𝘖𝘱𝘦𝘯.

[unequally]

s h a d o w;
1. a dark area or shape produced by a body coming between rays of light and a surface.
2. used in reference to proximity, ominous oppressiveness, or sadness and gloom.
OTA 25/8 - Action, Texts, Etc.
( art )

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[resignations]

[ everything about this situation is alien. caring is alien. feeling anything beyond that vague in-between limbo of 'just enough to get by' is alien. being forced to consider his own actions is alien. the tired acceptance on a face that looks too much like his own, too much like something treasured and beloved, is alien.

megumi is the adult in this situation. he has the wherewithal to question what he doesn't understand; toji doesn't. with everything he has, he tries to look away from it. his anger. his disappointment, mostly in himself.

(again, that echo: "take care of megumi, okay?")

his flashbang emotions scatter like shrapnel. megumi, limp and tired on the bed, fades in and out of focus. this time, toji doesn't push him back onto the mattress.

he's collecting his ire and trying to set fire to them, until he has nothing left to burn. ]

If the Gojou kid doesn't come back [ he says, his voice low to the ground ], I'm going to kill him.

[ hypocrisy at its finest. of all the things toji is angry about, this isn't even at the top of his list (the real point of contention is how little effort megumi expends to defend himself, his hurt and his own feelings)— but it's the easiest thing to focus on amidst the myriad of nebulous bullshit he's trying to compartmentalize.

gojou promised. money in return for megumi's life. now the money's stopped, and megumi is here, grief-laden next to an empty room.

toji could tear gojou in half right now, if the brat were in front of him. ]

[unequally]

No.

[ that word settles between them like another thing on the floor inhabited by cursed and subtly constant motion. does he think he could force toji to listen? of course not. does he have delusions of protecting the man who is alone in heaven and earth the honored one? also negative. yet 'no' comes out of his chapped mouth, emanates from the white knuckled grip his hands have on his mussed bedcovers, silently echoes in the room.

he's tired.

megumi's expression, hard and sharp if only from strain, softens now not because he's suddenly forgiving or gentler but because he's at the edge of his limits. so tired.

but what does he mean when he says 'no' anyway?

no, he can't? no, he shouldn't? no, then where will he get his money? no, that's the man who saved me and tsumiki?

too complicated. too much. and he doesn't think for a second that toji's anger has anything to do with himself, with what's gone wrong or what's missing.

because, well, why would it?

'no' is how he leaves it, and dares to raise his head finally, to peer up calmer than he's felt this whole time from last night until now. exhausted. sad. self-loathing. they come to roost not a murder of crows but the edge tendrils of a storm.

megumi can't possibly know this, has no way of understanding how in this moment the unintentional heart on his sleeve is closer to the image of his mother than his father. ]

[resignations]

[ "no" doesn't assuage him. "no" does very little to stop toji from imagining gojou's blood on his hands or the way his bone relented under his knife when he'd stabbed him in the past, once, twice, three times, until he went limp. "no" doesn't begin to excuse gojou satoru despite the fact that this is all still fushiguro toji's fault, for being the way he is, for being born the way he is, for being more beast than man. for his reprehensible personality. for not being better.

and it's in the way megumi looks up at him that toji sees all of his fuckups in one place, sees all the ways in which megumi's mother has persisted in this small frame, no thanks to toji and his broken promises.

he wants to laugh again, but he finds that he's also tired. strange.

so he sits on the floor of megumi's cold room. legs folded, shoulders hunched, expression neutral. ]

I'm gonna kill him. [ petulantly. on this point, toji doesn't budge.

and, after a beat: ] ...Get some sleep. [ he sighs between his teeth, and it sounds like a hiss. ] You look like hell.

[unequally]

[ he doesn't want to do what he's told. in an unusual streak of objective childishness, megumi simply wants to go against what toji says because toji is the one who said so. needs must, however. more than twenty four hours is not something he does often, and even then he's in better shape than this. he could be smarter about it perhaps but megumi just lets himself fall back against the bed again. it feels like it takes a long time for him to actually land, which is peculiar. his ceiling moves even though he doesn't. if he told itadori, he would laugh —

— oh.

if toji wasn't here, megumi still wouldn't cry.

but the tension in his temples, the heat crawling up his neck, the unmistakable sting...these things are real just the same.

he closes his eyes and, stupidly, thinks he should get up again, at least throw the covers at the man on his floor who would be convenient to hate like a simple math problem if that were possible. but megumi slips into overdue slumber just like that. maybe it's that he's been feeling too much in succession, but the cold doesn't register even though he remains on top of everything, like some stray cat on a pile of what's there.

his last thoughts as he drifts off are: 1. tsumiki would be disappointed in him; 2. gojou better check his texts or his voicemail; and 3. toji reminds him of an animal, yes, but also —

— a child.

strange. ]

[resignations]

[ nothing good ever comes from overshooting your own expectations. toji'd known that from the jump: told himself that he'd be in and out this time around, too. invisible and unnoticeable, the way he always is. the way he always chooses to be.

(he knows why he broke his own equilibrium today, but it still unsettles him.)

toji doesn't turn to watch megumi fall asleep. back to the bed and his ankles crossed, he waits and listens for the sound of breathing to settle from neutral to restful: an involuntary defense mechanism for a tired body.

it's only after he's sure that the rhythm is persisting that he gets up, pivots, and settles his focus on that sleeping face.

surreal.

megumi, a monochromatic heap on mussed blankets, is simultaneously bigger and smaller than toji thought he'd be. with his eyes open, he radiates quiet maturity; with them closed, he's still just a kid.

toji doesn't bother trying to shift his son to cover him with blankets. instead, he moves to the closet and piles a loose jacket over his son's rumpled form. with that done, he maneuvers back towards the window that he'd come in from.

considers leaving. for good, this time.

(what good is it to stay?)

for the first time in a long time, toji lets himself think. about gojou, about his bank account, about megumi.

mostly megumi. it wears him out.

but his conclusion is this: until the gojou kid comes back. a time limit. a countdown until he can be barely an afterthought again, corralled into irrelevancy like the memories of him in the zen'in house.

until the gojou kid comes back.

so toji hauls himself up and out of megumi's widow, scales the walls of the boy's dormitory, and lays flat on the roof like some morbid shikigami, himself.

oh well. it is what it is. ]

[unequally]

[ for too long, when megumi wakes, he just lies there and quietly processes certain informations: itadori yuuji's death, the loss of divine dog white and orochi at the hands of the special grade and sukuna, the appearance of fushiguro toji through his dorm window. as terrible as it is to admit, the last of these is the most unexpected. he doesn't have time or the right to stay too sullen, at least not stagnantly anyway, so he gets up. he washes. he changes. he checks his phone and isn't surprised to find his messages unread and no voicemails to speak of. in a way, megumi wonders how much itadori's death has effected gojou and then he figures it's pointless to wonder that kind of thing.

he checks his window and then, as much as he doesn't want to, he does in fact open the door to itadori's room: also nothing.

the sense that toji is still here, however, he can't shake, foolish as it is.

closing the door to itadori's room, he pauses. he should go find kugisaki, see how she's doing. anything is better than nothing. there's training to be done with the second years too, though before that he has to return a dead son's nametag to the only person in the world who will mourn him.

at the end of the day he's noticed what he failed to the night before — the push of his hand through the shadows. it bothers him less than he thought it would, that it's sukuna's words which brought him to consider pushing further than what he knows. maybe he'll change his mind later; but for now it's just the slow thoughtful simmer of untapped potential, trying to make itself articulate.

still outside, he stops in front of the building.

it might be sentimental, or simply emotional, or something more complicated when megumi murmurs soft under his breath the incantation for the remaining divine dog. it hasn't fully manifested before it's in his arms and he presses his forehead to its nose in apology. aside from tsumiki, they are the ones who were with him the longest. and they aren't animals. they are his own energy. but megumi calls upon them, speaks to them, has faced death with them.

he hasn't lost until now though and...in its own way it's too much.

itadori above all, one would argue; because he was human, because this wasn't his world to begin with.

megumi tries not to be a selfish person and mostly, one can objectively say, succeeds in every category except one: the lives he saves. maybe it's karmic, this uselessness. but he's not one who believes in that anyway, so who cares?

under the moon, fushiguro megumi and divine dog black are two blots of shadow that steep into each other. the way he rested his hand on nue's head was no accident of compassion; he pushes his fingers back through his dog's fur in a way that is as grateful at least one is still here as it is sorry. but the loyalty of two dogs will be found in one now and megumi can already feel it, the intrinsic part of him that manifested so many years ago.

if toji has stayed somewhere, megumi of course cannot feel him, but even if he could it's uncertain whether he would go to him because again: what would be the point?

it doesn't stop him wondering. ]