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It was quiet, trapped inside his own body. Not peaceful, not even in the slightest, but certainly quiet.
Megumi felt like he was underwater. He didn’t need to breathe for whatever reason, could barely even move, just floated aimlessly in the water, something happening above him, voices muted and too far away to truly tell what was going on. His limbs didn’t work, his ears were full of liquid, his eyes full of salt.
Part of him, the part of him that was floating even further beneath the waves somewhere, was still fighting. Enough that he remained in this in between state of consciousness—not quite dead, but not completely alive either.
He could hear airplanes, closer than you’d think.
This was the end. He was sure of it. He’d failed, Sukuna had taken over, and there was nothing left for him. The last thing his hands ever did in the mortal realm was kill his own sister.
He was having trouble caring about much else.
Because what point was there to living if it wasn’t for Tsumiki? She’d never produced a curse in her life, even though she had all the emotions and none of the sorcery ability. She only ever leaked cursed energy when Megumi was upset, like she could bleed enough for both of them. She was the only thing in this world that truly deserved the air she breathed, and Megumi was the one to take it from her.
That other part of him, the one that swam in the depths of the ocean of his mind where light never touched, placed blame in the correct hands, believed the childish hope in Itadori’s smile. He dared not let that part surface.
Because right now his hands were being used again, the technique he’d honed for years being used against the few friends he had left, instead of to help them fight. His hands were slashing and cutting too, a technique foreign to them yet twice as deadly. Fire and shadows, brimstone and darkness. Jujutsu society had never seen anything like him. It was best not to try and reconcile this foreign control over his limbs.
He hadn’t completely checked out, though, not yet. He’d been trapped for a long time, only getting flashes of what was happening in the real world. But he couldn’t ignore the first challenger to take a stance against the King of Curses.
No matter how hard he’d always tried.
Because it would be him to fight first. He was the strongest, the best of them, freed from his cubed prison just to be thrown at Megumi and expected to fix everything.
The petty teen rebellion in him groaned at the bravado being thrown around out there, a lifetime of dealing with Gojo’s arrogance had him almost ready to break free of Sukuna’s hold on him just to roll his own eyes.
But there was a stronger instinct, a much more embarrassingly childish one, that won out over annoyance. It was the instinct that recognized Gojo for what he always had been—safety.
And with the recognition came relief. Gojo would fix this. Gojo would kill Sukuna, and by extension Megumi, and the world would be spared a monster. Megumi could relax now; he didn’t need to keep trying to swim to the surface to watch the fight—he knew the ending.
He knew he needed to get to the airport. He didn’t want to get stuck in line at security. What if he missed his flight?
He felt his limbs sink further into the darkness and finally found the strength to shut his eyes, letting the sound of airplanes landing and taking off overtake him, the water around him draining as it pushed him somewhere new.
“Oh, Megumi,” a voice echoed, coming from everywhere.
It was the clearest he’d heard anyone speak since Sukuna forced him into himself, taking the reins and trapping him in this strange in between. The rest had sounded like trying to hear a conversation while underwater— muffled and far away, and definitely not worth listening to.
He opened his eyes.
He was no longer underwater, but his limbs still felt like jelly. He was upright, as much as one could be upright in a directionless void, and in front of him was the white-haired thorn in his side who called himself a teacher.
Gojo was smiling at him behind a pair of round, black sunglasses.
For a second, Megumi didn’t understand what he was looking at. It was, of course, Gojo, but it wasn’t the Gojo that was out there fighting Sukuna. This was the Gojo that had plucked Megumi and Tsumiki off the streets and gave them an actual, stable, home. Jujutsu High uniform and all.
He objectively knew his perception of age as a seven year old was severely skewed by, well, being seven, but in his mind Gojo was like, at least forty-five the whole time he knew him.
The Gojo in front of him looked barely older than Megumi himself. Just a teenager.
Before he could let that thought spiral into some kind of Infinite Void of its own, he blurted, “What are you doing here?”
Because this was his own personal mind purgatory where he was teetering on the edge of life and death, so if Gojo was here too, possibly doing the same, then that meant…
No. It couldn’t mean that.
Without letting that easy smile drop, he shrugged, checking a nonexistent watch on his wrist. “Oh, I have a flight to catch,” he said. “Just wanted to say goodbye.”
Megumi’s stomach flipped, his whole world turning on its head. It was impossible. It had to be impossible. This wasn’t even a real place, so this Gojo wasn’t actually real, he wasn’t actually…
He fought through the heaviness in his limbs, pushing his head up, forcing himself to turn back to that fight, to see—
“Hey, Megumi, don’t worry about all that, okay?” Gojo’s voice tried to cut through the panic rising in his throat, but his nonexistent heart was beating so fast he could hear it in the pounding of his skull, because what do you mean the nearest thing he had to a parent in his life was lying dead on cracked concrete, blood seeping out of his mouth and mixing with the ash and dust of the destroyed city around him?
And Megumi’s hands were the ones that killed him. Ripped him in half like he was nothing more than a sheet of paper.
“You—“ he started, and then felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned toward the touch, face to face with bioluminescent blue eyes that could somehow reach the depths of that darkest ocean, the part of himself he tried so desperately to keep hidden.
Still, Megumi was one of very few people on this planet who was immune to the intimidation tactics of the Six Eyes. This was supposed to be the end for Megumi, not for Gojo. Never Gojo. “You can still—“
But Gojo cut him off with a definite shake of his head. “Nah,” he shrugged, the same way he’d answered Itadori when he asked if he liked the Human Earthworm franchise, with all the nonchalance in the world. “I loosened him up for the rest of you guys. Isn’t that what you always said when you couldn’t open jars?”
“That was one time, and I was ten.”
But Gojo was snickering, and he even reached over to ruffle Megumi’s hair, like this was any other day and not a conversation had in the moments before death, drawn out only by the last electric currents in the brain stem and pure unadulterated spite.
“You’re too serious, kid. You’re gonna be the death of me.”
Gojo was grinning like he’d just made the best joke of his life and Megumi would’ve punched him about it if he didn’t feel the guilt stinging behind his eyes, spilling over onto his cheeks, threatening to escape his mouth and become audible sobs. “Too soon,” he whispered, even as Gojo was still laughing, but he was also wiping away the saltwater that had dripped from his lashes with the pad of his thumb and pulling him in for a hug.
He rarely hugged Gojo, couldn’t even remember the last time it had happened. Gojo preferred a layer of calculus between him and the rest of the world, and Megumi was never one for physical touch. Beyond the occasional ruffling of Megumi’s hair, they didn’t hug.
But now was different. Now was the end. Megumi pressed his face into Gojo’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around his lanky frame.
“You’re gonna win,” Gojo declared, sensing the finality this hug meant to both of them. After all, he had a flight to catch. One Megumi was realizing he didn’t have a ticket for. He didn’t even know the destination. “Remember what I said, yeah? Don’t forget to take up space. If there was ever a time to be selfish, it’s now.”
Megumi remembered the other part of that conversation— where Gojo said all sorcerers die alone. He hadn’t been talking about Megumi then.
He wrapped his arms a little tighter around him. In this form, this younger version of himself, he felt smaller than Megumi had ever known. More fragile than he was supposed to be. More human than anyone gave him credit for.
In the end it was still Gojo who pulled away first, like always, taking a deep breath and giving Megumi a watery smile. The planes were quieter, the sounds of fighting getting closer to reality than this in between state they found themselves in.
Gojo smiled, getting a little farther away as the water started to rise around him again, as Megumi’s fight was just beginning. A real fight, where he couldn’t just give into the despair that had so thoroughly gripped his heart.
It still ate at him, still haunted him, but Gojo had begun to surface the part of himself that wanted more than the cycle of curses, fighting, rinse and repeat. That wanted to live. It was still rising through the water slowly, having to fight through wave after tumultuous wave of Megumi’s guilt and horror, but it wasn’t so deep anymore. He was about to be underwater with it all again, still trapped within himself and all the parts of him, but at least now he’d be able to swim.
Something was knocked loose in his chest as he watched the man who basically raised him fade into inky blackness with a little wave of his hand and a smile on his face.
“I’m proud of you,” came his light and feathery last words, his singsong voice as nostalgic as it was final.
And the water came crashing back down on Megumi’s head as the current swallowed him whole.