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There are many different sides of Toji Fushiguro. To most he’s known as the sorcerer killer, to the Zenin clan he’s a disgrace.
To his only son, he’s a question mark. A blank slate that will be filled with a mentor, who though obnoxious and immature, will be there when he needs him, in a way Toji never had or could.
Deadbeat.
That word tends to get thrown around a lot when describing Toji Fusiguro. Although that word is not at all inaccurate, there are so many more parts of him that have yet to be addressed, traumas and situations that are integral to him becoming who he is.
Scared
Like all people, Toji Fushiguro was once a child. But unlike most children, he grew up in a clan of sorcerers. But unfortunately for Toji, he was born with no cursed energy at all. Even in her last breaths, his mother cursed her son for existing. An enigma, they called him. A disgrace, trash, disappointment. But he didn’t let it faze him. Because he was strong. He knew he could defeat anyone who opposed him and made it known. He wasn’t afraid when they pushed him, because he would push back.
Until one day when he was 10 years old when he was ambushed, beaten, and thrown into a dark room he didn't know existed.
He screamed and cursed and demanded to be let out, but he never once begged for mercy like the people outside the door wanted.
He stopped banging against the door, knowing he needed to conserve his energy. As he peered through the dark room not seeing anything but feeling the curses surrounding them, how much bigger than him they were, how malicious and evil they felt, feeling their presence get closer and closer, he felt scared for the first time. He wanted to cry, to curl up in a ball and pretend the monsters didn’t exist. He wanted to believe that someone would open that door, take him in their arms and comfort him, tell him that it's okay, that they love him. In this fleeting moment of panic, a curse caught him in unawares and struck him across the face.
He never let them get another hit in.
When the Zenin clan opens the door the next morning, they will see Toji in the middle of the room, with remnants of dead curses surrounding him, with only a single cut on his mouth as a sign of struggle. When he smiles at them coldly as the scar on his mouth bleeds, they will fear him for the first time.
Toji decides that day, he prefers being feared than being the fearful.
Lonely
The thing about being feared is that no one really likes you. No one gives you a smile as you pass them by, never inquiring about your day casually. Still, it’s better than being abused and degraded. But Toji hates the indescribable emptiness within him whenever he’s around the clan that avoids him like the plague. That feeling, that loneliness, feels too similar to being weak. So, he leaves the Zenin clan, but that feeling still follows him. He blows money on booze and drugs in order to escape this feeling, but he just can't seem to get drunk or even be high enough to escape that horrible ache in his chest. He sleeps with women, mainly for a place to stay, but also because he hopes in vain that the empty feeling inside of him will dissipate momentarily. But instead, even with a warm body next to him, the loneliness persisted. But being lonely is easier to deal with when your stomach is full and you have a bed to lie on, so he continues this self-destructive lifestyle for the foreseeable future.
Loved
Until one day, at a supermarket, someone buys his groceries. It's a woman his age surprisingly, and pretty too, so Toji goes through the routine, hoping maybe he could get a week on her couch. But surprisingly, the woman only smiled and wished him a good day before leaving. The first thought he had was that she was a sucker. The fact she gave something to him and didn’t expect to return the favor was stupid and weak. He continued to think this when they met at the same market a week later, and even when they went out on their first date.
It was the same thing. He made an offer to crash at her place for a few days and she agreed, but never tried to sleep with him. It was the third day when she was making breakfast that he snapped.
“Do you want nothing from me?”
“I do.”
“Then what is it? Cause even for me it feels weird to get all this treatment and not have to do anything.”
“Get a job. Help pay the rent and I promise you can do whatever you want.”
“...okay.”
She was Toji’s first housemate and first love. She never told him this, but when he had first asked her what she wanted she was going to say ‘to heal your hurting heart.’
She would never tell him aloud, but she only ever desired Toji’s heart. And before Toji knew it, he had given it to her.
When they get married, he makes her keep her last name.
“You don’t want this name. Or what it brings.”
The woman agreed with sad eyes, knowing her husband hasn't told her so many things, but she is still tasked to love him regardless. Toji still keeps his last name though, because, with the woman he loves by his side, the weight of the name ‘Zenin’ had never felt lighter.
Father
When he held his child in his arms for the first time the first thing he said was “Megumi.”
The mother protested. “ Megumi, as in blessings? It’s cute, but why would you give our boy a girl's name?”
“Megumi.”
“What if he gets bullied at school because of his name?”
“He won’t. He would beat up any bullies like that. He’ll protect people. He’ll have my strength and your heart.”
“I think you’re selling yourself short. Even if he had your heart, I’m sure he would protect those weaker than him.”
Toji wasn’t paying attention to her now, too enraptured in trying to get his son’s attention, cooing and rocking him as gently as possible as to not break him.
The mother smiles at the sight. “ Megumi it is.”
Toji didn’t say the real reason he believed Megumi had his mother’s heart. When he looked into the baby’s eyes and saw his own, he was overcome with a warmth and comfort that he had never felt until he had fallen in love for the first time. He believed that the gift to comfort others was rare and that a killer like him could never make others feel good. His presence was undetectable to sorcerers, and by the time they became aware of him, the light would already be fading from their eyes. But his wife, his kid, they see him. They love him.
So the fact that a kid that has his genetics can make him feel loved just minutes out of the womb, well, it’s a blessing indeed.
Lonely
When he loses his first love, he is surprised at how little he feels. He tried drinking his sorrows away, but he can never seem to get drunk. So he throws himself into work.
He kills ruthlessly and mercilessly, not because he gets a kick out of it, but it keeps him from thinking of her.
At night, he just sits in the middle of the floor, looking at nothing, wishing he could cry.
After a vicious night of nightmares, he screams and throws his pillow at the wall.
Suddenly, his door opens, revealing a small toddler in a light blue onesie who waddles towards him.
Toji makes no sound, not even registering the child.
“Papa?”
For the first time in what feels like a million years, Toji Fushiguro looks into the eyes of his son again.
Angry
He doesn’t feel anything at first. No warmth or fuzzy feeling like he felt when he was first born and he looked into those eyes. He hardly remembers that feeling anymore, as everything had died with her.
“I guess I was wrong about you, after all, kiddo. You ain’t no blessing.”
The brat is relentless.
“Papa, stop being mean.”
He grabs onto Toji’s sleeve and pouts so cutely, and Toji feels a small spark in his chest.
Ah. That’s how it felt.
But with that small flicker of feeling comes so much pain and grief, so much regret, so many memories of her , that he instinctively pulls away from his child, who looks hurt, but says nothing, as if he was mature enough to give his father some space.
Toji leaves him that night and doesn't come back until morning. He’s mad at the world and the kid is paying for it. He can’t even go back to his old lifestyle anymore, cause even with the kid’s cursed technique, he’s still a baby and will probably kill himself without supervision.
So he finds a caretaker. He eventually marries that woman because that way he can do whatever he wants now because Megumi now has a mother and older sister to take care of him. He doesn't need Toji. He’ll be fine without his father. Toji is sure of it.
He takes her last name to be Toji Fushiguro, because he no longer has the strength to acknowledge his past anymore.
Guilt
Toji hasn’t felt anything for a while. He hasn’t been home in a while, they probably think he’s dead by now. Well, that's for the best, given what he’s about to do.
He doesn’t need the money, really. But it’s a shit ton of it and it's hard to say no, even to the Zenins. So he agrees to sell his son to the clan that tortured him, all for a measly buck.
In that moment, when he agreed to that deal, he felt a twinge of something. It couldn’t be for his kid that he barely remembers, probably the residual anger for what the clan has done to him in the past. Yeah, that sounds right. It makes more sense that he’s a selfish asshole who thinks about his own traumas while he sells his son without his knowledge. He can’t feel guilty about it. But that night, Toji dreamed about innocent blue eyes full of love and woke up with tears on his face.
Reflection
Being on your deathbed does a lot to you. It’s refreshing actually. Knowing there is nothing to plan, nothing to do. All you can do is accept death and let it take you. But one thought kept Toji from just throwing in the towel. A fading memory, a name, blue eyes.
Megumi
He puts on his bravest smile as he looks at the man who put a hole in his chest.
“Yo, Gojo. You willing to listen to the request of a dead man? Cause I’ve got this kid…”
Rage
Toji was dead and suddenly he was alive again. Despite the mixture of emotions that swelled through him, the one that won out was rage. Whether it was due to the cursed technique or Toji’s own being, no one can know for sure, but Toji had the desire to kill anything near him, anything strong. So when he attacked a boy with sea urchin-like hair, he didn't think about how familiar he looked. All he could think was kill. This was a strong sorcerer, and strong sorcerers always looked down on him so killing him would be fun. He doesn’t know what made him look at the kids' eyes, but when he does it makes him stop. He knows those eyes, he remembers someone who had eyes like that, whose presence made him smile, made him proud.
“Hey kid, what's your name?”
“Megumi Fushiguro.”
“Not Zenin, huh?”
The relief that flooded him when Megumi said his last name was breathtaking. I guess even cocky sorcerers like Gojo make good on a dead man’s last wishes. He is filled with a desire he hadn’t felt in a long time, to talk to his kid and finally know him. But when he’s about to open his mouth, he sees that the kid is still wary of him, in a fighting stance with not a smidge of recognition in his eyes.
It serves me right that he doesn’t even recognize me.
Suddenly Toji is filled with the urge to kill again that isn't his own. It seems that the technique still has a slight hold over him. Toji laughs for the first time in years as he pulls out his blade. He looks at Megumi to just see how alike they are and hopes to all the gods he never prayed to that his kid doesn’t fuck up his life in the future as he did.
Love
He positions the blade at his skull and smiles at the boy, his son, who he never got to know and never will.
“Good for you, kiddo.”
Toji Fushiguro commits his first and last selfless act as he kills himself in front of his own son.