Work Text:
When you inherited
A fight that you were born to lose
Satoru’s hand is wrapped around the back of his head, his legs tight around his waist. He holds Megumi for a moment, a second, half a breath and the flinch of an eye, but it stretches in that moment, cuts through the gore and destruction that rains down around them. He’s bleeding, Megumi can smell it, the bright iron scent of his blood. He’s bleeding, mutilated, grinning. He’s weeping power, more energy than human, more energy than his splitting body can contain, but he takes a moment. And Megumi curls into it and it’s been so long.
You are so much more than your father's son
You are so much more than what I've became
The news comes when Satoru is halfway across Japan. Summer time sticks his uniform to his back, and the hum of cicadas is as thick as the heat. Satoru is thinking about dinner. Something light, something he can get on the way home. He’s thinking about soda in a glass of ice, something melon, bright. He's thinking of a cool shower and his bed dressed in summer linens to keep out the heat.
His phone rings. Satoru slides it from his pocket lazily, perks when he sees it’s Tsumiki.
“Hello, hello, Miki girl!” Satoru sings when he answers, pacing a few steps away from the bodies.
It’s quiet on the other end, all but stuttering breath.
“Hello? Tsumiki?”
“Is this Tsumiki’s dad?”
Satoru doesn’t recognize the voice. “Who is this?”
“It’s–I’m Tsumiki’s friend. I’m–oh my god, I’m so sorry.”
They’re smart kids, Satoru thinks, a mundane thought in his tripping mind, when he appears in the neighborhood he was directed to there’s an ambulance already pulled up. Satoru watches, numb to his bone marrow, as Tsumiki is laid on a stretcher. He approaches, pushes through the weepy crowd of her friends. A paramedic steps in front of him before he can get to the gurney.
“Sir–”
“That’s my–she’s mine,” Satoru says. “She’s mine.”
They let him into the back of the ambulance. Satoru examines her, despite the dirty looks he gets from the paramedics that are taking vitals. Tsumiki is still, like death, the color gone completely from her face.
“Does she have a history of seizures?”
“No,” Satoru says.
“How about allergies?”
“Pine nuts.”
“Do you know if she drinks or does any other substance?”
Satoru takes Tsumiki’s limp hand, pats the top of her knuckles and thinks a hysterical open your eyes.
“Sir?”
“No,” Satoru says.
His mouth is a buzz like his tongue is pressed flat to an old TV screen.
“Okay, does she have a record of fainting?”
“No.”
Satoru’s voice breaks, and dies. Tsumiki is drenched in the presence of a dark, dark curse. Satoru stands up, ignores the gasps for him to sit down. Leaning over her, Satoru draws a banishing sigil in the air and pushes it at Tsumiki. He feels it hit the dark energy, feels it sizzle, flare, die. Satoru stares, signs it again and again and again, until he’s pressing his hands to her chest, demanding his power, all his goddamn power, press against her fragile ribs. It rebounds like Tsumiki is wrapped in Infinity and Satoru isn’t himself. Bones creak beneath his palm, a warning that any more pressure will shatter them. He stares at her, the impassive blankness of her face, the faint markings on her forehead, that he can’t make out, pulsing like they’re mocking him for even trying.
“Sit down!” a paramedic grabs his shirt, and he can. Bury his hand in the back of Satoru's shirt and yank him onto the little bench.
Satoru leans forward and buries his face in his hands.
They hook Tsumiki up to a dozen machines. They run tests and take blood and murmur to each other as they gaze stupid eyes across inconclusive charts. It’s supernatural, this sickness, this sleep like death. Coma the doctors say, not sure why. Satoru is flipping pages in his head, running through sigils and seals and centuries of curses and hours in class and years in the family library. All the things he knows. Satoru thinks about things he’s exorcised, things in jars and cut open on Shoko’s tables. All the things he knows. There is nothing clinging to her but the thickness of a settled curse, there is nothing for Satoru to obliterate against a wall. To toy with, to dance in splattered guts, and pick out from underneath his fingernails. There is nothing but Tsumiki cloaked and out of his reach.
Shoko arrives an hour after they’ve kicked Satoru out of Tsumiki’s room. He’s sitting like he’s been shot in the plastic hell of a waiting room chair. She brings Megumi who’s pale and wearing one of Satoru’s zip up jackets. It’s long on his hands as he picks at fraying thread he's wrapped around his fingers until they're going water colored. Satoru stands to meet them. They walk side by side, Satoru and Megumi who’s shrunk from fourteen to six in the time between lobby and hospital room. The room has cleared out, the steady beep of a heart monitor kicks nausea up Satoru’s throat.
Megumi goes to his sister’s side, after a statuesque moment in the door. He calls her name. Soft, then loud, then again and again and again. Frantic in a way that Satoru has never heard, wavering like he is a very small child. Satoru grabs the boy when he starts to climb up the bed, like he plans to straddle his sister’s chest and shake her until she wakes up. Satoru heaves him out of his climb, holding him against his chest. Restraining him in something vaguely hug shaped. Megumi shakes and clings to Satoru’s sleeves as Shoko takes her turn to look at Tsumiki. To wince at Tsumiki, her tight mouth saying, poor thing, poor girl, poor darling. Satoru tries not to think of a vigil, an open casket. Shoko confirms what Satoru already knew. Tsumiki is cursed.
“You can fix that right?” Megumi asks, turning to look at Satoru. “You can fix it.”
Satoru swallows. He meets Shoko’s eyes.
“Yeah,” Satoru says. He squeezes Megumi. “Yeah.
Satoru Gojo is twenty-seven years old when he learns once again that he can’t save everyone. That love, no matter how powerful, no matter how deep, no matter how good, love is nothing if blood and sweat and power can’t do anything with it. Satoru does everything he knows how to do. He consults libraries across the world. He spends weeks in the heart of Kyoto forcing himself to relearn something that is so ingrained in his body that it’s in the molecular make up of everything he does. Satoru talks to Higher Ups and ancient sorcerers and ghosts. He hunts down anything he thinks might be responsible, kills curses brutally, carries back parts for Shoko to examine. Satoru gives his blood for information, gives his time and energy and when it is so necessary he gives his body to learn anything he can.
And Tsumiki sleeps.
She sleeps through Satoru pulling out every trick he knows. She sleeps through vigils and sealings and rituals. She sleeps through Satoru on his knees by her bed, pressing her knuckles to his forehead. She sleeps through him crying for her.
It’s late when Satoru drags himself home. The porch light is off. There is no light coming from under the front door. Satoru slides his key into the sticky lock, opens the door into a home suspended. He pulls off his bandages so he can deposit them in the bowl by the door. He has long since given up on Megumi waiting for him. The house is quiet. The sink drips every three and a quarter seconds, an isolated rhythmic plink that scatters tiny half singing drops across stainless steel. Satoru stands in the dark hallway. He brought dinner from across town at one of Megumi’s favorite little eateries. He hasn’t spoken to Megumi in weeks. He’s watched the life go out of his eyes, watched the anger he’d shaken for one beautiful season settle back onto his shoulders. They don’t talk. They exchange rigid shoulders, and Satoru swallows words.
Satoru puts the cooling take out on the counter. He’s not hungry. Hasn’t been hungry. The sweat dank jacket goes into the back of a chair. He’ll go to bed, be up in a few hours. He’s off to Singapore in the morning, something nasty that’s ripping apart a little village.
Tsumiki’s door creaks open. Megumi stares blankly at Satoru, then walks past him to the sink.
“Hey kid,” Satoru starts.
The tap flips on. A glass fills half way. The tap flicks off. It starts to drip three and a quarter seconds later. Megumi drinks his water and turns to leave.
Satoru grabs his shoulder.
There is a child in Satoru. Sitting alone, clutching something, a blur of a thing that it loves. It watches people come and mourns people as they go, and they all go. It is the one true constant. The brutal act of leaving. The cleaving of a limb. It’s Satoru’s fault for making people limbs, vital organs, extensions of his life and the half dead child in his ribcage. Megumi smacks Satoru’s hand off his shoulder, turning deep green eyes onto his face. Stranger's eyes, killer’s eyes, eyes that look at Satoru like there is nothing between them. A bone saw starts to gnaw, there's nowhere for the child to go.
“Why are you here?” Megumi says.
“Where else would I be?”
“Anywhere, wherever you always go.”
Satoru smiles a brittle thing. “I come back here every night.”
“I don’t know why.”
“You’re angry.”
Megumi scoffs, folds his arms and evades Satoru’s reaching hand. He tucks himself into the shadows along the counter, his face going obscure. Satoru drops his hand.
“It’s okay to mourn her,” Satoru says.
“She’s not dead,” Megumi snarls.
“I–no. She’s not.”
Another scoff, catching wet in Megumi’s throat. There is no conversation to be had here tonight. Satoru can see a losing battle.
“Are you hungry?” Satoru moves to the counter, starts unbagging the food.
He can feel Megumi’s eyes burning into him. The silence strips familiarity. Stereophone creaks in Satoru’s hand, maybe he is hungry. Something pulls in the bottom of his stomach at the smell of cooling rice.
“I don’t want you here,” Megumi finally says.
Satoru pauses. He sets down the wooden chopsticks he’s rolled apart. He looks over his shoulder at the boy.
“Sure. I’ll be back in the morning.”
“No. I don’t want you here anymore.”
“Megumi–”
“I don’t want you here! Get the hell out of my house.”
Satoru blinks at the boy. He’s stepped out of the shadow into the dim square of orange light that comes through the shuddered blinds like it’s afraid to come in.
“What are you talking about?” Satoru asks.
“I can’t stand you,” Megumi replies.
If his voice had shaken. If his lungs had pulled and sucked the truth from those words, Satoru would have walked away. Give the boy a day or a few, then come back, but the word doesn’t shake and it’s full. He said it almost in wonder, in freedom. Megumi’s eyes don’t flinch when they meet Satoru’s.
“Megumi,” Satoru says, “I know things suck right now, but we just, we have to keep going.”
“I plan to,” Megumi bites. “But I want you gone.”
“Megumi. Come on.”
Megumi pushes himself off the counter. “I’m going to bed. Get your shit and get out.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Satoru scoffs. He follows Megumi out of the kitchen. “Megumi, what is wrong?”
The boy ignores him. Satoru grabs his shoulder again, pulls him to a stop. His wrist stings when Megumi strikes him.
“What’s wrong? You’re the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
“That’s just not true,” Satoru says. “Megumi, I didn’t curse Tsumiki.”
“I don’t care!” Megumi shouts. “You’re a fucking joke.”
“I’ve done everything I can,” Satoru argues. “I’ve spent every day looking for solutions. I can’t break a curse I don’t understand.”
Megumi laughs in his face. A bitter, dark thing. “I’ve never wanted you for anything. I’ve never needed you for anything, except now, and suddenly you’re powerless?”
“That’s not fair or true.”
“It doesn’t have to be fair you asshole, I don’t care if it’s fair for you. It’s not about you!”
“I’m not saying it's about me! I’ve never said that.”
Megumi makes a broad sweeping gesture. “This whole thing has been about you. It’s always been what you wanted. Why the hell do you get to feel bad about this?”
“I love her, Megumi!” Satoru shouts. His voice echoes. He takes a breath, quells the rising anger, speaks softer. “I love both of you, of course I feel bad.”
“Then prove it. Try harder,” Megumi bites.
“I’m doing everything I can. I don’t know what else you want me to do.”
“I want you to fix it,” Megumi snaps. “I want you to actually make a difference for once. Nothing you do matters, Satoru.”
Megumi coughs out a laugh, half hysterical half the cresting of a sob. “Nothing you do matters. You’re suffocating to be around, but it doesn’t mean shit.”
Satoru has no rebuke for that. Has no posturing. He could say a thousand things that are true about what his power means, but its all bullshit. It’s harrowing and hollowing and Satoru is a clumsy super cell masquerading as a warped simulacra of a human being. His pitfalls lie in his mortal soul, his fallible mind and the limitations that restrain that mind.
“Maybe so,” Satoru says, “but that doesn’t mean I’m not trying, Megumi. I’m trying so hard.”
Megumi’s eyes are something tortured. A small animal caught in a trap, an angry man, a dying forest, Satoru’s little boy and maybe that’s all it took. They’re wet and red and training on Satoru with disgust.
“We would have been better off if you never found us.”
Satoru throws his arms out. “You had nothing, Megumi. You came from nothing!”
The hit is hard. Satoru has trained Megumi to fight him, to fight an opponent that has a devastating amount of cursed energy. Satoru taught him how to bring down taller, broader, stronger threats. Megumi knows where Satoru will hurt, where he’ll stumble for the sliver of a second it takes for RTC to kick in. Megumi hits him across the face. A blow that lands heavy on Satoru’s cheek, whips his head to the side. The taste of iron comes down onto Satoru’s back molars, coating the edges of his tongue. He stays standing, reaches up to touch his throbbing face, looks sidelong at the boy.
“You came from everything, and it means shit.”
Megumi turns and leaves. He slams Tsumiki’s door so hard the house shivers. Warmth spills over Satoru’s upper lip. He touches the tips of his fingers to the blood, licks it off. Standing straight, Satoru goes back into the kitchen. He closes the styrofoam containers, puts them into the fridge. Satoru stands in the middle of the kitchen and bleeds. It plips onto the floor, onto his shirt, lands hot on the side of his hand. He thinks that now would be an appropriate time to cry. Satoru feels it in the back of his throat, rooting into his lungs, but his eyes are dry and tired. Rarely is Satoru lost for what to do, but he has no idea how to navigate this. Megumi has been his grumpy, easy to anger kid for nine years and Satoru has never had any grace in actually soothing or mitigating it. There is only so many slammed doors, icy glares and pointed silences that Satoru can handle without turning it into something it was never meant to be.
He wipes his nose. Works his jaw.
Satoru realizes that he’s been given instructions on what to do. Leave Megumi alone and never come back. He could pack a bag, go to campus and sleep on the couch in his office for a few days. He could find something devastating and time consuming to fight, but then what. Satoru has never been the best at following instructions and his insides ache with a loneliness he was born with. Scabbed over by the proximity of his chosen few. It spurs him on towards reckless abandon.
Satoru washes his face in mild water. Sets Megumi’s cup upside down in the sink. He goes to his room at the back of the house, tucked away almost like an after thought. His blinds and curtains are drawn, his bed messy from leaving so early in the morning. Satoru strips himself of day old clothing, scratches harsh nails down his shoulders, digging his fingers into tight muscle, enjoying the sting and burn. The room is cool enough to draw a prickled reaction from his skin and if he were anywhere else Infinity would ripple to life and coat him in the dead air of never ending space. Not warm, not cold, a fully rounded nothing.
The floor is cold against the back of Satoru’s short covered thighs when he sinks down in front of Tsumiki’s door. He pulls up his legs, lays his head on his knees. He doesn't fold up so easily anymore, even as he feels seventeen and reeling from Suguru’s defection. Seventeen and left with grief he had no choice but to nurse like a baby to a tit; at least it was something. He curls into himself and huddles against the door.
When the dawn is hesitating in the sky Satoru is taken out of his half sleep when Megumi settles on the other side of the door.
It's not your fault
No, it's not your fault
He wakes up wishing that he hadn’t. He can taste Sukuna in his mouth and feel Purple curled up his ribs. The ceiling is familiar, the bed is almost a stranger, and Yuuji’s hand is in his. His fingers twitch without his permission, his chest rises, his breath hitches, without his permission.
“Oh,” Yuuji says.
Oh.
Rough hands cup Megumi’s face, smooth at his cheeks at the wetness that’s coming down them without his permission. Yuuji’s face is worn, a haunted look, fractured eyes and a mouth that ticks on new scars. Once, he was spring to Megumi. In all the ways Megumi, fifteen and churned up by something vaguely loved shaped, could conjure in the way of metaphor.
Winter is the opposite of spring, but Megumi doesn’t think it’s the right opposite.
It had been snowing. He remembers suddenly. Drifting flakes. His physical body had been so hot, boiling under Sukuna’s power. It had been snowing, catching in the red smear that—
Megumi lets out a long low sound. Turns his face into his pillow, gasping at the crushing agony that descends upon him.
And it hadn’t been snowing yet when Tsumiki, barely Tsumiki, that body was not his sister, that soul was not her, that face and laugh, that wasn’t her—but it was. It was. Simulated life or not.
“It’s not your fault,” Yuuji rasps.
His hands slide down, cupping the back of Megumi’s neck, he shuffles on the bed, pulls Megumi up. He puts Megumi in his lap, against his chest. He is full of tremors and shaking words as he cups Megumi against him. Megumi revolts at the idea of this, at the idea of his life, of Yuuji’s life, but he’s selfish so he clings. He clings and thinks about trailing insides steaming against the ground, dark brown hair splayed out like the branches of a tree.
“He’s dead. Isn’t he.”
Yuuji rocks them, says something that sounds like a prayer, buried against Megumi’s throat, hot and wet.
I put this heavy heart in you
I put this heavy heart in you
They start to talk again. Barely. And only after Megumi had walked in on Satoru having something close to a break down on the floor of Tsumiki’s hospital room. He’s never been quiet about his own hurt over this, but he never wanted Megumi to see him like this. Disheveled, bleeding, hissing vitriol at nothing but his own useless ink covered hands. Satoru had been in the middle of drawing sigils of blood and imbued ink in the floor. One had broken. One. Shattered under the frenzied power Satoru was forcing into it and with it Satoru’s mind short circuited.
“Satoru.”
Satoru looks up at Megumi, hands clenched on his knees. His chest is bleeding, it took blood from the flesh above his heart and from between two ribs. Megumi stares down at him, a small bouquet in his hand. He crosses the room carefully, stepping around Satoru’s shitty work. The flowers replace the dead ones in the vase on Tsumiki’s bedside table. Satoru wipes the back of a hand over his sweaty forehead, tracks Megumi with his eyes. The boy leans over Tsumiki’s bed. The stale blankets rustle, Megumi murmurs something to her.
“Get off the floor,” Megumi says when he’s done tending to his sister. “That’s disgusting.”
Satoru gets warily to his feet, hissing through the twinge in his back. One of Megumi’s brow rises, but Satoru has been on his knees for almost four hours.
“What are these?” Megumi asks. He toes at one of the sigils.
“Useless,” Satoru rasps.
“What were they supposed to do?”
“Reveal unseen underpinnings of a curse and start to undo them,” Satoru says.
It’s old jujutsu, ancient jujutsu for that matter and one of the first things that Satoru learned. He had been twelve so this jujutsu has been in his body and mind for years and it broke.
“Satoru.”
Satoru blinks, Megumi is reaching out for him like he’s expecting Satoru to keel over. There’s a little knot between his brows.
“How long have you been here?”
Satoru shakes his head, fumbling for his phone. He’s numb throughout his body, a true numbness from being on the floor for so long, but also a numbness because this is the first time Megumi has addressed him in two months. This is the longest he’s talked to Satoru and he doesn’t know how to navigate it to keep it.
“Uh,” Satoru clears his throat when it tightens at the image of his happy kids on his phone screen. “About six hours. Came here from Okinawa.”
Megumi doesn’t say anything to that. He tucks his hands into his pockets and walks towards the door. When Satoru doesn’t immediately follow, Megumi looks over his shoulder.
“Come on. I’m hungry.”
Satoru follows after Megumi not unlike a lost puppy. He’s too tired to try and maintain conversation that is likely to be shunned anyways. They walk down the empty sidewalk to a restaurant that is still open despite the late hour. There’s a booth in the back of the room that Megumi makes for. He takes off his uniform jacket before he slides in and looks expectantly across the table. Satoru hadn’t even realized that Megumi was still in his uniform and that he must have come from his after school club. It’s jarring to feel so…not there.
Satoru sits stiffly, glances at the menu on the device connected to the table. He’s not hungry, he’s not interested, he lets Megumi rattle something off to the waiter that comes around eventually and when a glass of water is placed in front of him, Satoru wraps his hands around it and stares down at the ice.
“I need the paperwork for the Tech,” Megumi says eventually.
Satoru nods. “you want to go?”
One of their bigger fights before Tsumiki was cursed was Megumi’s vehement hatred towards the idea of being a sorcerer. Satoru knew it was something the boy had to do. It was part of the deal that allowed Satoru to claim Megumi in the first place. But Satoru has also been soft for Megumi from the moment he rubbed a hand into dark, soft, spikes, so the argument has been on going.
“Yes,” Megumi says.
“Okay.”
Satoru’s current students haven’t seen much of him recently. He feels bad about it, distantly at least. He’s a shit teacher anyways. Who gives a fuck if he skips class for a week. Not Maki that’s for sure. The third years have always been a little closer to Satoru and he misses them fiercely if he thinks too much about it. They were his first students, Kirara and Hakari, but they’re also advanced and Satoru hasn’t seen them since he dropped in to check that Kirara was getting everything she needed a few days before Tsumiki was cursed. He missed seeing her, missed her energy and the way she hugged him and looked genuinely pleased to see him.
Their food comes. Megumi got them yakitori to share with colorful asazuke on the side. They say a quiet ‘thank you for the meal’ together. Satoru eats a few bites before his hands shake too much and he has to put his utensils down so he can cup his mouth, press his eyes closed and heave rattling breathes through the sensation of horror that surrounds him out of nowhere. The restaurant hums with quiet conversation and Megumi had picked the spot well. No one can see Satoru breakdown. No one can see his shoulders hitch up, his stomach pull towards his ribs and tears run silently down his face in straight uniform lines. They slip through the crease of his hand over his mouth, pool in the seam of his lips or make their way to drip off his jaw. No one sees it but Megumi and Megumi who hates Satoru with an authenticity that Satoru cannot sway as long as they are each other, scoots in next to Satoru and puts a hand on his back. Solid, unsure, comfort shaped like the awkward way they comfort each other. Out of practice, out of character. It makes Satoru feel like he’s being held. It’s enough.
The first time Satoru hugged Megumi the boy had appeared like a little phantom by the couch one midnight three months into their strange new arrangement. Satoru hadn’t meant to stay the night. He tried on Fridays and it was Tuesday that time, but he’d blown in from Kyoto, lightly buzzed from the alcohol they served at the clan function, and bitter from the interactions he had with Naoya Zen’in. He’d kicked off his traditional clothing in the bathroom, pulled on rumpled, dirty sleep clothes and sat down to watch something. He’d jerked awake in the dark, Megumi only visible because of Satoru’s Six Eyes. He’d exclaimed a breathless ‘what the fuck kid?’ and then recognized the tears on the kid’s face and the hem of the Shadow the Hedgehog night shirt strangled in little hands. Megumi had taken half a step back, and Satoru, stupid, eighteen, and little more than brute strength, had scrambled to recognize that Megumi was asking for something from him. Comfort. The little thing wanted comfort from Satoru who was jagged words and jagged power and a lack of understanding human beings that he has never cured himself of. But still he could understand that to scare Megumi off here was to destroy something he would never get back. He’d opened his arms, collected Megumi when the kid came to him, laid back with Megumi held on his chest and told him that nightmares are liars and nothing will hurt him and listen to my heartbeat and sleep kid, sleep.
And the last time Satoru hugged Megumi—
A million choices, though little on their own
Became the heirloom of the heaviness we've known
Megumi doesn’t remember the last thing he said to Satoru. He thinks he vaguely remembers thinking, wishing, projecting out to Satoru, to not come to Shibuya. To not appear and stride with all his damnable confidence into a trap that would spring. He remembers being breathless and terrified and bleeding and high enough on adrenaline to detonate the bomb that could kill him and Satoru was locked in a cube. They hadn’t spoken. There had been no time. And then Megumi murdered him brutally.
“Megumi.”
It’s been hot. The floor of the bathroom sticks to Megumi’s thighs. It smells like vomit and blood and Yuuji is silhouetted in the door by the hall light. His hair is mussed from sleep and heat and he smells like sweat and line drying when he kneels by Megumi.
The first time Satoru hugged him, he told Megumi that nightmares are liars. His voice had been so strange, half asleep and the same sound as the dark front room. For a moment, Megumi curled on his chest, a little bony and uncomfortable, had come to the realization that Satoru was a tangible being. It had made him shiver, that and he didn’t have a blanket and Satoru had never run warm. Megumi had sniffled back snot, then dealt with Satoru roughly, clumsily using the collar of his shirt to wipe at Megumi’s nose half off center and pawing. Satoru had patted his head afterwards, scooted back against the cushions and called nightmares liars, told Megumi to listen to his slow heartbeat and to go back to sleep. Satoru had fallen back asleep before Megumi could—he was a little enamored by the rhythm of Satoru’s tangible, beating heart. When he slept he dreamt of—well Megumi doesn’t remember a dream he had twelve years ago. He doesn’t remember the nightmare either. Here, now, he wishes he could tell Satoru that nightmares aren’t liars, not when they’re a replay of reality.
“Are you okay?” Yuuji asks.
He’s gotten up into a crouch next to Megumi, looked for blood in his vomit and for self inflicted hurts on Megumi’s neck and arms. Something is bleeding, or maybe the smell is forever caught in his nose. Yuuji is whispering, which is odd. There is no one else here but them and Megumi has been awake since Yuuji fell asleep.
“Megumi, are you okay?” Yuuji asks again.
Like a mantra, begging for something. Maybe for Megumi to speak to him. Megumi should know better. It’s early morning and he’s plastered on the warm bathroom floor, vomiting up nothing, because he cannot stand the guilt that’s chewing him up inside for not talking.
Yuuji gather’s Megumi’s shoulders, turns his face gently so he can wipe away vomit and sweat, then sweeps Megumi up into his arms.
“I know you’re not okay. I’m sorry I keep asking.”
“Don’t stop,” Megumi croaks.
He’s always been selfish.
Yuuji laughs quietly, lays Megumi down on his bed. Satoru’s old bed. The bed they now share as rebuilding is underway. Yuuji fiddles with the AC remote, turns on an old oscillating fan—one that Satoru swore by—and climbs into bed.
“I won’t stop,” Yuuji whispers. He touches the side of Megumi’s face. “I won’t.”
Megumi closes his eyes. “I don’t really deserve it.”
“I don’t really care. I think you do.”
“I killed my family.”
“No,” Yuuji murmurs. “No you didn’t.”
“I did,” Megumi says. “It’s my curse.”
The fan churns sound into the room. Yuuji’s breath comes even and a little hot against Megumi’s face. He leans closer, puts their foreheads together.
“Well it’s a good thing I’m really good at breaking curses.”
Its a family curse. Passed down and down and resting on Megumi’s bent head, a heavy crown. He inherited the unmarked graves of mother, father, sister and the multifaceted thing that Satoru Gojo was to him. He was passed pain and regret and a hollowness that was in his father, that was in Satoru;no matter how much he tried to fill it. Megumi, Satoru, maybe even poor, innocent Tsumiki, were not meant to be anything cohesive. They were built on unstable ground and propped up by the thing that propped up everything. Satoru. And he was a wavering support beam when it came to family, when it came to cohesion. They were built to fall apart, to fold under the pressures of monstrosity and strength and innocents. Megumi is the last testament in a pattern of breakage in the flimsy architecture of his family.
It’s a family curse, and in some ways Megumi is possessive of it.
As if Yuuji can read his mind he sighs and presses their brows almost painfully together.
“They wouldn’t want you to be so miserable. They’d want you to move on. They loved you Megumi.”
“I know,” Megumi whispers. He does, he knows that to be true, and he hates that it’s true. “I just wish—”
“Wish what?”
Megumi curls closer to Yuuji. In spite of the heat, he gets close to the other boy’s stomach and shivers,
“I wanted to talk to him. To ask him if he was okay after the realm and I wanted to hug him when I was me and I—”
Acid burns up his throat. Yuuji’s four fingered hand threads through his hair.
“I know,” Yuuji whispers. “And so does Satoru and Tsumiki. They know you love them.”
And Megumi also thinks this is true, but he wonders what curses would be broken if he had gotten the chance to speak with Satoru, to speak with his sister, to tell them both,as he should have years ago and thousands of times—that he loves them.
You remind me of who I could have been
Had I been stronger and braver way back then
“Are you okay?”
“Am I supposed to be?”
The morgue is the backdrop of too many hard conversations and unwanted realizations. Satoru sits on a cot, cross legged and empty. He stares over Shoko’s head at nothing while she does whatever mundane things she’s doing to make sure Satoru isn’t going to keel over dead.
Not yet, Satoru thinks. Not yet when he is ravenous and half mad and ready to slip in pooling blood. Not yet, because they still need him.
Satoru laughs.
Shoko eyes him dubiously.
“Do I want to know?”
“What am I Shoko?” Satoru asks.
She pauses, looks tired and wary and like Satoru’s friend, and like a stranger . She tilts her head, rolls her cigarette along her bottom lip.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I ever have.”
“I think,” Satoru says, though he knows, this is a proven science at this point, “that I am a curse.”
Shoko’s mouth twitches--he's being melodramatic, but at this point he's earned it--and her eyes go darker. “Why do you say that?”
They’re all dead. They’re all dead by his hand, by his failure. It’s a pattern, he is the spreading fracture point in an ongoing breakage. And Satoru thinks its because he has always been selfish and he has always wanted things that are tangible and breakable and human. He’s only ever wanted the antithesis of himself, and he’s not a genius, he’s just insane, loving the same way.
“I’m going to have to kill him,” Satoru says.
Shoko takes the cigarette out of her mouth. She looks out of the morgue, blows a gasp of smoke. She doesn’t say anything, there’s nothing to say.
When Satoru kills the Higher Ups he laughs and cries and gags and frees himself of one pair of shackles. He stands in the middle of the room and breathes deeply the wretched smell of their obliteration. It burns hot into his sinuses, fills him with a giddiness, something frantic; elation in the body of a terrified prey animal. He doesn’t slip in their pooling blood , but he does kneel in it, puts his fingers in it. A large part of him wants to curl in it like a little child, the cooling mess of everything he’s ever known. Pain and power, his suffocated identity debated in this room through threats of violence and martyrdom for the lives of children that Satoru never wanted to be him. He kneels in their blood, sees a part of his dream coming to pass. He puts his palms in their deaths, their gore, and he sees life. Satoru gets back to his feet. Something has escaped out of him, too grotesque to be a bird, but it’s fully him stepping out of the room.
Satoru Gojo saw life in the blood he split in the monster he made himself, a beast of free flight. Saw beginning in Yuuta Okkotsu’s deep eyes and the finality in Maki Zen’in. And in Ryomen Sukuna, choking on his own power his own blood, grinning because this is him, he saw Megumi.
It’s snowing as Satoru dies. Facing the sky, water running from his eyes. He can hear his legs fall over, he might laugh if he could. He thinks about Megumi, how easy it was to love him, how much Megumi refused to accept it. Satoru remembers the selfish relief when Yuuji Itadori ruined his own life and Megumi took something for himself. Megumi will be loved in ways that Satoru was never able to convince him of.
It’s not snowing anymore.
He can see blue sky.
The End