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Megumi couldn't stop vomiting. At this point the bare-bones dinner he ate was already flushed away, leaving bile and pink-colored water choking up into his throat and dripping out of his mouth in a nauseating cycle.
For the third night in a row he’d failed to keep something down in his stomach. His head ached from hunger and his throat constantly burned from the acidity.
It was also the third night since he returned to the dorms, telling the others that he was fine.
Shoko had told him to stay in her office for a little longer so she could better monitor his recovery, but he stubbornly refused to listen. The sterile walls reminded him of inescapable loneliness and he reasoned with her that staying in the dorms to acclimate would resolve that feeling of isolation, and resolve whatever trauma she insisted he must have.
She eyed him critically at the time. "Fushiguro, your cursed energy is a mess. I genuinely don't know how you're alive and talking right now. Withstanding Unlimited Void for longer than a minute had to have caused after effects, and I do not know exactly what those effects are. It could be amnesia, migraines, blurred vision, loss of mobility, a full-blown coma—do you really want to risk this?"
And Megumi simply nodded, which sent her pinching the bridge of her nose with a sigh.
"If anything comes up, you have to come back and see me," she said as her parting words. "Satoru wouldn't forgive me if I let you suffer because his stupid technique got you hurt. Sometimes, you really are like him," she tacked on, and the words startled Megumi so bad that he stumbled as he got out of the cot.
"Sorry," he mumbled, and though she frowned, she didn't end up saying anything, and permitted his return to the dorms with a flap of her hand in a shooing motion.
Shoko probably hadn't intended to speak so bluntly, but the damage was done. She wasn't even lying. Gojo would have hated to see Megumi in pain like this over him. He would've tried to make a joke out of this and irritate Megumi, because annoyance was better than melancholy, and for all that Gojo teased, he was serious about keeping Megumi safe.
The first day he spent outside of the school infirmary was surprisingly decent. Yuuji showed him and Nobara the letters Gojo had left for them, and he had a good laugh with his letter until he reread it later that day within the privacy of his dorm room.
The fact that Fushiguro Toji was dead didn't concern Megumi in the slightest. It was the fleeting moment where he could hear Gojo's voice, childish and candid all in one, and he curled up around the letter and laid there on his bed, reading and rereading the words, the curve of the kanji and the doodle underneath them.
He did not mourn Fushiguro Toji. He never even knew the man.
There was a hollow spot in his soul though, carved into existence since his only remaining family died.
Megumi wasn't sure if Gojo considered him his son. He would've never asked either way, and Gojo wouldn't have said. It was only then, in the wake of remembering white hair and blue eyes, when he realized, perhaps a little too late, that Gojo was something of a parent figure for him.
And Megumi—Megumi with his own two hands, Megumi whose soul was drowning in darkness, Megumi who was not strong enough to fight back—Megumi was Gojo Satoru's executioner.
Mentor-killer. Father-killer.
He felt bile rise in his esophagus and entertained briefly the thought of staying the way he was, letting the guilt and shame choke him until he was dead too.
The thought was shoved away, and he slid off his bed towards the bathroom, where he spent his first of three nights throwing up for hours.
It occurred to Megumi after the second night to let Shoko know of his current predicament, but it wasn't harming anything other than his throat so he let it be. She would have words to say to him about staying in the infirmary for a little longer, and vomiting was nothing compared to the other effects she had mentioned. Other than the dizziness that came with an empty stomach and lying over a toilet for a long duration of time, his head felt fine.
It also occurred to Megumi to say something to Yuuji or Nobara, but he could see how hard they were trying to stay upbeat and retain some normalcy in their new day-to-day lives. He let them bicker away the way they always did, and they'd draw him into the conversation with agitated exclamations and shouts, and for those ephemeral moments, he could smile again.
He was content to stay in the background for a little longer.
The third day came and went, and now Megumi sat on the floor of the communal bathroom in the first-year hall of Jujutsu High, sick with the memory and thought that yes, Unlimited Void caused some irreparable damage to his mind, but his own hands were the ones that dealt the finishing blow. Wasn't that worse? Why couldn't Shoko have been more concerned about that? Why didn't everyone stare at him with resentment for killing Gojo Satoru?
His hands tremored with the weight of his guilt, and the toilet seat jostled every time he put pressure on them to try and stand back up.
Tomorrow he would do better. He'd eat a smaller portion for lunch, he’d go and take a walk outside the way he probably should’ve since two days ago, and maybe he’d even get back on his training. He’d readjust to the new normal at some point. He needed to.
Until then, though, he remained slumped by the toilet, half-hanging onto the seat with shaky hands and half losing himself to an inexplicable exhaustion.
He didn't remember falling asleep, but he did remember hearing someone call his name.
"Fushiguro. Fushiguro, wake up! Fuck—Nobara, go get Shoko-sensei!"
And everything melted down and away.
~ ~ ~
When he came to, he was right back where he started in the cold office, upper body propped up on pillows. His vision cleared enough to find Shoko at the side of his cot, staring him down with unamused, deadpan eyes.
"You're lucky you were only vomiting a little bit of blood," she stated, "The lining of your esophagus was awfully thin when Itadori brought you in. I've restored it back to the way it should be, but why don't you tell me why you thought it was a good idea to keep this to yourself?"
He hung his head down at that, and a creeping sense of shame rose.
"It wasn't a problem to do with my head, so I thought it would go away."
"Did you know? Itadori said he's seen you in the bathroom since your first night back at your dorm. He said you were probably having nightmares and left you be out of respect. He's a bit upset that he didn’t say something sooner."
Megumi choked a bit at the thought that Yuuji had been there. He hadn't even felt the other boy's presence.
Shoko didn't comment on his lack of a reply, thankfully, but she did raise her hand up, and he felt an unobtrusive mass of energy rest over his forehead.
"I can't understand how you feel right now, Fushiguro. I find it unbelievable you're alive at all, but then again," she chuckled half-heartedly, "Itadori is his own freak of nature. If anyone could've brought your soul back, it'd be him."
He recalled faint words, a resigned voice telling him "it's lonely without you," accepting that he didn't want to go on. The only light in the darkness that he was submerged in was that voice, and he had woken up to it, gripping onto it like a lifeline to claw his way out.
But now he was back in the land of the living, and he didn't know what to do with himself.
"What I do understand though, is knowing how pointless it feels," Shoko continued, "Every time they bring a sorcerer back for me to heal, I feel like it's all pointless too. I fix them up and they're sent right back out to die. I've become desensitized to that part of the job, and that's fine with me. This is the stupid cycle we live in, as part of the sorcerer's world. I can't tell you of all people to open your eyes and move onwards without guilt, and I know that. Just remember that you made the choice to come back, alright? You made that choice, and now you have to live with it."
"Just like how you're living while your friends died around you?" He heard himself say, and he grimaced at how it sounded.
Shoko didn't bat an eye at him. "Yeah. Exactly like that. I'm a cog in a machine that I don't have the power to change. For all that Satoru was the strongest, he was a cog too. He wanted you kids to break out of this so bad that he knew he had to give his life up for it to happen."
She finished whatever assessment she was conducting on his head, and withdrew her arm.
Shoko was not the type of adult Megumi would call intense. As one of the few remaining pseudo-parent adult figures in his life, he had always known her as someone staunchly nonchalant, but in the present, the way her dark eyes pinned him down carried more than apathy.
Then came her next words. "If you're going to live with guilt, Fushiguro Megumi, then use it for something good like the rest of us."
Like Shoko, whose only guilt was that she didn't have enough of it, and did her job anyway. Like Kusakabe, who was working to shoulder the responsibility of the jujutsu world so kids like them didn't have to. Like Yuuta, who moved forward with conviction to face the higher-ups despite being a kid himself. Like Maki, who carried the loss of her twin with the fury to dismantle and remold the family that birthed them. And...like Yuuji.
Yuuji, who was sitting on the floor outside of Shoko's office with his knees drawn to his chest and his head down when she finally let Megumi out.
"Hey."
The head lifted up, and upon seeing Megumi up and walking, Yuuji jumped to his feet immediately.
"Fushiguro! You—you're okay? Right?"
"Okay enough," he answered, "Shoko said I could start going back on missions in a couple weeks if I don't show any more symptoms. She'll have me monitored, I think." She had also said that the vomiting was likely rooted in a psychological problem, and that as long as it stopped affecting his physical health she would clear him for real.
Yuuji nodded multiple times in agreement, and his eyes gleamed with tears that Megumi kindly decided not to comment on. "Cool! I'm glad you're okay, I was really worried, yanno?"
It was times like these where Megumi had to remind himself that Yuuji's guilt was something none of them could even begin to understand. He was someone unbearably selfless, oblivious to his own needs but caring for the people around him without a second thought. It was a selflessness that made him want to save people, but Megumi had witnessed firsthand how that desire morphed into self-blame and remorse for the lives that his body had claimed.
If there was anyone that could understand Megumi...well. It would be Yuuji.
Megumi couldn't strive to be his level of altruistic, but he was starting to think that maybe, maybe he could afford to be a little selfless himself and live for Yuuji, who promised to save him and did exactly that.
"Don't worry too much, you'll lose the few remaining brain cells you have left," he joked, and Yuuji's resulting smile brought him a relief he didn't know he could feel.
"I really am glad you're okay," he repeated, and then grabbed Megumi's wrist gently. "Nobara has been blowing up my phone about your condition, so let's go see her before she blows us up!"
Blow them up she did.
Nobara was about as mad as Megumi expected her to be, but he could tell it was an exaggerated sort of anger.
"You are so STUPID, you could've told us something! I swear, boys are such morons, both of you! This means you too Yuuji, don't think I'm leaving you out of the equation! I swear the two of you are giving me way too many wrinkles and I cannot have that happen this early in my young beautiful prime!"
She said all of that, but her lip was wobbling and her eyes were as shiny as Yuuji's were earlier, and so Megumi let her yell and kick at him without complaint. To his side, Yuuji's eyes were curved up as he laughed.
God, Megumi loved them both. He hoped that he could forgive himself someday as easily as they forgave him.
~ ~ ~
Before night fully hit, Yuuji knocked on the door of his dorm and invited him out for a walk.
"Meet me at the entrance in 10!" he whisper-shouted, bolted off, and left Megumi standing at his own doorway in disbelief. He sighed, and then got himself ready.
The sky was a deep blue that melted into a pale purple down the horizon line. The lamps that lined the stone steps of the campus were already turned on, and they cast hazy shadows of them that ebbed and wiggled as the wind blew.
It was peaceful.
Or, it would've been, if Yuuji wasn't actively fidgeting with his hands and half-hunched throughout the walk, lagging behind with each step.
Megumi was starting to get a bit irritated. It wasn't his idea in the first place to come out here, and clearly Yuuji must've had a purpose in this walk other than admiring the lamps, so he stopped in his tracks, causing Yuuji to halt next to him too.
"Would you just spit it out already?" he snapped.
Yuuji mumbled some gibberish, to which Megumi just kept staring down at him, expressing what he hoped was disapproval. Then Yuuji finally give in and asked: "You miss him too, don't you?"
It didn't take a genius to figure out who he was asking about. Megumi wasn’t really surprised to hear the question. He was more surprised that it took this long for the question to be asked.
"Obviously. It...it's tough," he admitted. Tough barely covered it, but that was all he could get out.
Yuuji's face was half-covered in shadows, but the contours of pain on his cheekbones were hauntingly beautiful in the dim lighting. He forced a smile that looked more like a wince. "It is tough. I still don't know what we're gonna do without him."
"Live, probably." And that was the truth.
"Hah, that's something he'd say. He'd tell us to live our youth to its fullest while we could or something silly like that."
It was a punch to the gut for him to remember Gojo, but this was the first time in days he was able to think about their former mentor without bile rising on instinct.
Megumi had dreaded the potential conversations he'd have with people once his family was gone. All the voices who would say stupid words like "Tsumiki wouldn't have wanted you to die" and "Gojo wouldn't have wanted you to do this." They’d speak like they knew them better than he did, and it irked him how condescending it all was to be talked down to about his own damn family.
Because despite Nobara calling him an idiot, he wasn’t exactly blind or dumb. No shit, he knew Tsumiki and Gojo wouldn't have wanted that from him. They both loved him too much for their own good and it bit them right where it hurt. Love really was the greatest curse, and Megumi would continue his every remaining day cradling that balled-up curse against the empty spot in his soul.
It was the only way he knew how to remember them. That to be loved was to be remembered in any way possible.
What Megumi had been denying since he woke up was the acknowledgment that if there was one thing his family really couldn't have stood for, it was being remembered as curses. They wouldn't have wished this burden onto him, despite his own efforts to hoist all of it onto his own shoulders over and over and over.
"I wish he would've killed me before I killed him," Megumi whispered, a secret for just the two of them.
And in return, a simple two words: "I know."
Because here stood Itadori Yuuji, who knew what it felt like to be a killer with no control of his own body, offering to shoulder that burden with him.
The vulnerability made Megumi want to ask a very stupid question, and without anyone around to warn him against it, he went ahead and said the words, “Hypothetically, if I told you I never wanted to return to jujutsu society again, what would you say?”
It was impossible to miss how Yuuji's shoulders tensed up.
“I’d tell you that I’d follow you anywhere,” he whispered back, and it was Megumi’s turn to freeze. “If you want to return to living a normal life, I’d beg you to take me with you. You’re…,” Yuuji hesitated, then something in his breath hitched before he said, “I couldn’t lose you too. If you really wanted to leave, I’d go with you.”
The aftermath of the second secret that night distended between them in the form of silence. Megumi couldn't breathe. How does one respond to that? He didn't know. The quiet stretched on until Yuuji laughed, awkward and broken.
“But I don't think Nobara would like us pulling that.”
That broke Megumi out of the silent spell over his mouth. He chuckled sadly at the image of it: she would've thrown a complete and utter fit to hide her upset that she wasn't included in their plans to escape. The weight of Megumi's guilt would've only grown, not only for her, but for Yuuji, who would be lured to leave with him.
“She wouldn’t let us go in peace, for sure. If we did manage to leave she’d find a way to drag us back to missions somehow.”
“Yeah, she probably wouldn’t be too happy with us." Some of the tension in Yuuji's shoulders loosened visibly, and he slumped right back.
“Fushiguro, if this is something you really want, I support you,” he declared, like some kind of knight in a red hoodie. “I want to be with you for as long as we’ve got. So. All I ask is that you tell me.”
Communication was decidedly not within his skill set, and Megumi blamed that on Gojo’s own poor communication ability. But he had told himself he would try, and the only person he could stand to try with right now was Yuuji, who was standing in front of him, baring his soul out for Megumi to see.
"Alright. I'd tell you," he said like a vow.
A silent vow to himself, because Yuuji saved him already, and it was his turn to hold up his end of things.
He suddenly had a childish memory of Tsumiki holding her hand out for a pinky promise when they were kids and saying something about locking the vow in place. When he looked down at Yuuji's hand though, the one closest to him was the one missing a pinky and ring finger.
There was no reason to act on the urge, but he tried not to think too hard on it, and grabbed the hand altogether. Yuuji's palm was warm and sweaty and his three remaining fingers were calloused beyond belief, the product of fighting with fists and punches.
“Is this okay?”
Yuuji's eyes were wide and they glanced between their hands and Megumi's face in boggling surprise.
“Yes, yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t it be okay?” It was hard to tell with the flickering lights, but Yuuji's face appeared a shade or so redder than it usually was.
The fluster was comical, yet Megumi couldn't bring himself to call him out for it. Not here at least, in their little bubble away from the rest of the world.
The sky got darker and they went back inside, hands still clasped and clammy, and Megumi didn't let go until he reached his own dorm room. They said their good nights and went into their separate rooms and it wasn't until he heard the firm click of Yuuji's door shutting did he close his own.
He stood there for a while, until his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he could see the individual grains of wood on his door. It could've been seconds, minutes, hours that passed. When his legs tired, he turned around to lean against the door, and sank down until he reached the floor with a light thump.
Gojo-sensei, would you be proud of me? I'm learning to live again.
Outside the window, a cloud parted for the moon to shine its beams onto the floor by his feet, and Megumi took that as the answer he was looking for.
Of course I am. You should be proud of yourself too, Megumi-chan.
He imagined the beams of the moon were a different form of light, something paler and bluer and brighter. He imagined there must be a face smiling down at him, and wiped away the tears that had begun welling in his eyes.
Thank you.