Chapter Text
Epilogue:
No One Haunts Me Like You Do
Several years in the future…
Snow was falling, dancing like mischievous fairies around the bronze lions in the square.
A wintry gloaming enveloped the surrounding monuments in a dull gray light. There was a solemnity to the hazy landscape, a ghoulishness to the familiar outlines of all the buildings. A fine mist crept along the square, its belly low to the ground, dragging behind it the specter of the encroaching night. Only the windswept snow saved the city from becoming too dim, too glum.
The reflective whiteness of the falling flakes valiantly held back the invading dark. Kept the slinking shadows at bay.
Beyond this cold and bleached out idyll, directly behind the metal pelts of the snow dappled lions, stood the proud columned silhouette of London’s National Portrait Gallery.
The gallery was a grand and storied place, perfect for viewing some of the world’s most famous works of art. It was also completely free and open to the public. There was, of course, a discrete little money box stationed out front in the atrium. Sitting there with its imploring sign in respectable font, pleading silently for donations. Like a fancy, somehow more acceptable form of panhandling, but without a pan or a handle. Classy. Professional.
Easy to ignore.
Which is exactly what art student Ryomen Sukuna did when he entered the gallery. He bounded up the front steps and walked briskly past the imploring box without ever glancing down at it, hell bent and seemingly on a mission. He marched through the front rooms, passing through centuries, through various art movements in rapid succession. Baroque, Neoclassical, Impressionist. Stalking through periods of time, unconcerned and unwavering.
One by one, he left them all behind.
Until he found the one he wanted.
Goya. Romanticism.
He paused, a frayed sketchbook tucked under a tattooed arm, a pencil tucked behind a generously pierced ear. His hair was dyed pink and swept back high from his forehead like Hokusai’s Great Wave. There was a cruel twist to his mouth, a mouth that turned into an impromptu snarl as he momentarily stuck his pencil between his teeth. He held it there, a pit bull chewing a bone, while he flipped through the pages of his sketchbook.
Seeking a blank page. It was far more difficult than expected. His pad was almost full. As he flipped, he saw:
A study of Saturn devouring his son, both the fleshy Reuben one and Goya’s eternal nightmare—
Caravaggio’s Seven Mercies—
Judith Slaying Holofernes, covered with founts of blood—
An ominous looking shrine with steps leading upward to an open maw, stacked with skulls—
He finally found an unused page. He backed up, and without looking settled onto a bench. He kept his eyes trained on the Goya in front of him.
The painting before him was entitled Forcibly Bewitched.
There were numerous other art students scattered throughout the gallery, some with full easels, some with simple pads. Like Sukuna, they were there to study and copy the techniques of the great masters. Unlike other prestigious museums, the gallery allowed, even encouraged this. The students working on their own pieces were as much a part of the scenery here as the valuable pieces of art.
The slide of a graphite pencil slashing across the page could be heard, the sound like an animal scratching at its cage. Sukuna’s hand moved automatically, the bands of ink wrapped around his wrist shifting rhythmically, like a conductor with a baton. His rust colored eyes stared ahead. He had become obsessed with Goya lately.
Specifically, with the Black Paintings.
Lucky for him, the gallery had some Goya on hand. Free and available for him to study up close. It wasn’t Saturn or Heads in a Landscape or Witches’ Sabbath, but it was close enough. The painting spoke to his lurid interests in the dark and the profane, the grim and the macabre. Goya’s vision aligned with his own dreams, which were always dark, always disturbing.
Like something cursed.
A flicker, a scene:
Dead bodies stacked in a trench. A yellow fog descending, the sound of machine gun fire in the distance…
The smell of burning so close…too close by…
Clack!
The pencil fell from his hand, rolling beneath the bench. “Tch.” In frustration he leaned over and snatched it from the tiles. Annoyance traced lines between his brows. He’d had an argument with his art history professor earlier that day and the fallout from this confrontation still stung. It sat, stiff and uncomfortable, like a looming gargoyle at the forefront of his mind.
It all boiled down to this: his professor had basically accused him of plagiarism on his mid semester term paper. Because unbeknownst to Sukuna, some of his analysis sounded suspiciously like those of a critic from Artforum.
A critic whose work he had never read.
The whole thing was complete bullshit. Sukuna had immediately taken offense at the notion. His pride had been pricked, and like an agitated tiger, he’d gone on the attack. Started lobbing insults at the prof. At a person who obviously thought all his students were idiots and incapable of forming any compelling arguments on their own.
He wondered now if his behavior from earlier was enough to earn him a suspension. Or maybe even cause him to fail the class altogether.
It remained to be seen. He had stormed from the office mid conversation, without looking back. All he knew was he hated Rauschenberg’s White Painting with a passion, was sorry to have ever laid eyes on that particular patch of blankness. After all, how much could one say about a plain white square? How many interpretations could one infer before accidentally slipping into the repetition of someone else’s argument?
“It’s fucking bullshit,” Sukuna muttered underneath his breath. A throat cleared to his right in pointed disapproval. He glanced up, saw a dad with a young child clasped to his side. The man regarded Sukuna with a narrow eyed and judgment laden stare.
Sukuna’s mouth curled reflexively in the most cruel, sadistic fuck you grin. Flashed it at the man like a drawn saber, curved and threatening.
An audible exhale of disgust followed the man as he quickly led the child away. Sukuna watched them go, like a predator lying on his belly in the brush, silently surveying his territory.
Good. Go on, get out of here.
He was pleased to have the Goya to himself again. Only now he wasn’t thinking of Forcibly Bewitched. No, his mind was back on that single white square. Yet again.
The color white caused such agitation inside of him. But he didn’t know why.
Another flicker, another scene:
A cloistered view from a dormer window shows him a towering spire, its darkened silhouette framed in cold gray stone. Etched there like a middle finger pointed directly up at heaven.
A Delft blue vase sits on a washing stand in the corner.
Behind him, a voice calls to him from a narrow bed filled with straw. Beckoning him away from the starlit window:
Come back…
Come back to me…
Sukuna found himself staring off, unseeing. Lost in the fragment of a dream he kept having. Over and over. He thought of the color white again. Of how that particular shade made him feel.
Pain…
That color always caused him pain.
White: the color of some unknown and unknowable regret. The color of a memory he couldn’t remember.
White: a shadow flitting in the corner of his eye, just out of sight, beyond his reach. Diaphanous and fleeting, insubstantial and impossible to hold.
He swallowed and looked down at the witchy outline of the figure there. His technical prowess in drawing was unquestionable, but the way he challenged and argued with all the profs at school was a problem. Sukuna knew he was stubborn, prideful. Excessively strong willed. He refused to take the things they told him at face value. He liked discovery, discussion, debate. He didn’t always immediately accept the proclamations, the interpretations, of those scholarly men long dead and gone. He had his own eyes, his own mind, after all.
He didn’t need dead men, those ghosts, telling him how to feel, what to think.
He had other ghosts haunting him. Ghosts diaphanous and pale as moonglow.
Come back…
Come back to me…
A flash of white floating in the water. A lone dead eye, the color of a summer sky, staring up…
Again, there was the sense of something close by: a specter, a shadow, prowling just out of his line of sight. Sukuna looked at the Goya with growing apprehension.
Saw a shadow fall across the bench to his right.
He turned his head slightly, prepared to draw his saber (or rather his saber toothed smile). He was ready to make himself unpleasant, uninviting. To be left alone with just the Goya. But upon spying the person next to him he saw—
A pale, perfect profile—
Hair like fallen snow—
Skin translucent, glowing—
All of it contrasting with the dark sweater he was wearing, the dark slacks. He was like incandescence itself, dressed and draped in shadow. A perfect chiaroscuro.
Sukuna couldn’t help staring.
“I know that face.”
The man next to him said this softly. But he wasn’t looking at Sukuna directly. No, he was looking at the painting.
Which just emboldened Sukuna further. Encouraged him to stare openly, study the man even longer.
No, not a man—he was like some felled angel who had stepped straight out of a Caravaggio painting. Riminaldi’s Icarus.
“What do you think of Goya?” This time the stranger turned his head and looked straight at Sukuna, addressing him directly. It took Sukuna a moment before he could answer.
Because he was stunned into silence by the most breathtaking face he’d ever laid eyes on, looking at him dead on.
The man had the most vivid, beautifully faceted blue eyes he’d ever seen. Sukuna instantly thought of Vermeer’s ultramarine, a color harvested and transmogrified from crushed jewels.
“I think it’s metal as fuck,” Sukuna said conversationally. He mentally kicked himself for saying this, but pressed on. “I’m a huge fan of his Black Paintings.”
The man’s mouth tilted up in an ironic smile, as if he had fully expected this answer. He watched the man (angel) lean back casually on his elbows. That was when Sukuna noticed a second person standing just a few feet away, a petite individual with a silvery bob. They appeared to be waiting, at a discreet distance, for the man with the killer blue eyes. Sukuna caught them looking at him, saw them bow their head in acknowledgment.
“Who is that over there?” Sukuna asked him. “Your mom?” A surprised peal of laughter erupted from the man’s throat. He heard the person with the bob make a tch! sound; they’d obviously overheard Sukuna’s question. Sukuna realized then he’d made a social faux pas, but he thought the question was not without basis. After all, they both had extraordinarily pale hair and features.
And the one with the bob was middle aged, while the man sitting next to him was mid twenties at most.
“Uraume is my executive assistant,” the man told him, smiling a rather secretive smile. Armed with this information, Sukuna appraised the man next to him in a new light. He was suddenly made aware of how tastefully minimalist, yet expensive, his outfit was. He snuck a look at his feet and saw the boots he wore looked designer. Everything about the earthbound angel next to him screamed rich! and privileged!
Whereas Sukuna was practically penniless. He’d gotten into university on scholarship, on merit alone.
“You must be someone important to have an executive assistant following you around,” Sukuna observed. The man merely shrugged at this. But after a moment of consideration, he looked upwards, towards heaven. He gave Sukuna a full view of his perfectly sculpted profile. Then he said softly:
“I’m not important but…it’s possible you might have heard of me. I’m an artist based in Hampstead. Gojo Satoru.”
Silence. The man stilled, his form froze in place like some beautiful, regal sculpture, like a Greek god in repose. He seemed to be waiting for something. Some sort of recognition perhaps. Some outward reaction from Sukuna. Sukuna’s eyes widened.
He realized that the name was indeed familiar to him. He grew excited. “Hey, I do know that name!”
There was a slight pause where Gojo turned his head and looked at Sukuna expectantly. Finally Sukuna said:
“You’re the one who found the missing Vermeer.”
Sukuna watched Gojo’s expression change. It was odd. He thought he detected a hint of disappointment there. An unaccountable sadness fell across his eyes, slipping down over his face like a funeral shroud. Sukuna saw—
White, wispy folds of sheer material—
Flecked with red, with trails of blood—
Eyes staring like death, inverted—
Staring at him from across—
“That was quite a while ago,” said Gojo. “I’m surprised you remember that.”
“Well, it had been missing from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum for decades. It was the world’s most expensive stolen painting.” A slight pause. “My name’s Ryomen Sukuna, by the way. And I’m in school studying art,” Sukuna said this last bit with pride.
Sukuna watched those breathtaking eyes brighten with interest. “So you’re an artist then?””
“Yes.”
“So am I.” Sukuna watched Gojo’s face intensely, half bewitched and wholly entranced already. He flexed the fingers still holding his pencil. They itched to flip the page of his sketchbook, longed to start moving across the fine blank paper. Render in dark romantic strokes the beauty he saw before him.
As if reading his thoughts, Gojo’s eyes dropped to his sketchbook. “Do you mind if I take a look inside?” he asked. The question sounded strangely intimate, personal.
Like he had just asked Sukuna to strip down for him.
Which didn’t matter in the slightest. Because right now, Sukuna would have done anything he asked. Including the stripping down.
Sukuna didn’t hesitate. He offered Gojo the book. He knew his work was good, great even, if a little lurid and unnerving.
But maybe that was what this man was into: lurid and unnerving. Just like Sukuna himself. Sukuna’s mouth curled into a wily, knowing smile as Gojo reached over to take the proffered sketchpad.
The fingers that brushed across his own sent a thrill of electricity coursing through his body; his touch was hot and strangely, agonizingly familiar—
His hand slides over and covers the one holding the stone mueller. Guiding him, showing him—
The smell of linseed oil and candle wax is thick in the air, almost as thick as the intense, relentless longing—
Desire permeates the room, invasive as the dark—
The razor-like smile slid from Sukuna’s face as he stared, drawn away into dreams of a distant past. He suddenly realized he was still holding onto the sketchbook, that he hadn’t let go of it. Their fingers were still touching. Sukuna looked down, at Gojo’s pale, long fingered hand, then at his own meaty fingers, the nails painted and flaking with chipped black nail polish.
He jerked his hand away as if he’d been scalded. Singed by a fire he couldn’t see, but knew was definitely there. And he felt something he’d never, ever felt before:
Fear.
Sukuna watched a slight, predatory smile tug at the corner of the beautiful angel’s mouth. Lips like a Cupid’s bow, aimed and locked on Sukuna’s now frozen form. Sukuna felt himself becoming gripped with something that felt suspiciously like the beginnings of an obsession.
The fear he felt just now wasn’t a deterrent at all.
No, quite the opposite. In fact, it made him more interested than ever. Sukuna’s fingers twitched reflexively with the memory of his touch. With—
—with the cascading memories of centuries, all of them washing down, drowning him like a waterfall, falling from a great height.
Sukuna watched as Gojo opened his sketchbook and began slowly flipping through the pages. His expression was unreadable, sphinx like. He got to the page depicting the macabre looking shrine with all the skulls and he paused. Sukuna thought he saw a flash of some emotion on his face, but what that emotion was, he couldn’t tell. To fill the tense and growing silence, Sukuna began talking:
“That one is from this reoccurring dream that I keep having. There are more like that in there. The ones that aren’t strictly classical studies, that is.” Sukuna watched Gojo pause on another sketch, one showing the view from a dormer room, the room’s window acting like a natural frame, outlining a tall spire with an oxidized clock dial affixed to its tower. A washstand with a vase sat next to the window, domestic and delicate. Sukuna explained:
“That one is also from a dream, it’s just not as creepy or as dark as the others. It’s actually kind of cozy—“
“—well, he was your favorite,” Gojo said with an odd tone. Sukuna’s brows knitted together at the statement, which he thought was just as odd as the tone with which it was spoken. Not that it bothered him much.
After all, artists were such an eccentric bunch. That was a universal fact.
Sukuna shook his head emphatically. He leaned over and began rapidly going through the pages, practically tearing the sketchbook from Gojo’s hands. “It’s actually not my favorite,” Sukuna argued. He finally found the page he was looking for. “This one is.”
The page revealed an elaborate sketch of an exquisitely rendered angel in long flowing robes, bloodstained and pinned down by knives. Arms akimbo, he was like a beautiful butterfly pinned to a mat. Arcs of blood were scattered all around him, their placement deliberate, artistic. They flowed out from his form, surrounding him like the veins of rivers and estuaries, but viewed from above, as if on a map.
Sukuna watched a wistful looking smile slip across Gojo’s face. Both of them had gone perfectly still. There was a strange feeling, a burgeoning tension, in the air. It stretched on, causing Sukuna’s heart rate to speed up dramatically as they both studied the sketch of the bloodied angel. This tension remained unbroken until Gojo suddenly slapped the sketchbook close. There was a fresh smile on his face as he turned to Sukuna:
“They’re all so exquisite. You have a wonderful imagination. And a lot of talent.”
“I know.” Zero hesitation and zero sense of pointless modesty.
Gojo’s smile stretched even wider. It was like watching a sunflower bloom. He held out his hand, his hypnotic blue eyes directed at the pencil that Sukuna was still holding. Seeing his intent, Sukuna placed the pencil in his hand. Gojo flipped to the back of the sketchbook and he began scribbling out an address. He said:
“I have a place in Hampstead, overlooking the heath—“
“—oh, like in that Keats poem! Darkling, I listen, and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful death, called him soft names in many mused rhyme,” Sukuna recited. Gojo froze and looked at him, with—
—eyes like easeful death, staring up at him from the petal laden water—
—and without thinking, moving only on pure instinct, Sukuna leaned across the bench and swooped in for a kiss. A sensuous surprise attack, an impertinent ambush. Because he knew—
He knew he could—
He knew this felled angel of a man would allow it—
That he would permit him anything, consume him, feed into what was very quickly becoming an exhilarating new obsession, a new all consuming need—
The kiss was returned, but softly, almost reverently. It broke just a beat too late, yet still too quickly to be entirely satisfying. It was just a taste, a prelude to the main course that was yet to come. Sukuna’s razor smile was back—cutting, confident—as he pulled back. Gojo whispered:
“And he still doesn’t ask.” Sukuna just looked at him, mouth crooked with catlike satisfaction. It sounded like a complaint but Sukuna thought he detected a fondness to it that made him think otherwise. “You should come visit me in Hampstead,” Gojo finally told him. “I’ve got a lot of paintings and sketches of my own. I’d love to share…” He kept on talking but all Sukuna heard was:
Come up and see my etchings!
That, and the blood rushing through his own ears, bringing with it the thundering pulse of desire, of lust. Sure, this guy was obviously a few years older than him, but that had never stopped him before. Sukuna wasn’t some kind of wallflower. Obviously. He indulged in desire’s violent delights often, indiscriminately, without holding back. He had participated in plenty of his own personal witches’ sabbaths. So picking up a guy in the middle of an art gallery was nothing new to him.
But even so, he knew that this one was something special. He just knew it. As Gojo handed back the sketchbook with his address written in it, he instructed, “But if you do decide to come, do so after sunset. I’m very busy during the day, so don’t come before then.” Sukuna watched him rise from the bench, watched him—
—rise like Eurydice from hell, blade in hand, bent on destruction, on vengeance. Beautiful and frightening and seductive all at once. Head wreathed in red, crowned with blood. Blood he’d unwittingly caused, blood he had been repaid with in kind. Blood he knew he had yet to spill—
—and he saw the beautiful angel glance back over his shoulder at him, not Euridyce after all, but Orpheus at the mouth of Hell. An exquisite figure of a man (angel? devil?) leaving behind him a tempting siren’s song for him to follow.
And Sukuna knew that he would follow—
Would always follow—
Just like fate decreed he always would. In his head, in his dreams, Sukuna heard that voice calling out, calling from the dark. The same voice that was always, always calling him. From the water, from the fields, from beneath the stones. From a ghostly incubus’s bed:
Come back…
Come back beloved…
Come back to me…
Fin.