Chapter Text
The sun had just reached its zenith when the miko suddenly appears in his moya and the only thing that stays his hand is the fact that he can sense the distinctive juryoku so thoroughly clinging to her petite figure that it seems ingrained into her very being. It shouldn’t be possible given that he’s never seen her before, and yet there is no mistaking that it is his own juryoku wrapped around her sleeping form.
Still, Ryōmen Sukuna is no fool and he approaches the miko with the same level of caution he would anyone else, expecting this to be some sort of elaborate assassination attempt by one of the sorcerer clans that have taken umbrage with him as of late. He idly wonders which clan would be stupid enough to employ this kind of tactic when juryoku itself is toxic to non-sorcerers, let alone how they could have gotten hold of enough of his juryoku to bathe a miko in it, but she doesn’t stir no matter how close he gets to her.
The reason why doesn’t become evident until he closes his hand around one of her dainty wrists and finds that her reiryoku is so severely depleted that there’s no telling how long she’ll be asleep for. “Not much of an assassin, are you?” he murmurs as he lets go of her wrist and grasps her chin, tilting her face up and away from the floor so he can get a better look at his would-be assassin.
She’s young from what little he can glean based on her features alone, with a naturally pale complexion that the courtiers would be jealous of and long, ink-black hair that pools beneath her. He brushes her bangs back to finish his examination of her face only to freeze as a black crown-shaped juryoku marking that complements the innate juryoku markings of his own body is revealed on her forehead.
That it covers her inner eye isn’t lost on him, but simply bathing the miko in his juryoku wouldn’t have created a marking so like his own. It is simply impossible for another to replicate, and so very deliberate in its placement that it completely shatters the notion that this is an assassination attempt. Instead, it tells him something far more interesting, and he lets her bangs fall back into place to hide the juryoku marking from sight for now before he gently scoops her up into his lower set of arms.
“Uraume,” he calls out as he straightens up, keeping three of his eyes firmly fixed on the miko’s sleeping face when Uraume steps around the corner from the eastern side of the hisashi. Their dark pink gaze briefly flicks towards the miko in his grasp before it rises to meet the gaze of his lower left eye, and he watches as their lips start to thin in displeasure at the thought that someone had managed to slip into the shinden unnoticed. “I need more yaedatami.”
Uraume’s expression quickly returns to one of neutrality as they acknowledge him with a bow, easily accepting the miko’s presence with his request for more bedding, and then they swiftly walk over to the nurigome to fetch more yaedatami.
He patiently waits as they add several yaedatami to the ones already on his chōdai—expanding his already considerably sized bed to the very limits of the raised platform the yaedatami rest upon—and runs mental calculations on how long the miko will need to recover from her reiryoku depletion. Several days at a minimum is his best guess without knowing just how strong she truly is. “Prepare something light and easy to digest in addition to my usual fare, and make sure that I remain undisturbed,” he orders once they step back from his chōdai.
“As you desire, Sukuna-sama,” Uraume responds with another bow, though they don’t immediately leave the moya to carry out their new tasks. “Shall I inform anyone who inquires that you are undergoing a ritual?” they ask, subtly referring to the miko.
“Just see to it that I remained undisturbed, Uraume,” Sukuna repeats as he steps up onto his chōdai and then sinks down into a half lotus position on the yaedatami.
“Understood, Sukuna-sama,” Uraume acknowledges with another bow before they finally depart, leaving him alone with the miko.
“Now,” Sukuna says in a hushed tone as he brushes the miko’s bangs away from her forehead once more, and then he presses his thumb to the juryoku marking. “What can you tell me?”
His juryoku contained within the marking is significantly denser and far more refined than the juryoku currently flowing through his own body, to the point that it feels…ancient. And there isn’t much more he can learn from it, beyond the fierce possessiveness it holds towards the miko that bears it, which gives him something else to think about.
“How interesting,” Sukuna murmurs as he pulls his thumb off the juryoku marking and moves his hand to the side of the miko’s face.
“Mmm… Stop it… Sukuna… You promised…” The miko’s face scrunches up with her sleepy grumble, of which he can only make out his name amidst what sounds like a completely different language, and then she shifts in his hold to nuzzle into his chest. It’s unexpected and just as foreign as the words that had come out of her mouth, and yet he finds that he doesn’t dislike it.
“Are you my lover from some far-flung era, little miko?” Sukuna ponders aloud as he lets his hand rest on her hair, and the miko’s face scrunches up once more.
After a few seconds her eyes crack open, and she sleepily peers up at him. “Sukuna?”
“Yes, little miko?”
It isn’t unusual for her to fall asleep curled up amidst the roots of Goshinboku only to wake up in the cradle of Sukuna’s arms within his innate domain, so why does something feel off when she’s pulled out of her much-needed rest this time? Her reiryoku is far too depleted for her to get a good read on her surroundings, but the familiarity of waking up in Sukuna’s arms…has never felt like this.
There’s a warmth to his body that has never been present within his innate domain before, and then…
“Sukuna?”
“Yes, little miko?” He rumbles out in Early Middle Japanese, completely forgoing the use of her name, and a sinking feeling forms in her gut as she tiredly stares up at him.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?” It’s the only thing she can think of asking him in the moment, the Early Middle Japanese easily falling from her lips only because the man holding her had insisted that she learn it when she had first met him. As a cursed object buried beneath Goshinboku. In her time.
“Only because this is my first time meeting you, little miko,” Sukuna responds, his gaze briefly flicking to the exposed juryoku marking on her forehead.
And it only makes sense that this is his first time meeting her if she’s somehow managed to travel even further into the past to the time when he was alive. In the Heian Period.
“And here I was hoping you had gotten your body back,” she says in Modern Japanese as a last-ditch effort to see if she’s wrong about being in the Heian Period, and that this is just another one of Sukuna’s tests.
“Is that the language of your era, little miko?” Sukuna asks instead, which is finally enough to convince her that she is somehow in the Heian Period. Well, that and his continued use of little miko in lieu of her name, which is honestly better than constantly being referred to as Kikyō’s reincarnation. Because he doesn’t know her name in this time.
“Yes, that is the language of my era,” she softly confirms, and for the moment she’s too tired to think about how she could have possibly ended up in the Heian Period let alone if she can even return to her time. “And my name is Kagome.”