Chapter Text
Megumi was tired. Bone-deep exhaustion turned his limbs to burning liquid, knotted muscles straining as he dragged himself out of the dark depths of a street lamp’s shadow, knees scraping against the concrete. He sputtered a shallow cough, rubbing his knuckles against his lips, checking for blood. Of course, he found none. Shadows just tasted like blood—blood and death. Familiar iron filled his mouth though, and he knew that had nothing to do with his technique.
“Kon.”
He didn’t know how much control he had, but he felt himself pull his hands into the familiar gesture and summoned his companion.
The Shikigami was there in an instant, rising out of the dark beneath him, it’s large body blocking out the sun as it settled on four legs, nosing at Megumi’s face.
Megumi huffed, a soft sound that may have been a laugh if he wasn’t in so much pain, and wrapped his arms around Kon’s neck. “Hey there, big boy.”
The wolf chuffed, nudging Megumi’s arms almost as if it were trying to encourage him into climbing onto it’s back. Megumi was tempted really, with the allure of soft fur under his fingers and the underlying warmth trying to lull him to sleep. But he shouldn’t—sleep was the last thing he needed right now. Rest, yes, but the blissful quiet of unconsciousness was nothing if not deadly.
It was times like these when he missed Kuro and Shiro. Sure, he knew that his two loyal pups weren’t exactly gone, only melded into one body. But that didn’t stop the small twinge of sadness that crumpled his face into a grimace as he stared into Kon’s eyes and found no softness. No familiarity, only an unbreakable bond tethering them together, love replaced by duty. Megumi trusted Kon, but he didn’t think he had it in him to earn the same back.
Megumi groaned, and looked away. He could feel sweat and something else, sticky and thick, trickling down his neck. The mid-day sun was merciless, and Megumi knew he didn’t have time. It had only been minutes since his fateful fight with Reggie and the longer he stayed on the streets, in broad daylight, the more likely it was that he would get caught at his weakest.
Megumi dragged himself to his feet, Kon supporting more than half of his weight as he turned to gauge his surroundings. The streets were expectantly empty but Megumi couldn’t risk any watchful eyes observing his every move so he moved forward, heading towards the small convenience store a few yards ahead, across the street. The place looked too run down to be housing any ancient sorcerors—shattered glass from the windows scattered across the pavement, the metal frame of the entrance door hanging off a singular hinge.
If he was lucky, there would be no more fighting for a few hours and he could clean out his wounds and maybe find some scrap of food before he set out once again. If he was not, a sorceror would most likely be hidden inside, maybe behind the small cashier’s counter he could make out from this distance, and he would be instantly knocked out if not killed whenever he came within range.
Luck was not on his side today. Megumi hadn’t even made it halfway across the street before the hefty weight of his Shikigami disappeared from his side and he toppled forward, only catching himself with scraped palms seconds before his knees smacked into the ground. Kon was already gone, a blur as he jumped through the metal frame of the store’s entryway with a menacing snarl.
One. Two. Three seconds.
Time seemed to slow, and before Megumi could even fix his eyes upon the woman lounging languidly against the doorframe, before he could even move he felt it.
Air punched out of his lungs, white filling his vision as a ceaseless pressure bared down on him, crushing him. He couldn’t think beyond the blinding pain, the fear but his body seemed to move on it’s own, and he released his technique, vision swimming as he jumped to his feet in one swell swoop. Kon was gone, already sinking into the shadows and with him, some of the weight and fear lifted off of Megumi’s chest. He would not lose him again.
The woman was young. Couldn’t have been older than a teenager, blood red hair held up falling over her shoulders, fair skin almost blinding in the sun. A thick blue sweater hung over her slim frame in stark contrast to the regal, embroidered gown beneath. A slick smile graced her face, but she showed no signs of surprise, an uncomfortable calm hanging in the air around her.
Something was definitely wrong. Megumi was still, didn’t dare move a muscle or look away from her piercing stare. A sweater? They were in the thick of the hottest days of summer, when even a light layer of cloth felt inhibiting. Putting on a sweater meant asking for a heat stroke. And there she was, smiling at him, covered in multiple layers of the warmest fabric.
Fuck, was she shivering?
“Ah. I didn’t expect a family rescue.”
Megumi startled. Was it—
“What?” His voice was hoarse, enough to sound threatening, but he could feel it, the fear creeping back in. If she had Tsumiki—
The woman stepped forward and Megumi recoiled, clutching at his chest. Within seconds, he was gasping for air, fighting back the urge to fall to his knees and instead clawed at his throat.
Her smile was unnerving, ever fixed on her face not even a twitch as she spoke. Had her lips even moved? Megumi didn’t know but he wasn’t in his right mind to care. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, the stabbing in his lungs becoming a throbbing remnant compared to the relentless barrage in his mind. Tsumiki, Tsumiki, Tsumiki.
Megumi sunk.
The darkness had barely engulfed him before he pulled up through the shadow cast against the convenience store wall, mere feet behind the young woman, “Domain Expansion—“
She hadn’t even moved from her spot, didn’t even bother to turn as his throat closed up. Iced over.
Huh.
It was cold. It was freezing, ice in his veins, frost seeming to creep under his skin trapping the cold inside him. His feet were leaden blocks and the blood in his body felt like it had slowed to a halt even as it rushed in his brain. Fuck.
She had him. He was too tired after the last fight. It had barely even been a few minutes. His hands refused to pull up and move through the gesture of summoning his domain. Not that it would have mattered. His domain would have ripped him apart in this weak state and he couldn’t even summon his shikigami.
There had to be another way. Tsumiki.
The ice in his through sliced painfully as he croaked out, “My sister...”
The woman finally turned, but there—a glimpse at the back of her hair. A golden hair pin with sliver engravings tucked into the silken locks. Megumi could barely make out the kanji carved into it. Ameya.
She was no ordinary sorceror. She was one of the vessels that Kenjaku had awoken, an ancient being with possibly thousands of years on him.
Ameya frowned, the downturn of her lips almost curious in nature. “Your sister?”
Megumi groaned, straining against the hold on him. “Tsumiki.”
“Who?”
When Megumi’s eyes met hers, the confusion on her face was terrifyingly genuine. The relief that coursed through him was nearly enough to knock him out. No, no, he is not going to pass out now, it wasn’t over yet.
She watched as he struggled in place, gaze piercing through him. Who was it then? Did she have one of the Zenin clan? No, that’s impossible. He was the only one of Zenin blood in the arena right now, and unless someone of the clan weasled their way into the Culling Game after his entrance and was immediately caught by one of the most powerful sorcerors in the district, there had to be something he was missing here.
The ice crept up through his throat, frost covering the roof of his mouth and he gagged, once again opening his mouth.
“Who...” Pain, ripping through his insides. He shouldn’t be conversing with her dammit! He needed to get the hell away from here. She may be all powerful, but Gojo had been his tutor, he could figure this out—
Wait.
She tilted her head, predatory, like she had heard his thoughts and smirked, as if to nudge him in the right direction.
He hadn’t heard her name. Ameya. Megumi knew coming into the game who the sorcerors trapped inside most likely were—their names, their techniques, the era in which they were born. There was Kashimo, Kurusu...
No Ameya. She was most definitely one of the ancient ones, Megumi knew by the power of her cursed energy, there was no way that she had slipped under their radar, not someone that was currently slicing his insides to bits. Who the fuck was she?
Ameya didn’t give him any clarification, only continued that disturbing stare, like a predator watching her trapped prey. They weren’t much far off from it, Megumi unable to even twitch a muscle as she had him in a vice hold. Irritation itched through him, setting his skin on fire. He didn’t have time for this. He needed to rest, get those hundred points and find Tsumiki before Kenjaku could use her for whatever his master plan was.
But first he needed to make sure he didn’t die. If he was useful for anything, it was for the fact that his sister needed him and he would find her, whatever it would take.
Ameya frowned, an actual annoyance ticking at her mouth, the scrunch between her eyebrows.
And all of a sudden the ice was gone. His knees buckled but he caught himself, forced himself to look her in the eye.
“You’re nothing like him,” she groused almost petulantly, like a child. She was one it seemed from the way she shouldered past him, making sure to knock into him hard enough that he took a step back before she headed into the store without even looking back.
She called to him almost as an afterthought, “Be gone. Pests like you aren’t worth my blood and soul. If you die, it would be a cleansing.”
It was then that Megumi’s world shifted.
Cleansing. Soul. The hairpin. Ameya.
Ameya, meaning midnight rain. An ancient name.
Blood-red hair. The sweater. The cold. As cold as the dead. As cold as hell.
The woman in front of him was a necromancer.
Megumi would make the smart decision. He didn’t care who this necromancer was planning on resurrecting or how, he didn’t. He was drained, his well of cursed energy near empty and he had no energy to pick a fight. Tsumiki is all that matters, he told himself.
He wouldn’t go after this woman. Danger lay in that path.
Megumi turned—no. He sprinted. A veil bloomed across the sky, darkness falling over him. The street lights blinked on a few moments later, just as the veil touched the ground and cemented in place, mere feet in front of him. He skidded across the pavement, twisting, back slamming painfully against the unforgiving wall of the barrier. He groaned, smacking his fist back against the wall in exasperation.
And just like that, he was locked in.
Why did this have to happen to him, today of all days? He didn’t have the patience to sift through carefully thought out moves in a fight for his life twice in one day. He hadn’t even made it halfway through his first day in the culling game and he would be dead before sunrise.
“Fuck!” he shouted at the veil above, as if that would do anything. It didn’t even echo.
Whatever this woman wanted, she was willing to toy with him for it. And he refused to think about how powerful she must be to lay down a veil against jujutsu sorcerors inside the largest veil laid down in the history of humanity. Well. Now he had no choice.
Like a man walking to the gallows—terrifyingly not far off from the truth—Megumi turned and headed into the store, slipping through the metal frame and blinking rapidly against the growing darkness. He felt too empty-handed for this situation. If, when it came to a showdown, he wouldn’t risk losing his shikigami against a necromancer this powerful. The pressure of her cursed energy had lessened around him, as if distracted and redirected elsewhere, but it was still there. And from how how darkly lit the place was, there wouldn’t be enough shadows around him to strategize. Best-case scenario, he manages to salvage enough cursed energy inside himself to put up a proper fight. Worst-case, he rips himself apart in the process. Fun.
Small candles lit his way as he crept through the hall, leading to a rundown room in the back end of the store, beyond the aisles and shelfs. Megumi scuffed his shoes on the ground loudly as he walked, humming a cheery tune under his breath—there was no point in stealth, she knew he was coming and he might as well just try and mess up whatever ritual she had started by being unnecessarily loud. He wasn’t sure what a resurrection required, but he couldn’t help but imagine a dozen women dressed in modest robes, standing in a circle chanting some ancient rhymes.
What he found was the exact opposite.
The room was not drenched in blood and sigils, as much as Megumi had expected it. What he found was much worse. It was a simple office room, a large, wooden desk pushed up against the far wall. The room was cloaked in darkness, except for a half-melted candle centered on her desk. The necromancer was seated calmly behind it, eyes focused on the stack of of papers in her hands. Were those glasses perched on her nose? Whatever, it didn’t matter.
Megumi dropped into a ready stance, hands sliding forward into a defensive position. “What do you want from me, woman?”
She looked up, as if just noticing his arrival and answered him with a derisive snort, lips pulling up into a smirk. “Oh, little sorceror. Call me Ameya.”
Megumi refused to give his own name. There will be no sort of familiarity between them.
“Ameya,” he ground out between clenched teeth, eyes sliding to the stack of papers in front of her. Those were printed sheets. Where the hell did a thousand year old sorceror find a printer, and better yet, learn how to use it? He wouldn’t be surprised if she had created a non-disclosure agreement for this meeting, Megumi thought, a bit deliriously. “I don’t give a flying fuck what you’re doing here, but if you let me go I’m just going to pretend this never happened, and you can go about resurrecting whoever you want freely.”
The curse slid of his tongue uneasily, but Megumi was at the end of his rope.
Ameya laughed, head falling back as if she couldn’t believe him.
She lifted up from her seat, leaning over the desk. The sweater slid aside, revealing pale, unblemished skin, uncovered by the dress beneath, with it’s sweepingly deep neckline.
She was flirting with him. The realization came to Megumi like a slap across the face, and something inside him snapped.
He stormed forward, vision tunneling on her face, bright eyes sparkling with mirth, an unnerving smirk twisting her pretty features into something so deeply frustrating to him. The look was so familiar that Megumi couldn’t stop himself from responding accordingly. God, she was acting like Gojo—playful and spoiled, as if this were all just a game, as if she knew something he didn’t and refused to share, just for the fun of it. The casualnesss of it sent a pang of something through him, frustration boiling over.
Two could play at this game.
Before he knew it, Megumi was grabbing the front of her sweater, yanking her forward roughly until her hips smacked into the desk and she jerked, face mere inches away from his.
His hand tightened it’s grip as he leant past, nose brushing against her cheekbone in a way that he knew would rile her up and he settled his lips against the outer curve of her ear. His other hand slid up, curving carefully around the back of her neck, fingers slipping into the hair at her nape.
The pressure around him rocketed, almost as if in warning. One wrong move, and there would more no more at all.
Gathering the tattered pieces of his mind and power, Megumi pushed back, his own cursed energy surging around him, and opened his mouth.
“We can play this game all day, little necromancer,” his voice came out low and angry, startling to his own ears, but he couldn’t stop now even if he wanted to. This was such a bad idea. He could —“But maybe I’ll give you what you want if you stop being a little bitch and tell me.”
It was such a gamble. He could feel her shaking against him, rage tangible in the air, her cursed energy frozen around him, a response to her shock. One. Two. There.
His hand slid up, viper-fast, and pulled the golden hairpin free in one move.
She jerked forward, reaching for him, but he was already gone, melted into one of the only shadows in the room, cast over the floor by her body, the singular candle on her desk flickering faintly.
His body strained as he pulled himself through the sliver of darkness on the far side of the room, a far cry from the kind of shadow he needed to move, but it would have to do.
Megumi had suspected that the hairpin was the eye of her power. That crushing weight of cursed energy that had rendered him useless seemed unusual considering the way Ameya carried herself, carelessly and wild. She acted like a child who had stumbled upon immense power and used it freely to exert her will. The hairpin, tucked carefully into her hair, was an amplifier, Ameya’s own measly amount of cursed energy hidden behind an object imbued with immense power, probably from multiple talented curse wielders. Megumi couldn’t help but think about Playful Cloud, and the way everyone used to be surprised at his cousin’s lack of cursed energy when she wielded the weapon, mistaking it’s power for hers. But the hairpin in his hand was nothing like Playful Cloud. It was something much, much more.
And he could use it.
Megumi had barely made it half way out of the shadow when—she was already there. He twisted sharply and dropped out of the dark like a stone, hooking his thumbs together, the golden hairpin tucked between them.
This was it. His one and only play.
“Nue!”
Megumi crouched away from Ameya’s towering figure, making room for Nue to materialize, waiting for the tell-tale screech of fury following her arrival.
He stilled. The world seemed to pause, not a single shadow rustling. Nothing.
And then—
The cold and ice from earlier was nothing compared to the flaying heat that enveloped him.
Megumi screamed. Pain coursed through every muscle as his limbs locked in place, useless. The hairpin slipped from between in fingers, falling to the floor with a soft ping.
But Megumi didn’t care. Nothing mattered beside the fire in his veins, burning him from the inside out. Blinding white crept into his vision, and Megumi knew he was going to pass out at any second. His scream caught in his throat as it once more closed over.
The hairpin. It wasn’t an amplifier.
It was a dampner. And whatever cursed energy it had caged and tamed now ran wild, craving to kill. He could feel the tendrils of it wrapping around his body, drawing taut from where they pulled back to Ameya. He was wrong. He was so, so wrong, and now he would pay for it with his life.
He wouldn’t accept this end. There were too many people that needed him. But there was nothing Megumi could do as Ameya knelt before him, and picked up the hairpin. She examined it, and then looked back at him. The expression on her face was unreadable. Megumi couldn’t even groan as the pain spiked, as if a knife had been twisted into his abdomen.
She said nothing as she slipped the pin back in her hair, twirling it into place. As she stood up, he could see it, disappointment shining crystal clear in her face.
Megumi jerked, would speak, yell, if he could. She had no right to have that look on her face, direct it toward him, as if her opinion meant something to him.
Through the haze of burning agony, Megumi was vaguely aware of his anger, so unusual and bubbling higher with every second.
He would not break. Not right now. There was no time for him to throw a tantrum. He needed to calm the fuck down and figure out how to break the necromancer’s hold on him, and then a way to get out of here before she did whatever she was planning. Megumi didn’t care which Zenin she wanted to resurrect, and things would only get worse if that person saw him.
But Megumi could do nothing but watch as Ameya strode toward the center of the room, and plopped herself down unceremoniously on the hardwood floor, gown as dark as night fanning out behind her. She was seemingly at ease, but Megumi could see the slight tick of her jaw, lips void of a smile. She didn’t bother to even acknowledge him, as if he was no longer worth her attention.
And in one move, she flipped over a wooden plank, dragged it out of place, and reached in to pull out—
A curse.
It had to be. It couldn’t have been larger than a small child, body deathly still as she shifted it out of the hiding place. Ameya’s fingers were surprisingly gentle as she replaced the plank and moved the body into place, prone before her. Megumi couldn’t help but think that respectful was not a word he thought he would ever assign to a necromancer, but her movements couldn’t be mistaken.
The body was covered in cursed, paper seals, harsh black markings unnervingly similar to the ones that had been wrapped around Sukuna’s fingers before they had fallen away, worn down by age and Sukuna’s growing power.
The one’s on the curse in front of him were far from falling apart, wrapped securely around it’s frame, mummifying the body.
Megumi watched as Ameya’s hand’s took on a soft, golden glow. She pulled the seals off, one-by-one, meticulous and delicate in her work. As the seals fell to the ground around the curse’s face, Megumi could barely catch a glimpse of it’s face. Or the lack of it.
Where the features of a face were supposed to be lay darkness. Depthless and black, it almost reminded him of—shadows. As Ameya removed more seals, Megumi realized that the entire creature itself was made of shadow, almost as if, if she reached to touch it, her hand would slip right through.
Megumi went to speak, dropped his mouth open and let out a strangled cry. His throat was still nailed shut, and the pain had not dampened a bit, but it was less like the sharp tip of a knife, and more like the bludgeoning of a club.
As if recognizing his awareness, Ameya shifted, eyes still focused on the body in front of her, but the slight tilt of her head told him her attention was on him. “Don’t take this as some kind of mercy, little sorceror. It would be a shame if you died before I had the chance to see you lay your eyes upon the greatest creation of this Earth.”
Megumi slumped back as much as he could, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. He didn’t much care about her, but if she was willing to talk to him, he could use that somehow. Somehow, he thought.
He still couldn’t talk, so it seemed like she didn’t want a conversation.
She continued, ignoring his struggle. “This is not a body, as you must be thinking.” She ran her hand, softly, almost reverently against the thing where it’s cheek should be. “It’s a vessel. An empty vessel to house the soul brought to it. It’s nothing but a blank canvas.”
“Did you know,” she asked, a curious lilt to her voice. As if talking about this thing was bringing unknown excitement to her. She talked the way a mother talks about her child, an inventor about his creation. “This vessel has no earthly connection at all. It’s a void. It’s not made of even made of matter. It’s merely a shadow.”
So Megumi was right. But a void...was that even possible?
“Everything in this world is a give and take, Megumi,” she said distractedly, and Megumi wanted to yell his discontent about her using his name so casually. “Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Everything has it’s opposite. Life and Death. Everything has a soul.” she pulled her hands back and settled them loosely in her lap. “This,” she said, and her eyes finally met his.
“This is the lack of one.”
The air seemed to be sucked out of the room, as Megumi’s eyes dropped to the...what exactly was it, if it wasn’t a body, or a curse, or a corpse?
Ah.
A void.
And just like that, Megumi could feel something slide into place in his head.
This wasn’t a resurrection. It was a rebirth.
What Megumi would be witnessing was not the recall of a human’s final wishes personified, its remnants, into a willing—or dead—body, as it usually was, but the recall of a soul.
A void. Not the creation of a life, but carving out a space for it. Whoever is brought back will have no limits beyond their own human mortality—a true second chance at life.
Megumi had the sudden urge to laugh. This was not necromancy. And whoever Ameya was, she was far more dangerous than Megumi had given her credit for.
Ameya seemed unfazed by his revelation, and instead leaned back and closed her eyes. A deep breath in, and out.
And then it started.
If Megumi thought he knew cold, he was poorly mistaken. The temperature dropped so quickly he could barely keep from passing out. His blood felt frozen inside him, and even as he saw the frost creeping frighteningly quickly over him, that wasn’t what truly terrified him. It burned. The air around and inside him was so cold it burned through him. Oh god. Forget about dying in battle, he’s going to die from hypothermia.
His limbs were locked, and the slight range of motion he had previously was now down to nothing.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ameya, right where she had been, as if she was completely unaffected.
No. That’s not right. If he looked closely, Megumi could make out her shaking shoulders, skin speckled with goosebumbs, the hair on it standing on end. Her lips were no longer pink, had lost all their color as they took on a palid blue hue.
Megumi wouldn’t survive whatever this was. He was minutes away from losing himself to unconsciousness, and Ameya looked nowhere near done. He wished he had any bit of cursed energy left in him to reinforce is body, keep his core warm and make sure he didn’t succumb to the cold. But whatever dregs had remained were already gone from fighting against the iron grip Ameya had on him.
He was interrupted from his internal monologue by Ameya’s voice.
She was chanting, in a language he couldn’t understand. An ancient root of modern Japanese that was no longer used. Megumi never wished as much as he did now that he had paid attention during Gojo’s droning lectures about ancient Japanese.
But all those thoughts flew out of his head as he saw the body morph.
The darkness slipped away as flesh and bone wove into place, seemingly out of nowhere. The creation of an actual body. From this angle, Megumi couldn’t make out any of the details, and was immensely relieved for it. He didn’t need to see the innards of a human being outside of a fight.
The temperature plummeted. Fuck. His vision swam, a bout of vertigo hitting him as shivers wracked his body, strong enough to slightly break Ameya’s grip. Sound was muffled, and he could here Ameya’s voice, saying something to him, but it didn’t register.
Cold, cold, cold. He could feel his breaths turn sluggish, few and far inbetween. The slight glow of the room dimmed, and Megumi figured the transformation must be complete. That was unnaturally quick.
“Fushiguro Megumi.” Ameya’s voice rang through the haze.
Wait. How the fuck did she know his name?
“Say hello to your—“
The world fell away, and Megumi succumbed to the darkness.
Fushiguro Toji opened his eyes. Blinked once. Twice. The world was a blur around him, muddled and shifting. Too bright.
He could feel—feel—the Earth below him. Hard, sturdy planks—wood—digging into his back.
Sound filtered through the air around him. It was deafening, a loud, shrill howl that threatened to cleave his head in two. His own groan dissolved into the litany of noise.
Sound, loud enough to let him know that he was alive.
And with that terrifying thought, he took his first breath in a decade. He could feel the night air as it filled his lungs, the soft smell of rain, and the musty scent of papers. The acrid smell of cursed energy hung like a curtain around him.
And then he heard it.
A strangled, pained cry. Young, and so filled with anguish. Familiar.
For the first time in his life, his body moved without his knowledge. He felt the sickening crunch of bone underneath his foot as he careened upward with the momentum, hands wrapping around a slender neck as he settled on the balls of his feet, weight pressing violently against the flesh in his grip.
He heard more than saw the creak and snap of bone beneath his palms. Felt a body go limp beneath him.
A soft whimper registered in his ears, and a horrible sense of urgency flitted underneath his skin restlessly clawing at him. He whirled around at the sound.
There. Against the far wall, half hidden in shadow—
The second Fushiguro Toji caught sight of the boy, dark haired, pale skined, scarlet-red blood pooling around him—the world went quiet.
A soft ringing took it’s place.
His vision clouded hazy red, and Toji couldn’t tell if it was his blood or his anger that filled them. His body was on edge, an irritating buzz vibrating under his skin, seeming to shake every part of him awake, both physically and mentally. A hot flash of heat tore through him, followed by a cool prickling against the surface of his skin, like a soothing ice pack during a hot summer.
And with it, his vision cleared—and his senses snapped violently into place, the force of it sending a jolt through his body.
He was on his feet before he knew it, lunging forward on unsteady feet, his mind uncaring about his lagging body, forcing him into a dead sprint that sent him stumbling. Palms braced on the ground, pushing him back up before he faceplanted into the floor, and he couldn’t stop. All that mattered right now was him.
The sight of blood was familiar if not welcome in Toji’s life. Red wounds, ravaged and healed into scars long before he had even touched a knife. Blood, covering every inch of his body, coating him like a second skin as he disposed of another body. Wads of cash clutched in his hands, seeping a dark, wet red as he shifted through them carelessly, counting. The metallic tang of it drowning his mouth, his very being reduced to nothing, as he finally met his end.
The sight of blood was so familiar it was almost a relief to Toji.
And so Toji didn’t expect the spike of senseless emotion that filled him as he saw the growing pool near the boy’s body, the lump that formed in his throat and refused to let go, made it hard to breathe. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, feel his muscles twitching as he propelled himself forward in a reckless haze.
The world tilted on its axis as he slammed his shoulder into the far wall from the momentum, clambering down to meet the unnaturally still body before him.
It wasn’t until he reached for him, arms trembling with foreign soreness, until he hesitated, that Toji realized this emotion eating him from the inside out—was fear.
An alien feeling, threatening to ruin him, the man he used to be and the one his mind was telling him he needed to be now.
He had never felt as cowardly as he did now, body trembling as he reached for the boy, breath stuck resolutely in his throat as his fingers met cold skin. A gentleness that had never bothered to inhabit his body gripped him dangerously, the pads of his fingers softly brushing away the tangles of hair hanging before the boy’s eyes. They were swollen shut, as if he had squeezed them together painfully, blood, still wet, painting the back of neck, matting his hair against his head.
Blessing.
Toji stumbled back, hands failing to catch him as he fell painfully on his ass. The thought was intrusive and absurd, a sentimentality that he had never posessed bleeding into the word.
Like a switch was flipped, he was suddenly struck by the ridiculousness of his situation. Fushiguro Toji, the Sorceror Killer, filled with the weakness of fear, drawn to a surely dead boy as if he were his own—
A thundering crash across the room served as his wake up call. Toji whirled.
A bookshelf had toppled over, wood warped and books scattered across the floor. A soft rumble under him was his only warning. The metal beam supporting the ceiling creaked dangerously. The rumble turned into a violent shudder—and that’s when Toji caught sight of the woman. The woman who he had thought he killed, the impression of his fingers pressed into the hollow of her neck—
But Toji was far from stupid enough to assume her dead. Not when the building around him seemed to want to tumble down on him with a fit of rage, and a soft glow filled the room, the singular candle before him flaring brightly—too much. A grin tore across his face—Toji must be getting rusty if he had somehow managed to leave her alive.
The building would collapse in a matter of minutes, and the room would certainly burn before then, when the candle inevitably toppled over and lit the kindling that this room was on fire.
Neither of those things were enough to kill Toji. He had half the mind to settle himself comfortably back against the wall and wait for this shitshow to be over. He was sure to get an audience with this necromancer,— if his being here was any indication—after her childish wrath had passed. He would much rather conserve his energy, especially when it was being so fickle with him, forcing him to stumble and pant at the slightest movement.
Of course, the poor boy next to him wouldn’t make it, the weak little thing—
Fushiguro Toji used to be an asshole, before his death. A piece of shit, deadbeat husband who abandoned his wife, lived on money built upon a long trail of strangers’ corpses, and smiled at death itself, as if he had bested it long ago.
Some called him fearless, unpredicatable. Some called him the opposite.
But—
In one move, Toji scooped the boy up into his arms, ignoring the matted blood seeping into his skin, shifted towards the door, and ran.
The ground crackled beneath him, spiderwebbing from the impact as his power slipped out of his control.
Toji was a man of instinct—he didn’t give a single thought to anything other than his own pleasure. That was the way he had lived, and that was the way he had died. He was shamelessly proud of it.
And right now, everything in him was screaming at him to hold on to who was in his arms.
Fushiguro Toji was never one to deny his instincts. He tucked the boy protectively against his chest, and sprinted out of the building.
As if the decay of the building had spread like a disease, reaching it’s tendrils into the air around it, the night melted. What had once been a powerful veil slipped away, giving way to blinding light. Toji winced, head throbbing as he pushed past the veil and onto the streets of Tokyo. He had no time to think about why the streets were so barren, why a bustling city was now an empty wasteland.
He could feel the pounding of his heart against his chest, like a rabid animal trying to escape its cage. Even as he was encapsulated in heat, a bone-deep chill took hold of him, urging him forward, away.
He didn’t turn when he heard the resounding crash of the building. Didn’t flinch when his legs shuddered violently, numbness setting into them.
Toji just tightened his grip, and let the pounding of his heart, the pounding of his head—the emotion dying to be let out—swallow him whole.
The red haze of his vision faded, even as his eyesight sharpened, his senses heightened once again. He could feel the back of his neck burn, knew he was being watched somehow, but he couldn’t bring himself to care beyond himself as his—
His what?
In a vicious surge of speed, he barreled forward until the streets blurred around him, until the feeling of being watched was nothing but an insignificant warmth around his throat.
Toji ran until it faded entirely, and his legs screamed at the brutality he had put them through, and his lungs were one breath away from unconsciousness. He drew to an abrupt halt, tripping forward against the gravel, and only when he caught himself against a smooth wall that he had neared, did he realized that he had been barefooted. He stared at his ravaged feet, an unknown, festering feeling snaking through him.
A door. There was a door behind him. He didn’t bother to glance inside before he shouldered through, the sound of a lock snapping filtering through his ears.
Toji knew his body was at its limits when his vision swam again. He slammed the sole of his foot against the door and kicked it shut and hoped the loud crack had nothing to do with it.
Ah.
That was what this was.
Toji was pissed. For some inexplicable reason, Toji had the sudden urge to kill everything in sight, unable to look at himself, his tattered body. Alas, there was no one in this goddamned city and he would be doing himself a disservice if he killed the boy he had just ruined himself to save.
Toji scoffed, a soft, grating chuckle that echoed in the room. Toji, a saviour. It was a laughable thought even for himself.
He had walked into some small store. A family business, from the size of it, raided shelves covering every wall. He barged through the halls, and headed toward the back of the building. His feet throbbed, a sharp twinge climbing up his back, threatening to white out his vision entirely. And just like he thought, he grabbed the handle of a small door that looked like an employee entrance, and walked straight into a bedroom.
Living quarters. Toji flicked his hand out and turned on the lights.
His eyes were immediately drawn to the center attraction. A large bed was pushed against the wall, futons rolled out on either side of it.
Toji let out an uncharacteristically long sigh and moved forward—
His knees buckled and he barely grappled the boy back into his arms before he hit the ground with a thud. Fuck. The ringing was back.
Toji could feel himself lay the boy down on the bed, seconds before his arms fell limply to his sides. The boy flopped backwards, boneless and unconscious, dried blood flaking onto the bedsheets.
Darkness crept up on Toji, and he swayed backwards.
The hair had fell out of the boy’s face, and suddenly all the broken puzzle pieces of his brain slotted together in inevitable, painful truth.
And as Toji thudded back against the ground, unconsciousness blanketing him like a protective mother, he couldn’t help but feel like he had been looking into a mirror. And saw his own face, glaringly obvious, plastered over the boy.
But then the world blinked out, and the thought slipped away. Death was nothing like unconsciousness.
Then, there was nothing.