Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Gojo Kiyomi jolted awake. The first thing she felt was soft, silky sheets beneath her, the comfortable weight of a fluffy, warm kakebuton - blanket - wrapping her in a soothing embrace.
It was quiet. Peaceful.
And she wasn’t alone.
Her eyes snapped open. She leapt out of the cozy nest - that was beckoning to her like a siren to a sailor -, stumbling over her feet as she scrambled to get her footing. Clumsiness otherwise, her glare was deadly as she glowered at the tall man standing in the corner of the room, trying and failing to summon or channel any cursed energy or technique.
She was - effectively, for all purposes - helpless.
Injured, shaken, and bound.
Caged.
Weaponless, powerless, weak.
“Who are you?” She bit out, tone harsh and threatening, trying to make up for her lack of strength.
He wasn’t at all phased by her aggression, nonchalantly striding into the light of the lantern, allowing it to illuminate his features. “Careful now.” He lilted, “You haven’t recovered yet.”
She studied him wearily. He had no cursed energy, no cursed tool. Nothing about him was distinguishing apart from his …choice of fashion and almost-luminescent eyes. A quality that was similar to her own, and her husband’s, though to a lesser degree.
She didn’t let down her guard. Not when her senses were telling her that something was off about him. The way his cells seemed to vibrate, how his blood coursed through him like a tsunami rather than the calm river in normal people - something about everything was off.
Inhuman.
But that wasn’t possible, right?
He wasn’t a curse. He wasn’t half-curse - she had seen Choso before-
(Heart pounding, overflowing with energy - more than a human body should be able to hold -, capillaries and arteries where there should be none, a flowing network more intricate than she had ever seen.)
-had dissected him using her unique, sharp vision, and this man standing before her had no points of similarity.
It wasn’t just him though. As she spread her senses, scanning the area, she realised, quite quickly, that cursed energy didn’t seem to exist.
That wasn’t possible.
Except the very air felt different, the configuration of objects were different from what she was used to, and that man…
“Where am I?”
The man tilted his head, casually observing her. “We’re in Edo.” He hummed. “Keicho 10.”
Edo.
Edo as in what? Tokyo? Edo period?! No, Keicho was the period. What the hell was Keicho?! Tenth of Keicho? Wha-
“You look confused. Not from around here, are you?” He said, words inquiring but tone decisive. As if he’d already known the ‘fact’ and was simply reporting it.
They were in Edo, in other words, Tokyo, which aligned with her previous knowledge, because she had been running through the streets of Shinjuku before her blackout. Aka fainting from a combination of torture, exhaustion, and the stress of running for her life from a bloodthirsty imposter of a Sugu-chan.
Kenjaku, if it wasn’t clear enough from her babble-
(“Princess. You look great today. I suppose those Gojo genes do run strong.” Low, soothing, familiar but wrong.
“GO FUCK YOURSELF!”
That disgusting miasma marring other-wise familiar features, teeth-
“How crude. We’ll have to take care of th-)
But no one referred to Tokyo as Edo. Then again no one used terms such as ‘Keicho 10’ anymore to refer to the date, so it was pretty obvious, if the architecture wasn’t enough of a clue, that she was far behind her time.
Although some of her clan’s compounds also had such architecture. All of them in fact, before Satoru-niichan came out-
(Rupturing veins, soaring blood pressure and-
“GOJO SATORU!”
The booming voices roar, frothing mouths as decorum lies forgotten beneath the rage that comes from-)
-and demolished some of them. Giving it a ‘makeover’ was what he called it when the elders were in the midst of an aneurysm.
It was hilarious. And he did have good taste. Meaning beautiful glass structures and abstract buildings - the culmination of the word ‘modern.’ Every elders’ nightmare.
Wandering down the rabbit hole aside, this explained his - the stranger’s - clothes. In this period - that she guessed was some time in the Edo period, not just because he called the city they were in Edo, actually it might have been because of that, but moving on -, it was normal for people to wear these long, formal robes - it wasn’t limited to stuffy jujutsu higher up elders.
How did she go from fleeing from Kenjaku to waking up in the past?
A past that had no cursed energy. Maybe it was an alternate dimension?
That still didn’t answer the question.
“You must be hungry.” The stranger man interrupted her train of thoughts. “I’ll bring some food.”
“Wait-!” She exclaimed, reaching out for him. “Who are you?”
He paused, then smiled. “Kibutsuji Muzan. Now try and get some rest.”
Cursed energy was negative energy that leaked from every human being on Earth, with some having the special ability to manipulate that energy. The ability was inherently innate, with it coming either very naturally to people - such as to Satoru-niichan, Sugu-chan and herself - or nearly impossible for others - such as the mundane population that made up the majority of the world.
But those mundane people still had the energy. It swirled within them, contaminating everything they came into contact with, and if enough of it was present, it could form into a curse - a being made from all the grief, sorrow, hatred and anger of humans.
It was omnipresent. Present in everyone - apart from rare cases, one, two of which came to mind, but had no correlation with Kibutsuji - which was why it was so bewildering that she hadn’t even caught a hint of it here.
And it wasn’t the fault of the chains encasing her either, as all the chains did, was seal her own ability to use cursed energy, and had no effect on her senses, including her eyes.
Her eyes. Which even Kenjaku couldn’t steal from her.
It was part of her technique.
(“Cursed eyes of the Gojo Clan. A variation of the Six Eyes.”
“This must be a sign!”
“Yes! The Six Eyes and this! We have never been more blessed!”
“Get Satoru!”)
Her ‘powers’ if you would put it in crude terms.
It allowed her to see the world in ways no one else, including Satoru-niichan, could. It allowed her to break apart complex structures, seeing into the very essence of things, to see what built them and what could tear them down.
X-ray vision in Shoko’s terms. The dead on her feet doctor that everyone relied on, and the one person who could put her husband in his place.
(Laughing, smug, stunned - plastered to the wall. Kiyomi watches in amazement as Shoko nonchalantly turns away from the crime scene she had caused, brushing it off like she hadn’t just sent the STRONGEST sorcerer of modern times flying. The Strongest Sorcerer who is still lying crumpled, frozen in shock.
She is so COO-)
Anyways, her eyes told her that Kibutsuji wasn’t what he appeared to be.
Whether that was a bad thing or not, was something only future her could tell.
For now, she would snoop. She wasn’t going to sit there like an innocent lamb. Also, she wasn’t entirely convinced that this wasn’t some scheme that Sukuna cooked up.
Who knew what that cunning bastard, only marginally better than Kenjaku, was thinking. Ancient fossils better off buried.
Unfortunately, until her husband could somehow bust his way out of the prison realm, she would be stuck here. And Sukuna would be allowed to roam to his heart’s content. Hopefully, if she ever managed to get back to her own timeline, it wouldn’t be to a smoldering world on the brink of death, via the disastrous millennium old curse that was Ryomen Sukuna.
But yes. Picking through the minimalist style room with close-to-the-ground tables, cushion-for-chairs, and the futon she was lying on previously, there was not a hint of anything suspicious.
Which, to her pedantic - not really - mind, was suspicious.
But she was too tired.
And so she succumbed to the siren song that was the softness of the kakebuton offered to her, and drifted off.
(From outside the paper door, Kibutsuji Muzan’s eyes glowed a bright crimson, different in colour and luminescence than it was before.)