Archive of Our Own

i. now

Yuji had been offered a cup of chamomile tea no less than three times by one Fushiguro Megumi. He hadn't spoken much since the incident, but shook his head at each ask. He sat contemplative with a fuzzy blanket draped around him. It didn't seem like he even noticed the extra weight around him, and how ever so slowly the blanket was shifting off him. Megumi grabbed at it and tightened it around Yuji, as if he could protect him from every thought inside his head. His knuckles turned white around the blanket.

"You don't have to say anything," Megumi said. He hadn't meant it as permission. More like an offering, something Yuji could set down if he needed to.

Yuji stared off in the distance for a long moment. The window across from them was dark. At some point the sun had gone down without either of them noticing.

"I didn't feel anything."

Megumi went still.

"When it happened." Yuji's voice was unhurried. Not hollow exactly, but careful, like he was turning something over in his hands and examining all its edges. 

"I thought I would. Feel something. Maybe? But there was just…” 

He paused. "Nothing."

Megumi didn't speak. He'd learned, somewhere along one too many sleepless nights spent together, that Yuji's silences weren't gaps to fill.

"I've been quiet because it just dawned on me how easy my moral compass can shift when it comes to you." Yuji tilted his head slightly, like the admission was a small and simple thing. 

"How fast.”

Megumi had gone still.

"And how little I care."

The words landed soft. That was almost worse than if he'd said them like a confession, like something shameful. He'd said them the way you'd state the weather. Not recklessly, not proudly. Just as a fact he'd arrived at and decided to say out loud in typical Yuji fashion.

Megumi’s grip loosened on the blanket. He didn't know what he'd expected, but definitely not this. Not Yuji looking almost peaceful with it, like a man who had finally put down something very heavy and found that he didn't miss the weight.

He thought about what to say. He thought about all the things he'd watched Yuji carry: Shibuya, Junpei, Nanami, Nobara, the long months in between, and how Yuji had carried them loudly, all that grief worn on the outside where anyone could see it. Well not anyone. Yuji always had a smile on his face, but Megumi was intimately aware of the strain in his smile after every event. On bad nights, Megumi cursed himself for ever telling Gojo he didn’t want him to die. On bad nights, Megumi wishes eating the finger had killed Yuji on impact. But Megumi wasn’t good like Yuji. He was selfish.

All this to say that Megumi knew Yuji pretty well. Yuji wasn’t carrying the weight of this death. This was something quieter. Something that had settled into Yuji like sediment.

"Itadori," Megumi said finally deciding he should say something. Anything.

Yuji turned to look at him. His eyes were clear. That was the part that kept catching Megumi off guard, how clear they were. No tears. No wildness. Just Yuji, looking at him, waiting.

Megumi didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have the words for what he wanted to say, which was something like: I’m sorry it came to this. Something like: I would have done it too. Something like: I would have done worse.

Instead he just sat there, close enough that their shoulders were touching, and let the silence be what it was.

ii. then

two months earlier, days after shibuya

The clinic smelled like antiseptic and cigarette smoke. Two scents that didn’t really go together, but made the space distinct and familiar even thought Yuji had never been here before.

Yuji had been awake for most of the night. He didn't sleep well anymore, not since Junpei, and the particular kind of not-sleeping had shifted over the months into something he'd almost gotten used to, the way you got used to a bruise. You stopped expecting it not to hurt. You just adjusted how you moved.

He was sitting up in bed, back against the headboard, staring at nothing, when Megumi came in.

He didn't knock. He never knocked. He just appeared in the doorway with two vending machine coffees and the particular expression he wore when he was trying not to look like he'd been worried, which was a tight blankness around the eyes that Yuji had learned to read as easily as a shout.

"You weren't asleep," Megumi said. Not a question.

“Nope."

Megumi set one of the coffees on the bedside table and dropped into the chair beside it. He didn't ask how Yuji was feeling. He never asked that. It was one of the things Yuji appreciated about him most, Megumi had an instinct for when a question would land wrong, and he trusted his own instincts enough to stay quiet.

For a while neither of them spoke. The clinic’s air condition hummed around them.

"It keeps coming back," Yuji said eventually. "not like, I'm not losing time. It's not like that." 

He picked at the edge the thin blanket that covered him. "I just keep thinking about their faces. The people. In Shibuya."

Megumi watched him.

"All those people and I couldn't do anything." 

The words came out flat, stripped of the anguish he still felt when he reached for them, because he'd said them so many times now that the anguish had worn smooth.

"He was using my hands and I couldn’t, I just had to watch. All of it. And then they put me back in my own body and everyone just. Expected me to keep going.”

The emotion felt undeserving of him to feel. Why should he be allowed to mourn, when he had been the cause of it all. But Megumi’s presence always drew out every part of him.

"No one expected…”

"They did," Yuji said, not unkindly. "I did. I expected myself to.”

Megumi looked at the coffee can in his hands. The taste was already bad. Stale in a way that he wasn’t used to having growing up funded by the Gojo clan. 

"I think about it a lot," Yuji continued. "What it means to like, to deserve to still be here. After all of that." He exhaled slowly. "I came up with this thing. This philosophy, I guess. I don't know if it's stupid.”

"Tell me.”

Yuji turned to look at him then, and something in Megumi's expression, the complete absence of judgment in it, just steady attention made it easier to say.

"I just have to be better," Yuji said. "Every day, I just have to be as good as I can be. That's all I can do. I can't undo what happened. I can't bring anyone back. But I can…I can add something, instead of taking away. I can be someone who adds." 

He paused. "Does that make sense?”

Megumi was quiet for a moment. “Yes."

"Sukuna took so much. And I can't fix that. But I can be the opposite of that." Yuji's voice was steady. 

"I can be someone who protects. Who doesn't take more than they have to. Who tries.”

Megumi set down the can. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, looking at the floor.

"You already are," he said.

It was very quiet when he said it. Megumi didn't do declarations, that wasn't who he was. But he said the four words with a kind of blunt certainty that made them land harder than any cursed speech ever could have.

Yuji looked at him for a long moment. 

"You're the only one who can say something like that without it feeling like a lie.” he said.

Megumi's jaw tightened. He didn't look up. "Then I'll keep saying it.”

The simple statement warmed Yuji in a way that he didn’t feel he deserved, but couldn’t help 

but bathe in. Time passed and the warmth faded.

“I have to add more,” Yuji declared. It was a silent promise. To who, Yuji wasn’t sure, but he felt compelled to say it. 

At that moment Megumi knew that Yuji would not be staying in their safe house long. Even if Yuji didn’t know that himself yet. Megumi knew because he knew the type of self-sacrificing idiot Yuji was. He racked his brain for anyway to ensure he stayed. To ensure that when Megumi turned his back it wouldn’t be the last time he sees Yuji. He sat pensive, but he was too much of a coward to ask him to stay. Gojo’s disappearance sat heavy within him. It was just a matter of time before Yuji left him too.

So he didn't reach out. He didn't touch him. That wasn't Megumi either. But he stayed, he stayed until the sun came up through the little light that peeked from the basement window, and the vending machine coffee cans sat there untouched, and Yuji finally fell asleep sitting up.

Megumi sat with him until he was sure. Then he fell asleep too, in the chair, one hand resting on the bed near Yuji's knee. Not touching. Just near. 

When he opened his eyes later, he was surprised to see Yuji still there, asleep with his eyebrows furrowed. Relief hit him, as he tried to push down the sneaking feeling that this wouldn’t last.

iii. then 

two months earlier, two weeks after shibuya

Nobara's wake was small. Held within a random safe house they chose to regroup in. It’d been two weeks since Shibuya.

There had been some debate about whether to hold one at all for anyone, whether it was safer, given everything, to mourn quietly and in pieces rather than in one place where grief could make them careless. But in the end they had done it anyway because to do anything else felt like an erasure of her, and Nobara had always been too large for erasure.

Yuji didn't cry. He'd already cried, had done it days ago, alone, somewhere Megumi wouldn't see, because the grief had needed somewhere private to happen before he could bring it out into the open. By the time they were standing in the cold with flowers in their hands he was past the part that needed tears. He just felt the absence of her like a rearranged room, everything technically in order, but wrong, the shape of the space changed in a way you kept forgetting and then remembering again. 

Nobara’s urn sat on a mantle, plain and utterly unremarkable. It lit an unreasonable fury in Yuji. He could almost hear Nobara’s voice cursing out whoever had placed her in such a boring urn. To Yuji it was such an impossibility that everything that Nobara was, could fit inside a stupid, ugly urn. 

He looked away from it in disgust. His only hope was that Nobara’s soul wasn’t around to see this. That she was stressing out angels through the shopping districts of heaven. The thought brought a small smile to his face. 

After the wake, Megumi and him walked. Neither of them suggested it, they just both kept moving after the others had gone, falling into step side by side down a street neither of them had been on before.

"She would have hated this," Yuji said eventually.

"The flowers were terrible," Megumi agreed.

Yuji laughed a small, involuntary sound, and then immediately felt guilty for it. 

Megumi looked at him as if he couldn’t believe the sound was coming from Yuji, nevertheless that it had been a direct result of his comment.
 

"She would have wanted a room full of eternity roses. Specifically.” 

"Specifically," Yuji repeated, and the guilt loosened a little. Just a little. 

“And a send-off carriage.”

They walked for a long time adding more and more outlandish asks their departed friend would’ve wanted.

"I keep thinking," Yuji said, "that I should have protected her better."

"You did everything…“

"I know. That's the thing. I know I did everything I could. That's what I keep having to tell myself." He shoved his hands into his pockets. "And then I have to figure out what to do with the fact that everything wasn't enough.”

Megumi didn't answer right away. He was looking straight ahead.

"I've been thinking about the same thing," he said finally.

Yuji glanced at him. Megumi said things like that rarely, made the door open just enough to let you look through. It always caught Yuji slightly off guard.

“Yeah?"

"I keep going over it. The choices. What I would do differently." Megumi's voice was even. "I don't get anywhere useful. But I can't stop.”

"That's grief," Yuji said. "I think. That's just what it is."

“Probably."

They turned a corner, walking in step. They’d been walking for hours. It would be a pain for Megumi to figure out their way back, but that didn’t concern him now so they kept going.

"Can I ask you something?" Yuji said.

"You're going to anyway.”

"After Shibuya." He paused, chose the words carefully. 

"You didn’t…you never looked at me differently. Even when everyone else was. Even when I was doing it to myself." He looked at the side of Megumi's face. "Why not?"

Megumi was quiet for so long that Yuji thought he wasn't going to answer at all and cut his losses.

"Because you weren't there," Megumi said finally. "In Shibuya. You were, it was your body. Your face. But you weren't there." He stopped walking.

Yuji stopped too.

Megumi turned to look at him, and his eyes were very direct in the way they only were when he'd decided to say something true and was committing to it fully.

"I've never confused you with Sukuna," he said. "Not once."

The words settled somewhere deep in Yuji's chest. He didn't know what to do with them so he just stood there on the pavement with the convenience store light behind them and let himself feel them land.

"Okay," he said, very quietly.

"Okay," Megumi said.

They stood there for a moment longer than was strictly necessary. Then Megumi turned and started walking again, and Yuji fell back into step beside him, and neither of them mentioned it again, but Yuji carried it, added it to the small collection of things Megumi had said that he intended to keep.

iv. then 

one week ago

Yuji did end up leaving. Megumi knew it was coming but that didn’t make it hurt any less. In all honesty, Yuji had left them long before he physically left the safe house. When the higher ups announced Yuji’s warrant of execution, Megumi tried doing everything in his power to keep the information from spreading in the safe house. But somehow it had still spread to Yuji. Megumi knew that Yuji was too good to ever risk anyone in that house, but he had clung on to the hope that for once the Good Itadori Yuji would be selfish. That he would read Megumi’s mind and know, but he didn’t. He didn’t even say goodbye.

Megumi knew that he could be in any of the twenty-three wards of Tokyo on a self-assigned suicide mission to kill as many curses as possible. As some sort of cruel penance. The likelihood of finding him didn’t diminish his need to look. 

—

He found out about Okkotsu Yuta on a Tuesday morning.

The news came through channels, filtered and clipped and missing most of its context, the way important things always arrived when someone had already made a decision and the information was just a formality. Gojo-sensei's absence had cracked something open in the politics of the sorcerer world, and in the vacuum a lot of debts were being called in and a lot of old loyalties were being tested.

What it meant in practical terms: Yuta was back. What it meant in every other sense was still being worked out. 

Reasonably, Megumi knew that Yuta wasn’t going to execute Yuji. Reason didn’t comfort him in the face of hearing Yuta had made a binding vow, however. Reason didn’t play a role when hearing about how Yuta’s blade had pierced through Yuji’s heart. It made him sick to even think about bringing back old memories long buried by more trauma. 

He understood the logic of what Yuta had done. That was the frustrating thing. It made sense, in the way that terrible things sometimes made complete and total sense. Yuta had acted on orders that were not of his making. He had done what he had to do. Yuji had been dead for a very short time and then he hadn't been anymore.

He understood all of that.

He still tracked down Yuta.

—

Waking up the second time was quieter than the time before.

The first time, he hadn't really understood what had happened and he wouldn’t for a while. The gap in his memory refused to forget Megumi’s devastating face. He would’ve done anything to keep that look from his face.

This second time he'd felt it more. The specific cold of it. Yuta’s face close to his.

The way the world had narrowed to a single point and then gone. He had fought hard to keep living, but in that final moment he couldn’t help but feel relief. 

The relief didn’t last as he woke up.

There was a joke somewhere in here about if someone tried to kill him now the third time would be the charm. He didn't have the heart to make it. The irony of that was not lost on him.

What he had instead was Choso, who was sitting beside him when he opened his eyes and who did not say anything for approximately four seconds before beginning to fuss in the particular way that Choso fussed, loudly with all of the dramatics Yuji never expected to come from someone who looked like that. In rapid succession he was checking his pulse, adjusting the blanket, examining the site of the wound with an expression of severe concentration that somehow managed to communicate both profound relief and profound disapproval simultaneously.

"I'm okay.” Yuji said.

Choso's expression did not change. He pressed two fingers against Yuji's wrist and counted.

“Choso."

“Brother, you were dead.” Choso said. Very evenly. The way you said something you had decided not to be emotional about and were only partially succeeding.

“Briefly."

"That's not a qualifier that makes it better.”

Yuji looked at the ceiling. He felt strange not bad, exactly. Just new. He was alive. He was aware of being alive in the specific way you were only aware of it when you'd just been reminded of the alternative.

His feelings about Yuta were sitting somewhere in his chest in a shape he hadn't had time to examine yet. He knew they were there. He knew they were complicated. He decided to leave them there for now, unpacked, and come back to them when he had more capacity.

He let Choso fuss. It seemed like the least he could do. 

"Where's Okkotsu-senpai?" Yuji asked, while Choso was rewrapping something at his wrist with more focus than was strictly necessary.

Choso's hands didn't stop moving. "Other room."

"You put him in the other room?"

"I told him and the urchin hair one to wait." A pause. The wrapping continued. "I was angry."

Yuji looked at the side of Choso's face. Choso had the particular expression he wore when he was not going to elaborate further on something and did not consider this a conversational gap that needed filling.

“Urchin hair,” Yuji repeated.

“Mm” 

“Fushiguro’s in there?”

Choso smoothed the wrap flat with his thumb. "He insisted on waiting.”

Something shifted in Yuji's chest, different from the Yuta-shaped thing, less complicated, more immediate. Megumi was on the other side of a wall. Had been on the other side of a wall this whole time, presumably in whatever state Choso had decided constituted waiting. Yuji had no right to miss him after leaving, but he did. Choso might have been subject to a handful of stories that ended in him discreetly wiping a tear.

"He can wait a little longer," Choso added, with complete serenity.

"You're enjoying this."

Choso did not dignify that with a response.

Yuji decided not to push it. His feelings about Yuta were still sitting in that unopened shape in his chest and he found, now that he knew Megumi was just on the other side of a wall too, that he had slightly more capacity for them than he'd thought. Not enough to sort through properly. 

But enough to stand up.

He swung his legs off the bed.

"You should rest.” Choso said immediately.

"I've been dead. I'm rested." He stood. His body felt strange but functional, the way it always did after… after. "I'm going in."

Choso said nothing. But when Yuji reached the door he heard him follow, which was so precisely Choso that it almost made him smile.

He walked into the next room and saw Yuta first, taller than he'd expected, quieter in person, with eyes that carried something heavy in them. Then he saw Megumi standing by the door, and the tension in his shoulders loosened by a fraction so small he doubted anyone else clocked it.

Megumi was looking at him the way he looked at things he was angry about and had decided not to say anything about yet. His jaw was set. His eyes moved over Yuji once, quickly, checking, and then flicked away.

Yuji's first instinct toward Yuta was not anger. It was something more complicated, the recognition of someone else who was doing the thing Yuji was trying to do, carrying something large and deciding not to put it down.

"Yuji," Yuta said.

"Okkotsu-senpai." He inclined his head slightly. "You look tired.”

Something in Yuta's expression shifted. Not offense. Just the slight loosening of someone who had been braced for worse. "So do you.”

"Yeah," Yuji said. "It's been a year.”

The joke didn't land.

Behind him, Choso had positioned himself near the back wall with his arms folded not sitting, not leaving, just present in the way Choso was present when he'd decided to monitor a situation without participating in it. Yuji didn't look back at him. He didn't need to.

Megumi had moved from the door to near Yuji's shoulder, which was where he tended to position himself when he was reading a situation, close enough to be a presence, far enough to observe. He was still, Yuji noticed, unknowingly glaring at Yuta. His attention flicked to Yuji once more, briefly, then forward again. He and Yuta looked at each other for a moment. 

Some exchange passed between them that Yuji didn't fully catch something resolving, or at least being set aside. It saddened Yuji for a moment the fact that he wasn’t the one having a silent conversation with Megumi, but he quickly shook that thought away.

They sat down.

They talked.

It was strange and necessary, and by the end of it Yuji found that whatever shape his feeling about Yuta had been, it had shifted into something less jagged. Not forgiveness, exactly. He wasn't sure there was anything to forgive. 

Choso did not sit down for any of it. He remained at the back wall the entire time, arms folded, watching Yuta with an expression of sustained and focused displeasure that he made no effort to conceal. Yuta did not comment on this. Yuji respected that choice.

What no one mentioned in that meeting, what existed in the air of the room without being said, was the Zenin clan.

Megumi's name was a thread that several powerful people were pulling on. The end of the Zenin line, a vessel for Ten Shadows, the question of succession and control still not fully resolved despite everything that had happened. Yuji had been aware of this the way you were aware of weather on the horizon, distant and real and coming toward you.

He had not understood until later how close it already was.

v. then 

a few hours ago

Since Yuji had come back, the safe house had been in motion.

Plans for the culling games. Plans to get to Tsumiki. The logistics of it were sprawling with maps, informants, timing, the question of who could be trusted and how far.

Megumi moved through all of it with his usual economy, contributing exactly what was needed and asking for nothing, and Yuji watched him and tried not to notice how tired he looked underneath the composure.

There had been Zenin members, since Megumi became head of the clan. That was the word they used “members”, neutrally, as if they were discussing something administrative. What they meant was, people who had decided that the question of Zenin succession was better resolved with Megumi dead. Most had been manageable. Most had been beaten quickly and sent away with the message delivered.

This one was different.

Yuji heard it before he saw it, the particular sound of a fight that had been going on too long, impacts landing at wrong intervals, the rhythm of someone managing rather than winning. He came around the corner into the courtyard and understood immediately.

The Zenin was large. That was the first thing he noticed not tall exactly, but dense with it, the kind of build that suggested the cursed technique wasn't supplementing anything so much as amplifying what was already there. Yuji clocked the technique in the first few seconds, some form of reinforcement, strength-based, the kind that turned a human body into something closer to a battering ram. Simple. But brutally effective.

Megumi was still upright which said something about Megumi. It said less than Yuji wanted it to.

He could see it in the set of his shoulders, one held slightly lower, slightly wrong, the arm on that side moving in a range that was too careful, too deliberate. The shikigami were still deploying but at a cost, every summon pulled from a well that was running low. The Zenin knew it. He wasn't trying to win so much as waiting, absorbing, redirecting, wearing the distance down until there was none left.

Megumi's jaw was set. His eyes were focused and cold and Yuji recognized that expression because he'd seen it before, had learned what it meant. Megumi had already calculated the cost and decided to pay it. He was going to give it everything he had left.

Yuji moved before he could.

He came in hard and the Zenin turned to meet him, which was what Yuji had wanted, the weight of the man's attention pulling away from Megumi, recalibrating. Up close the technique was even more pronounced. The first block sent a shock up Yuji's forearms that he hadn't fully anticipated. He adjusted.

They fought.

Yuji was good. He pulled his punches, he always pulled his punches, that was the line he'd drawn for himself, the one that separated what he did from what Sukuna had done in his body. He hit to disable, to redirect. He left room.

The Zenin didn't leave room. He fought like someone with nothing to prove and nowhere to be, steady and grinding, and every exchange Yuji gave ground on was ground that put him back in range of Megumi, who was still in the courtyard, still upright through what had to be sheer stubbornness alone.

"Fushiguro," Yuji said, not taking his eyes off the Zenin. "Get back.”

"I'm fine.”

"Your shoulder is not fine."

"I said I'm fine.”

He didn't have the bandwidth to argue. The Zenin pressed forward and Yuji pressed back and the fight ground on, longer than it should have, longer than Yuji's read of the situation had accounted for. The technique wasn't flashy. It was just relentless. Every counter Yuji landed got absorbed and returned with interest, and he could feel the accumulation of it in his bones.

At some point he became aware that Megumi had moved. He caught it in his peripheral, Megumi repositioning, bringing his good arm up, preparing to push back into it despite everything. Despite the shoulder, despite the exhaustion that was visible in every line of him.

The Zenin saw it too. He pivoted.

Something in Yuji's chest went very quiet.

It happened without announcement. He didn't decide. The line he'd drawn just stopped existing quietly and without ceremony. Just gone. He was watching the Zenin turn toward Megumi and something in him recalculated, simply and completely, what he was willing to do.

He stopped pulling his punches.

The shift was immediate. The Zenin felt it, Yuji saw it in the fraction of a second where certainty became assessment, the recalibration happening too late to matter. Yuji was already moving with a different weight behind him, no space left at the edges, nothing held in reserve.

He saw an opening.

He took it.

In the moment itself there was nothing. Not righteousness. Not rage. Not guilt. Not the complex weight he'd been carrying since Shibuya. Just the clean factual reality of what he was doing and then what he had done. And admittedly maybe a bit of morbid satisfaction, as his fist knocked the Zenin clean out painting the courtyard in his blood.

The Zenin fell and did not get up.

The grey afternoon continued. A bird somewhere in the courtyard made a sound.

Yuji stood there for a moment. Then he turned.

Megumi had lowered his arm. He was looking at Yuji with an expression that was carefully, deliberately unreadable, but Yuji knew Megumi, and underneath the control he could see the adrenaline still moving through him, the readiness that hadn't stood down yet, and the thing beneath that which was harder to name.

"Are you alright?" Yuji crossed to him, already looking at the shoulder, already cataloguing.

“I’m…”

"Your shoulder," Yuji said. Not a question.

Megumi's mouth pressed into a flat line. "It's dislocated.”

"Okay." Yuji got a hand under his elbow, careful, telegraphing the touch before it landed. 

"Okay. Let's get inside.”

“Itadori…”

"Inside first.”

Megumi met a bit of resistance in himself and then let it go. He allowed Yuji to steer him toward the door, and Yuji kept his hand at Megumi's elbow and did not look back at the courtyard.

Inside, Yuji was very focused.

He located the first aid kit with the efficiency of someone who had needed first aid kits in too many places to ever lose track of them. He guided Megumi onto the low bench in the back room and started laying things out in order, and Megumi sat there and let him, which was unusual enough that it told Yuji something about how much the fight had taken.

"This is going to hurt," Yuji said.

"I know how a shoulder reduction works.”

"I know you know. I'm telling you anyway.”

He did it cleanly and quickly. Megumi made a sound that was not quite a word and then went very still, jaw tight, and Yuji kept his hands steady and waited until he felt the joint settle.

“Done." Yuji said.

Megumi exhaled.

Yuji started wrapping. His hands knew what they were doing, which was good, because the rest of him was not entirely present was still somewhere in the courtyard, looking at his hands, feeling the particular quality of the nothing that had been there.

“Itadori."

"Hold still.”

"I am holding still." A pause. “Yuji."

"I'm fine.”

Megumi looked at him for a long moment. Yuji kept his eyes on the wrap.

He was fine. That was the true and slightly terrible thing about it. He was not shaking. He was not dissociating. He was sitting here wrapping Megumi's shoulder with steady hands and a steady pulse and the only thing that was strange was how steady everything was, how quiet, how he reached for the expected weight of what he'd done and kept finding something that was almost like nothing at all.

Megumi reached out and put his free hand over Yuji's, stopping them.

Yuji went still.

"Sit down," Megumi said.

"I'm already…“

"You're perched on the bench. Sit down.”

Yuji sat down. He ended up with his back against the bench, on the floor, and Megumi shifted to sit beside him, lowering himself carefully with the wrapped shoulder. For a moment neither of them spoke.

Then Megumi got up.

“Chamomile." Megumi announced.

Yuji looked up at him and shook his head.

"I don’t…” he started.

Megumi shushed him instinctively as he started walking. Yuji heard him in the other room, the low sound of a kettle, a cabinet opening. He came back with a mug and held it out. 

Yuji again shook his head with a soft smile pulling at his lips. 

“You should…”

Megumi cut him off again with an annoyed huff as he went back to the kitchen and grabbed his own mug. He placed one next to Yuji in silent offering.

Something about it, the mug, the huff, the particular way Megumi was standing, caught in his throat.

"I know." Megumi set the mug down beside him anyway. Then he reached over the back of the bench and pulled down the blanket that had been folded there and dropped it around Yuji's shoulders without ceremony, the way you did something you'd decided to do and weren't going to discuss.

Yuji looked at the mug.

"You just killed someone," Megumi said. Very quietly. "So we're going to sit here.”

It wasn't a question. It wasn't even really an offer. It was just a statement of what was going to happen, delivered in the flat tone Megumi used for facts.

Yuji pulled the blanket around himself. It was warm. He hadn't noticed until now that he was cold.

“Okay." he said.

Megumi sat back down beside him.

Outside, the afternoon was becoming evening. Neither of them moved to turn on a light.

vi. now

The blanket had shifted again.

Megumi pulled it back up without thinking. His hands knew what to do even when the rest of him was still catching up.

Yuji was watching him do it.

"You're going to say something," Yuji said. "You're doing the thing where you're deciding what to say.”

"I'm thinking.”

"Take your time.”

Megumi looked at his own hands, the knuckles pale against the blanket's edge.

He turned Yuji's words over, how easy my moral compass can shift when it comes to you, and how little I care, and waited for the alarm in himself. It was there. It was real. But it wasn't about the Zenin. It had never been about the Zenin.

It was about the fact that Yuji was sitting here wrapped in a blanket looking at him with clear eyes and saying I feel nothing and meaning it. It was about the fact that Yuji had built something very careful and deliberate out of the wreckage of Shibuya and had watched it shift without flinching. It was about what that meant for what came next, the culling games, the execution warrant that hadn't gone away, all the ways this could end badly stacked up like a hand of cards nobody wanted to play.

He didn't know what to do with any of it. And frankly, he didn’t want to think about it. But as he looked at Yuji his brown eyes focused on him like he was the thing keeping him tethered, like without him Yuji would simply drift off into all that empty dark and not particularly mind, except that Megumi was here, and so he stayed.

"I don't care that you killed him," Megumi said finally.

Yuji looked at him.

"I want to be clear about that." His voice came out even. "That's not what this is.”

"I know," Yuji said. And then, quieter "That's kind of the thing.”

Megumi exhaled.

"You're worried about me," Yuji said. Not accusing. Just naming it, the way he named things plainly, without making it strange.

"I'm always worried about you." The words came out before he'd decided to say them. He didn't take them back.

Yuji was quiet for a moment. He had tilted his head slightly, the way he did when he was listening carefully.

"And I'm not going to," Megumi's voice came out lower than he meant. "I'm not going to make you carry it alone.”

The room was very quiet.

Something in Yuji's expression shifted, not relief exactly. But something adjacent to it.

"Your moral compass," Yuji said softly.

“What?"

"You're always saying you don’t, that you operate differently. Practically. That you don't get attached to the philosophy of it." Yuji's eyes were clear and direct. 

"But you're here. You've been here every day. You're holding a blanket.”

Megumi looked down at his hands.

He didn't answer. But he didn't let go of the blanket either.

"You know what I keep thinking about?" Yuji said.

"Tell me.”

"That version of myself, the one I built after Shibuya. The one who was supposed to just be good, every day, to make it worth something." He looked at the dark window. 

"I thought that was the most honest thing I'd ever said about myself.”

"It was.”

"Maybe." He didn't sound convinced. He didn't sound devastated either. 

"But that version of me has a blind spot. And the blind spot is you." He said it plainly. 

"And I don't know if I can fix that. Or if I even want to.”

Megumi exhaled.

"I've been thinking," Yuji continued, "that I should probably be more scared about what that means. About what I'm capable of.”

"Are you?”

A long pause.

"No," Yuji said. 

"That's the part I keep going back to. I'm not scared of it. I'm just aware of it. Like I looked at this thing inside me and I thought, oh. So you were there the whole time. And it just felt like something I already knew.”

Megumi turned to look at him fully.

Yuji met his eyes.

"That probably should scare me more," Yuji said.

"Probably," Megumi agreed.

Neither of them moved. 

Megumi was still looking at him. He'd been trying not to, directing his attention at the window, at his hands, at the distance, anywhere that wasn't Yuji's face directly. But Yuji had turned toward him fully now and there was nowhere else to look.

He thought about the courtyard. The sound. The fraction of a second between hearing it and understanding it, and how much had rearranged itself in Yuji without asking permission.

He thought about the execution warrant, sitting somewhere in a higher-up's file with Yuji's name on it, waiting.

He thought about the culling games. About Tsumiki. About every plan they'd laid out on those maps with the full knowledge that plans were a form of optimism and optimism was a limited resource.

He thought, there is not enough time. He had thought it before, abstractly, in the way you thought about things you couldn't afford to feel directly. Now it sat in his chest like something with weight.

Yuji was watching him do all of this. He had always been good at that, at waiting while Megumi arrived somewhere. He never rushed him.

"You're doing it again," Yuji said quietly.

"Doing what.”

"The thing where you're deciding.”

Megumi exhaled through his nose. He looked at Yuji, really looked, the way he usually only let himself do when Yuji wasn't paying attention. The blanket around his shoulders. His eyes clear and steady, no performance in them, no deflection. Just Yuji, looking back.

"I'm not going anywhere," Megumi said. 

"Whatever comes next. Whatever the games look like, whatever they decide to do about the warrant." He stopped. His voice had gone quieter than he intended. 

"I'm not going anywhere."

Something shifted in Yuji's expression. Not the small cloud-and-light shift from earlier. Something larger. Something that had been held under pressure for a long time and was now, carefully, being set down.

"Megumi," he said.

Megumi didn't answer. His name in Yuji's mouth like that, not Fushiguro, not said with distance, just his name, did something to his ability to construct sentences. He felt as if it was the first time he heard his name said correctly. 

Yuji reached up. Slow, the way he did everything when he was being careful, and he was almost always careful with Megumi, in a way he wasn't careful with anyone else. His hand found the side of Megumi's jaw. Just resting there. Not pulling.

The question was implicit and they both knew it.

Megumi closed the distance.

It wasn't dramatic. It was just the only thing that made sense, the logical end of a very long sequence of events that had been pointing here for longer than either of them had been willing to name. Yuji's hand stayed against his jaw. Megumi's stayed on the blanket. It was brief and quiet and when they pulled back the room felt different.

Yuji looked at him. His thumb moved once against Megumi's cheek, almost involuntary, and then stilled.

"Is this enough?" he asked. Not desperate. But with a trace of optimism that was so uniquely Yuji.

“With everything, the games, the warrant, all of it. Is this enough to… " He stopped. Tried again. 

"Is right now enough?”

Megumi understood the question. Not just the kiss. The whole shape of it the uncertainty, the borrowed time, the very real possibility that there was a version of the future where right now was all they got.

He looked at Yuji for a long moment.

"It's enough to start," he said.

Yuji let out a breath. Slow. Like something leaving him that had been there a long time.

He leaned sideways until his head found Megumi's shoulder. Not asking. Just doing it, the way he moved when he'd decided something and was done deliberating. Megumi went still for a moment.

Then he reached over and pulled the blanket off Yuji's shoulders. Yuji made a small sound of protest. Megumi ignored it, shook the blanket out once, and resettled it across both of them.

Yuji went quiet.

Neither of them commented on it. The blanket was warm and wide enough and that was all it was.