Chapter Text
Megumi Fushiguro had never intended to fall for anyone. To him, love was intangible, unreachable to a person like him who had never experienced the first love most people are exposed to: parental love.
From the very beginning, his father had abandoned Megumi before the memory of a face or a name could ever ingrain itself into his memory. Before he could even learn how to write, he was sold off to the Zen’in clan in exchange for his father’s freedom. Freedom from a life Megumi couldn't begin to understand could be so awful for his father. What could possibly be so horrible about a loving wife, a kind adoptive daughter, and his very own biological son? What was so torturous about that that his father felt the need to sell his own kid to escape a family he himself made? A family he put together after leaving the Zenin clan.
Was he too overbearing? Too excited over the small animals and the insects he saw on the street? Too hungry? Too much trouble to feed, to take to school, to keep?
Eventually, Megumi stopped caring. So long as he didn't let people in, he wouldn’t be hurt again. As he grew, his father became nothing more than the nameless figure that, along with his deceased mother, brought him into the world. Still, he hated him for leaving.
Megumi hated that he had waited for a stranger at the door. He had spent his energy as a kid listening for heavy footsteps that would not come instead of making friends like a normal toddler. Megumi hated that someone who had escaped the Zenin subjected not only him but the whole Fushiguro family to the toxic clan in exchange for a few bucks.
Because Megumi’s nameless father did not love Tsumiki’s mother. Even now, after his dad's face has become nothing but a blurry mirage, an illusion of what once was his childhood, his deep masculine voice a faint echo of what his empty childhood could have been, Megumi recognizes his biological father had never loved anyone. It was as clear as day. He did not love the wife he convinced to run away with him, did not care for his asshole family, and did not even deem worthy of remembering the two small, barely elementary school children he left behind.
Which is why, since Megumi could reason, he decided his name was Fushiguro because of Tsumiki, because his sister had an unshakable character worth honoring; Tsumiki was a good person. A good sister who was barely eight years old when she learned how to cook with ingredients from an empty fridge. Who learned the fastest way to school so they wouldn't be stopped by a social service worker or any other reasonably concerned adult? Who learned how to manage the small amounts of money Megumi got from pickpocketing unsuspecting adults so they would have a place to live in, electricity to warm them, clothes to keep them from looking abandoned, and water to sustain them? Who, as Megumi grew into a middle schooler, learned how to sanitize wounds from the fights she despised.
He was a Fushiguro because Tsumiki sacrificed the joys of childhood, like playdates and dancing, to sit Megumi down and teach him about the constellations, about every star and how they came together to form beautiful patterns that guided people home. He remembers sitting down on the dirty roof of their battered place with her as she pointed to the Southern Cross and explained its five points. Listened to her explain with a faint hope in her voice that their parents would use these constellations to one day find their way back home to them. How they were just lost and would come back soon with lots of food and clean (not stolen) money that would pay the rent.
Megumi let her spin these fantastic tales not because he believed them, but because he knew that small hope of being saved kept Tsumiki sane. Tsumiki sacrificed teen years filled with silly gossip and romance, all for Megumi to have a semblance of a normal childhood. All of this, so Megumi could focus on getting good grades and quietly stealing food so they could survive by themselves and wouldn't be separated by foster care. For this sacrifice, Tsumiki deserved the world, and Megumi would give his life if it meant Tsumiki got a chance to live the life she deserved. He would train and work his ass off as a sorcerer saving lives he did not care for if it meant finding the culprit of Tsumiki's coma.
Unlike his bum father, who took the last name Fushiguro to escape his own sins and abandoned the woman and two children who gave him the name. Tsumiki was someone that deserved his love. She deserved the fragile, tiny bits of affection Megumi could offer as he grew into an emotionally constipated pre-teen. She deserved everything Megumi couldn't give her before she fell into a coma.
—
It was due to his sister’s absence that Megumi turned to the last thing he could cling to for comfort: his soulmate. The only person he was certain would love him.
Itadori Yuji
The name was tattooed over Megumi’s forearm.
The messy handwriting of the mysterious boy named Itadori Yuuji lay just high enough on his arm that it could be covered with a long-sleeve shirt but rested just low enough to stay visible to Megumi whenever his gaze drifted down to his arm.
That tattoo, that name, had consoled him since he was young, but especially during the year after Tsumiki fell unconscious. During lonely hospital visits, after fights with Gojo over beating up his classmates yet again, he always looked at his forearm for comfort.
During nights where the grief of losing Tsumiki felt too heavy, he took comfort in the fact that she was not the only person who loved him. He took comfort in the fact that someone out there carried half his soul, and despite all the ugly, crude feelings festering inside him, all the doubt and self hatred, Itadori Yuuji would love him.
—
Most people never found their soulmate, and even when they did, so many things could go wrong.
Yet not once during his thousand and one lonely nights did that deter a small Megumi from hoping to find Itadori. Not once when the guilt of being reprimanded by Tsumiki for beating up his classmates (because they were bullies) consumed him. Not once after his father's abandonment crushed him. Not once after his sister's absence reduced him into an angry teen with nothing but contempt towards everyone and everything around him.
Megumi preserved hope that he would get to meet “Itadori Yuuji”; because his soulmate had a Japanese name.
Every time Megumi looked at the promise of Itadori engraved in his skin he promised himself this was the one thing he would risk dying for. Megumi promised himself that if he ever met his soulmate, he would fight. He would give his soulmate a chance, give himself a chance to live, to love someone the way Tsumiki would have wanted him to.
—
When Megumi joined Jujutsu High, he ripped to shreds all his delusions of love. The innocence of them he burned as one might a past lover's letters. Buried them with the shame of a veteran that committed war crimes to survive. He had dared to hope for love when the price of his childhood was a suicidal job he could not escape from.
Megumi was now a young adult; he had to act like one. Away with childish things. Away with the useless weight of hope. He no longer believed Tsumiki could wake up, no longer hoped to meet his soulmate spontaneously, and no longer believed he would ever be in love.
Dramatic yea, maybe, but it was his reality.
Now, he accepted Gojo’s incessant offers of coming along on missions. He faced the monsters that as a child had scared him and willed his shadows to come out of hiding. To become purposeful in the way they will have to be in the future. Megumi turned his pair of pet dogs that cuddled with him as a child into the murder tools that would exorcise curses for him. He ripped apart from his rib the shadows that once hugged him and shaped them into the weapons they were always meant to be.
And as he learned to exorcise curse after curse, the monsters of jujutsu became not so different from his own. His curse is impotency; he’s a weak force that could only drag down the people he cares about: Tsumiki, Gojo, and his soulmate. Therefore, he will leave behind the attachment that weakens him. He will pay every cent back to Jujutsu High for rescuing him from the sale to the Zenins.
Away with childish things, with soulmates and love, Megumi decided. The sun will set another day, and he will exorcise another curse. Maybe then, he thinks, Tsumiki might wake up.