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Fushiguro might be the sun, and Yuuji might be Earth, and he thinks he'll revolve around the sun until he explodes.
Whoever came up with the saying, As Astra Per Aspera — Through Hardships to the Stars — must be an exceptionally stupid genius.
He's slumped against a brick wall, fingertips dusty with chalk and covered in dust when the rustle of fabric draws his attention, and he looks up to see a pair of green-blue eyes.
He hates those eyes.
Fushiguro is the pride of every teacher, the smart one, the one that is just — there, and Yuuji hates him, but he doesn't, he only hates himself.
Frowning, lips part. "What are you doing," says Fushiguro, lips a thinning line as his eyes land first on Yuuji's chalk-dusted hands, then to his red eyes, then to his torn fabric. In comparison, Fushiguro's hands are perfectly clean, slender fingers tapping unbelmished fabric, and his eyes are a perfect aquamarine.
"Stuff," Yuuji mumbles, pressing his back against the wall. He narrows his eyes at the other. "Why're you here?"
"The matron asked me to," says Fushiguro, and oh, his eyelashes are long. Longer than the few girls' he's seen. He wants to touch them.
Shaking his head, Yuuji says, snappish, "Well, I'm fine."
Fushiguro raises an eyebrow. "You sure?"
No.
"Yeah."
A sharp pang stabs into his mind, driving a nail between the folds of his skin. Megumi presses two fingers to the wound and promptly regrets it — another little flower of pain blossoms from his touch, fingers coated with something warm, rapidly cooling as time goes on.
Is this how he goes out? Megumi manages to think in a daze, vision hazy and all but gone as red begins to creep from the edges, slowly shifting to a black that's dotted with green. Not the poetic death, but the death jujutsu sorcerers normally take.
A hiss escapes his mouth as he stumbles back, hitting rough concrete as a rattling ache shoots across his spine, dislocating the fabric and small shards of glass left from the explosion from the Player with the explosion technique. His mind is just coherent enough to remember a tooth falling from the sky, enamel shattering to give birth to a thousand little sparks of glowing fire.
Mind addled, he doesn't notice when something crouches down in front of him until his own blood-dripping eyes meet a pair of sorrel, deep with concern and swimming with worry.
"You good?" asks a kind voice, reaching out. The rustle of fabric follows, along with the sound of shoes cautiously shuffling across pavement. Megumi flinches, regretting it when the pain returns, this time thrice-fold and crippling. "Oh. Guess not. That looks painful."
"You — think?" Megumi grits out, begging his hands to move, hoping his cursed energy is enough for something close to an attack. He'd take Rabbit Escape at this point. "Why don't you—fuck—!"
He coughs, blooding spilling from his lungs and onto his tongue. He spits onto the pavement in front of him, eyesight too clouded to fully see the splotched gray in front of him.
Ears ringing and popping simultaneously for a cacophony of noise, he barely registers the movement in front of him until a solid clamp gently closes around his shoulder — he twists, twists — trying to shake it off, to clap his hands together and call for Divine Dog or Nue or even Rabbit at this point—
"Ah — easy, I'm just trying to help you!" the voice protests, vaguely concerned — amused? — as the hand retracts, leaving the spot it just left cold and naked to the wind suddenly whistling between them. There's a breezy sigh before they move in again, this time holding two distinctly hand-shaped objects in front of his slowly fading eyesight. "There, there's my hands. And — like, here's my fingers, yeah?"
A group of blurry objects moves on the hand-shaped clouds of skin-colour. Megumi tries to narrow his eyes, focus his vision — and promptly receives a bucketload of washing crimson dripping from his eyelashes instead, stinging his eyes with little pinpricks of needled point.
"Oh — gosh," says the person, voice now stifled. "Wow," they say, choking back what his ears classify as laughter, the skin-toned objects pausing their journey to his shoulders. "You have — uh, really long eyelashes, dude," they manage to say, voice strangled.
Why, thank you, Megumi wants to say, in a reverie, floating with the clouds his mind's conjuring up. It's my pride and joy, actually. Kugisaki envies them. Gojo competes with me on the aerodynamic properties of them on the daily.
He doesn't realize he'd said the words aloud until the voice snickers, a smile given shape in the world of bloodshed around it. "Good to know I found a model in these killing games. What, your technique called mascara?" they joke, the pun coming as natural to them as speaking so easily does.
"So, uh," Megumi clears his throat, trying to rid the dry feeling it's gotten from the iron leaking down from his sinuses all the way down his esophagus. All he gets is another swallow of disgustingly sharp liquid sliding into his stomach, his next words coming wheezy and choking. "You're not trying to kill me," he says stupidly.
The person laughs again (gods, what did they do, how can they laugh—) and shuffles forward the tiniest bit, slowly picking up the pace when Megumi does not flinch. "No, I'm not," they say, amused. "Unless you'd like me to? You're, ah, dripping in blood right now. Concussion?"
Probably. Most likely. Most definitely.
"Aw, that sucks," the person sighs, and Megumi realizes he'd spoken his thoughts aloud again, and the person's blurry face contorts into something he'd like to call a smile razed with bits of jaded shards leftover from the games. "Said that aloud again, huh? I do that a lot. Helps me voice my thoughts, 'cause I'm kinda dumb sometimes!"
They finish their decisive statement with a stretch of white across melanin before shuffling in one decisive sweep, some sort of support hugging his limbs in another clean movement as Megumi's hair rustles, the world spins with his vision, and he flies.
The person laughs again, again!, and Megumi's limbs hang limp in their grasp as they run forward, up-and-down along with his roiling guts, shaking around in his torso. "Sure, you're flying! Man, concussions do make everything go whee, and whoo, and wahoo, huh?"
He stares at them — or at least he thinks he's staring at them with a dumbfounded expression ruined by the queasiness apparent on his face. "Put me down," he says roughly, though with the movement and nausea it sounds more like, "Pwedun."
"Pwehden?" the person leans closer, and Megumi notices the flecks of gold in the sorrel. Something wraps around the iron of blood and throws it to the side, letting the faintest hints of sweet peach and cheap oolong tea waft through the air. "That your name, bloody guy? Doesn't sound Japanese….ah, well, I ain't judging! Nice to meet you, Pwehden!"
They — he — flashes a smile, all teeth. "Itadori Yuuji!"
"Fushiguro," Megumi tries to voice, lips heavy and a cough steadily bubbling away in his lungs.
"Kuro?" asks Itadori, brows furrowed — he leans in, close enough for Megumi to see every individual fleck of gold in his eyes. He frowns, confused. "Your vision fading out? Black? Is that what you're trying to say?"
He waits for an answer, but Megumi has none other than a cough of blood, splashed onto his arm with the movement of Itadori's running and his roiling stomach.
"Well, I'm not a doctor," Itadori sighs, regretful, "but if I get you somewhere, then I can put some kind of bandage on you without some random dude coming up and trying to kill us. So just hang in there, Pwehden?"
Miraculously, he does hang in there. By falling asleep in some stranger's arms like some damsel in distress, drifting off while his brain scolds him endlessly for falling for such a trap.
The sting of antiseptic and the strangulation of what he hopes to be bandages and not human hands brings him back, tickling his nose and sweeping over the dried layer of maroon already making its home on his skin. His eyelids push open against the weight of something gathering at their tips, pushing it down until he forces them open, squinting immediately when a bright beam of light flashes through a glass pane.
The subsequent hiss brings a pair of umber eyes to him, lighting up when they see his eyes open and alive. A smile arcs below them, bright even in the dreary, forcefully lit backdrop of his life now.
"You're awake!" the person — Ita…Iwa..Iwasaki? Itasaki? Itadori? — offers a toothy smile, leaning against the wall thirty centimeters away from him, curled up into a little ball, elbows tucked around his knees. "Wassup, Pwehden?"
His first word to Itadori is a rather rude euphemism followed by, "Fushiguro. Not whatever name you've got floating around in that brain of yours."
Itadori blinks once, displacing the tiniest granules of dust lit by the musty sunshine through a shattered window before he nods. "Nice to meet you, Fushiguro," he says, agreeable. His nose twitches; his hand arcs through the air to send a flurry of dust molecules wavering in the space between Megumi and him in a little tornado of yellow-gray. "That makes more sense."
The conversation lapses into silence; Megumi resurges it with a question. "What did you do to me?" he asks, cautious, on-guard. His fingers move in, out — confirming they're unbound and free of any restraints; he flexes them into separate wings, his shadow ripples just slightly.
"Carried you like a princess, bundled you up like a mummy," Itadori says with a wave of his hand, gesturing to his body. He makes a vague wrapping motion. "Wiped the blood off you, slapped some of that sharp-stinging stuff on it, chucked it out the window."
Megumi eyes him, still apprehensive. "I mean, why didn't you kill me?" he asks, emboldened by Itadori's easy answer and the freedom of his hands.
Itadori frowns, something innocent and lightly confused. "C'mon," he sighs after a moment of considering Megumi, lips quirking into a tired smile. "Do I seriously strike you as the type to go around punching people into oblivion for five points?"
No, Megumi says in his thoughts, vocals controlled this time rather than voicing every thought popping into his mind. Regardless, Itadori's smile grows just a little wider before falling flat when his eyes slowly drift away from Megumi, staring at the desolation that's become synonymous with Tokyo Colony Number One.
"Besides," Itadori adds, voice nearly swept away — the tone is quiet, almost meek in the face of crumbling gray and rotting brown, edged with burnt black. "There's nothing I would want with that many points. I'm just playing to survive. Aren't we all?"
He trails off with a weak laugh, slowly fading to something less hopeful and raw.
"You were a citizen," says Megumi, feeling the edges of pity soaking his tone sorrowful.
"I always saw those monsters," counters Itadori, still staring at Tokyo, like he can build it right back up from the ground, phoenix from ash. "Just didn't know what to do with them."
He blinks, waving away the dust once more, and Megumi catches the movement of a scar below those gold-flecked eyes. It lines the surface, pulling the skin towards it like a black hole given to a crescent moon and etched into a melanin sky.
Jujutsu has hardened him to asking about matters Tsumiki would have stumbled on a million times before working up the courage to approach them. "Those scars," Megumi gestures vaguely to Itadori's eyes. "From curses?"
Itadori's fingers dart to the scars, tracing them as his eyes widen the tiniest bit, imperceptible. "Could say that," he shrugs, ambiguous. His eye closes just a bit at the edges as his fingers slowly go across the marred skin, returning to his knee when the crescent stops. "Childhood incident, you could say."
"You're from Tokyo?"
"Sendai, actually," Itadori's expression turns fond, as if recalling something buried under layers of caked-up age and time. "Was in Tokyo for something or the other, and these big black walls go up. Next thing I know, there's a helicopter man chasing me into buildings and some joker guy asking me about my social preferences on TikTok."
"You're not concerned for any family in Sendai?" asks Megumi, curious, but keeping it businesslike. He'd expect someone trapped in another city altogether to be more worried about family, especially for a non-sorcerer.
Itadori bites back a yawn. "Oh, they're all gone," he says, careless. At the surely stunned expression painted on Megumi's face, he laughs again, genuine. "I mean, I never knew them, you know? Was raised by my mother for years, and I know she's safe somewhere, so I never knew anyone else in my family. If I knew where they were buried, I'd bring them flowers, but sadly…"
He shrugs, as if to say, that's life, and returns to staring out the gaping jaw of a window.
An 'I'm sorry' sounds cold, and Megumi has seen far too many people break down over two simple words, but he says it anyways to see Itadori's eyes flick to him for the tiniest moment before nodding in acquiescence.
"Thanks, Fushiguro," he says, simple, and they leave it at that.
He ventures to talk further when Itadori offers no other words to say, monotone — a flip of a switch, instantly listless, as barren and bare as the ground before them. The sun recedes to nothing; the crescent turns to new moon in an instant.
"Did you—" he hesitates, unsure if Itadori's the type to be worked over a revelation, but he continues when umber settles on him, "awaken a technique?"
Itadori sighs, a low, quiet thing. His eyes crinkle in the beginnings of an attempt at smiling, breaking through clouds on face. "I have a — a thing," he says reluctantly, like he wants to wipe it from his mind and from the crumbling ground below him. "Technique. Yours is the cool shadow animals, right? Mine's not so cool."
"And you're fine to reveal it?"
"It's the death games! Not like I can hold it in my mind forever," Itadori laughs, lighthearted in a stilted way that suggests it's light in the way that the supporting undertone is rapidly crumbling to nothing. He offers a faint smile. "I can cut stuff."
"You can cut," says Megumi, drier than he'd been intending, realizing it sounds mocking when Itadori's smile stays frozen on his face, half-fallen from the dimples holding it up.
"Told you it wasn't exciting," he mutters after a moment.
He glances away, watching the falling grains of rubble drop to the ground twenty floors down. "Better than some techniques I know," he says in a meager attempt to comfort Itadori. "I'm not just saying that to comfort you. It's the truth."
Silence.
"Thanks, Fushiguro," Itadori brushes some strands of pink falling round his forehead, tucking them into the knotted part of his hair. "I can cut. You can summon demon creatures of the shadow realm. The Dream Team out here, huh?"
Are we sticking together? falls flat on his tongue when he considers Itadori's words. It's most likely a joke, a probe, but he wants to — to believe? To have someone to rely on, when Kugisaki and Gojo have disappeared from the world?
Instead, he says—
"Have you seen a player named Angel?"
"Angel," Itadori repeats, rolling the word around his tongue. His eyes wander to the ruins of Tokyo, gazing at something out of Megumi's view. "Like, a real angel? One with wings and a fancy glowing hat?"
"It's a halo," Megumi can't help but correct, "and no idea how she looks like. Just assume she's an angel, I suppose?"
"We can go out and check, if you're all healed," Itadori suggests after a brief pause, sliding up the wall to stretch his feet. His shoes brush aside little piles of collected dust from their stint in the apartment building (how much time were they in there for, how many days have passed—) and he glances back when Megumi makes no move to go, curious. "Fushiguro?"
Tsumiki turns, smile etched on her face. "Megumi?"
"Right," Megumi manages, standing up to follow Itadori. "Let's go."
The other nods lightly before stepping forward, and in the light, something ripples across his skin, shown by the torn chasms left by something catching on fabric. Something darker than the rest, forming spiralling patterns of jet for just a moment.
"Itadori?"
Itadori turns, attention caught. The patterns disappear; he'd have thought they were never there had the scars below not been the exact same.
"Nothing," Megumi shakes his head, blood roaring in his ears as he steps forward, picking up pace with every step until he's right next to Itadori, pushing down the urge to stay on guard with Gamma at his side, if not Dog. "Just thought I saw something. Why're you helping me?"
"Why?" Itadori hums, considering. He pauses at the broken-down door, brushing the torn edges of wooden frame before he continues forward. "Dunno. You looked like a drunken man. Stumbling around the Tokyo Colony. And — uh, nothing to do around here, anyways. Why not?"
He waves off the suspicion lingering in the recesses of his mind, perhaps hoping for some sort of allyship without string attached. Make use of all your assets, Gojo's voice rings in his mind. Even those you think will betray you. Use them. Jujutsu doesn't play fair, so you shouldn't either.
"…I follow you?" Itadori's saying tentatively when he refocuses his attention, his last words lost to Megumi's thoughts and Gojo's echoing words. Itadori's hand scuffs the walls, dragging a pattern into the dust as Megumi follows. "If not, it's fine," he adds, an undertone of nervousness in his words.
Another swirling pattern joins the ones already scraped onto the dusty walls, this time etched by Megumi's idly fingertips. "It's fine," he says to appease Itadori. "As long as you're fine with meeting more people, and you won't try to kill me in my sleep."
"Define 'more people'," Itadori squints against the sun that lights up their figures when they emerge from the building, lifting a hand to shade his eyes before they adjust to the light. "Murder-y?"
"Only if you provoke them," Megumi offers as comfort. He doesn't want to give Itadori any false perceptions about the motley crew of Jujutsu High as of now; all of them would kill anyone at the drop of a hat at this point, he's sure. "Besides, think of it as if you try to kill me, they'll kill you. Happy?"
"Not really," Itadori breathes in slowly, taking in the not-so fresh air. Megumi follows suit, letting the ashy scent take away the lingering sting of antiseptic in his nose. "But I'll take it. Thanks for letting me stay with you, Fushiguro."
Megumi shakes his head, striding ahead of him. "Don't worry about it. You're better than the clown," he scoffs in a little bit of comfort.
"The clown?"
"Don't worry about it."
(He misses Yuuji's glance to the side, guilty. Sorry, Yuuji mouths to himself, feeling a washing tide of disgusting guilt sweep over him as Fushiguro continues forward, heavy and sickening. His gut heaves, his throat feels heavy and tight, his tongue is unwieldy and cumbersome as it rests between his teeth. Fushiguro. Sorry.
But I can't fail.)
"What's next, Fushiguro?" Itadori asks, dragging his red-soled feet against the pavement, kicking up dust left-over from the stampedes of civilians rushing through the colonies in their haste to escape. Megumi glances at him briefly before waving away the dust.
"I'm confronting Higuruma," he says, waiting for Itadori to shake his head, make up some bullshit excuse, and run.
Instead, Itadori just nods in acquiescence. "For his points?" he asks knowingly, fabric round his body pooling into sad little wrinkles in the hot sun and surely exertion-induced sweat. "That's why you went after Reggie Star, right?"
His voice is tight as he answers. "They're not for anything — like, bad," Megumi says in a sad attempt to reassure Itadori of his innocence despite the other having seen him summon Elephant and Dog on Hazenoki just hours ago. "Just to add some rules."
He glances over to see the corners of Itadori's eyes crinkle into a knowing look, tan layered over each other with a crescent slash arcing through. "Is Okkotsu in Sendai helping you out with that?" Itadori questions, sending an involuntary chill down Megumi's spine as he asks. Itadori offers something of a smile when he sees Megumi's face, something reassuring in his tone. "I mean, it's not like you'd go barging into a colony without some kind of plan to get more points. And Okkotsu took down the stalemate in Sendai, you know. I figured you'd be in on that."
Megumi considers how much information is safe to reveal to this teenager before constructing a reply. "Okkotsu's my senpai," he decides on, thinking it's better to just tell the truth, since Itadori doesn't seem like he'll be going anywhere anytime soon. "We're making rules to get my — someone I know out of the Culling Games."
Itadori hums as they reach the crossroads where Megumi met Remi and was led to Reggie, this time going for the green path to Ikebukuro, where he assumes Higuruma to be. Bushes rustle as Itadori considers an answer silently, Megumi's shadow rippling over itself in a sort of comforting rhythm, as if telling him it's there if needed.
"Then, you'll let me help, Fushiguro?" Itadori finally says as they reach the spiralling reflective surface of the cinema where Higuruma is, every panel perfectly angled to have little bits of sunlight embedded in their surface and only further amplifying their brightness through the splendor of the coalesced jewel of a theatre.
"I'm not stopping you," says Megumi, and it's the naked, pure truth that leaves his mouth as they make their way to the double doors.
Dear Megumi,
Yuuji frowns, erasing the pencil marks in front of Megumi's name. Who is he to call Megumi 'dear'?
Megumi,
Too intimate. Crossed out.
Hey,
Erased.
Do you—
The eraser is heavy in his hand as he rubs the paper, cream creasing just as much as his forehead as he tries to puzzle out exactly what Fushiguro Megumi is to him.
Yuuji bites his lip, trying to puzzle it out.
Finally, his pencil touches the paper.
Fushiguro,
I miss you.
He nods. Perfect.
His pencil goes back.
Why did you have to die?
He plays the flute on the rooftop, amidst doves slowly fluttering down. The breeze is cool on his cheek, brushing hair over hair as snow slowly flutters down from the sky, like some angel took pity on him and decided to bury him in white.
Megumi finds him there and sighs. Lips press thin as he throws a red blanket round his shoulders, and Yuuji looks back.
"You'll be cold," he says, and Yuuji smiles.
"So will you," he says, and Megumi nods. Yuuji hooks his arm under the blanket and throws it over Megumi's shoulder, and he smiles again, bringing the flute to his lips.
A C rings clear, and the next to follow is A.
Tomorrow, tomorrow.
The sun will wash the cobwebs away.
Blood is wet under his fingertips as he brings his fingers away from his lips.
Megumi's chest is broken. His bones are shattered, and his lips are cracked.
Death must be euphoria, Yuuji thinks as he brings the blade to his heart, and their blood mingles.
Megumi is a star, and he is the sun, and their glass enclosure is the universe.