Chapter Text
Sukuna holds Itadori's heart in his hand. It's still beating, a reflex from when it was still curled between two lungs and surrounded by a rib cage, the movement causing blood to gush out in a spurt that has nowhere to go. Its dark red colour contrasts with the black claws from which it is trapped, five fingers as thin as the bars of a cell, or rather a cage. Sukuna holds Itadori's heart in his hand. Sukuna throws Itadori's heart to the ground. Throws it down without even looking at it, as if it were a stone picked up from the ground. And it's morbid, the way that same heart bounces off the grass with a sickening noise, rolling a few centimeters before settling between the blades of grass, a red stain in a sea of green.
Itadori ends up dying, inevitably. Megumi watches him regain control of Sukuna, watches his mouth say live a long life, watches his body land on the ground just as his heart had done just before. Then he looks up at the sky. Drops of rain enter his eyes, burning them in a way that only rain can do, but Megumi doesn't close his eyes. They end up coming out just as easily as they went in, and they are the only tears Megumi allows himself that day.
Carrying Itadori is no mean feat. Eighty kilos, cold, stiff already, uncooperative — but wasn't he when he was alive? — and dirty. Blood seeped into Megumi's uniform as he made his way, his friend's corpse in his arms, to the place where he'd left Ijichi. Of course he's not there, having taken Kugisaki to the safety of the school campus. Megumi doesn't trust his voice, so instead he sends a message to Nitta and another assistant to come and take Itadori's body away. Fortunately, the response is immediate. All that's left to do is wait, a corpse in his arms and rain washing away the blood and sweat.
Megumi looks at the road. The trees, the prison building, the sky. He looks at everything except Itadori, because he already knows what awaits him if he looks down: a peaceful face, almost asleep except for the streaks of blood on his chin, his eyes closed but his chest gaping in a silent scream. So Megumi looks away, at the trees, the prison building, the sky. The ground. Then finally the grass. And it's only there that his eyes stop. There, left behind by everyone else, Itadori's heart almost melts into the landscape. The raindrops roll over it without ever really penetrating it, a drop of oil in a glass of water, but they seem to have washed away the blades of grass around it. The blood isn't as red as it used to be, less threatening, a pale pink the same colour as its owner. Megumi remains standing, his friend not breathing in his arms and his eyes fixed on his heart. His arms hurt where they're wrapped around Itadori's torso to keep him from falling, and he can feel his shoulders sagging under the weight of the rain. Sitting down would be nice. But that would mean putting Itadori down on the cold, dirty ground, and the idea alone feels like a disrespect Megumi doesn't have the courage to commit, like throwing a heart (a good, big, too big one) on the ground without a backward glance and letting the rain wash away the evidence of its presence.
Blue on red. Or rather blue on pink. Megumi looks, looks, looks. The water weighs down his hair, drops slide down the flattened strands on his forehead, dance between his lashes and then plunge into his eyes. But that doesn't stop him from not blinking.
The sound of an engine can be heard in the distance, snapping Megumi out of his trance. Itadori is in his arms, Itadori's heart is on the floor and the assistants are getting closer. Itadori is in his arms, dead, cold, Itadori's heart is on the floor, dirty, rotting, and the assistants are getting closer. Several images come to Megumi's mind, one of a breakfast between three teenagers just a few hours ago, a shirtless body on the dirty floor of a prison complex alley and a rotting body, hundreds of worms nibbling away at the green, blue and red flesh. Crows too, perhaps, in search of food.
This is where things click, because Megumi delicately places Itadori against the half-wall where the name of the detention center is marked, his back leaning against the wall, and if he concentrates he can even pretend that the boy is just resting, his eyes closed peacefully in the rain, before heading towards the heart in four strides. Megumi doesn't think, thinking would only stop him now, with thoughts of ethics, morals and everything contrary to what he's about to do, and that's the last thing he wants when the noise of the cars gets closer and closer. He doesn't think but his hands are still shaking as he removes the top of his soaked uniform to wrap the heart in it. Hesitation stops his fingers three millimeters from the organ, though only for a second, no more, and in the next Itadori Yuuji's heart is carried by both of Megumi's hands. It's heavy, cold, viscous, everything Megumi expected. Heavy in the same way Itadori was in his arms not long ago, but where the weight was a morbid comfort, here it threatens to bring Megumi to his knees.
He still ends up getting on his knees, wet grass soiling his pants, and wrapping his friend's heart in his uniform like a gift on Christmas Eve. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see a black car followed by a van stop ten meters from the entrance. Nitta gets out of the car along with several other people from the van, a body bag in hand.
Megumi watches Itadori get carried away by what he assumes are those in charge of recovering the corpses, watches his pink hair disappear under the zipper of the body bag. That's where Nitta finds him, soaked to the bone, his knees buried in the grass and his uniform wrapped tightly against his chest, where Megumi's heart beats unlike the one in his hands. He answer neither to Fushiguro-kun, are you hurt? nor to the proposal of an umbrella. He just walks towards the car, his back hunched, his shoulders tense, his friend's heart in his uniform and his friend in a body bag, cold, dead, unreachable.
No one asks what he has in his hands.
The ride back to school is a blur. A mixture of light from street lamps, advertising hoardings and speeding cars. Nitta had spoken to him, perhaps, surely, but that too was a blur. All Megumi could remember was the weight on his knees as the car pulled up in front of the school campus. Even the walk to his room is just a vague green and brown memory, nothing his brain bothered to register by defining the edges because Itadori is dead, dead, dead. It's the only thought that's been running through his head like a badly rewound cassette since he took refuge in the solitude of his room.
And that's when it hits him. He—He brought Itadori's heart with him, still in his uniform and now sitting on the desk in his bedroom. He—
What have he done? A wave of disgust hits him so hard that he almost doesn't reach the toilet in time to empty the contents of his stomach. The bile burns his esophagus differently from the drops of water that burned his eyes at the detention center, burning him from the inside out until Megumi collapses to the ground, his head throbbing, his stomach empty. He must be a sight to behold, drool hanging from his mouth, the white shirt he wore under his uniform soaked, body sore from Sukuna's blows, Itadori's heart on his desk.
Itadori's heart on his desk.
This is both a disgusting and unrealistic thought. He can't even blame his action on impulsivity because, even now, the thought of the organ rotting on that grass-covered ground almost gives his stomach a second round. The thought of Itadori himself rotting on a mortuary table is currently giving him a second round, even though there is nothing left to vomit up.
A shower. Megumi needs a shower. A hot shower to wash away the permanent cold in his chest. Just before, he forces himself to put the heart in the mini-drink fridge in his room — still in the uniform, Megumi doesn't have the mental energy to unwrap it now, certainly not now — and tries hard to forget about it.
Key word being tries.
According to the Internet, meat should be stored first in plastic wrap and at a low temperature, that is to say at minus eighteen degrees Celsius, for optimal slowdown of deterioration.
Megumi scrolls through the different articles on his phone, sitting on his bed, clean and changed into more comfortable clothes that don't smell of blood and rain. Beef, pork, poultry, seafood, his eyes scan all the information he can gather on how to manage the consequences of his actions. He doesn't type in the search bar how to preserve an organ or shelf life of a heart because that will make it all too clear: that Itadori is dead and that Megumi has horribly, disgustingly, kept his heart for... For what exactly? To grieve? To mourn? To stay in denial? However, there was nothing to deny: Gojo had been informed as soon as the students returned to campus and Ieiri had surely already started to dissect the boy.
It's legally illegal, morally disgusting, and emotionally wrong— Itadori would never have done that to him. No, he would have mourned his death, bought flowers and cleaned his grave every week. He cares for the dead as much as he cares for the living, and Megumi would probably be as cherished as the urn of ashes in one of Itadori's bedroom closets, neat and clean and sitting right next to a photo frame of a child and his grandfather. A vase too, whose flowers change every week.
It's desecration of a body. That doesn't stop Megumi from putting some of Gojo's money on his card to order a mini-freezer that goes well below minus eighteen degrees. Guilt weighing down his stomach, he takes the smallest one available. He only has one thing to store anyway.
The next day, he declines the invitation which sounds more like an order from Kugisaki to make her breakfast. According to her, the task of cooking falls on him now that they have lost their personal cook and pastry chef. Megumi pretends not to notice the red swelling of her eyes and goes to pick up his pre-ordered freezer from the store. He doesn't know how to cook, and even if he did, he's in no mood to knead minced meat in his hands to make meatballs. Megumi doesn't have time anyway, raw meat can only be kept in the refrigerator for two days, which only gives him one more day to freeze the organ stored between his water bottles in his room.
He'd be lying if he said he hadn't thought of other solutions. But each of them seems impossible to achieve, both physically and emotionally. Simply throwing away the heart is out of the question, Itadori deserves better. Burning it is an option, perhaps Megumi could even incorporate the ashes with those of the rest of Itadori's body once Ieiri is done with him, give him back what is rightfully his, what Megumi cowardly has stolen like a hungry scavenger. It's the best thing to do and yet— He can't. Can't bring himself to let go of what's left of this boy halfway between spring and summer. And it's ridiculous, because Megumi had only known him for a few weeks, no more, no less, and finds himself clinging to what's left of him so desperately, so ignobly, that it takes all the effort in the world to stop the bile rising from his stomach for the third time in twenty-four hours.
There is the old-fashioned burial too. Like murderers and serial killers, dig a hole somewhere, a forest perhaps, place the evidence of the crime and cover it with dirt as if nothing had happened. Out of sight, out of mind. Itadori doesn't deserve this, not this kind of treatment.
Itadori doesn't deserve this— Does he deserve what Megumi is doing to him? Does he deserve the professional smile the appliance salesman gives Megumi as he walks out of the store, a mini-freezer in a bag? Does he deserve the plugged-in freezer under Megumi's desk, hidden from the world by a dark cloth draped over it? The answer is clear: obviously not. But Megumi is selfish, especially now, more selfish than he's ever been as he opens the refrigerator to take out the heart.
He unwraps it, but his mind is elsewhere. The different solutions dance in his mind while his fingers move of their own accord, peeling off the uniform layer by layer like peeling an onion until they reach the heart. It crossed his mind, briefly, a volatile thought of how to get rid of Itadori's heart without actually getting rid of it (because Megumi is disgusting like that). He soon gave up, however. He may condone the desecration of bodies but draws the line at cannibalism. Itadori doesn't deserve this.
His heart is just as heavy as it was yesterday, strewn between Megumi's two trembling hands. It's cold too, thanks to the fridge. The smell of raw meat, the same as in butchers' shops, assaults Megumi's nose to such an extent that he has to momentarily turn his head to the side to regain his senses. He doesn't know much about anatomy, having only leafed through one of Ieiri's book out of curiosity once during a stay in the infirmary, so all he can recognise under his fingers are the superior vena cava and the aortic arch from which the two carotid arteries and the brachiocephalic arterial trunk emerge, thick, solid and still red from the blood they carried not so long ago.
He squeezes it, more out of morbid curiosity than anything.Once, twice and stops at the fourth time. Just what the fuck is wrong with him. He'll take this to his grave, he swears.
With plastic wrap stolen from the common kitchen, Megumi wraps the heart in it before placing it in the freezer. Putting it in a food storage bag would be better, but that would prevent him from being able to see the heart better once it's frozen.
Megumi can't look Kugisaki in the eye for the next two weeks.
It's becoming part of his routine now. He wakes up to the sound of his alarm clock, showers, dresses, brushes his teeth, marks a cross on his calendar on the wall, checks the heart and leaves his room without forgetting to lock it. Today is no exception.
Megumi opens the freezer as he has done every day for over a month now, his gaze resting on the organ wrapped in cling film. Chunks of ice have formed here and there around the heart to such an extent that it looks more like a large red pebble. An icy wind whips across Megumi's face, a kind of second awakening that erases any sleep that might have lingered, before he closes the freezer with a sigh.
"I'm off," Megumi says to no one in particular. Maybe to someone, after all.
If asked, Megumi would say he's not a fast runner.
He has other qualities, of course. His punches hurt to some extent, he's still working on them, his aim is lower than Kugisaki's but still remarkable, and he has quite a bit of agility. Agility that isn't innate—not like a certain idiot who decided that pretending to be dead for two months was the best thing since chicken nuggets—but earned through hours and hours of training and honing his flexibility. He runs pretty fast, though it's not his trump card.
But currently, having just come out of the infirmary where he landed after the fiasco of the Kyoto exchange event, Megumi is breaking all his records and not just his own. His vision is a blur of green trees, brown buildings, and red toriis as he speeds through the school campus. Breathing ragged, throat burning, Megumi doesn't even stop to apologize when he bumps into Inumaki by mistake in a tight turn, which earns him an offended Tuna! He'll apologize later.
Yes, later, not now, especially not now, because he has a disaster to prevent. The disaster being that idiot, imbecile, insipid, airhead Itadori entering his room — of course he will, whether he's there or not, with or without permission this idiot— poking around curiously, eager to see what's changed during his "absence" and oh— what's that box under the desk covered with a cloth? Oh, a freezer! I wonder what's in it! Mmmh, that's weird, it looks exactly like the heart Sukuna plucked from my chest two months ago! Say, why is it here, Fushiguro?
Megumi isn't ready to answer that question no matter how many times he runs the possible scenarios in his head. There's the one where Itadori is confused, the one where he's disgusted, the one where he actively avoids him, the one where he tells Gojo everything because what's wrong with him Sensei he kept my heart—
They all have this same question in common: why? And Megumi doesn't know. Megumi would also like to know. Megumi asks himself this question five times a day since Itadori died.
So there he is, close of becoming the second coming of Usain Bolt as he charges through the corridors like he's fighting for first place at the Olympic Games, as if he had the devil at his heels, his legs burning under the effort. He almost runs headfirst into his bedroom door, if not for the brake that he manages to pull off in extremis at the last minute. Once inside, Megumi locks the door and leans against it to catch his breath, his chest rising and falling at a rate even he didn't think he was capable of.
Nothing seems to have been touched, which means he made it in time. He almost collapses with relief.
Megumi goes to the freezer almost automatically and, as he has done for the last two months, opens it wide to look inside. The heart is still there, frozen in time thanks to the cold, but this time Megumi takes it out and puts it on the desk. He struggles: the touch is so cold it burns him, the bits of ice sink uncomfortably into his hands and the heart has frozen with the bottom of the freezer, making it difficult to extract. It takes him a few long minutes, but he finally manages to dislodge it, resulting in cold, reddened hands and water everywhere under his desk.
He places the heart where he had placed it the first time Megumi brought it back, when it was still cool and flabby to the touch, that is to say on his desk. Megumi has to get rid of it. It's one thing to keep your deceased friend's heart frozen in your bedroom, it's quite another when said friend is perfectly alive. Itadori is alive, and that's good, it really is, Megumi is— He's glad. The fact that there is finally someone in the next room, living, breathing, making noise, warms a part of him that had been forever chilled by the rain in that detention center. Itadori is alive as Megumi is, with a brand new heart beating in his chest. And if before Megumi felt bad for having kept this organ — one of his worst decisions, really — now he doesn't even dare to look at himself in the mirror for fear of vomiting just at the sight of his own reflection. It's wrong. He's been selfish enough for an entire lifetime.
That doesn't mean he knows how to get rid of it. All the solutions he'd thought of before come and go in his mind, without one really standing out from the rest. It's still his heart, Itadori's heart, and while Megumi has never paid much attention to the symbolism of actions before, he finds himself wanting to do it right, to do it in the same way that what a good death represents for Itadori.
In any case, Megumi have to thaw out the heart first. He'll sort out the rest later. Putting it in the microwave in the common kitchen is as impractical as it is disrespectful, perhaps even borderline psychopathic. The simplest and safest way is to leave it defrost on the desk. Megumi is even lucky for once, as a ray of sunlight hits the very spot where he placed the heart, so all that's left to do is wait.
There are two timid knocks on the door. What did he say about his luck again?
He holds his breath, eyes fixed on the door and almost panics when the handle clicks. Thank God he locked the door. “Uh, Fushiguro?” It's Itadori's voice, unusually low for his loud personality. Megumi doesn't answer in hopes that the boy will assume no one is there and leave. He has a heart to thaw. "Dude, I know you're in there. I literally heard you running down the hall like there was fire." Well shit. It was either that or Itadori would discover his crime like one uncovers a serial killer. Megumi still decides not to answer.
The silence stretches from second to minute and just when he thinks Itadori has given up— "Are you still mad?" Soft, low, almost a whisper. It cuts the tension that had built up with a delicate edge, a knife sinking into butter. “I’m really sorry, y’know.” Megumi can see Itadori guiltily looking down in his voice. He frowns. “I never wanted any of this,” Itadori continues, his voice so low that Megumi has no choice but to move closer to the door to hear better. “I know I keep repeating myself but Gojo-sensei said it was better like this and I—” A pause. From where he stands, Itadori's breathing hitching doesn't escape Megumi's ears, nor does the sound of a forehead resting against the closed door.
"I missed you guys. I missed you."
Oh. He remembers now. Why did Megumi do what he did, keeping a frozen heart for two months, just looking at it every day before going out and every day when coming back. Because that's what Itadori Yuuji's heart is capable of. In the world of jujutsu, sorcerers are not known for dwelling on feelings. They either curse, or slow down, or distract. A burden for some, useless for others, that's what feelings are. But this heart cherishes them so deeply, lets everyone in as if there will always be room for one more person—and there always, always is—that Megumi couldn't. He just couldn't let go. Is this what you call precious?
Megumi places his hand on the door, where he knows Itadori's forehead rests on the other side. His heart is heavy in his chest, guilt digging into him to the marrow and beyond. He wants to open the damn door and say what's been stuck in his throat since that rainy day, what he couldn't say to Gojo or Kugisaki or even Tsumiki's sleeping form during his visits to the hospital, that he hates the fact that Itadori is dead, dead and buried or burned or whatever but dead. That he hates that it happened that way and hates himself for keeping what he could keep of him at the time. But Megumi can't, not when his friend's heart is half-thawed on his desk.
"I'll talk to you later," is what he says instead. It sounds small, unhappy, lonely. "Oh," he can tell Itadori is disappointed, sad even, "okay then." And he leaves.
Megumi hates himself.
In the end, it takes several hours for the ice to melt completely. Thus Megumi stays in his room all day, juggling between cleaning the water from the ice and keeping himself busy until the heart is finally loose and spongy out of the plastic wrap. He doesn't linger over it like he did the first time, doesn't even dare touch it. He tries to ignore the ignoble part of him, the part he wishes he never have discovered, the one he should have never discovered, that doesn't want to let go of the heart.
Getting rid of something without getting rid of it sounds more like a philosophical phrase than a concrete, realistic action. Megumi is still looking for a compromise between the reasonable and the irresponsible thing to do, the right one and the wrong one. His room smells more and more like raw meat, not fresh from the butcher but rather one that has lost its quality, its shine. Megumi sighs, hands covering his eyes. Guilt tires him, more than any harsh training or deadly mission had ever.
He doesn't think, doesn't do it often these days. He doesn't think when his hands form the familiar sign, doesn't even need to see what he's doing as a black dog sits obediently in front of him, waiting for his orders, its tail motionless. Megumi gets up, reaches over to the desk and holds the heart in both hands before returning to his position on the bed. The dog tilts its head curiously, muzzle sniffing the air.
Megumi holds out the heart. It's ridiculous how this looks like an offering, and maybe it is. But Megumi is tired, he is tired, yet neither burning nor burying nor throwing away nor vitriol are good enough and destroying without destroying, degrading without degrading is only possible if—
(His shikigamis don't excrete.)
"Eat," Megumi orders the dog.
And eat it does.
The next morning, Megumi runs into Itadori in the middle of the common kitchen. The boy freezes, his eyes wide open, the look of a child caught in the act painted on his face. Even though he's just setting the table. “Um,” he starts nervously, hands playing with the bottom of his purple hoodie, “So—”
Megumi hugs him.
The body in his arms tightens like the string of a bow, but only for a few seconds, the shoulders sagging as quickly as they had risen. Itadori hugs him back, two powerful arms around his back inking him in place, heat radiating from them like a furnace and evaporating the remnants of June's stubborn rain from his shoulders. His heartbeat echoes in his chest and ricochets against Megumi's.
It is in the whitish glow of the September morning, with the smell of grilled fish tickling his nostrils and the characteristic sound of the rice cooker echoing in the kitchen, that Megumi realizes it. This beating heart is worth a thousand frozen ones.