Ask Sythe

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Tsurugi had a secret he thought he would never tell any one.

The secret wasn't even his, but some horrible truth hidden away years ago that he simply happened to stumble across in his boyish search for his father figure. The unearthing of it had the young Tsurugi, then only ten years old, wishing he had never gone looking in the first place. But what was done was done. There was no putting back what had come out the Pandora's Box. It would have to be his secret now, probably to bring to his grave.

But as always with sorcerers and the affairs of the jujutsu world, there was no absolute. What was once a secret he thought would never leave his lips would now need to be divulged if he still wished to have a little sister.

He would have to tell Yuka the secret.

"There's another way," said Tsurugi to Kou Usami. "It doesn't have to be Yuka."

"I understand it's a difficult decision, but we need an answer to the Simurian. There is nobody else. Yuka's Ten Shadows, as under developed as it is, is our only option should push come to shove."

Yuka, his exasperating, head strong sixteen years old little sister, who was now actively dying from brain cancer, was Japan and probably the whole world's only answer against the force the aliens might bring to bear. What a sad fucking state of affairs they were in. But it didn't have to be this way. All Tsurugi had to do… was open the family closet and reveal the skeleton within.

He breathed in deeply, feeling the shame and guilt and not a small amount of resentment bubble in his guts. It wasn't even his secret to keep but kept it he did nevertheless, ever since he was ten.

"There is another way," he repeated. "Yuji Itadori…"

"…has been missing for the last ten years and counting," countered Kou Usami. "Despite all of our efforts to find him. Counting on a legend of the past to appear right now to save all of our asses when we haven't seen hide nor hair of him for years is nothing short of leaning a pipe dream. Tsurugi, you should know better than…"

"I can find him!" Tsurugi almost shouted. "I… we the Okkotsu have a way to find him!"

"That you have not divulged to Jujutsu headquarters all these years?" Kou Usami looked at him incredulously, clearly unconvinced.

"Yes…" Tsurugi drooped, thinking of what this would mean. If he did this, then there would be no going back. Mother… he couldn't imagine how she might feel, reopening a wound that old and cut that deep. But if it could keep Yuka alive… then wasn't it worth it?

Sorcerers were good at hiding from each other. That was the way of their society ever since time immemorial. A game of cat and mouse, smoke and shadow. Yuji Itadori had had decades to hide himself. But if one shared blood… then there were ways.

If one shared blood…

… they shared blood… they two, him and Yuka… and that third child whose name none would speak of.

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Yep! Skeleton in the Closet is basically dog blood drama Jujutsu telenovela!

My plot plan is that: Iori's suicide attempt, taking place right after Yuka's birth around that canon moment in the manga where the servant woman saw them having their confrontationa and Yuji saying 'it doesn't matter,' fails. But he's still severely wounded and weakened. The whole ordeal is such that there is no hiding it from Yuta and Maki, who find out about Iori's pursuit of Yuji for the last two decades... as well as Iori's determination to die at Yuji's feet rather than suffer a slow, despairing death by growing old and withering away and never getting to see Yuji again so long as he lives. What else can parents even do in this case? It's a shit situation all around. So, the end result of that crash out is that Yuta, not wanting to see his one son fall into such despair, begs Yuji to stay within the Gojo compound. The initial agreement is that Yuji will stay until they can get Iori some kind of mental health that hopefully stabilize him. Yuji doesn't have to do anything. He just needs to stay.

Out of respect (and not a small amount of concern) for Mifuyu and the two actual legal children of Iori, Yuji is kept in a separate wing of the Gojo house, very secluded, while Iori can see him every day as they try to cure him of his 'whatever the fuck that even is.' But one doesn't cure an obsessive love that has rooted for over thirty years. Yuta and Maki's attempt to resolve the situation only allows Iori to make his own progress on Yuji. To summarize, sex happens. Because regardless of Yuji's own feelings on the matter, he's not actually made of stone. He has his own complicated feelings about his seeming unaging immortality too. He's someone who is deeply scared of being alone, and the further it goes, the more he feels detached from humanity as a whole. From such a place of loneliness, intimacy happens.

Anyway, there is a pregnancy. Hahahaha. I can't help it. Modulo Yuji has such strong milf vibe I just want to turn him into an actual mom! There is actual plot behind that too. I have a separate pet theory of Yuji being one of Kenjaku's many backup plans and unfinished projects. Without going too deep into my rather long dissect of canon lore and Kenjaku as a character and what he might have planned for along the way, let's just say that Yuji is Kenjaku's plan B to the Culling Game merger plan A. The end goal is to produce something beyond human sorcerers and cursed spirits, with Yuji being made into the perfect vessel / carrier body / mother body. Yuji doesn't know this (albeit he suspects). So the pregnancy is a nasty surprise for him... and a ecstatic one for Iori.

Because of it, things are... awkward... to say the least between Yuta, Maki, Yuji... and Mifuyu and her children. But then again, clan affairs often are complicated so it's not exactly that complicated a scenario really.

To summarize again, a child is born, and the child is something Kenjaku would approve of. Very human in appearance, but very non human in potential. Iori is over the moon. Everybody else is... complicated about it.

Give it another year or two. Shit happens. Yuta or Maki dies. One day, Iori has to leave on business. When he comes back, his little love nest is empty, completely bereft of the one thing that ever matters to him. He breaks down. His brief few years of joy is nothing more than a delusion that he alone habors. What he thought was the fruit of his unending efforts to make the god of his heart feel something more than pity for him turns out to be nothing more than a lie.

He is heartbroken, in the pit of despair. There is no going back. He suicides in that very same nest, dressing himself in wedding clothes he dreams he would one day wear to sit down beside the love of his life, to have the real family that he wants, and not that other one that was foisted on him out of responsibility for the clan. The circumstances of it all create a vengeful spirit that eclipses even the three great spirits of Japan, not the least because Iori descends from not one but two of those three great vengeful spirits from his Gojo and Zenin lineage.

He, now a vengeful spirit, goes to his love, happy now that he will not grow old, will not die, and can finally stay by Yuji's side forever.

What family left behind? What wife left behind? What son an daughter left behind? Those things are merely responsiblity. He's free from such responsibility now. He goes to his real family.

I haven't thought too hard about how Iori might appear as a vengeful spirit, but I think he will be remarkably human in appearance, similar to a fully realized vengeful spirit Naoya. Unlike Rika, he's a sorcerer and a decently powerful one at that. His death is also of his own doing. I think, he might appear a lot younger, like...14 or 15 years old kind of young. Because he remembers that as the time when Yuji gave him unconditional affection, back when he didn't have to beg for scraps of affection, back when Yuji didn't recoil from him. So you probably have vengeful spirit Iori looking like a 15 years old teenager wearing groom clothes, happily following Yuji (and their child) around.

Meanwhile, in the main Modulo timeline, Tsurugi and Yuka are not okay! Their father essentially ran away with / to his mistress and their 'extramarital' child! The mistress also happens to be the strongest sorcerer! Hahahahahahaha. And now they have to use their blood connection to their half sibling to track down their deadbeat vengeful spirit father and Yuji Itadori to ask for help against the aliens. It's tough to be the children of clans huh?

He hurriedly grabbed another condom from the box. Damn it, this one was too small; it wouldn't fit at all as he tried to pull it up, squeezing him to the point of sharp pain. Sweating buckets, a panicked Iori frantically rummaged through the courtesy basket to find an XXXL size.

But the person beneath him seemed to be growing impatient. Uncle Yuji let out a few low, whimpering complaints from the back of his throat, and then his legs, which were draped over Iori’s waist, suddenly tightened, pulling the boy back down. That sudden motion brought their lower bodies flush against each other. Yuji spread his legs wide. His soft, intimate warmth parting slightly in invitation. Iori’s little Iori, already weeping pre-cum, followed the shifting momentum and the pull of their bodies and slid right into that sweet, scorching heat.

Pure bliss! An insanely ecstatic, numbing sensation shot straight up his spine, defying any description. Iori felt as though he might pass out right then and there. His lower body sank deeper instinctively, driving his oversized length deep, deep into the depths of his uncle's body.

Uncle Yuji let out a sobbing sigh, his breath exhaling as sweet as peach nectar. Those malt-candy-colored eyes fluttered open, gazing hazily yet intently at Iori’s flushed face. His lips parted, weakly murmuring his name: "Iori...?"

Iori’s entire world exploded. At this point, screw the condoms! He tossed the basket of love hotel complimentary protection over his shoulder, pinned Yuji down with all his might, and buried himself completely to the hilt. Immediately, a sharp, lewd, and utterly satisfied gasp echoed in his ears.

To hesitate or hold back now would mean he wasn't a man at all!

Sex was an instinct that requires no teaching. The eighteen-year-old's body, brimming with youthful vitality, automatically moved in a familiar primal rhythm. Thrusting in and pulling out, in and out... each driving, pounding motion grew faster and faster, heavy, deep.

Beneath Iori, Uncle Yuji trembled violently. He locked his legs tightly around the boy's hips, actively arching his waist to meet him, like a withered tree lifting its head to welcome a late spring rain, devoutly accepting everything from his nephew. Panting heavily, Uncle Yuji choked out his name once more: "Iori..."

...

When it came to Yuji, right from the start of this whole ordeal, he was hesitant and utterly flustered, completely at a loss. The little nephew he used to carry on his back, running all over the clan estate back in the day, was suddenly confessing his love and wanting to cling to him for the rest of his life. Put anyone else in his shoes and they would have sprinted in the opposite direction. Yuji wanted to do the exact same thing. But who could have guessed that Iori would be so dangerously determined that he'd try to commit suicide? Then, before Yuji even had a chance to slip away, Yuta-senpai stabbed his sword right through the hem of Yuji's clothes, pinning him to the ground (like father, like son, seriously! How can they demand someone stay while being this aggressively overbearing?!! One threatens suicide! The other literally pins your clothes down with a sword so you can't leave! What kind of madness is this??!! Yuji felt so incredibly wronged), and then bowed deeply to beg him to stay and help them with Iori's treatment.

His senpai was already well into his seventies at the time. His hair was entirely white. Yet, for his son's sake, he had to bow his head. It was heartbreaking. So, despite the anxious fluttering in his chest, Yuji felt he had no choice but to stay.

Afterwards, he was relentlessly clung on by an officially-declared-mentally-disturbed Iori day in and day out. They were practically attached at the hip. Anyone else would have probably gone completely mad and run away. But Yuji felt… that it wasn't all that bad. He had survived Sukuna, after all. Comparing the two, Sukuna was without a doubt the harder roommate to live with.

As time passed, he gradually let his guard down against his nephew's small, pushy advances, excusing them as the actions of a patient who needed help and understanding. To some extent, it made Yuji feel a little less isolated and lonely.

And then, that first drunken incident happened.

It was absolutely mortifying. Uncle and nephew making love right on the wooden floor with the door and windows both opened. And to top it off, he was the one on the bottom.

Yuji buried the whole thing deep down, fully intending to never let it happen again. But man proposes, God disposes. Yuji was almost seventy himself. Because he was terrified of his half-cursed spirit physiology, he had, embarassingly, never been intimate with anyone. His blood was toxic. Even a Grade 1 sorcerer splashed with his blood would be knocked out cold. He constantly worried whether his other bodily fluids were just as dangerous not to mention what else mommy dearest might have stuffed in his body that he was yet unaware of. So he strictly enforced absolute celibacy upon himself. The consequence of living like a monk in a temple for decades was that… his body was genuinely, desperately starved.

Maybe it was inevitable. He was only human after all, not made of stone, so how could his heart not soften? As with every thing, once there was a first time, the second and subsequent times came about far more easily. The physical relationship between him and his nephew sparked like a flame catching dry straw, suddenly exploding into a roaring wildfire. Before he even had time to process what was happening, he… was fucking pregnant already???!!!!

...

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And so, shifting into the mindset of a fiercely protective elder looking after the kids, which included both the giant, overgrown toddler named Iori Okkotsu and the actual tiny babies, two of which he was in fact responsible for creating as crazy as that sounded, Yuji forced himself to adapt to the suffocating realities of clan life.

He began taking on heavy burdens that no one else could handle, slowly building and fortifying this highly unconventional, utterly bizarre little nest of theirs from the ground up. From completely shutting down and terrifying the useless, troublesome elders into submission to taking poor Mifuyu under his wing, and pulling in the two kids, Tsurugi and Yuka, he poured his entire soul into teaching and raising them. He wanted to make sure the rest of the clan saw their worth and growth, hopefully curing those snobs of their nasty, deep-seated urge to shun the poor children.

As for Iori, Yuji understood his anxious, deeply insecure state of mind inside and out, that constant, frantic panic of holding onto something while terrified it will slip through his fingers. The reason the man always gripped him so tightly, refusing to loosen his hold for even a single second, was rooted in a profound, terrifying dread of abandonment. To be entirely fair, some of that guilt lay on Yuji himself. Before Yuri came into this world, Yuji had occasionally dropped clear, wistful hints that he deeply missed the absolute freedom he used to enjoy, long before he was cornered and pinned down in the Gojo mansion by the tag-team efforts of Iori and Yuta-senpai.

Alas, it really goes to show that when someone falls in love, they truly are willing to reshape their entire existence for the one they love, aren't they?

Yuji had to dedicate an immense amount of time, years of consecutive, unending patience, just to pamper and comply with Iori's whims. He willingly let the man unleash his suffocating possessiveness over his body, all for the sole purpose of soothing that agonizing dread of being left behind that lived deep within Iori's soul. More often than not, their intense lovemaking sessions would catch him completely off guard. One moment, Yuji would be softly petting Iori's hair, sweetly praising him for being such a good, capable clan head, then, not even a few minutes later, that absolute grenade of a nephew would suddenly flip a switch, pinning Yuji ruthlessly against a wooden house pillar and thrusting so fiercely that Yuji's tongue would tie completely. He could barely let out a coherent whimper, let alone actual words. In the heavy, quiet atmosphere, the only sounds left were their thick, wet breathing, his own breathless gasps, and the rhythmic, protesting creak of the old wood. On other days, Iori would drag him straight out into the garden, spinning Yuji around to face a massive tree trunk before burying himself entirely inside him from behind. He would slam Yuji's body so hard against the rough bark that Yuji's feet couldn't even graze the ground, leaving him dangling and trembling violently, looking exactly like a helpless fish skewered completely through.

But he was not born a cannibal. He was born loved.

The boy had everything and more growing up. His father was the strongest of the time. His mother the woman who tore down the rot of the old blood by her lone hands. It was certain, before he even came into this world, that he was destined for great things, or so they said.

Such expectations.

That was why they gave him a name that meant… Trust Weaver.

They too had great hopes for him, as the old blood that heralded his birth had their expectations.

But life was often not as wished. The man and the woman weren't the kind of parents they wished they could be. This was not their fault. They too bore scars that hadn't yet completely disappeared. The woman extinguished her own blood. The man forsook his own family. Whether they intended to or not, some of their own pain was once more relayed into their love for him. And beside, the lofty goal of mending their world, broken after the calamity, was one that demanded all of their time, and all of their attention.

Between his parent's pain and their noble goal, the boy, who lacked for nothing material in truth, was often left in want anyway.

But that was okay. Because someone else stepped in to fill the vacuum that his parents often left in their quest.

The one and only.

He was different, the boy could tell. Because he had no expectation at all for the boy, saved that he have the childhood that any child that was loved should have, and have more joy than he could have ever asked for. When he called the boy's name, he did not call for the Trust Weaver that the boy's parents hoped he would become, nor the combination of his parent's strength that the old blood expected. He merely called for…

"…Iori…"

The one had eyes like sunlight in the bottom of an autumn lake. The boy called him uncle. They had no blood relation in truth, saved for the tenuous connection of the man's sharing the same teacher and savior as the one.

Throughout his quiet childhood, uncle was often the noise, the chatter, and the laugh. On the ornate dining table filled with regimented Kaiseki Ryori, each richly lacquered plate of Zensai, Osuimono, Yakimono, and Takiawase measured down to the individual nutrient tailored to the boy's exact dietary needs, he was the popcorn, soda, and sloppy burgers with cheap melted cheese that would have the boy's personal chef screeching in rage. In between the boy's rigorous education and training, he was the 'let's ditch those boring, old tutors, Iori! Human Worm 9 just came out! I'm taking you to watch it! You are going to love it, I'm sure!'

Just like that, the one took him from the great big house of the old blood, where a place with the boy's exact shape was already decided for him before he was even born.

Out of that house of the old blood, the one told him. You can be anything you want to be, so long as you are happy. And don't worry about a thing. I'm here. I'll protect you.

And protect him the one did. He was strong. Stronger even than father, thought the boy, for all that everyone around him always told him father was the strongest of his generation.

The one was strong and beautiful. He was a shining sun in human form. His every motion was poetry. His being was carved art. He captivated the boy effortlessly, in between his easy laugh and his freely offered, unconditional affection.

This one (copy pasted from my AO3):

In other news, in my continued effort to cope with incessant health issues (I am very good at coping. That's why I'm a professional writer see), I came up with yet more story ideas. Not mentioning the slew of flash written smutty IoriIta snippets, and a new story branch titled God and his Most Devout (so born because I grew tired of writing the same kind of relationship dynamic through different lends and genres so I wanted to see if I could write a completely different character dynamic), I came up with… another rom com story idea!!!

It's titled: "Shocking News: Itadori-kun has flowered!" In short, it's a story in which Yuji has the power of Otome-game protagonist!!!! Ah, but he doesn't know it. It all starts with Gojo's first lesson to Yuji in canon where he said Yuji had no cursed technique at all. But here, in this story, Gojo's Six Eyes picks up something but he doesn't know what exactly. It seems to evade the Six Eyes as it is. Meanwhile, Yuji thinks of his little harmless secret. Ever since he was a young child, he has had a little sprout on his head, hidden underneath his pink hair.

Yes! A sprout!

In any case, it seems Yuji really did awaken some technique after swallowing Sukuna's finger. He thinks it's a kind of support technique where he can cast passive, continuous and powerful active trigger, short term buffs on himself and his friends the more time he spends with them or the deeper their bonds become. Hahahahahahahaha. In truth, it's the otome game system at work. The system itself is inspired by the support and pair-up systems from Fire Emblem Awakening and Fates (I'm a big fan!!), as well as a few other popular otome game features (like the whole self improvement / beautifying system that is so prevalent in dating sims heavy otome game). Because Yuji has no idea that his technique literally requires / encourages him to romance people to buff the both of them (ah, the power of love and youth! The buffs are very powerful) and only thinks he is helping out his peers and seniors, our innocent boy happily goes around 'flirting' with everyone at Jujutsu High, both the Tokyo and Kyoto branches.

He can level up himself and his relationship with individual people. The higher the level, the more the sprout on his head grows, and eventually flowers!!!! He literally walks around with a pink flower crown on his head! Looking like the spirit of a sakura tree!

Ergo the name: Shocking News! Itadori-kun has flowered!

I think, because of the nature of such a system, he will probably have an innate sense of dual combat with any one he even just starts to get closed to too. You know like that mythical battle couple trance state that you sometimes see in romance stories with a combat focus (or that final gun fight scene in Mr and Mrs. Smiths movie). Because canon keeps prattling on about the strongest ones of each era always being lonely that it makes me want to chuck otome-game-powered!Yuji at it while hollering: "Behold! The power of love and friendship! Nyahahahahahaha!"

I'm not really sure which ship is end-game for this story yet. I'm oscilating between Goyuu (hey, mister I'm so lonely I can only fight alone even against Jujutsu Satan! I wanna do something about it! Don't dare me! It makes me want to do it even more) and OkkoIta / YuuYu (because I have never written this ship and I'm curious if I could pull it off. Also because the other weeks I stumbled across a bunch of well written OkkoIta Chinese fics and they sorta kinda convinced me).

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If it is, somebody did ask me how I would write the OkkoIta route. This is my answer to them: