukuna has committed a grievous and unforgivable sin.
The flames sputter out, but her rage does not, and she and Sukuna engage one another in a bloody battle, tearing wounds into one another with every strike. Sundari shatters the hardened mask on the side of his fast, blinding him on one side, and he slashes the corner of her mouth down to the bone, revealing her gritted teeth.
It is only pain. It is only vengeance.
Yuji prepares his attack.
Snck-snck-snck!
Sukuna, now blinded on one side and contending with the relentless grief of his daughter, does not see the ghostly dotted lines appearing around him.
Snck!
He stumbles as his soul is hit again. That cursed border he's erected between himself and th Fushiguro boy frays.
Sundari lands a blow to his injured chest in a shower of black sparks, driving the King of Curses to his knees.
Snck!
The threads binding him to Megumi severe one by one, until suddenly—
"Stop it," Megumi's voice sounds as broken as Sundari feels. She and Yuji stand over him as he curls in on himself. This place Sukuna has cast him is dark and bleak and void of everything. Sundari can only imagine the cruelties her father has subjected the boy to keep him suppressed. Is there no depth to which Sukuna will not sink?
"Fushiguro," Sundari says, her breath winded. "You have got to get up. I know it's rough, but if you don't get up, he wins."
"He's already won," Megumi argues, and he sounds shattered. Sundari understands more than he realizes. It's why he must fight.
"Hikmat-san," Yuji says, and his voice is unnervingly calm. Sundari's eyes cut to him. "We can't…we can't ask this of him. Can't ask him to live when so much has been taken from him."
Sundari wants to protest. She'd heard about Tsumiki, and the incarnated sorcerer that had taken her body. She understands that Megumi was awake and present when Sukuna took the girl's life with no more thought than he'd give a pestering insect. Sundari is angry because it is a death her mother could have—and should have—prevented.
"No," she says bitterly. "But…he is your friend, Yuji."
Yuji nods, smiling at Megumi and crouching down to meet the boy's haunted green eyes.
"I won't ask you to fight, or even live. But it would be so lonely without you, Fushiguro. There's still so much about sorcery I don't know, and you were the first person to bring me into it. I can't imagine going on without you, not without trying to save you."
Megumi is silent in the wake of Yuji's words. And then—
Sukuna feels his control slip as one of the shadows beneath him turns to liquid, staggering him as Sundari rains down blows on him with all the aching fury of her heart.
Snck!
Sukuna cries out as the last threads of the border are severed and Megumi Fushiguro's consciousness bleeds to the foreground, inky darkness purer than the corrupted prison Sukuna had subjected him to.
Yuji glances at Sundari, and Sundari nods. It's now or never.
"Ryōiki Tenkai: Tripura Purification."
Sundari's domain floods the landscape, but unlike her father's, she withholds her attack. Above them, a starry night, and the silhouette of a four-armed goddess swimming in the vast darkness betwixt the stars above.
"You think you have it in you to kill us both, whelp?" Sukuna taunts through a mouth full of blood as his wounds slow him. Sundari is sad that it must come to this, but her father has caused enough grief, and her mother's cowardice has shamed her.
"Hanten: Divine Mandate."
Sukuna's taunting dwindles on both his tongues as the domain shifts. He feels his cursed energy being drained, forming something—he can sense it: an altar. Sundari's domain is an altar, and he begins to panic as his cursed energy dwindles. An altar to whom?
Sundari doesn't speak, both mouths occupied in chanting a mantra in a haunting harmony. Yuji stays near her, protected by Lakshmi's Lotus, which she maintains with her unoccupied hands. With her sacrifice prepared, Sundari bangs on the door she should not know exists.
Time seems to stop. The world feels like it sucks in a collective breath, and all trapped within Sundari's rapidly inverting domain are made aware of something vast and incomprehensible turning its attention toward them. Sukuna feels it, can swear he almost sees it—a massive, cosmic eye blinking with a slowness that only a creature like Nadja could have understood were she here. He looks at his daughter, who sits in a pose that tells him she may be a bodhisattva in this lifetime.
The gods are watching them. Waiting. An offering has been prepared, and Sundari makes her request, chanting in a tongue that tolls endlessly across the universe without beginning or end. Sukuna is awed by it, for he never imagined such power could ever exist in a human. Well, half human. Even though her mother's divine spirit was trapped in a heavenly pacted form, her union with Sukuna managed to produce this being capable of grasping the livewire pulse of the divine lifeline of the universe itself, if only for a brief time.
Sundari's request is heard, and everyone remains frozen, even Sukuna, who does not dare move with the eyes of the cosmic powers beyond mortal comprehension scrutinizing them all. It is perhaps the first time the King of Curses has ever truly been humbled.
Sundari's eyes glow white.
The gods consider her request, the great cosmic eye blinking in the span of time it takes entire galaxies to be born and to die. Sukuna stares upward in shock and realizes belatedly that time has not frozen for any of them. Sundari's domain has placed all within it in a state of quantum uncertainty. Sukuna is alive and dead at the same time. His daughter communes with the very powers that be for the fate of her accursed father.
And as Sukuna is peeled from the mortal plane, his last sight is of Sundari engulfed in the flames of the First Fire, and yet her flesh does not burn. Yuji cries out in anguish, but Sukuna sees the cursed ink of his tattoos being stripped from her flesh, even as Megumi is separated from him. This is a power beyond any of them, and Sundari is merely the conduit for it.
Sukuna's world is thrust once more into perfect, utter darkness.
