the king's return

The King's Return Chapter 1: Two Years Later

Two years had passed since you'd severed the dream connection with Sukuna. You'd tried to move on, to live a normal life, but nothing felt the same. Every night you went to sleep hoping—and dreading—that you might feel that familiar pull into his consciousness. But there was only silence.

You'd taken a position at Tokyo Jujutsu High as a consultant, using your dreamweaving abilities to help traumatized students process their experiences. It was meaningful work, but part of you remained hollow, waiting for something you told yourself would never come.

That changed the night the cursed energy readings went haywire across the city.

"Something's wrong," Gojo announced during an emergency meeting. "Sukuna's been... different. Stronger, but also more focused. Like he's planning something specific."

Your blood ran cold, but you said nothing. You couldn't tell them about the dreams, about what you'd shared with the King of Curses. Some secrets were too dangerous to speak aloud.

Chapter 2: The Manifestation

It happened during what should have been a routine mission. You were investigating cursed energy disturbances in an abandoned shrine when reality seemed to fracture around you. The air grew thick with malevolent power, and suddenly he was there—not possessing Yuji, but standing before you in his true form, terrible and magnificent.

"Miss me?" Sukuna's voice was exactly as you remembered, rich with dark amusement.

"That's impossible," you breathed, backing away. "You can't manifest independently. The binding—"

"Binding?" He laughed, taking a step closer. "Did you really think I'd let something as trivial as binding keep me from what's mine?"

His four eyes gleamed in the dim light as he approached, his massive form both intimidating and achingly familiar. "I told you I'd find a way, dreamweaver. I always keep my promises."

Chapter 3: The Explanation

"How?" you whispered, your back hitting the shrine wall.

"Months of planning. Centuries of accumulated power. And a very specific ritual involving a certain dreamweaver's lingering cursed energy," he explained, now close enough that you could feel the heat radiating from his skin. "You left traces of yourself in my consciousness. Did you think I wouldn't use them?"

Your breath caught. "You used our connection to—"

"To anchor myself to this plane, yes." His hand came up to cup your face, thumb tracing your cheekbone with surprising gentleness. "I told you I'd tasted mortality through you. I wanted more."

"Sukuna, this is madness. You can't just—"

"Can't what? Want you? Claim what was promised to me in dreams?" His other hand pressed against the wall beside your head, trapping you. "I've spent two years remembering every moment we shared, every touch, every whispered word. Do you think I'd let that go?"

Chapter 4: The Chase

You tried to run. Of course you did. But Sukuna had anticipated that.

"Where exactly do you think you're going?" he asked, appearing in front of you before you'd made it ten steps. "I just tore a hole in reality to get to you. A little sprint through the woods isn't going to stop me."

"The other sorcerers—"

"Are currently dealing with a very convenient curse outbreak on the other side of the city," he said with a predatory smile. "I may be obsessed, but I'm not stupid. I wanted privacy for our reunion."

He backed you against a tree, his massive frame dwarfing you. "Two years," he murmured, his voice dropping to that intimate register you remembered so well. "Two years of wanting, of planning, of dreaming about having you in my arms again."

Chapter 5: Surrender

"You're insane," you whispered, but your body betrayed you, responding to his proximity despite your fear.

"For you? Absolutely." His mouth brushed against your neck, and you shuddered. "I've committed atrocities that would make demons weep, but the worst torture was losing you. Being alone in that darkness again, remembering what it felt like to be human in your arms."

"Sukuna..."

"Say you didn't miss me," he challenged, his hands finding your waist. "Say you didn't lie awake at night remembering how I felt inside you, how I made you scream my name in pleasure. Say it, and I'll disappear forever."

You couldn't. The words stuck in your throat because they would have been lies.

"That's what I thought," he said with dark satisfaction, lifting you easily. Your legs automatically wrapped around his waist as he pressed you against the tree. "I can smell your desire, little dreamweaver. Your body remembers who it belongs to."

Chapter 6: Reclaimed

What happened next was explosive, desperate, two years of longing poured into desperate touches and fevered kisses. He took you against the tree with a passion that bordered on violent, his control fraying as you responded with equal fervor.

"Mine," he growled against your throat as he moved within you, his powerful body claiming yours with ritualistic intensity. "Always mine. Say it."

"Yours," you gasped, overwhelmed by sensation and emotion. "Always yours."

The admission seemed to break something in him. His movements became more tender even as they remained possessive, his hands gentling on your skin.

"I love you," he said suddenly, the words torn from him like a confession. "I don't know when it happened, but somewhere between dreams and nightmares, you became everything to me."

The declaration shattered your remaining resistance. You pulled his mouth to yours, kissing him with everything you had as pleasure crashed over you both.

Chapter 7: The New Reality

Afterward, as you lay in his arms beneath the stars, reality began to set in.

"What happens now?" you asked quietly.

"Now? Now we figure out how to make this work." His fingers combed through your hair with surprising tenderness. "I won't go back to that prison of consciousness. And I won't let you go again."

"The jujutsu world will never accept this. Us."

"Then we'll make our own world," he said simply. "I have power beyond imagination, and you have abilities they need. We'll find a way."

"And if they try to stop us?"

His arms tightened around you, and for a moment, you glimpsed the true King of Curses beneath the tender lover. "Then they'll learn why I'm called the King of Curses. I've been holding back, playing their games. But if they threaten you..." His voice turned deadly. "I'll burn their world to ash."

Chapter 8: The Proposal

Over the following weeks, Sukuna proved remarkably adaptable to modern life—when he wanted to be. He'd acquired a human form that, while obviously powerful, didn't scream "ancient curse" to every sorcerer who saw him. The deception wouldn't fool anyone who looked closely, but it bought you time.

"Marry me," he said one evening as you worked late in your apartment.

You nearly dropped your tea. "What?"

"You heard me." He moved behind your chair, hands settling on your shoulders. "I want the binding, the ceremony, the declaration before whatever gods are listening that you belong to me and I to you."

"Sukuna, we can't just—"

"Why not?" He turned your chair around to face him, dropping to one knee in a mockery of human proposal traditions. "I love you. You love me, even if you're too stubborn to say it. I want forever with you, in whatever form that takes."

Chapter 9: The Wedding

The ceremony was small, secret, held in an abandoned shrine under the full moon with only the stars as witnesses. You wore white silk; he wore traditional hakama that somehow made him look even more dangerous and beautiful.

The vows were simple but binding in ways that went beyond human law.

"I take you as mine," he said, sliding a ring of black metal onto your finger—cursed gold that would tie your life force to his. "In this life and whatever comes after. My queen, my equal, my heart."

"I take you as mine," you replied, your voice steady despite the magnitude of what you were doing. "My king, my destroyer, my salvation."

When he kissed you to seal the bond, power crackled through the air, announcing to any sensitive beings in the area that something fundamental had changed in the world.

Chapter 10: The Honeymoon

He took you away from the city, to a hidden realm he'd carved out of space itself—a pocket dimension where time moved differently and only the two of you existed.

"Our kingdom," he said, showing you gardens that defied physics and a palace that seemed grown from dreams. "Somewhere they can never find us, never separate us."

The honeymoon lasted weeks in the hidden realm, though only days passed in the real world. He worshipped your body with the devotion of a supplicant and the skill of a god, teaching you pleasures you'd never imagined.

"I could keep you here forever," he murmured one morning as you lay tangled in silk sheets, your skin bearing the marks of his passion. "Just us, just this, for eternity."

"But you won't," you said, knowing him well enough to read the conflict in his expression.

"No," he admitted reluctantly. "You wouldn't be happy as a caged bird, even in the most beautiful cage. You need purpose, people to help. It's one of the things I love about you."

Chapter 11: The Return

When you returned to the real world, you found chaos waiting. The jujutsu community had discovered Sukuna's manifestation and your disappearance. There were accusations, threats, demands for your immediate surrender.

"They want to bind me again," Sukuna told you after intercepting several of their communications. "And they want to execute you for treason."

"Let me talk to them," you said. "There has to be a way—"

"No." His voice brooked no argument. "I won't let them hurt you. If they want a war, they'll get one."

But you had a different plan.

Chapter 12: The Bargain

The meeting took place on neutral ground—an ancient battlefield where cursed energy ran so deep that even the strongest sorcerers proceeded with caution. You faced the assembled might of the jujutsu world with Sukuna at your side, his power a tangible force that kept them all at bay.

"I have a proposition," you announced before anyone could speak. "A new contract."

"You're in no position to negotiate," one of the elders snarled.

"Aren't I?" You smiled, letting your own cursed energy flare—stronger now, amplified by your bond with Sukuna. "I can enter any sorcerer's mind, unravel their defenses, turn their own techniques against them. And now I have the backing of the King of Curses himself. Trust me, I'm in an excellent position to negotiate."

Chapter 13: The Agreement

The terms were simple: Sukuna would help them deal with special grade curses—the ones too dangerous for even first-grade sorcerers to handle. In exchange, you would both be left alone to live your lives as you chose.

"And if you refuse?" Gojo asked, though he seemed more amused than threatened.

"Then every curse in Japan suddenly becomes my ally," Sukuna replied pleasantly. "And I start with the ones currently residing in your students' bodies."

It wasn't really a choice, and everyone knew it.

The contract was signed in blood and cursed energy, binding all parties to their word.

Chapter 14: New Beginnings

Months later, you'd found an unexpected rhythm. Sukuna proved surprisingly effective at curse extermination—he understood their nature in ways human sorcerers never could. And your combined abilities made even the most dangerous missions manageable.

"Regrets?" he asked one evening as you watched the sunset from your balcony.

"Only that it took you so long to come back," you replied, settling into his arms.

"I'll make up for lost time," he promised, his mouth finding that sensitive spot below your ear that always made you shiver.

"We have forever," you reminded him.

"Forever," he agreed, and in that word was every promise he'd ever made, every dream you'd shared, every moment of eternity stretching ahead of you.

Epilogue: The Dream Made Real

Years passed. The jujutsu world adapted to your unusual partnership, and you to your role as the King of Curses' queen. You bore him children who inherited both your dreamweaving abilities and his immense power, raising them in a world where love and strength went hand in hand.

Sometimes, late at night, you'd use your abilities to share dreams again—not because you had to, but because you wanted to. In those quiet moments, you remembered how it all began, how a contract born of necessity had become the greatest love story ever told.

"Thank you," he whispered during one such dream, holding you close in a landscape of stars and possibility.

"For what?"

"For teaching me to be human," he said. "For giving me a reason to want to be more than just a curse."

"Thank you," you whispered back, "for coming back for me."

"Always," he promised, as he had so long ago. "I will always come back for you."

And in dreams and in waking, in this life and whatever came after, he kept that promise.

The End