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The first thing Fushiguro Toji does upon his re-entrance into the world of the living is find the nearest convenience store.
In his pocket, he’s got one hundred yen, a bloody half torn racehorse raffle ticket, and 50% off coupon for toilet paper and Meiji baby formula. It had to be that god awful Zenin luck, getting resurrected screwed over by some tween brat and jack shit to his name.
…Actually, that last bit was basically more of the same even back when he was alive.
Well. Whoever said near death experiences would turn your life in the opposite direction was full of shit. Instead, Toji decides to resume his get money quick scheme immediately upon his resurrection and he shoulder checks a stumbling salaryman, obviously drunk off his ass as he stumbles out of an alley into the streets. Toji’s scarred, resting bitch face stops the guy from saying anything- about both the rude gesture and the handful of bills lifted off of him.
The salaryman sways a little, regaining his balance before deciding to sleep off the alcohol in a bush near the sidewalk. Toji looks at the near empty streets, deducing that it’s probably late enough for the trains to have stopped by now. He wanders for a little while, stumbling through streets before he finds himself under the bright neons of a 7-Eleven. Nothing like a good, old 7-Eleven to rely on to never change a bit.
A dead eyed looking college student barely looks up from the register as Toji dumps a case of Asahi and a bag of peanuts on the counter. He’d empathize with the punk of his lazy stare didn’t remind him so much of that tween Gojo brat.
Eventually, he walks out of the store to sit on the curb, the quiet jingle tune of the door sensor ringing in his ears. He sits there for a moment, oddly numb as a cold air sweeps through the dim street. He takes a moment to blankly lift the hem of his shirt and feels nothing when he looks down to find the twisted, raised skin of his stomach, swirling on the side of his abdomen where a crater should’ve been. He raises a hand to his temple, a headache blinding but still unable to mask the death dream of a Megumi all grown up.
Not a Zen’in, huh?
Toji squeezes the can in his hand, creaking enough to leak sticky beer residue everywhere. He gets a little over halfway through the case of beer and a salted bag of peanuts before he allows himself a sharp bark of bitter laughter.
“Huh. That shitty punk really killed me.”
The observation hits nothing but the cold air of the night and his own ears. He lets himself go still for a moment before chugging the rest of his third can of Asahi.
“Hey, brat. Megumi, right?”
Toji finds his way home sometime after the sun comes up. He doesn’t quite remember walking there but he guessed that was just muscle memory for you. The apartment however is just as shitty as Toji remembers it being. Thick boards over the windows, the socks stuffed near the hinges of the door where it was too loose, chipped paint and water soggy walls that sucked in the cold instead of keeping it out.
And Toji is sure the boy who answers the door is Megumi. He’s got the absolute stone cold bitch face he gave him to prove it. (And his mother’s dumb spiky hair. Her nose. It’s pink. He must be cold.)
The boy blinks up at him, eyes glossing over his face, wide and unreadable. “You’re not dead.”
The fucking audacity. It was enough from the Gojo punk- but his own kid? “You sound disappointed.”
The boy shrugs, rubbing his nose turned pale pink to hot red from the cold let in through the entryway.
Behind the door, he can hear the clanging of kitchen noise. Toji reaches forward to push the door further open from where the kid stands rooted and shivering in the doorway. Toji shuffles his legs a little to make the kid step back as he swings the door shut. He’s barely got his shoes off before a pointed cough echoes through the genkan.
A girl from behind him raises an eyebrow from where she stands precariously high on a few stacked phone books near the kitchen counter. She holds a large kitchen knife as she teeters and a cutting board before her is littered with too large chunked vegetables.
“You bring any money back with you this time?”
Toji digs up the change left from the late night 7-Eleven run. He deposits the coins into his son’s hands haphazardly and the girl frowns and continues to cut whatever the fuck kind of vegetable six year olds eat- Toji stares at Megumi, a little taller than he was last time he saw him. Okay, whatever vegetables nine year olds feed to seven year olds, then.
As she turns away she barely mumbles to herself as he walks past Megumi into the living room. “Typical.”
Toji toes off his worn house sandals before finding the couch to fall onto, exhausted. His head spins and he tries to ignore the dinky cable TV in the corner playing newscasts of heavy winter weather (it was summer the last time he checked- wasn’t it?) and Christmas chicken commercials.
Toji huffs and closes his eyes. “Sorry. Died yesterday.” Twice, he doesn’t say aloud.
He doesn’t remember what the tiny girl (Tsumiki? Tsumiki.) says before he passes out.
He wakes up to a small hand patting his face over and over again.
Blearily, blinking above him in the dark room he traces the shape of Megumi’s sea urchin shock of hair. His eyes are sleepy and lidded and he looks unrepentant for interrupting Toji’s nap.
“You should wake up and tell Tsumiki you're not dead. She’s been crying for hours now.”
Toji sighs. There truly is no rest for the living or the semi dead, is there. He gives himself a minute of staring contests with Megumi to subtly sleep for a little longer while his eyes are open before he picks the kid up, tucking him under one arm and going to find his wife’s (ex-wife, looking at the empty bedroom down the hall) kid.
“Y-you said you’re dying!” Tsumiki sits at the kitchen table snot nosed and red faced as she sobs through her words. “You’re g-gonna leave forever!”
“Past tense. I’m not dead anymore.” Probably. Maybe. Hopefully. He didn’t like dying the first or the second time around. Though judging by the blurry memories he has of dying and then waking up in some random ass place, he was starting to wonder if he could die. Or if he even had in the first place. Had he been… cursed?
A tiny foot jabbed his ribs and Toji looked under his arm remembering the kid he tucked beneath it. Megumi squirmed, yanking at his shirt to be let down and it was all Toji could do not to just drop the kid splat onto the chipping linoleum below.
Once on his feet, Megumi pattered up to the kitchen table where Tsumiki sat scrubbing at her blotchy face. He patted her knee with solemnity unfit for a toddler. “I kicked him for you ‘Miki. Can I get lunch now?”
His death and resurrection was pushed aside for Megumi’s grumbling stomach. Apparently the vegetables Toji had walked in on Tsumiki chopping up was ‘lunch’. He’d been asleep for a while now, long enough for the sun to hit its pinnacle.
The two tiny gremlins made a big show of meal prep, Tsumiki wearing an apron decorated with bunnies and frills and getting out big puffy oven mitts to move the bubbling pot onto a makeshift heat pad made of newspapers. Megumi putters about the small kitchen with the same energy, having the gall to attempt to push Toji around when he gets in the way. When he finds he can’t be moved, the kid glares up at him until Toji shuffles to a corner to put himself. The kid collects mismatched tableware from the dishrack to line up on the table along with their collection of mismatched chairs and stools.
At some point when everything is set up, Megumi points to Toji in the corner where he was banished whispering to Tsumiki. When they part, Tsumiki straightens out her apron and declares with all the pomp of a Michelin chef.
“I guess you can have some too.”
And so he finds himself squatting over a stool that creaks when he settles a quarter of his bodyweight on it, a blue plastic Digimon cup with watered down tea, and a bowl of burnt leftover rice and box curry. Toji doesn’t trust it for a second and debates wholeheartedly donating his serving to one of the kid’s bowls under the guise of ‘making sure they eat their veggies’ but Megumi’s unblinking gaze unsettles him and Tsumiki’s wide eyed grab for his approval stop him in his tracks.
After he swallows down the last of his cold tea, he finds his words. “You should at least charge me for the meal.”
Megumi’s eyes go wide over his matching blue Digimon bowl and he turns to Tsumiki for answers. “We can do that?”
Toji shrugs. “Your labor, your rules.”
Tsumiki wipes furiously at Megumi’s rice sticky face with a napkin. “No, thats rude! Besides. We both know he doesn’t have any money.”
Megumi slumps and Toji is beginning to realize Tsumiki’s word might be law in this house since he’d been gone.
“…Rude.”
Getting up from his seat, Toji makes his way to the refrigerator, opening the door to see what the kids have been eating (in the days? weeks?) since he was gone. A pot cooker of leftover rice sits in the top shelf, a stash of a few barely browning vegetables below that, a ziploc of half opened box curry cubes, and little else. Toji closes the door gently to thump his head on the cool outside of the icebox. There’s been a slow rising panic in his gut since he stumbled home covered in his own dead viscera but he’s not going to address it even now. With a calm tone he doesn’t quite feel, he turns to the kitchen table where the kids are still nibbling at their food.
He assembles his words carefully. “Your mom leave any cash, ‘Miki?”
Tsumiki shoulders inch up to her ears and she shoves a oddly chunked piece of carrot into her mouth before shaking her head furiously.
Right. That had been the first thing Tsumiki asked about before he even stepped through the doorway.
“Are you gonna take it if there were?”
“Why, do you have a lot?” Megumi glares at him from over his bowl, a plastic kid knife in hand. Toji rolls his eyes. “…Nah. I’ve got a job lined up. And I’m too old for piggy bank money.”
Tsumiki inches towards the edge of her chair, swinging her too short legs down to touch the floor. She begins to shuffle behind the chair, pushing it towards the fridge before Toji gets the idea. He steps forward to lean down, wordlessly offering himself as a human ladder, growing tired of time consuming self sufficiency the brats seem to be so good at.
Tsumiki stares at his open arms for longer than Toji thought she would and he's getting ready to go back to his corner and let her go back to pushing her chair when she grips tightly onto his arm. He shakes out his stiffness trying to remember how to hold a kid that isn’t just tucking them under his arm like a sack of rice.
When Tsumiki sinks her face onto his shoulder, the foggy memories of quieter days where it was just Megumi and his wife slowly teaching him what it was to be a regular person come to the surface. The moment is just as weighted as Tsumiki- warm and light. She takes a moment to rub her face into his shirt before he can tell her that it isn’t such a good idea with everything he’d fought recently.
Tsumiki fights her grogginess valiantly before she points to the fridge and Toji walks over to let her yank at the to portion of it where the freezer was. The freezing air is only slightly colder than the outside air and it reminds him that he either needs to threaten a landlord or find a job that’ll pay for heat soon. Tsumiki pulls a carton of Cool Whip from inside the freezer and before he can scrounge up a plan to take a Dad Tax on the dessert she prys open the top to reveal its Cool Whip-less insides.
“Cool piggybank, kid.” Tsumiki smiled shyly up at him, one of her canines missing and her eyes crinkled.
“I hid some in here from Mommy when she was leaving. We don’t got a lot left though…”
Toji looks back at the icebox and the range of old photos and miscellaneous papers stuck to it with magnets. Tsumiki pulls down a paper stuck to the fridge with a magnet. What he thought at first was a report card or some kids drawing actually turns out to be a meticulous little chart of finance balancing. Granted, every label has a different animal sticker, it’s covered top to bottom in glitter, and written in those weird sniffy markers he can still smell off the page- but perfectly balanced.
He finds himself sat at the kitchen table with Tsumiki and eventually Megumi slung over his head and shoulders as he reads the glittered spreadsheet.
Tsumiki is very enthusiastic about it all. “This is how much you give to Mr. Sasaki for rent, this is for the heat, the water, the electric, the security, the locks, the cleaners…”
Toji gets more tense the longer Tsumiki breaks down inane fees their landlord has been gouging them for. The numbers she rattles off are white noise for his violent fantasies involving this Mr. Sasaki. He was looking forward to using the whole zombie thing to its full capacity.
Tsumiki finishes her spreadsheet breakdown and goes back to burying herself against his neck. Megumi caught on to her idea ages ago and lounges fast asleep cocooned in a ball under Toji’s thin shirt. Toji bets he must be the warmest place in the entire apartment. Clingy brats. He’d shake them off if it weren’t so damn cold.
Tsumiki mumbles further. “Mr. Sasaki turned off the heater this morning… He said he was gonna come back soon with a policeman if we didn’t get rent soon.”
Toji scrubs at his hair, probably still caked in blood and dirt. Okay. He can deal with this. His wife did it fine, Tsumiki’s old lady too. Easy, right?
“I did get paid.” Or he should’ve been. He’d died before he could go and check if those weird cult bastards had kept up the end of their deal with the whole Riko business.
Tsumiki’s nose scrunches up. “You gave Megumi spare change.“
“Look. I’ll go get it right now. I just have to go to the bank-” The ‘bank’ being his old handler, Shiu Kong. He’d have to make the trip fast, the night sucking what little heat the apartment retained out through the walls. He’d crack the oven open like he used to his early days on the run from the Zen’in but he didn’t trust the sleepy tots with it no matter how self sufficient they were.
Tsumiki studies his face. “The bank is closed right now.”
Toji snorts at her barely veiled disbelief. “Not this bank. They’re special.”
Tsumiki’s stare is more judgmental than any toddlers should be. “Fine. You better not die again, okay?”
“No thanks. It sucked.”
“Promise?”
She holds her hand out, snot and all and Toji recoils. The little demon persists anyway, her glare pathetic and red rimmed from earlier.
“Yeah, sure.” Toji knew he probably shouldn’t be doing things like promises with his luck, but hey, getting resurrected twice made a man with an ego feel real fucking lucky.
Toji entrance into Shiu’s office was a bit more abrupt than he meant it to be. “Those’ll kill you.”
“What the hell-“ And suddenly Toji is staring down the barrel of a gun. It was a common phenomenon, knowing trigger happy Shiu and so Toji has a lounge on a nearby chair waiting for his old handler to get his shit together. The man scrambles for a minute, having dropped his lighter and a freshly lit cigarette in lieu of aiming a gun at Toji’s face. He spends a moment hurriedly stamping out the sparks before they can catch further on the strewn papers and wood flooring beneath him.
He imagined it would be weird for a dead man to stroll into your office in the middle of the night demanding a paycheck. For Toji, it's been barely a day since the two of them turned in the Star Plasma Vessel bounty. For Shiu… well, Toji wasn’t even completely sure how long he’d been gone.
Toji is drawn out of his thoughts when he hears Shiu disengage, the quiet click of the safety noticeably loud in Shiu’s tiny private office. “Y’know, if I didn’t know better, I’d’ve thought your ghost was here to haunt my ass.”
Ah. So he thinks he’s a curse too. Toji decides to be snarky, just enough to get his old pal nervous.
“I am. Dead people still got bank accounts in hell- and I haven’t seen nothing of that 30 million you pinky promised.”
Shiu snorts, trying to come off as lax as Toji does. It doesn’t come off as smooth as he probably hoped with the way his eyes barely leave his face as he bends down to pick up the cigarette ashes and his lighter. His hand is shaky as he pulls another smoke from a pack of SevenStar with his teeth. Aborted clicks of a sparkwheel echo in the room. “Didn’t think dead people still needed to bet on horse races and poker.”
“Nope. Just rent and groceries.” And at this point, it’s not even a lie. IfToji yawns, the cold from outside still sunken into his bones. It doesn’t stop him from catching the moment Shiu finally lost his shit.
“Fuckin’ hell. I saw your body in the morgue and everything. How are you alive?” Shiu narrows his gaze and shuffles back to lean against the window, one hand shakily holding the smoke to his mouth and the other still gesturing at him with the handgun. Toji does him the favor of not acknowledging the frankly insulting move. “You couldn’t’ve faked your death. You’re not subtle enough to go to ground…”
Shiu clicks his tongue, pulling at his hair, the lit cigarette too close to his strands than Toji would’ve tried. He mumbles, mostly to himself as he stares. “You’re not some cursed clone or something? Though you probably wouldn’t know if you were…”
“I haven’t got a clue. But I’m pretty sure this is my corpse anyway. Got the souvenir from the brat to prove it and everything.” He pulled up the edge of his sweatshirt just enough to reveal the twisted flesh and of his abdomen where that little devil had blasted him straight through.
Shiu’s eyes widen imperceptibly, and the tension in his face loosens a bit. “What the fuck. You Zen’in are really something else. Killing curses without cursed energy is one thing. Never thought the next thing you’d upend was death.”
“Still not a Zen’in.” Toji clicks his tongue, drawing up his legs where he sits to cross them over the coffee table in front of him. He purposefully knocks over the few bits and bobbles on it. Shiu’s protests are summed up by a few grunts. He smirks, ready to start a habit of death jokes. “That’s not on my gravestone is it?”
“Naw. Would’ve thrown off being buried next to your missus.” Something in Toji aches at the sudden image. That wasn't a response he’d been expecting and he completely avoided thinking about it further. Shiu shifted before he spoke again. “Speaking of- your wife. The new one. You haven’t contacted her?”
Toji thinks of the empty side room where his wife had kept her things. The dust there. Megumi and his thin jacket shivering in a cold apartment. Tsumiki and her little balancing sheet of expenses. Some part of him is filled with a hypocritical sense of disgust. The part he lets Shiu know shrugs. “No. Think she ran off after she realized I was dead. We had an understanding. She stays with the brats, I send her money so she keeps ‘em.”
Toji uncrosses the legs he strew across Shiu’s immaculate imported coffee table to sit up straight and serious. “Which brings me back to my point. I’ve got jackshit in my ghost account, Shiu. What’s up with that?”
They both knew if there was one thing you never messed with in this line of business- it was money.
“Well. Then I’m sorry to say, but your money’s long gone.” Him and his fucking Zen’in luck. Shiu shifted uneasily. “Your wife came sniffing around… after the fact so I told her where you were buried. She got real quiet at that. I should’ve known. I gave your bounty to her since I figured she looks after Megumi. Didn’t think she’d run off with it without your kid.”
The scoff that leaves his mouth is uncontrollable. “Kids. She left her own brat behind too.”
Shiu drags a hand down his pale face. “They alright?”
“Yeah. Megumi’s a little tank that can eat whatever crap Tsumiki’s been cooking up. She’s a pretty stubborn kid. Got Excel sheets for expenses and everything. That normal type of toddler shit, Shiu?”
“How should I know? Besides I’d be surprised if any brat in your vicinity grow up ‘normal’.” He had a point there. Shiu sighs, walking over to settle on the couch next to Toji. He offers the rest of his smoke out to him and despite the promise of the warmth, he thought it probably wouldn’t do to start off his new era of fatherhood bringing home secondhand smoke as well as an empty wallet. He takes the apology for what it is. Even if he would’ve rather him buy them dinner instead.
“Well, I thought maybe CSS would at least find them eventually when I couldn't. You’re a paranoid bastard. Sue me for not being able to dig up whatever hidey hole you burrowed them in.”
Still. Toji’s money problem has come back to haunt him. He’d rather go headfirst into retirement after his last disaster of a job, but seeing as he still had only 7-Eleven spare change to his name…
Toji sighed. Just like that, his big break was gone. Probably being spent halfway across the world on a yacht for all he knew. Back to his early working days it was. “In the meantime, you got any quick jobs that won’t kill me again?”
Toji walks back to the apartment covered in viscera around dinnertime. He’s also become convinced Tsumiki has some sort of mind reading cursed technique with the way her face immediately clocks his unsuccessful ‘bank’ visit. “So. The important thing is: I didn’t lie about the money.”
Megumi barely acknowledges him from where he sits in front of the TV watching Digimon reruns. He turns from his place on the floor to blink at him slowly while he dunks another mountain of furikake over what Toji assumes is the last of their leftover rice. Tsumiki grumpily turns away to gnaw at her oddly chopped vegetables from earlier on the couch.
…Toji still feels too dead for this shit.
He drops the borrowed set of pistols and knives lent to him by Shiu across the kitchen table. Apparently dying had given the rights to loot his corpse to a certain white haired little shit. His arsenal of stolen Zen’in weapons he’d stashed inside the worm curse he’d scored on a job was apparently in the hands of the Gojo brat’s little friend.
Shiu could work some magic when it comes to jobs but his taste in weaponry was the complete opposite.
He fished the pay from his pocket to deposit into Tsumiki’s Cool Whip bank before stumbling into the shower. Halfway through waterboarding himself with water straight from the Arctic, he realized he might’ve been warmer if he’d just doused himself with a water hose somewhere outside.
When he exits the bathroom, Tsumiki is already at the kitchen table with a set of glitter pens and cat stamped envelopes. She’s got the Cool Whip container popped open and her yen stacked in neat rows as she scribbles labels on each of her envelopes. Toji finds himself slumped over the table counting in his head as she mumbles to herself out loud.
“Keep that up and you’ll be making bank as an accountant, kid.”
Tsumiki scowls at him. “I hate math. I’m gonna be a ballerina.”
“Ah. Right.” Toji doesn’t know what to say to the mood swinging toddler across from him so he just shuts up at that.
Eventually, she sorts everything out and Toji scoops up the rest of the cash, leafing through it.
“Alright. That leaves the rest for a 7-Eleven run.” Toji gets up, tucking Tsumiki under his arm as he goes. She yelps, unable to suppress a giggle and Toji takes the tiny win. Megumi perks up and he tosses the kid over his other shoulder. He doesn’t make much noise but he’d always been a quiet baby. Instead, Toji feels the way he burrows into the threadbare sweater Toji had raided from his wife’s closet. “Trash that sad ass dinner, kid, we’re going shopping.”
The money from Shiu’s bounty can’t last forever and getting a job is a lot harder than it looks.
One, he’s probably wanted dead by most of the jujutsu world, so no dice there unless Shiu has some quieter work (tough luck, since when has he or Shiu ever been ’quiet’?). Two, he’s been fired off of every regular civilian job he ever had so Toji is sure he’s been blacklisted at half the places that could pay for what he needed (if being a bodyguard for an asshole means he can’t punch said asshole for being an asshole, then he doesn’t want it anyway). And lastly, well, he really wasn’t the ‘working’ type. Not working in the sense of those sixty hour work weeks and days spent in some glass tower kissing ass as a pencil pusher. If you gave him a bounty and a gun, though? Well, if doing that endlessly paid as much as he wanted it too, he’d be a billionaire by now.
This was why these brats were better off with Tsumiki’s old lady or CPS or that Gojo brat or the Zen’in-
Oh. That was still on wasn’t it?
Tsumiki coughs him out of his thoughts. “Um. There’s someone at the door.”
Toji sighs, getting up from his place on the couch circling job ads in the newspaper.
He goes to open the door, tossing a comment over his shoulder as he watches the brats from the corner of his eye in the kitchen. “You try to cut fruit like that you’ll lop a finger off, ‘Miki.”
She scowls and waves him off.
Before he solved their crisis, he had a door to door salesman to threaten.
Turns out the door knocker had not been a solicitor. Toji didn’t know if it was a blessing or a curse when he found out getting rid of his problems was going to be easier than he thought.
“You brought me back to life for what?”
It wasn’t a conversation he was thrilled to have in front of his supposed to be hidden apartment. He’d been somewhat content to spend the last couple of days licking his wounds and sleeping everything off. A good brawl had been due soon- something he would’ve craved once the cabin fever settled in. And yet these fucks had chosen him fresh off a job while the brats were around. The clans didn’t really care about shit like that though. And Toji knew an ambush when he saw one.
“You somehow managed to defeat the Gojo clan heir before your demise. Granted, he came back, the little weed, but nonetheless it was done.”
Ogami, the old crone, stood outside his door with a slip of paper from the Zen’in clan head.
The deal.
“Your previous deal is still on. The boy. But your cooperation to recreate the circumstances of the Gojo heir’s demise will earn you the pay twice over.”
“Hm. And is this deal an offer-” Toji rolled his shoulder, settling into a familiar cold detachment. “Or a demand?”
“You are a Zen’in through and through Toji-boyo. You know your place, unlike that upstart.” The look on her face hadn’t changed, even after all these years. Like the rest of the faces in the jujutsu world. Like he was just another curse to be thrown into a dark hole somewhere never to be seen again. “Despite your deficiencies.”
Megumi crashed into the back of his legs from the doorway. “I’m not going.”
Damn it, hadn't he told told him to stay inside? "Megumi."
“No, me and ‘Miki were fine! We didn’t need you or her mom- you keep leaving. You keep ruining everything!”
“Megumi.”
“No! I’m not gonna go! Not without ‘Miki! I like it here. I even liked it when you were here sometimes. It’s okay if you can’t stay forever. I won’t be mad. I don’t need you. But me and ‘Miki, we’re forever. Can’t you just leave again this time? Leave us alone forever?”
The words hit sharper than he knew he had the right to feel. “You don’t know anything, kid. You're going.”
Megumi kicked him. “Why’d you even come back?”
Toji pushed him back towards the door. “For fucks sake. No one else will take you, do you understand? Nobody.”
The Zen’in would make a weapon, but to anyone else? A dead kid. And he refused to be the one tossing the brat into that grave, that curse filthied hole no one expected him to return from.
Megumi bares his teeth at him, looking more his son than his wife’s in a long, long while. “Fine, you don’t have to take care of us. We’ll be okay.”
He doesn't get it.
Toji growled. “No, brat, they won’t stop. This family, the name, everything follows you. You'll be better off joining their lot than going against the Zen’in.”
“I won’t be a Zen’in then!”
Not a Zen’in, huh?
Toji feels the memory like another hole punched through his gut. The feeling he’d been burying somewhere in his head finally u earthed itself.
What if that hadn’t been a death dream? What if that Gojo brat really had made good on his last words?
What if...
Toji finds himself speaking before his brain can catch up with his mouth. A bout of recklessness he was familiar with took over his lungs. “Fine. Fine. Deals off. Kid can do whatever the fuck he wants. If he doesn’t wanna go, he doesn’t go.”
From the look on Ogami’s face, he knows she hadn’t expected that from him. Definitely pulling and kicking and screaming. Perhaps the red seal ink of his hanko on paper. A wire transfer, maybe.
From his peripherals, he sensed movement from the floors above and below him. Ogami hadn’t come alone. Things could get ugly from here.
“Megumi. Get in the house.”
The kid, as if hearing the dangerous tone in his voice gives him one last look before darting inside like a kicked dog. Toji ignores the hurt in his eyes as he makes sure he slams the door shut tight.
“This would’ve been easier if you had been born normal. That body of yours shook off my grandson.” Ogami stares up at him, all the cordiality gone from her expression. “Maybe that son of yours would make a better match after the Zen’in are through with you.”
Toji pitied the hag. She’d probably seen whatever bullshit sum of money the Zen’in offered her to upend his life and neglected to pay attention to his reputation. “Oh. I get it. You planned for me to come back with strings attached.”
Toji smiled with his teeth, sharp and ugly. “Well, that’s too damn bad ain’t it? Turned out to be a real boy and everything.”
Toji felt himself relax, getting ready to give the Zen’in a proper welcome back with his re entrance into the world. They’d gotten complacent. He could see the tremor in her hands for the terror it was. Granny had never been one for mortal things such as old age. Her voice barely left the bluff out of her tone as she stepped backwards, thumbing her string of prayer beads. “T-the clan will not settle for less.”
“Good thing I left that godforsaken clan years ago.” Ogami eyes barely had time to widen. It always ticked Toji off how sorcerers always seemed to assume things would always go their way. “And by the way, granny? It’s Fushiguro.”
Pulling a trigger had never felt so easy.
For some reason, most employers tended to hate Toji.
When he called Shiu with a granny’s corpse and a dozen other Zen’in hired sorcerors at his feet, he just hadn't expected Shiu to be another one of them.
Shiu’s words are just as numbing as the cold outside. “Look, we’ve had our good runs. I don’t know how with how often you seem to do what ever the fuck you want but there’s no way I’m having to do anything with this. You just murdered the messengers of one of the Great Clans, Toji. You went back on a deal and they’ll be after you.”
“Please, since when have you cared about how the jujutsu world operates-”
“Since they’ve been half my clientele.” Shiu hisses through his teeth. “You think bounties come from random, unaffiliated sorcerers? No. Most of the time its the clans covering their asses from deserters like you from doing shit exactly just like this-”
Shiu took a long breath from the otherside of the phone. “Fuck. Toji, you really did it this time. You know, say what you want about that shiny family name you were born with but at least it left you do what you wanted-“
Toji cuts him off viciously. “Fucking talk to me like you know shit about my family name, Shiu, and you’ll be my next bounty-“
“I’m just trying to be honest with you here! Honestly? The only thing that could possibly save you from the clans now are the clans. If it were just you, I’d bet on them never catching you until you were an old fart hiding somewhere in Jeju a decade from now. With the brats though? God, Toji. Why didn’t you just go with what they offered?”
If it had been just Megumi? Just like before he'd died?
In a heartbeat. He’d give that kid back to the cesspool without guilt. He was a tough little shit, he had to be, being his kid and with that shiny technique… well he’d end up a bratty young lord like that Gojo brat.
He’d be wanted. Maybe not loved, Toji understood how rare and short something like that was, but he wouldn’t have to struggle for scraps.
Toji knew he had no right to want anything from the kid after the shit he’d let him be born into and before it all he’d made his peace with selling him off.
And then there was Tsumiki. No cursed energy, no technique, completely normal Tsumiki. Tsumiki the little accountant who hated math and wanted to be a ballerina.
And then that night he’d died. A grown up Megumi who still had his mother’s name. Toji hadn’t wanted more than booze and women for a long, long time. And the person Toji wanted to see… well obviously the kid hadn’t needed him to get there.
Not a Zen’in, huh?
Toji turns from the memory with a sharp jerk of his head. “Well. Thanks for jack shit, Shiu.”
He hangs up the phone before he can hear more excuses that’ll make him want to walk to the nearest bar or pachinko casino and pass out there. He finds his back leaning against the door on the ground until a small hand tugs at his pants. He meets a pair of dark eyes. Megumi still raises his arms up towards him and Toji can’t exactly comprehend why after everything. He still reaches out, allowing the kid whatever he wants, even if wanting anything to do with Toji anymore was stupid. He supposed he was just like his mother in that way. Stupid… kind. To an ugly fault.
“Whose the dad here, kid? You’re really showing me up, huh?”
“It's cold. You made me go outside. You’re warm. Can you stay still?”
Can you stay?
Toji doesn’t answer the unspoken question and the kid is wordless as he sinks his face into his spiky hair.
Between Shiu’s cold shoulder, the Zen’in forcing them to damage control with their landlord who'd probably call the cops if he could see curse guts, and rationing the last of their Cool Whip money, Toji was bound to forget a thing or two through everything.
His dying words being one of them. Granted, he did spend most days trying to forget about them. If only he hadn’t chosen words that would send a white haired brat sniffing around to bite him in the ass. At least he had half the mind to move Granny Ogami's body fairly quickly and fight the remaining sorcerers off the complex grounds.
“How the fuck are you alive?”
As if he were a testament to his horrible Zen'in luck, the Gojo brat finds his way to his front door where Ogami's blood is probably somewhere there still drying. “I could ask you the same thing.”
Gojo stares for a long while, trying to find the words to confront Toji's matter of fact voice. And probably the lack of killing each other with the doormat. Toji rolls his shoulders, itching to slam the door in his face. “I killed you. You killed me. Old news. Can you get lost now? I don't have time for this.”
“You killed me first! And- and- and-“ Gojo sputters. “I was a teenager!”
Toji rolls his eyes. “Boo fuckin’ hoo. Everyone hates teenagers. It wasn’t personal. Why are you here, brat?” He'd like to get this over with. He was pretty sure he had a job lined up with one of Shiu's competitors soon. He'd have to leave the brats with a couple of weapons and trap the door but they should be good for the time being.
“You absolute douche. You’re the one who begged me to look after your kid as you literally died in front of me-“
“I didn’t ‘beg’-“ Toji corrected.
The Gojo brat points at him vehemently. “Shut up! Beggar!”
“Okay, now that’s just classist.”
Toji looks at the kid, trying to figure out the sense of wrongness he gets looking at him. He’s ready to attribute it to his general brattiness but looking at the kid’s tense, grumpy face makes it obvious.
“And where’s the broody brat? Your boyfriend mad at you, punk?”
His question is answered immediately. The Gojo brat doesn’t say much as much as he shows it. It might’ve been the worst possible thing to say Toji began to realize as purple sparks sizzled at the kids palms and his eyes darkened, that unnatural bright blue suddenly becoming much more unsettling. “Shut up, you shriveled old nut sack-“
“Wouldn’t have asked if I did know. Especially since you got all pissy about it.”
“You know what- everyone knows.” The brat's expression shutters closed. Icy. “Geto Suguru no longer attends nor is affiliated with Tokyo Tech.”
Ooooh. “Oh, he defected? Good for him.”
Toji was expecting the cursed energy that sizzled past his head. The adrenaline rush that always hit him at the start of a good fight was a familiar buzz in his gut as he began reaching for his blades.
“You up for round two? I won’t get cocky this time, I’ve got actual bills to pay.”
It wasn’t his fault the Gojo brat couldn’t take a compliment. He’d honestly meant it for that shadow of his. That Geto brat had that same tired look in his eye that he often saw in the mirror when he’d last seen him. The jujutsu world was truly a cesspool he wouldn’t suggest anyone unless they could fit into it.
“You know what pisses me off? Rich brats who think they know everything.” Toji is met with another targeted hit that he bats away easily. “Newsflash, brat, there’s a million different ways to get past that annoying no no square you got going on. You ain’t old enough to know anything."
Before he can really get into another round of murder on his doorstep, a shrill voice stops them both in their tracks.
"You blew up my drawing!" Turning around, Toji finds a smoking crater where a stray burst of cursed energy must've soared over his shoulder. Where a line of freshly put up crayon art had been, was only soot. Tsumiki stomped up to the door, pencil in hand and Toji immediately moved, the muscle memory of being pushed around the kitchen by the brats coming to him easily. "Clean it up! Now!"
Before either of them could protest, they'd been handed cleaning supplies and locked in the living room. They wordlessly made themselves useful as Tsumiki peaked in and monitored them from afar.
“I really did die. I didn’t lie about that.” Toji found himself saying as he swept up the charred remains of a handful of Tsumiki's glittered papers. “That deal I had with the Zen’in… fell through.”
Gojo rocked back and forth on his feet, only springing into action when Tsumiki glared at him and handed him a dustpan. “I heard someone murdered a couple of sorcerers nearby. Found out a kid with your last name lived here too so...”
Toji swore. He'd made one of the brats put down a name on the paperwork while he haggled (flirted) with the receptionist about their room prices. He guessed it was too much to ask a kid to come up with a fake name on the spot.
Toji swept the last of the soot into the dustpan held by Gojo. "So you gonna kill me and take them or what?"
Gojo winced. "I'm not really into the whole 'child stealing' that most clans seem to enjoy."
He then perks up, a blinding smile and annoying, grating tone as he chirps. "But how's this: we do a test run! Your time and skills for jobs and cash!"
Toji deadpanned. "You sound like a car salesman. I'm not tryna sell off a used Toyota, I'm trying to pawn off my brats-"
The kid disappears in a comical poof noise and a post it note with a phone number and a cartoon cat with sunglasses smiles devilishly up at him.
...Toji hates kids.
The Gojo heir sticks to him like sorcerer guts and gum.
It starts small. A check here and there with details of a odd job he'd found him. Little post it notes with parent conferences are on the fridge. He trashes those and still ends up teleported to the conference minutes before it starts despite being nowhere near it.
The little shit keeps showing up as if he can sense Toji straying. Most notably, when he takes the tiny, devil hustlers out for lunch one day.
Really, he doesn't explicitly say its a ploy for the woman in business attire and a name brand leather bag over her jeweled wrist who meets his eyes while he pays for the kid’s lunch. In his peripheral, he can see the clever faced brats sitting at their table a ways away, Megumi gagging and Tsumiki subtly sizing the woman up. Before Toji can get anywhere though, a lean arm snakes across his shoulders.
“Hey, Miss! My dad has two other kids over there-” Toji looks to his left to find the fucking Gojo brat cheerfully pointing a thumb at the table where his brats try to hide behind the too large menus unsuccessfully. “Aaaand he’s also broke as hell so I’m looking forward to you paying our club dues and uniform fees-“
The sweet blush across the woman’s cheeks turns into an angry, embarrassed red and she shoots out of her seat immediately for the door. The two of them almost start another massive fight before Megumi begins to pelt them with stolen french fries, saying they're being embarrassing. Gojo takes the out and is gone before Toji can get his hands around his neck.
The brat doesn't stop there, and often makes it through the supermarket checkout line, explicitly remembering buying a case of Asahi and scratch tickets alongside the groceries only for him to get home and unload a box of canned milk tea and a paperback Parenthood For Dummies in replacement.
The kid is getting better at teleportation, he’ll give him that. But at the frequency the brat fucks with his life, he also gets used to the whooshing noises he unsubtly leaves behind. Annoyingly, even after socking the kid a handful of times in the fluctuations between keeping up Infinity and warping space, the interventions remain persistent.
Most days go by grating on his nerves.
“I can’t find my shoes!” Tsumiki will screech.
"They're under the sink." Toji will burn another breakfast to ash. He'll dump the pan in the trash and start over. He's gonna need to buy more pans.
“I don’t like green beans.” Megumi's voice will pop up.
Toji will dollop more butter in the pan, wincing as the high heat gobbles it up quickly. “Well, I just bought a whole bag of it so tough.”
Megumi will pull at him. “Mm’not gonna eat it.”
Toji's eye will twitch and he'll plate the slightly charred green beans into Megumi’s bento box. “Fine. Just eat around it.”
“No. The green bean smell is on everything now. I want curry.” The kid will say this as though he hadn’t just watched Toji pour it in the box without saying nothing.
“I’m not gonna start over to make goddamn curry just because you don’t like green beans-”
He figures out boxed curry. Most of his days after meeting the Gojo kids go like it. He discovers coupons for grocery stores, finds his hanko in between Tsumiki teaching him how to balance a budget and begrudgingly cashing in checks the Gojo brat leaves around. It leaves him less time for bounty jobs. It makes him too damn busy he can't recall when the last job even was. In between running errands for one sorcerer brat, Gojo, he gets dragged into watching Doraemon by Megumi, the other. He figures out whatever shit they’re calling math these days for Tsumiki’s worksheets. Later, he takes her to ballet lessons they can afford now. At some point he just says fuck it, and sends more inane expense bills to the Gojo brat in Tsumiki's cat envelopes. He brings Megumi to a cat cafe. He buys detergent for clothes Megumi grows out of like a weed and new shoes to replace the ones Tsumiki keeps losing.
Tsumiki has a horrible habit of losing things. Of course, it takes their first shopping trip to a major mall for it to happen the other way around. At some point he realizes he's down a kid and backtracks but the damage is still done.
He finds her sitting on a fountain crying herself so hard she has a bloody nose. He was also begining to learn kids were massive germy, snot monsters and Tsumiki for all her mini adulting was no different. Toji doesn't know if it’s his glare to blame everyone who ignored his kid sobbing her eyes out alone or if it happened after. He ends up on his knees being stared down by the crowds as they shuffle past them, averting their eyes.
“Hey. None of that. Don’t tilt your head back, they only do that shit to look cool in movies.”
He angles her chin down, holding the tissues he's been having to keep in his pockets for his snot prone brats in place as blood drips steadily from her nose.
“Pinch it. Look down. You wanna make sure you’re not sending that blood back down your throat. You’ll make yourself sick.”
Tsumiki barely looks at him now that he's made himself known. The loud sobbing from earlier quietly stuck in her throat. “Kid. Tsumiki. You’re not in any place where I’m gonna stop you from crying, y’know.”
Tsumiki’s sniffles were finally loud enough to hear after. She wailed, rubbing her face on his shoulder. "I lost my shoe again- we just bought it."
Toji countered. “I’ll take care of it.”
Tsumiki sobbed. “You weren’t here! You left again!”
Toji sighed, stiffly awkward and exhausted. Tsumiki, the little fighter, didn't seem to mind too much anyway, continuing to pull herself closer into his arms. “…You’re a fuckin’ tough one, ain’t ya?”
That seemed to calm her down, if infinitesimally. “You suck. I hate you.”
Toji tried not to laugh. “Yeah, yeah.”
“I want ice cream. Take me out for ice cream.”
“Isn’t your face a bit too snotty for ice cream?”
“Your fault.” Tsumiki sniffed. “Ice. Cream.”
If Shiu and his circles could see him now. Fushiguro Toji. Soft. Beaten by a few tears. “For fucks sake- fine. Okay.”
They go out for ice cream.
Days after the whole debacle, Tsumiki stays surprisingly grumpy even when he doesn’t argue about the ten flavors of ice cream or the new glitter pens or the shimmer notebooks. At some point between his two devils muttering to each other and the next request of emotional bribe being a set of wolf plushies and Digimon cards- he realizes he’s being hustled and can’t find the annoyance to drown out the pride that washes over him. If only they’d hustle someone who wasn’t him, most of the time it backfired since he was their only mode of financial security.
Somewhere after they come home and he burns a dinner for the millionth time, he nags at the kids to go to bed before falling into the couch to rest his eyes. A bone deep exhaustion slowly eats away at him and the dream he ends up having feels just like one he’d had while dying.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.” Toji says to the wispy mass of everything before him. He is a dead man wandering an abandoned Shibuya street with blood on his hands. Toji keeps wandering until he meets the gaze of a void with its dark eyes and carefully folded hands. Before he wakes, the void forms slowly in front of him to gently press against the scar on his lip. She smiles familiar, her nose pink and dark hair spiked, falling into her eyes as he wakes up.
Toji lays on the couch for a good while before the kids get up to watch the sunlight pour through the cracks of their boarded apartment windows. Warm. Quiet. Toji rubs his sleep wet eyes before he stands to his feet.
“You brats have ten minutes to get ready for school!”
And then he does it all again.
Some days are quieter.
“Dad.” Toji heard a familiar call out to someone. He continued dicing the carrots, moving to toss them into the pot of quietly bubbling curry when he heard the name again.
“Dad!” This time, he chose to look around, out the window where he found no couples or fathers with their children. Up until he looked to the corner of the windowsill, Megumi partially hidden behind its curtains.
Toji narrows his eyes. “Kid?”
Megumi shuffles his feet. “I, um. I don’t know where my notebook is. You’re supposed to sign something in it.”
Toji reflects the awkwardness the kid gives off. Dad. He had called him Dad. “Right. Okay. Ah…”
They spend the next awkward ten minutes searching the apartment for the missing paperwork. He even goes as far as lifting the couch for the kid to search, covering the sharp edge with his hand to blunt it. Kids been getting tall. It’s odd because he’s finally been around enough to notice it happen.
“Found it.”
“So. What do you need me to sign?”
Once upon a time, Toji would have to rummage around the place for his hanko but with all the bullshit grown up stuff he’d been subjected to for the past year or so, it didn’t take long for him to find it around.
The form is obviously handcrafted and Toji can make out the squiggly scrawl of Megumi’s penmanship. He takes a good look at the top where he thinks he can make out a cartoonish doodle of what he thinks is an elephant, although with the spots it could also be a giraffe with a very short neck. The title of the ‘form’ ends with the word ‘zoo’ but the rest is barely legible.
Toji sighs. “You know where my hanko is, kid. You and ‘Miki practically did all the paperwork while I was away. This isn’t even a real school form.”
Megumi sways in front of him, twisting his fingers together into different animal shapes and doesn’t meet his eyes.
“Y’know if you want something you can just take it from my wallet.” Toji shifts, just as uncomfortable as his kid in front of him. “We got the cash for it now, so.”
Megumi’s nervous expression shutters and through mumbled words the paper in Toji’s hands is snatched and Megumi has vanished just as quick. Toji chalks it up to another one of the kid’s quirks and slumps backwards into the couch to mentally bemoan parenthood for a good twenty minutes before he decides to get hit shit together again.
Later on that night, Tsumiki, armed with a large basket of dirty clothes, walks across the living room to where he was idly cleaning the innards of a few of his pistols. Despite holding a literal gun in his hand, she took a moment to whack him across the back of his head with a hand towel before stalking away towards the laundry room.
“Stop interrogating him and just take him to the zoo like a regular dad, dummy.”
Toji barely had any time to be baffled before she swung the laundry door firmly shut.
They went to the zoo the next day. They were banned by the time they got back.
At least Megumi seemed pretty happy with the new wolf puppy nestled in his closet. As long as they played their cards right, Tsumiki and the landlord would never know.
(Toji had never been good at cards.)
As Toji brings Megumi to his meeting with Gojo the next day, the landlord finds out about puppy Haiiro. Apparently, harboring a wolf baby in a bedroom closet is the extent that this landlord will stop taking bribes and/or stop being swayed by either Megumi or Tsumiki bawling. It was a good thing Tsumiki was at ballet while Toji spent most of the morning making Megumi shove their apartment into the gullet of a Ten Shadows frog summon. Everything would be safe for the time being, albeit covered in curse juice but only Megumi would be able to tell anyway.
“Is that a Ueno zoo shirt?”
Toji blinks down at the too small fitted top with a cartoon panda across the front of it. Megumi wears the same one. He’s pretty sure he got this shirt for Tsumiki and it rides up a little uncomfortably but he hasn’t done laundry for a good while (also why he bought the souvenir shirts) and he couldn’t exactly do his laundry while he was getting kicked out.
The Gojo brat stands on the edge of the entrance to Tokyo Tech as Megumi pipes up from where he hangs around Toji’s neck and over his back.
“Mm. We got a puppy yesterday.”
“Oh, so not the zoo, a pet store then?”
“No, we got Haiiro from the zoo.”
Megumi and the Gojo brat spend a good while blinking at each other. He can see how painful the gears turning in the punk’s cursed energy shot brain so he sets down Megumi to break the stalemate.
“Pst. Hey, ‘Gumi.” Toji pulls his wallet from his pocket and deposits it in the kid's hands. “Go get your old man something from the vending machine.”
Translation in the Fushiguro household: get lost.
The Gojo kid finally blinked away the stupid look on his face. “Uh, you’re gonna give a toddler your whole wallet…?”
You get given a wallet by mistake? No, you don’t. That’s You Money now. It applied to flustered bank tellers who fell for the hot single dad with two cute ass kids act, to cashiers who fell for the same thing, rich businesswomen single moms, trust fund man-babies, and so on. Toji enforced the same unspoken rule himself- you just had to pay the Dad Tax.
Megumi’s eyes go wide when he sees the amount of yen currently in his hands and runs off to where the vending machines are before Toji can change his mind.
“That kid of yours is gonna inherit your horrible spending habits.”
“Look in the mirror, silver spoon.”
Megumi comes back minutes later, grinning. He holds out his hand to Toji. “These are mine. This is yours.”
He guarded the overflowing sweater pouch of snacks he had accumulated via flipping the underside of his shirt hem up. In his hand he gave Toji’s usual choice of candy bar and a soda from the stash. Good man.
“Hm. Don’t make yourself sick. I'm not gonna clean it up.”
Megumi responded by stuffing his face with milk bread wrapped plastic, his cheeks puffed out.
“You not gonna share all that with your dad, kiddo?” The Gojo brat fake smiled at Megumi shakily transferring snacks from his shirt to the panda zoo backpack he left behind with them. “Seems a lot for one kid. I could help you lighten the load-“
“Get your own snacks, freeloader. Not my fault your dad doesn’t buy you candy.”
The look on the punk’s face made Toji wish he had a camera. “Freeloader?! I'll have you know I can afford to buy my own candy, rugrat. Don’t need your jackass old man’s candy anyway and who you callin’- I’m the reason your dad even has money-”
Megumi up until this point had just stared at the punk’s tirade with wide eyes. Within seconds of the raised voice though, he had devolved into high pitched wailing only a toddler could accomplish without bursting a lung.
It was amusing to watch the Gojo brat backtrack. “Wait! Wait! Stop crying, please, I didn’t mean it. You want more candy? I’ll give you whatever you want.”
Toji sat back on a nearby bench to crack the chilled vending machine soda can open. He took a sip as Megumi’s great big sobs immediately dried up and the kid held his hand out expectantly towards the taller teen. “Okay, then. I want ¥1000.”
The Gojo brat looked absolutely comical, gaping at Megumi’s attempted hustle. He turned to him, as if expecting him to do something about it. Toji returned the look with a long, noisy sip of his soda. “…I take it back, your kids are just as terrible as you are.”
That earned him a signature Fushiguro scowl and a tiny kick to the shin. Toji cackled at Megumi’s grumpy pout and the Gojo brat doubled over. “You stop crying after they give you the money kid, not before. The hell’s me and ‘Miki been teaching you?”
Megumi stuck his tongue out at him and Toji couldn’t fight the warm pride that burst from his chest at the sight. If he was being honest he didn’t think he’d want to in the first place.
“Yeah, yeah. Get outta here. Don’t go where I can’t see you.” As Megumi ran off to play in the empty courtyard at the foot of the stairs up to Tokyo Tech, a short cut laugh came from the teen on the ground.
“This is so weird.”
“What?”
Gojo studied his face for a moment and scowled. “You’re a dad.”
Toji scoffed, his eyes still trained on where the kid was running off to. “Why else would I be dragging that gremlin around? Where did you think the tyke came from?”
Gojo stood up to sit in the empty space next to him. “I don’t know. Thought you spawned him from whatever hellhole baby Zen'in crawl out of. Besides, thats not what I meant. You’re actually getting decent at it.”
He tells himself that it’s the hellhole comment that hits a little too hard and Toji prickles. “Nice try. It’s not happening. Congrats, you strong armed me into your little get help scheme for a while but you’re still taking them.”
Toji leaves no room for rebuttal even as the teen before him opens his mouth to comment. “You think, what, reforming me will fix anything? Stop kidding yourself. If you want some outlet, go play house with the actual criminal you really want.”
The brat winces at that, getting a familiar lovelorn look on his face that Toji has become accustomed to. At his vicious, pointed comment Toji half expects this to be the end of whatever pity pet project this is to him. Instead, after a deep bout of silence, Gojo simply asks him, “If you don’t care, then why stay? Why try to convince me to take them? Why pick me if you hate me so much?”
The dream he'd been playing on repeat in the back of his the past year finally puts itself into words.
“I saw the kid. When I died." Toji lets it sit between them unbearable and heavy. "He was older- made it to your age, actually. He still had my name and he was wearing your uniform."
Toji tilted his head towards the Tokyo Tech gakuran. "He looked alive. Powerful. Untouchable.”
Like we had been, he doesn't say.
“None of it would ever happen because of me. If anything, it would be in spite of it." Toji breathes, more to himself than the teen in front of him. “I was about to kill him. And… he looked afraid. Stubborn, but afraid. Didn’t recognize me one bit.”
Toji shakes his head to level a stare at Gojo at his side. “Whatever bullshit this intervention is, it’s not gonna change what I am. The Zen’in made me and I can't run from that.”
“But all this shit, everything he’s inheriting?" He watches as Megumi's hands folded skillful and careful in front of him, in a way that Toji never got a hold of no matter how many days his own father had drilled him hoping something would stick. "It’ll bless and curse him in equal measure.”
Gojo looks like he understood that too much. Toji looks out to where Megumi throws a ball back and forth to his wolf summons. Sharp barks of yipping, childish laughter fill the empty courtyard to the brim. “They’re gonna need more. They say they don’t but I always did. I’m not sticking around when they realize I can’t give that to them.”
“You're right. They don't need you.”
Toji looked away, stubbornly setting his eyes on Megumi in front of him. Gojo hums, like he'd just commented on the weather.
“You know, I'd already planned to take them the first time I saw ‘em?” Toji willed himself stone still at the revelation. The Gojo brat slung and arm over the back of the bench they sat on, his voice nonchalant and swaying. “But I dunno. They didn’t look at you like I thought they should’ve. And when I put you through the wringer, you just dug your feet in. You fought so hard for someone trying to get rid of them at every turn.”
"Could I give them everything they could possibly need to live? Of course. But what they want?" Gojo whistled. "Dads a tall order."
He turned to look at Toji, pulling at the cloth around his face and peering over the edge of his blindfold. “If I said I’d take them right now would you really go? What made you stay? Really.”
Not a Zen'in, huh?
Toji didn't bless him with an answer.
“Think what you want, you sad, old fart. But I’m gonna fix things. No more fighting, no more dead kids. Even for your stupid, demon brats.” Toji wants to believe him more than anything.
Instead, they sit in silence for a while, watching Megumi summon his wolf twins and making them play tag with him in the courtyard. Toji thinks them sitting there watching his kid run wild in this school is an answer by itself. Once he finds his words, Toji tries to sounds less antagonistic than before.
"What did you drag me here to talk about anyway? I know people think I'm your attack dog now, but I think even old Yaga would have issues with a student killer on campus."
"A job." Gojo smiles, young and bright. "How do you feel about becoming a live-in weapons instructor?"
And so Toji stood on the threshold of Tokyo Tech. He remembered how the beginning of the end started under these same torii gates and his hands move without him thinking, above where the hole in his gut should’ve been. From the way the Gojo kid rubbed at his sternum, he guessed the phantom pains were getting to him too.
Toji often wondered to himself if anyone could have made it out of the Zen'in without their name. He never thought he could himself despite all the trouble he went to leaving it behind, resigning himself to live and die by what he’d been made for.
"Fushiguro Megumi! Slow down."
Toji found his son waving ahead of him, hair spiked up and nose pink from the summer sunlight as he ran to catch up. The smile he gave him was quiet, warm.
After all those years questioning himself, Toji thinks he'd finally been blessed with an answer.