Archive of Our Own

Yuji’s hand shakes in Megumi’s grasp. His skin is colder than it would be usually, as if his body has been dipped in ice and reanimated. He told Megumi he’d be all right, but worry clings to the tension in his shoulders now. It’s evident in the lines on his face and his faraway gaze. He’s scared. So scared.

Distantly, the horizon stretches out in expansive planes that shouldn’t exist. White and blue layer on top of each other and form a sedimentary boundary to fit their world. Grey clouds hang heavy in the air to complete the image. A storm eases closer and closer with every step they take. Not much lies between them and the ocean now, where hurricanes lurk, in their peaceful place. The train yard has been abandoned for years.

Distantly, Megumi already hears the rumble on the tracks, and he can feel it in the ground beneath his feet when he pays enough attention.

“Hey.” Megumi squeezes Yuji’s hand and shifts so he can intertwine their fingers together. All he needs to do is keep him close for a few more minutes, make him feel safe. He doesn’t need to say anything more once Yuji jolts out of his daze and turns to face him. Megumi purses his lips and studies the look on Yuji’s face.

Yuji, graceful as ever, tucks the emotions into his breast pocket along with his hand and holds them there, where his heartbeat should be. He sniffs and blinks back tears. But a smile as brilliant as the dance of the sun across ocean waters lights up his face, so beautiful it seizes Megumi’s heart. A dull tick, tick, tick hovers in the air above the rumbling.

“I’m okay,” Yuji promises, and he squeezes Megumi’s hand back in an attempt to solidify his reassurance. He’s the one who starts off again, taking the first step before he resumes his pattern of letting Megumi lead him forward.

It’s not like this is easy for Megumi, either. He swallows back the anxiety he learned to identify ages ago and runs the toe of his shoe along the train track. It’s just that he’s been doing this long enough to know he can’t afford to falter. This is what he’s trained for. What he’s been meant to do all his life, in every reality, on every plane. He exists to guide Yuji to this moment.

Something else, something deeper and dark and dreary, something he doesn’t ever want to touch, flutters briefly in the pit of his stomach. He swallows again, and it dies like it’s done a hundred times before.

He reaches up to run his fingers through Yuji’s hair and instructs softly, “Lay down here.”

Only bits and pieces of hesitation remain to hinder Yuji’s actions as he uses Megumi as a crutch and lowers himself to the ground. Trust radiates off of him in waves. At least on the surface, his qualms dissipate, even though he winces when his shoulder meets the metal rail. Even though his smile is still sad when he looks up at Megumi and waits patiently for him. Grief outlines the curve of his hip and the scars on his face. His hands still quiver. No one else would notice; but Megumi sees him more deeply than he ever wanted to.

His own heart stutters in his chest, and he puts his knees on the ground.

The rumbling grows more intense in the time it takes Megumi to adjust himself on the train tracks. They lay splayed across, rail to rail, covering the path entirely. It’s not comfortable in the least. Because they’re made of metal, the tracks are cold, in this weather, and a spike digs into Megumi’s thigh. But he closes his eyes and takes a breath. They won’t be here long, he reminds himself.

He echoes the promise to Yuji, blinking at him in the pale, faded light and cupping his cheek in one hand, the one whose palm is turned towards the sky. He runs the pad of his thumb along the divot at the corner of Yuji’s lip. “We’ll be home soon,” Megumi says, his words a whisper and a curse, a vow.

The sound itself almost rattles his bones upon the train’s approach. He knows it will only get worse, that the train will seem like it’s speeding up; it won’t slow down. It’s not supposed to.

Megumi has been through this before, he thinks. In a half-remembered dream a long time ago. Perhaps.

Yuji’s stayed calm up until this point, but now he squeezes his eyes shut, and it looks like he’s about to throw up. He takes in oxygen in wavering, unsteady gasps. He’s on the verge of panic, or disbelief, or fear so intense he can’t stomach it, something he hasn’t experienced in years. Megumi made sure of that. He made sure of it, but now they’re back again, and he has to stop him, and he doesn’t want to put him through this, lying on the train tracks together and forcing him to trust him, but there’s no other way when Megumi can’t trust himself—

“Talk to me,” Yuji chokes out around a strangled sob.

Megumi can’t feel the beat of his own heart above the quakes in the ground. Piercing through the air, the train whistle sounds and won’t stop ringing, crying for them to move. It’s all so intense all of a sudden, and he wishes he didn’t have to do this. He clutches Yuji’s hands so hard in both of his their knuckles go white at once.

“You’re waiting for a train,” he calls above the din, trying to recall the words he murmured to Yuji in the shadows of a room somewhere when they were alone and making plans. Everything is scrambled in his mind now.

Through a short, forceful nod, his hair tousled where his head lies on the rail, positioned just as Megumi told him it must be, Yuji opens his eyes and gazes at him with the intensity of a thousand storms. A million oceans. Years and years and years of knowing him and trusting him and understanding are passed to Megumi in that gaze.

He feels the ticking from Yuji’s breast pocket even over the roar of the engine. He makes the rules here. He wishes he didn’t.

“A train that will take you far away.” Megumi forces himself to continue. He can see the speck that will become the machine that will kill them. He laid Yuji down this way on purpose, so he wouldn’t see, in an attempt to quell his fear. How foolish was that? Nothing can stop Yuji from being afraid. But Megumi tries anyway, babbling like he knows what he’s talking about. “You know where you hope this train will take you,” he says, “but you can’t know for sure. Yet, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, Yuji. Tell me—”

The train rams through their heads and bodies and bones and crushes them at the speed of light. The ticking from Yuji’s pocket stops.

Stark echoes follow Megumi up to the fourth floor, every step he takes leaving a mark on the quiet, ambient soundscape that fills the stairwell. No security cameras lurk around the corner here, but they’d be bound to spot him if he took the elevator. He adjusts his itchy collar and loosens his tie just enough to make it easier to breathe. He can walk up four flights of stairs if it means keeping out of sight, but it’s not anywhere close to his favourite task in the world.

As he breaches the metal door that bars offices and endless hallways from the rest of the mortal world, Megumi leans over and rests his hands on his knees, his lungs heave in and out, and he wonders what the hell the higher-ups want from him this time.

He does his best to straighten his collar and readjust his tie and ignore the sweat beading on his back. It slides down between his shoulder blades when he lifts his fist to knock on the door. He’s used to physical exertion, just not usually in a full suit.

When a moment passes and nobody responds to his knock, Megumi glances at the numbered placard on the door to make sure he has the right room. Then the door sweeps open in front of him, and an invisible hand ushers him forward.

“Come in,” a voice booms from amidst the bright lights that greet him.

Megumi takes a steady breath in and out and steps inside.

Unfinished tile flooring clunks beneath his heavy shoes, a change of pace from the stairs. White walls catch the white florescent light and toss it at a sheer white divider screen that stretches evenly from one end of the room to the other. Nothing else stands out in the quiet space; no windows decorate the walls, and every corner of the wall and every tile on the floor is spotless. The shadows that shift behind the divider are hardly visible.

“State your name,” another voice calls out, and it bounces off the walls, making it seem bigger than it is. It’s not hard to fill a space like this with sound.

Megumi straightens his tie again out of habit and then lets his hands come to rest at his sides. “Fushiguro Megumi.”

“Please state your occupation for the record.”

Megumi heaves a sigh and forces his shoulders to relax. They go through this every time, and it’s no less tedious to be squeezed through the process again. He’s on display, he reminds himself. Even when he can’t see the company board, they can see him, always. Everything is a performance with them.

“I’m an architect,” he answers, forcibly calm and clear. “A Dreamshare architect.”

He can almost hear their pencils scratch across paper as meaningless boxes are checked off.

A different voice rings out, plastering itself to every wall of the room like a coat of new paint. “When was your last successful mission?”

Silence sets in next, as Megumi’s nostrils flare, and the words hang heavy in the air. The implication. A clock only Megumi can hear ticks out the seconds between the loaded question and his response. But it’s not like they don’t know already; they’re looking at his file right now, parsing through the details, he’s sure. He fixes his gaze straight ahead at the divider screen and maintains his confident tone and stance.

“Two years ago.”

Another check box, more scribbling of pencils on paper. They don’t ask him to clarify the details of the job, this time.

“We have a new assignment for you,” the second voice says. He can imagine them leaning forward at a long table with their hands propped beneath their chin. “This is… more complicated than your previous missions, but we trust you can handle it.”

For the first time since he got the word they wanted to see him, Megumi lets himself become enveloped in a thin layer of surprise. He knew this wasn’t a review—it would be much more formal if that were the case. But he doesn’t know what they mean by a ‘complicated’ mission. He shifts uneasily, and his dress shoes squeak on the tile floor.

“Why me?” Megumi asks. Irritation seeps into his tone. “You just confirmed I’m behind on the company standard requirements for taking on high-end jobs. Don’t you want someone whose skills are more up to date?”

“You have all the necessary qualifications,” a new voice entirely booms. If this were a dream, the walls would rattle. The very core of the building would shake. Megumi glances at the ceiling and waits for dust to rain down. The voice continues, “Plus, this particular job falls within your realm of expertise. You’ve proven yourself useful on similar jobs in the past, Fushiguro.”

Something cold and dark and snakelike weaves its way around Megumi’s neck, and his eyes widen as understanding sets in, causing all his confidence to sink into his stomach. He clears his throat and forces his expression to remain neutral. “Who’s the target?”

Faint shuffling rises from behind the divider as the details of the mission, Megumi’s file, and likely the file on the target are sifted through and adjusted. But he knows he’s read them well, knows they’re speaking of the blood on his hands, when they don’t answer his question for a long few minutes. They breeze right past it in favour of the more important details.

Megumi blinks as his eyes adjust to the projected presentation that appears on the divider. Through the image, he can make out the figures of at least three administrators behind the curtain.

“As you know, the company’s greatest concern at present is the status of missing artifacts.” Respective slides flash across the screen, images of objects Megumi recognises, because everyone who works in Dreamshare and still has a pulse knows about them.

“Right,” he says. “The news of Sukuna’s fingers resurfacing has spread like wildfire.”

“Have you heard some of them have been found?” The second voice from earlier speaks up with a note of smugness in their voice, trying to coax a reaction out of him.

Megumi doesn’t dignify their attempt. He keeps his eyes on the screen, where picture after picture whisks by—shots of the faces of people he knows and locations he’s been to. Sketches of places he’s built. Behind him, a mechanical whir catches his attention; likely cameras descending from the ceiling, fit with motion sensors, heat monitors. He concentrates on taking slow breaths and smoothing out the muscles in his face. He’s passed polygraphs more stressful than this. He can walk out of this test unscathed.

“No,” he says as the presentation lingers on one face in particular, a candid taken on the street from a distance. He’s sure they already know he’s lying.

“The target has collected three of the fingers so far,” the second administrator says again. “And rumours are spreading that the locations of four more are known. The goal is to stop this before it goes on any further—the fingers were scattered for a reason, after all.”

Megumi hesitates for only a moment before he responds. “Of course.” He inclines his head forward and narrows his eyes, just to give them something to pick up on their monitors. “It would be a disaster for one person to have all twenty in their possession. Isn’t that right?”

Silence lapses again, and it’s as big a tell as any, when they refuse to even humour his questions that are starting to turn into less than questions, closer to observations. Megumi slots puzzle pieces together in his mind as they speak. The presentation has ended now, stopped on a picture taken somewhere he knows intimately, and he eyes it with careful consideration. They want him to play into their hands. He stands on the edge of doing just that and pulling away completely.

He knows what will happen to him if he disobeys. But they don’t want to lose him for this. This is one of those jobs he can’t just say no to and walk away from.

“Who’s the target?” Megumi asks again, disguising the way his breath hitches with a bored sigh.

He knows, but he needs to hear them say it.

It’s the first administrator, the one who asked the questions at the start, who finally gives him a name. Megumi isn’t surprised. He glances at the floor once before his eyes flicker back up. His shoulders don’t slump. He doesn’t show alarm. The tucked-away white rooms are a stage, and this is all a test, and he will pass it.

When the sound of files being slapped closed and chairs scraped back fills the room instead of voices, and a small panel in the righthand wall opens up and waits for him, he’s ready.

“I trust you know how to use this,” one of the administrators muses as Megumi strides across the room and slips his hands beneath the nine millimetre pistol in the box the panel holds.

“I do,” he answers with a single nod.

It’s almost over, he’s walking out, and he tucks the gun into his belt with ease and readjusts his shirt to hide it. Then the second administrator speaks one more time, and for a heartbeat, he almost recognises the voice. Not from previous missions. From somewhere else, somewhere real. Megumi turns over his shoulder with one hand on the doorknob and listens carefully.

“Fushiguro,” they say, taking a slow breath in to accent their point, “make sure this one is clean, okay?”

He nods once and turns the nob. The familiarity settles into place as he steps out. “Understood.”

The room could disappear behind him and Megumi wouldn’t notice, because he draws his focus inward and pauses to lean against the doorway of the stairwell before he dares walk through another door. He brushes past the gun as he reaches into his pocket. His fingers close around an old-fashioned fountain pen, and he pulls it out and studies the smooth wood of the exterior, and the metallic green band around the middle that reflects what its insides should, in theory, bear. Then he tugs back his sleeve and folds over himself and pops off the cap.

On his wrist, beneath his sleeve, where no one can see, he draws a single solid line.

He finds Yuji by the sea, like always. On any free day, at any spare moment, if Megumi needs to find Itadori Yuji, he will find him building bridges to nowhere at the edge of an endless ocean, deep inside a dream.

Megumi picks his way across the boulder-clad walkway that juts out from the shore. Gulls cry somewhere above and behind him where he can’t see, and a faint breeze stains his hair with salt. He runs his tongue over his lips and can taste it. He sways as he takes giant steps from rock to rock, and it’s longer this time, he realises; he wonders vaguely how Yuji accomplished that, maintaining his progress from dream to dream.

“If you were stuck in Limbo,” he calls once he’s close enough to be heard over the buffeting waves, “and you had all the time in the world, would you finish it?” Megumi crouches down beside Yuji and sits. He bumps their shoulders together and stares out at the water. “Finally see what’s on the other side?”

Yuji casts him a scrunched-up, wary sideways glance. He laughs and bumps Megumi’s shoulder back. “You always think about the darkest things.”

“It’s not like it’s out of the realm of possibility, in our line of work. I don’t see the problem with considering what we’d do with all that time.”

“Well, it’s not going to happen to us.” A sigh escapes Yuji as he stretches his arm out to drape it over Megumi’s shoulders and pull him in close. He presses soft kisses to Megumi’s temple and must taste salt there, too. “That’s why you quit, remember? So you don’t have to think about that anymore.”

“Yet, I’m still here, with you.”

Megumi pauses, and for a minute, the air is peaceful. The only sounds are the gulls, the waves, the wind, their breathing, and a too-distant and all too close thrum of ticking. Then he murmurs, “It happened to Gojo.”

Yuji’s hand runs through his hair before a second can pass. He probably guessed Megumi would say that; he’s the one who called on the topic first, after all.

“That was a long time ago,” Yuji reminds him, like he could forget about the details. “It wasn’t your fault, you know that.”

Involuntary and strained, a grin breaks across Megumi’s face as he rests his head in the crook of Yuji’s shoulder. He starts lining the puzzle pieces up in his head again before he can stop himself. The ocean is cold where he dips his feet in, and Yuji’s body is warmer than it should be. “Yeah, it was.”

Yuji lets out a soft hum and grows quiet. He knows better than to argue the point with Megumi, because it always comes back to the same conclusion in the end, and he doesn’t want to encourage him. Megumi knows this because Yuji has said it to him time after time. If I talk to you about it, I’m worried it’ll just get you stuck in your head again. I’d rather you talk to me when you feel like you need to get out of it. He could recite the words from memory, all of Yuji’s concerns, as Megumi peers up at him and watches his eyes glaze over as Yuji watches the crests of the waves, losing himself to invisible thoughts just the same way.

“What are you thinking about?” Megumi lifts his hand and drags the tip of his index finger down Yuji’s chest. The soft cotton of his shirt bunches up in the wake.

Yuji’s sharp inhale rises with the next wave and leaves him as the tide pulls out. He blinks himself halfway back to life and squints at a spot on the water only he can see. “Do you think you’ll ever go back to that life?”

Megumi’s shoulders tense as he looks up at Yuji’s face again. “Why do you ask?”

For a minute too long, as the scene remains still around them, free of shades, free of tension, confusion sweeps Yuji away from him. But the waves don’t start travelling backwards, and the sky is still blue. The rocks beneath them don’t threaten to shift and create paths that map out Yuji’s subconscious without him asking them to.

He mouths something, but the words fail him at first. He has to clear his throat twice and ponder what he’s about to say before he squeezes it out. “Kugisaki was wondering,” he murmurs, seeming unsure. “She said she… there’s a new job, that she picked up, that she thought you’d be good at. Wanted you to help…”

Before he can go on babbling forever, Megumi scoops up his hand and intertwines their fingers. He tugs on him until Yuji turns to face him, and then he puts a hand on the back of Yuji’s head and pulls him in for a kiss.

Yuji’s lips taste like salt, too. He exhales faintly through his nose as Megumi threads his fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck.

Megumi puts a hand against his own hip just to check while Yuji is distracted. He still feels the ticking like a heartbeat.

“What do you think is on the other side, at least?” Megumi asks him as soon as they pull apart. He pulls the ends of their conversation together and stitches them up right over the middle, effortlessly. He licks the saltwater off his lips again and studies the faded light in Yuji’s eyes. “Even if you never see it, you must have a guess.”

Yuji hesitates, then softens into him with a smile and rests his forehead against Megumi’s. “Well, it can be whatever I want, right? I could build cities on the other side. But I think…” His voice becomes hushed, gentle, instead of smug and wondering. “I think I’d find you there waiting for me, no matter what.”

A real smile tugs at the corners of Megumi’s lips as he breathes in Yuji’s scent. “Yeah?”

“You told me that once, didn’t you?” Yuji muses. “In some other dream, maybe.”

“Maybe,” Megumi echoes, and he leans in to kiss him again, chaste and soft and sweet. Around them, the sea ebbs and flows. “Maybe.”

In the centre of the room, framed by the plush carpet, there’s an empty space where the PASIV is supposed to go. Megumi leans against the bed and glances at the body laid out behind him before he checks his watch for the third time. They had agreed to meet at 14:50, a slightly off time that allowed them to disguise a distinct meeting as they all trickled in. Now 15:01 ticks by before his eyes.

“Do we all know the plan, at least?” Maki stands guard near the door, her arms crossed over her chest. Her clipped hair cascades over half her face. The other half is blank, unreadable.

Kugisaki’s fingers twitch around the file she clutches in one hand and the lighter she holds up with the other. She’s got her finger on the trigger, ready to burn the plans, the maps, the instructions, the roster, all as soon as Maki gives the go-ahead. “You’d better know the plan,” she growls, “or else what am I paying you for?”

The message behind her words and actions is clear, and she casts a harsh glance to Megumi and then to Yuji in turn as she continues to fiddle with the trigger. It means nothing to any of the three of them whether or not the file goes up in smoke.

A soft knock comes at the door, and the collective tension drains from the room as Maki turns to open it.

Inumaki strides inside without wasting another second. He’s got the briefcase that must contain the PASIV hanging at his side, and he pulls his surgical mask down once the door is closed behind him. “Sorry I’m late,” he signs with his free hand. Then his eyes dart to the body on the bed, and he raises an eyebrow, holding the briefcase hostage until he can take stock of the situation. “That the Mark?”

“Yes,” Megumi snaps at the same time Yuuta tries to placate, “Don’t worry about being late. We haven’t been waiting for long.”

Megumi shoots him a glare and receives a sheepish look in return.

The Mark, as they say, is a young woman with pale blue hair who Megumi recognises from somewhere, but he can’t quite put his finger on where. Kugisaki was the one who brought her in. Apparently they knew each other in school, and it wasn’t difficult to talk her into a drink with an old friend at a hotel bar. Megumi wonders if Inumaki would be impressed to know the drugs he provided worked so well. He eyes the woman for a moment more before he positions himself at the centre of the room and crouches down.

“We were just going over the plan,” Yuuta says, stepping forward to join him and sitting down obediently on the floor beside Inumaki. “Based on what Kugisaki told us, it doesn’t sound like we’ll need long—you’ve got a timer on there, right?”

Inumaki gives him a funny look as he lays out the PASIV and points to a small screen on one end. Of course, his expression reads, and Megumi will always be grateful that he doesn’t much care for Yuuta’s hovering, either.

“We might need longer than we think.” From his chosen spot by the window, as he scans the view outside the building, Yuji speaks for the first time since he walked in fifteen minutes ago. He keeps his tone even, just how Megumi taught him. “If she doesn’t seem to know anything, we could go a level or two deeper to see if she’s lying, or has more information than even she realises.”

His expression calm and questioning at the same time, he makes eye contact with Megumi across the room, and tucked against the bed the way he is, Megumi is able to give him a nod of acknowledgement where the others can’t see. Everyone is busy settling down around Inumaki, anyway.

“Wait, wait.” Yuuta makes a face and looks to Maki for confirmation. He means her when he says, “Nobody said anything about multiple levels.”

She flashes him a grin and moves forward to stand above him. “Why, you scared?”

“No, of course not. Just…”

Electricity crackles in the air as he turns to look at Megumi, who stares back at him and doesn’t bother to get up yet. He’ll take as much sweet time as he wants. Yuuta doesn’t need to finish his sentence for everyone to get the point, but he does anyway.

“…Isn’t that a little bit risky, given our team’s history?”

Megumi would bet at least three people open their mouths to rebut him, and he’s one of them. Itadori beats him to the punch with a sharp breath as he turns away from the window. His gaze passes over Megumi and settles on Yuuta.

“Our team,” he says, choosing his words carefully, “has a record for being one of the best in the business. The six of us, no matter if we’re together, or by ourselves, or working with any combination of the others—our history shows that we’re amazing at our jobs.” His gaze flicks across every single one of them and lands on Megumi this time. “Sure, we’ve made mistakes, but everyone does.” He looks at Yuuta one more time to make his point and takes a bold step forward. “And we all trust each other, right?”

“Well, if you don’t, you’d better tell me now.” Kugisaki flicks the lighter on and holds it dangerously close to the corner of the file. “Because I can do this to all of your paychecks, too, if you mess up this extraction.”

“It’s fine, Nobara.” Maki heaves a sigh as she sits down on the floor near Yuuta. “Itadori’s right, we can’t be fighting right now. If anyone has a history, it’s the Mark for having a big mouth. If she has the information we need, it shouldn’t be too difficult for us to get it from her. Right, Megumi?”

The whir of the PASIV turning on draws everyone’s attention, and Inumaki takes the opportunity to sign out a quick message amidst adjusting the lines. “I can get you three levels at most. I’m about to hook her up, so someone needs to be ready to go down to meet her.”

“Me first! I’m the one who invited her, I should be there to guide her.” Finally, Kugisaki raises the lighter to set the file in her hand ablaze, and she drops it in the metal trash at her feet before flopping down on the open side of the bed. She dutifully rolls one sleeve up and props herself back on the pillows. “Well, Toge? Chop, chop.”

As soon as he’s finished with the Mark, Inumaki scowls at her and comes around to the other side of the bed. Megumi pushes himself up and gets out of the way; Kugisaki almost kicking him in the head is enough. Kugisaki goes down quickly, and Inumaki looks relieved to have her demands quieted.

Maki lays down on her back next and gestures to Inumaki. “I’d better go next. I know she has experience, but someone has to be there to make sure everything goes smoothly.”

“Shouldn’t that be—” Yuji bites his tongue, and the faintest red flush comes across his cheeks. “I mean, I can handle it, Maki, or at least I’ll be right behind you. What happens if you descend into the dream before the Architect, anyway?”

I guess we’ll find out, Megumi thinks as he settles down beside him.

“You know, Itadori, you’re sure good at knowing what to say when it matters.” Yuuta folds his hands over his chest and patiently waits his turn, but he’s watching Yuji with wide, unreadable eyes. He blinks calmly at him, and it’s like he’s waiting for something more than the Somnicin.

Yuji’s face flushes even redder. He’s getting nervous, his concentration slipping the fewer people he has to put on a show for, plus with Inumaki literally holding his hand as he gets him set up. “Yeah, well, I just want us to be able to work well together,” he stammers. “I kinda miss it sometimes, you know?”

“Right,” Yuuta murmurs back as Yuji slips away. Suddenly, he and Megumi are the only two left, and those watchful eyes fix on him instead. “See you on the other side, huh?”

Megumi gives him a short nod and finally lies down on the floor. The carpet is soft, at least, better than some other places he’s been put under, and he lifts himself into a partial bridge position to adjust until he’s comfortable. “See you on the other side,” he agrees, avoiding Yuuta’s gaze.

He holds as still as he can to let Inumaki disinfect his hand and slide the needle into place, but he’s not expecting Inumaki to tap him on the arm midway through and sign to him as the medicine begins its steady course through the line.

“Fushiguro.” His motions are swift and confident, but there’s something wary in his eyes, like a warning. He bows his head in quiet acknowledgement. “You heard Kugisaki. Don’t fuck this up.”

Megumi sucks in a breath and gives him a nod back as his vision blurs. He rests his head against the floor, and the last thing he remembers is Inumaki putting a hand on his waist, right where the gun is, before he falls asleep.

“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.” Megumi crashes through the bathroom door and ignores it as it slams against the wall, then swings back to almost hit Kugisaki in the face. He strides forward like he did right past the bar and puts his hands on either side of the sink. His fingers dig into the porcelain. His shoulders roll forward. He feels like a predator, lean and purposeful and dangerous.

His hands shake as he grips the sink harder, and then reels back and punches the mirror in front of him with enough force to make it crack. Speckles of blood reflect back at him in its dingy surface. Pain is in the mind. He checked the pen already, and he can’t do that again in front of Kugisaki.

“Megumi, you have to calm down.” Kugisaki must have followed him in, and she stands off to the side and behind him, careful not to touch the filthy walls, her arms crossed over her chest. “Literally beating yourself up isn’t going to bring him back. Yeah, that was pretty fucked up back there, but are you going to fix it, or are you going to keep breaking into bars just to whine?”

A deep scowl carves itself into his face. He did not break into the bar. He didn’t break into—Shit. He just needed to get out of that hotel, as fast as possible.

The blood on his knuckles is the only thing drawing his focus in as the bathroom door swings open again, and he hears Kugisaki mutter, “Get out and stay out if you know what’s good for you.” He studies the way the tiny red branches spread out over his skin and tries very hard not to vomit.

In the hand that’s bleeding, he can feel an imaginary weight, one he lost partway from one dream to the next as he was yanked upward and out. He dropped the gun and he doesn’t know where. But it’s the fact that he was even holding it in the first place that sits like a lump in his throat and chokes him. Deep in the cavern of his chest, his heart thumps wildly, and the sound merges with a memory he doesn’t want to recall. Pulses wavering. Breath faltering. He can feel eyes on the back of his head, a hand brushing his, and he forces the sink faucet on and splashes palmful after palmful of ice cold water on his face before the lassitude of the mission can bring him to his knees on the dirty bathroom floor.

He holds his hands against his face and shakes all over.

“I killed him, Nobara,” he gasps into the stale air, until he’s suffocating on the bitter taste of the words alone. He slams his hands down on either side of the sink again and tries to crush it with strength he doesn’t possess. “I fucking killed him.”

Kugisaki’s sigh is not patient, and she does not attempt to comfort him. She doesn’t even step any closer. “I know,” she whispers instead. “I know you did, Megumi. I was there.”

He meets her in between two brick walls off the corner of a city street. Cars clip at his heels as they rush past behind him, but he steps up onto the curb smoothly, unbothered, leaving the taxi to scamper off without him. His eyes scan everything and he gives away nothing. He maps out his next move on the way, leaving no room for hesitation. His throat is covered with the collar of an ivory turtleneck, and a crisp peacoat drapes off his shoulders. In one hand he carries a briefcase; not a PASIV, just fake, full of blank sheets of paper to serve as weights. He could be going to the library, or to an office, and no one would suspect otherwise.

The pen weighs heavy in his pocket as he moves. He’s already certain he’ll have to use it as soon as this meeting is over.

Megumi slides calmly into the minuscule alleyway as people continue on their day to day routes, bustling on to wherever they’re going. No one bats an eye at the sleek stranger disappearing into the shadows. He breathes the tiniest huff of relief and redirects his focus; stalking the rooftops, fluttering down from the sky, hopping along the ground, he can already hear the crows.

City noise doesn’t follow him in as he makes himself aware of his surroundings in the pressing quiet. There’s not much to see. High overhead, a few windows are punched into the sides of the buildings around him, with one weary fire escape snaking down from one. Otherwise, the alley is dark, shrouded in unease that is as palpable as humidity in the air.

He stands stock still for a minute, then calls out, “What is it you want from me, anyway?”

Before he sees her, he hears her footsteps. He hears her laugh. Faint clicks of expensive heels echo from brick to brick, and the rustle of the crows’ wings mingles with her voice as she strides tauntingly slowly in his direction. “Oh, Megumi,” she tuts from the darkness. “Think of it more as a favour I’m doing for you.”

Her figure emerges just enough for the barely-there light to flicker across her diamond earrings, silver watch, and ghostly white hair. Her hips swing from side to side to match the clicking of her heels. Her very presence makes Megumi feel sick with a heat that isn’t there as she edges closer.

“Okay,” he says. His voice breaks with irritation and drips with sarcasm as he clenches his fists. “And can you explain what that is, Mei-san? Or do you want me to guess?”

“Guessing would be lovely, but I won’t go that far.” Mei Mei draws out her words and keeps walking until she can sling an arm around his shoulders and twist wisps of his hair between her fingers. It forces him to back up against the wall, where she squeezes in next to him, likely right where she wanted to be.

Megumi’s legs itch. He should never have agreed to meet her in a stupid dark corner of the world with little room to move. He doesn’t think he’s in danger or anything, and neither of them are equipped to fight in close quarters, anyway, but gods, she’s annoying.

“I’m here to make your job easier,” Mei Mei coos as she rests her hand on his shoulder.

Megumi rolls out a sigh and plans to roll his eyes, too, bites back another retort or request for her to elaborate, and almost considers walking away right now.

But before he gets the chance to do anything at all, she pins him where he stands with a swift whisper in his ear and another smug giggle. “I know who you work for, and what your assignment is.”

Chills spread like wildfire down the length of Megumi’s arms and up his spine. He opens his mouth to respond, but his eyes go wide at the same time, and he doesn’t know what to say or how to respond. He avoided the cameras. He checked for bugs. But he’s not ready to perform, now, and his hand flies against his better judgement to the holster at his hip, covered up by the long, thick peacoat.

Her hand chases his and tosses the folds of his coat open to reveal the hard metal edge of the gun. “They gave you that, didn’t they? Well, good, I suppose you’ll need it no matter what. But I’m here to tell you you don’t have to use it how you think you do.”

“How much did they pay you?” Megumi blurts out. “To convince me of whatever you’re about to say?”

A sly grin creeps across Mei Mei’s face as she tucks his coat back into place and pats his hip tenderly. “Enough.”

He wants to her to stop touching him. He wants her to get the hell out of his face, out of his ear, out of his head, because the more she twists her words and draws back again is enough to keep him on the line and put him at risk all at once. The sensation of spiders crawling all over him won’t go away. The crows press in from the rooftops and the shadows, and at the tight entrance of the alleyway, prickling eyes start to turn on him. Because he’s started to change things, he realises, without even thinking about it. He can guess as to what’s shifting outside of this space. He can feel the walls ease out a little at a time as he forcibly carves room for himself.

Mei Mei reaches up to brush a section of his bangs away from his face before he can stop her. Her fingertips grace his forehead. Then she brings her hand down and places it directly, palm flat, against his chest. “Take a deep breath for me, Megumi-chan,” she murmurs.

He does, more like a gasp before he can steady himself into something slower, because he knows where she’s coming from, and he hates to admit it’s not a bad idea to convince himself to calm down. He’s been staring straight ahead, and he blinks a few times to clear the red haze from his vision.

“Good.” She purses her lips with another, fainter grin, and her eyes dart across his face. “Relax. You’re safe here, okay? For now.”

Harsh words he refuses to spit out crawl up his throat and settle on the back of his tongue. His flesh burns beneath that threat.

“I’m here to make your job easier,” she starts to say again, reminding him. And here comes the woven web, the theory of the crows, the whisper that won’t leave him for years and years. More than two. Her words will follow him into every dream, every shadow, and trip him at every turn. Her proposal will become his downfall. Her hand never draws away from his chest.

“You don’t have to kill him,” she says. “Not in the way you think. You'll need to use the gun, of course, but that gun must feel so heavy in your hand every time you even think about picking it up.”

Mei Mei takes a breath, and Megumi bites his lip so hard he tastes blood.

“All you really have to do is… give him a nudge in the right direction. Leave him somewhere no one can find him. He'll be happy there, you know he will.”

He can hear the smile on her lips as she leans in so close her breath feels hot against his ear. She strokes her hand very slowly down his chest. Megumi might pass out. “Send him down, all the way down, and just… lose him there. Because it's all so much easier in a dream, isn’t it? Not so dangerous. Not so many consequences. Nothing is permanent, because nothing is real, Megumi.”

The words echo over and over again. Between the bricks, between his ears. His hand hovers at his waist. Near the gun, or near his pocket, he's not even sure anymore. He just wants to get out of here.

He turns his head and comes face to face with Mei Mei, her wide eyes centimetres from his where they’re visible past her waterfall of hair. Her breath smells sweet and unnatural, all floral notes and sugar and amber, as if she’s swallowed a bottle of perfume. The crow’s feet around her eyes crinkle with concern. “Something to think about, okay?”

At once, the crows flutter and the alley opens up, suddenly not as dark or cramped as it had been a mere moment ago. Megumi’s breathing becomes unsteady again as each of the birds begins to take flight around his feet. Their wings brush past him, scraping against his arms and cheeks, and he’s caught up in a flurry at the same time projections start to flood into the alleyway.

Mei Mei checks her watch, and he can barely see it through the feathers. Her axe leans against the brick wall behind her. She doesn’t move to pick it up. “Time to go, it seems,” she says to Megumi.

It’s not just people coming in off the street and moving rapidly towards him with fear and anger and accusation painted on their faces. There are dogs, too, and a beast like a harpy, and a storm of moths that mingle with the crows and create a hurricane around his head. In the distance, from the sky, he hears a sound like an alarm, harsh and prodding even as he cups his hands over his ears and tries to shut out the overwhelm.

“Megumi,” Mei Mei calls one last time, and he can’t be sure if he somehow hears her or finds a way to read her lips. Either way, he catches it when she says, “Remember this. Keep it close.”

Her voice sounds so familiar, like white rooms and lit-up presentations, that it makes him sick.

“How much did they pay you?” he asks again. Almost screams it.

He catches the flash of her grin through the feathers and the bodies and the howling of the dogs. She stands firm, doesn’t move. In the seconds before it ends, Megumi rushes to take the pen out of his pocket and scribbles on the inside of his wrist. He expects the lines to come out green, just like the metal band around the pen. He plans to shut his eyes and wait for death.

The ink isn’t green.

Megumi’s head jerks up, and he meets Mei Mei’s eyes the instant before his subconscious descends upon her, a shipwreck of humans, dogs, and moths, and tears her apart.

The replication of the hotel is effortless. Near perfect, even. Megumi walks alongside Maki and Yuuta through the same lobby he entered when he arrived for the job. The same hostess stands at the front desk, the same tile clicks beneath their feet, the same artwork hangs on the walls. Megumi makes a point of noting the finer details, the subtle changes: the covers on the overhead lights are silver here, but outside of this dream, they were gold. Different flavours of pocky sit on the shelf in the sundries shop. It makes him anxious, walking through a world so close in image to reality.

He wonders how Yuji is faring as he explores the stairwells and finds the right floor to set up on.

“There she is,” Maki murmurs. She raises one shoulder in a vague gesture towards the bar, but her pace doesn’t slow, and her gaze is focused forward. Megumi is in awe of her senses, how she can tell where everything is laid out just as fast as he can process it.

Laid out in the same place, the bar hugs one wall of the expansive lobby, blocked off by embellished half-height walls and glass panels. Stained glass decorates the back wall, with real sunlight piercing through and reflecting off of every bottle of alcohol. Hesitation wraps itself around a young woman with pale blue hair as she hovers near one of the tall, red-leather stools. She glances around and worries her lip with her teeth.

The Mark.

Right on cue, when the Mark has been waiting not long enough to get upset but long enough that seeing a familiar face comes as a visible relief, Kugisaki patters over to her on happy feet and throws her arms out. “Kasumi-chan!” she sings. Brilliantly placed excitement illuminates her face.

“We’d better head in.” Megumi nods to Yuuta and starts to search for a good table inside the confines of the bar. Not many projections take up the space, so it’s easy enough to pick a spot out of view of the Mark.

Yuuta hums and adjusts his collar, and Megumi barely feels the tug that tells him something in the dream is changing. Yuuta buries it under concrete belief and his own strength. “Are we performing inception?” he asks as the shape of his face shifts in the light, outlines fading and rearranging. He’s a bit shorter the next time Megumi blinks, and then he’s a different person entirely, his hair pulled back in a high ponytail and a scar that isn’t his own slashed across his face. The business casual clothes he wears look better on this character than Yuuta himself.

This is why he’s a Forger, Megumi thinks, because even he’s allowed to be impressed sometimes. A chameleon stands before him.

But he still makes a face at the pointless question.

“You know we’re not,” Maki cuts in. She walks confidently and scans her surroundings without letting on that she’s doing so, the same way Megumi would—the same way she taught him. She removes her hands from her pockets and speaks with an edge to her tone as she reminds Yuuta, “You’re here to prompt Miwa’s thoughts, not change them. We need to confirm what we already suspect.”

Yuuta gestures to himself as he fixes his ponytail. “And our standing theory is that it’s Kokichi Muta,” he says.

Megumi puts a forceful hand on his shoulder and nudges him into the bar while the Mark’s back is turned. “We need to go.” In Yuuta’s ear, still loud enough for Maki to hear, but not so much that his aggression catches the attention of any projections, he hisses, “Why do you keep asking questions like you don’t know what’s going on?”

“I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page.” Yuuta frowns, and he sounds genuinely surprised.

Once again, though, Megumi takes in his fake appearance and considers how good he is at pulling the wool over people’s eyes in dreams—how easily he lies.

We all trust each other, Yuji had said. Right?

Megumi guides Yuuta to the empty table he chose and sits him down before Miwa and Kugisaki can notice them. “That was what we were trying to do before we went under.” He slides into his own seat, manifests a glass of brandy in his hand, and drinks deeply as he ignores whatever Yuuta mumbles next.

He does his best to settle into the environment as he keeps an eye on Kugisaki, waiting for her signal. He didn’t get a chance to explore the hotel bar before the dream, and this is as good as anything, the taste of alcohol indistinguishable from the real thing and the ambiance completely natural; smooth jazz over the speakers, light chatter from the lobby. Megumi could get comfortable here, if he were to let himself enjoy it, free of the burden of the world above. He takes another sip of his drink and closes his eyes for just a moment.

He thinks he hears Yuji’s voice from somewhere outside the bar. Megumi’s heartrate picks up a little. But it doesn’t matter if it’s really Yuji or not, if he’s finished setting up and come back. Megumi can’t afford to turn and look at him right now.

Kugisaki talks on and on with the Mark, going about their animated conversation without a care in the world, and clearly has her wrapped around her little finger. Kugisaki leans in with casual touches, a friendly pat on the arm here and there, and the tight grip the Mark has on the drink in her lap loosens as she opens up to Kugisaki.

They’re so wrapped up in each other’s company, lost in their own little bubble, Megumi almost misses it when Kugisaki’s gaze darts around the bar and lands ever so briefly on him over the Mark’s shoulder. He sits up a little straighter and strains his ears to listen, nudging Yuuta’s arm to get him to do the same.

“What I’ve heard,” Kugisaki whispers, leaning in close, “is that someone’s been trading secrets with another business. Do you think that’s true? I mean, like, have you seen any signs of it?”

Visible tension rockets through the Mark, but thankfully, she seems to trust Kugisaki’s judgement enough not to take a look around herself before she speaks. “Oh my gosh, are you serious? That’s—that sounds like it would be a huge problem.” She stammers through the sentence with thinly veiled worry and obviously feigned shock.

“So you really haven’t heard anything?” Kugisaki bites her lip and gives her a once-over, pity blended with concern in her eyes. She leans back into the bar, and the skintight black halter top she’s wearing pulls just right around her. “You know, Kasumi, you should really be careful. There’s been talk going around, especially over company secrets like this… There’s this method called Dreamshare, which people can use to access your dreams and get information from you, even things you didn’t even realise you know.”

The Mark seems genuinely anxious now, wiggling in her seat and ducking her head. Kugisaki isn’t losing her, but the idea is in her head now, a scrap of awareness coming to her.

People in the lobby stop talking. The music over the speakers skips almost imperceptibly. Behind the bar, the stained glass doesn’t quite glisten the same anymore, and the overhead lights seem to sway. Now the Mark glances around, and it’s clear she’s noticed something’s wrong.

Megumi holds his breath.

Just as quickly as everything unsettled though, he feels the edges of the dream smooth over again. The hotel reanimates, sound coming back to the room, the light fixtures returning to their original positions. Kugisaki and the Mark’s conversation continues.

“You should be really careful,” Kugisaki is saying, not a beat missed, “about what you overhear. I wouldn’t want someone to take advantage of you, Kasumi.”

There’s Megumi’s cue. He sets his drink aside and rises in one swift motion and makes sure Yuuta does the same before he heads over. Yuuta walks right behind him, and Megumi meanders around tables and chairs like he’s done this every day of his life.

“You know, I have this friend who works in Dreamshare—”

“Kugisaki,” Megumi says, cutting her off.

She turns to him sharply, putting an excellent amount of effort into appearing taken aback. “Fushiguro,” she stammers, “Oh, wow, that’s a coincidence. We were literally just talking about you.”

He’s about to say something in response, but the surprise of the Mark outshines Kugisaki’s by supernovas, and the dream almost shatters again as she leaps up off her stool and pushes past Megumi to throw her arms around Yuuta. “Kokichi!” she gasps, drawing away to hold him by the shoulders. “What are you doing here? Oh my gosh, how long has it been? I haven’t seen you like this since… Oh, I don’t even know when.”

“Miwa.” Yuuta greets her stiffly, and there’s a hardness in the scratchy voice he takes on. He rests his hands on her forearms and meets her eyes with his brows drawn tight together. “Are you all right? Fushiguro here was just telling me—”

Her eyes widen, and she starts nodding vigorously before he even finishes his sentence. “About the company,” she says to him, breathless. “Nobara was telling me the same thing, that there are rumours that—of a—” She bites her lip, and her eyes water as she gazes up at him with all the fondness of a young woman in love. “Kokichi, I’m worried.”

One eyebrow raised, Megumi inclines his head to Kugisaki, and she puts a fist to her mouth and gives him one short nod. In any other situation, Miwa’s behaviour here would be confirmation enough.

“Fushiguro says he can help,” Yuuta tells her gently, and he looks up at Megumi with fierce eyes.

Kugisaki nods and pushes herself away from the bar. “That’s right. Kasumi, this is Fushiguro Megumi. He’s an Extractor who works in Dreamshare. He’s an old friend, and he taught me how to defend my subconscious for this same reason.”

Way to sell it, Kugisaki. She layers on the syrupy tone and devoted testimony, truly sounding like she believes what she’s saying. She nods in encouragement at Miwa as she speaks.

“You had to do that?” Miwa asks quietly.

Kugisaki raises one shoulder in a shrug. “You can never be too careful. You have even more reason to go through the process than I did.”

A dull ringing fills the air as Miwa reaches behind her and scrambles to take Yuuta’s hand in hers, searching for a familiar comfort. Megumi does his best not to check the lights on the ceiling as she turns to him. “What exactly would this… process entail, Fushiguro? How do I know it would help?”

“Well, it would help, first of all,” he says smoothly, “because it is my job as an Extractor to infiltrate the minds of others, and my team is one of the best in the business.” He quirks one eyebrow up again and makes a point of taking her in from head to toe. She’s wearing the same casual dress she had on when he walked in to find her lying on the bed, the same wedge sandals, her hair still up in a delicate bun. He meets her eyes and bows his head in respect. “I would be teaching you how to defend against the thing I’m best at. It would involve going into Dreamshare with me—Kugisaki can join you, don’t worry—and I’ll walk you through and show you how you can tell you’re in a dream, and train your subconscious to protect you against anyone who might be there with you.”

He gives her a minute to take this in, monitors the sounds of the lobby and bar around him, and watches as she takes both of Yuuta’s hands in hers and squeezes them. “You trust him?” she asks softly, pouring her whole heart into the single question.

Yuuta meets her gaze squarely and squeezes her hands back. He offers a firm nod. “I do, Miwa. I trust him.”

Miwa breathes in shakily, but turns back to Megumi with confident movements. She bows to him and says, “Then I entrust you with my care, Fushiguro. What do we do now?”

Good, Megumi thinks, she seems ready to dive in. He takes her gently by the arm and leans in close. “We should move quickly. Some of my team members are already here for a meeting; I can have them meet us in a private room and we can get started.” He lowers his voice even further to whisper in his ear. “It’s lucky I ran into you. We’re monitoring the hotel because the sort of people who would want to extract information from you, from both rival companies and your own, are already here.”

A different sort of stillness creeps in as she tenses against him, her eyes going wide. She swallows thickly and nods. “Then let’s do it. Take me where you want me to go.”

As Megumi leads her away, she reaches out behind her, gesturing to the others. “Nobara, Kokichi,” she gasps, “come with me. Please.”

“We’ve determined it’s not urgent for Muta to go through the process at this time,” he informs her before they get very far, already approaching the elevators fast. Megumi reaches into his pocket to grab out a key card. His knuckles brush past his fountain pen. “He told me about your status. You’re a secretary for the CEO, right? I think it’s best if we secure your safety as soon as possible, Miwa-san.”

She peers up at him with wide, anxious, trusting eyes, and for a second, Megumi almost feels bad about using her. He hopes he really can trust the others, because the most ideal outcome would be for Miwa to walk away from this unscathed.

“We have multiple rooms checked out,” Megumi goes on, trying to reassure her. “Muta can wait nearby, and he’ll be safe, while we work with you first.”

This does seem to calm her nerves, and she nods again in understanding and follows him into the elevator with Kugisaki and Yuuta close on their heels.

The elevator takes them to the seventh floor, where the same lush red carpets roll out beneath their feet as in the hotel before. Miwa doesn’t seem to recognise the hallway, though, just as much as she didn’t recognise the bar she met Kugisaki in twice. He leads her and the others to room 722 and swipes his key card on the door, finally letting go of Miwa for a moment.

He peeks his head in once to make sure the room is clear, blocking Miwa’s view of the change of clothes on the bed at the same time, before he ushers Yuuta inside. “Muta-san, this is where you’ll wait. We’ll be in the connecting room, so feel free to knock if you need anything. Someone will let you in.” He gives him a pointed look and shuts the door quickly behind him. Yuji had better be ready to let him in on the other side.

On the other side of the thick, red-stained wooden door to room 724, they should be all set up and ready to go. All Megumi has to do is pretend he’s checking in on his team on his cell phone to give Yuuta the time he needs to change and step into himself again and get to the other room. But Megumi makes eye contact with Kugisaki, and something comes over him.

“Miwa-san,” he implores, taking her by the shoulders and leading her to stand with her back against the wall, “I need you to listen to me very carefully. Once you decide to do this, it will change you. You won’t be able to see the world in the same way ever again. Do you understand?”

She blinks at him with owlish eyes, and her expression dissolves very quickly into fear once more. She shrinks back against the wall and looks so very small. It’s not like the warning can do much. She’s already here. It’s already too late.

“Fushiguro.” Kugisaki pulls him back by the arm and sweeps in to stand between them. She fixes Megumi with a hard look. “That’s enough. She gets it.”

The way she jerks her head to the side and raises her eyebrows tells him what she wants him to hear: Not everyone is like you.

He takes a breath and stares at her for a moment, then straightens his posture and tugs his sleeve further down his wrist. He steps smoothly forward and knocks on the door of the room Yuji told him to come to.

Maki swings open the door, her guard up and jaw clenched as she takes in the three of them carefully. She gives Miwa a once-over and then offers one short nod, stepping aside to let them in, where the rest of the array waits.

Yuji is already holding his line and settling down on the floor, likely opting to leave the chair for Megumi or Maki, and the bed for Kugisaki and Miwa to lay down on again. He perks up expectantly when they walk in and does the same sweep of Miwa, as if they hadn’t all seen her clearly up above, and then his gaze hovers on Megumi with hope and promise mixed into one throbbing message. Megumi only allows himself to focus on him briefly before he turns to Yuuta.

If Miwa recognises anything about him, she doesn’t let on. Yuuta is too good at his job, anyway. He kneels calmly on the floor beside the PASIV, his hands just as skilled as Inumaki’s when it comes to attaching the clean needles and drawing out the lines. He glances up and gives Miwa something just shy of a smile, one that doesn’t even begin to reach his eyes.

Against Kugisaki’s hold and putting her closer to Megumi again, Miwa jerks back, maybe on a flight or fight response, her body telling her to run. But Kugisaki wraps an arm around her and tries to reassure her. “It’s okay. It’s not as scary as Fushiguro made it out to be, I promise. You don’t need to take everything he says seriously.” She shoots a glare behind her that’s just for him, not for show for Miwa.

“Our main goal right now is to make sure you’re safe,” he tells her as he ushers her towards the bed.

Miwa lays down as instructed, her chest rising and falling with rapid breaths as she lifts her head to keep the others in her sight. Kugisaki ensures she’s settled before she walks around to her side of the bed.

Megumi has to still himself, give himself a chance to process the scene before him, because it’s déjà vu with slight differences. The bedside table is constructed from a different type of wood. The clock reads two hours later than it was before. Evening creeps in through the window, and the skyline outside is etched out in an unfamiliar pattern.

No, Megumi thinks, not unfamiliar. He knows that skyline. He knows every skyline he’s ever seen in a dream. It’s always the same one, just from a different angle each time. His heart pounds in his chest, and he hears the tick of Yuji’s pocket watch even though it should be impossible to notice over the sound of everyone shuffling around and murmuring to each other.

His hand twitches at his side. The pen. The gun.

“Okkotsu, I think we’re ready to go,” Yuji calls out. He slips the needle into his own hand to speed up the process and moves to make himself comfortable lying down.

Fresh confidence rushes through Megumi, and he leans down to grab his own line from the PASIV and do the same. He glances at the single chair in the room and then at Maki, but she shakes her head and gestures back at him. He imagines she wants to say, You fucking need it. He doesn’t argue, just takes a seat and adjusts his line until it’s comfortable and not pulling tight.

Kugisaki and Maki can take care of themselves, too, and he feels bad that they made Inumaki hook them all up earlier, one at a time, when there shouldn’t have been an argument who went down first. Yuuta goes to help Miwa while Kugisaki presses her down gently by the shoulder.

“It’s okay, it won’t hurt,” Yuuta murmurs as he reaches for her hand and swipes a disinfectant wipe over her skin. He laughs and says, “Tell me if it does, okay?”

Miwa reaches for him suddenly and bars his hands with her own, grabbing his wrist in a tight hold. It’s not at all dissimilar to how she held him at the bar when she thought he was someone else. “You work with Fushiguro, right? I can trust you?” Her eyes flicker to Maki, too, positioning herself beside Yuji, and Miwa’s nose wrinkles like that of a startled rabbit.

“Yes, this is the team,” Kugisaki reassures her. They rushed her in the door and into the bed so fast, they didn’t really get to cover introductions, and Kugisaki gestures to everyone in turn now. “This is Okkotsu, he’ll be staying awake so he can keep us—and Kokichi—safe. That’s Maki, a really good friend of mine. She’ll be keeping watch. Itadori there is our Architect, he’ll be constructing the dream, kind of like mapmaking, while we’re inside so Fushiguro can guide you through and show you different aspects. Does that sound okay?”

Hesitation grips Miwa’s expression, and she tries to sit up again. “I won’t be constructing my own dream?”

“Your subconscious will fill in the space,” Kugisaki soothes. “Itadori just chooses things like what buildings we have to work with. Try to lay back, you’ll be asleep in just a minute.”

Miwa nods and closes her eyes and breathes through her nose. She lets Kugisaki hold her down while Yuuta returns to his position monitoring the PASIV. He adjusts a few dials on the face of the machine, and Megumi watches him, but he’s a little too tuned in to the room and its traits to focus on Yuuta’s actions. His vision is already blurring, and he hasn’t even been sedated yet.

Soft threads of carpet lap at the bare sections of skin on Yuji’s arms where he lays. He’s not dressed in business attire like Megumi is, opting for comfort instead of appearance, plus utility in choosing outfits that have an inside chest pocket. His eyes are closed lightly, his expression peaceful, hands folded over his chest.

Megumi wonders if he’s already dreaming within the dream they’re already in, before he falls asleep again and sinks to another level. Megumi wonders, vaguely, as he relaxes his shoulders and leans his head back and keeps his eyes on Yuji, how deep he would go for the others.

They’ll never find out. He rests the hand with the IV in on the armrest of the chair and lays his other arm around his middle.

“Pressing the button now,” Yuuta announces, the same warning he knows Inumaki would give if he could. They’re both kind in the same conditional way, trying to ease the others down in tenser moments. “Ready in three, two…”

When a team goes under without their Architect, even for a mere sixty second headstart, the dream world doesn’t exist. They will stay asleep and wake up in and drift through an impossibly blank space, where white isn’t even a real colour and light and shadow know nothing of the mind. They cannot speak to each other, or move of their own accord, or imagine anything but what sleep really feels like in its deepest stage.

But it’s not as deep as they could be. It never is, not for an entire team of four, or five, or six.

Only two at most, usually, sometimes three, know what it’s like to share the deepest dream, to tumble after each other down the infinite rabbit hole. A space where nothing is real, and everything is.

Megumi has always been slow to go down, even fighting against the sedation a little. He likes to stay up and check to make sure whoever’s monitoring the PASIV has eyes on everyone and isn’t in danger. He likes to see the peaceful expressions on his friends’ faces.

He follows as quickly as he dares, and the dream comes alive.

Zenin Maki never screams. But a strangled yelp breaks free from her as she sits bolt upright on the hotel room floor, her hands flying to her throat to clutch at it desperately in an attempt to stop the flow of blood, Yuuta’s gentle face still dancing across her spotty vision. She gasps for breath and shakes from head to toe. Every muscle in her body quivers with tension.

Toge is staring at her, his eyes as wide as dinner plates. His hands hover over the PASIV and twitch once before he raises them. “What happened? Why are you awake?”

She chokes on her words, stammering them out in pieces, like broken teeth. The image plays before her over and over. Everything hurts. Everyone else is still unconscious around her, she realises. Her heart threatens to beat out of her chest. She can’t steady her breathing.

Maki looks at Toge, her muscles strained, and shoves herself to her feet. The IV line tears itself free from her hand. “You need a bigger kick,” she grits out. Her feet slip on the carpet as she hauls herself towards the bed. Her body moves on its own, and she fidgets with the IVs in Kugisaki and Miwa’s hands and lifts them straight up, slinging each of their limp bodies over one shoulder. She turns back to find that Toge hasn’t moved; he’s still watching her, wide-eyed, shocked into stillness.

Maki’s voice cracks like her vocal cords did when she shouts at him, “Toge, let’s go! Now!”

He nods once and bows his head and begins to shut down the PASIV, and he doesn’t ask any more questions.

Crisp ocean waves play from the sound machine they keep on the bedside table. Yuji prefers it to fuzzy white noise, and it’s close enough to the sound of rain that Megumi can still sleep to it. Yet, as the moon crawls through the inky night sky and the stars revolve around no other celestial body, Megumi lies awake. Tonight is different. It blurs at the edges and won’t let him rest until he picks apart the room.

He doesn’t want to look at the rest of the room, though. Not in the daylight, or in the dark. He feels safe here. He knows Yuji does too. Does it really matter if they’re awake or not?

For a while, he lays with his head against Yuji’s chest, his ear against his heart, and listens.

He’s surprising himself as the seconds wander by without him with how calm he is. He figured it would be easier to get this done sooner rather than later, before the hesitation and the doubt can eat him alive and he decides in a daze he can take whatever punishment the administration wants to give him for failing. He made it work once before, he reminds himself. He didn’t fail the first time. The details never did fully return to him, but he thinks he remembers a white room, and a gun coming out of a wall. It sounds improbable now, but highly likely all at once. They caught him with his guard down and hypnotised him, or something. Isn’t that all inception really is?

That’s why he runs his fingers over Yuji’s bare collarbone while he sleeps, and a voice he used to be too familiar with whispers in his head.

The idea was simple. His instincts, the same.

Slowly, his fingers creeping like the body of a cursed spirit shrivelling on the ground, he reaches for the drawer of his bedside table, the one Yuji has no reason to go into, and returns with the gun.

Three seconds pass in perfect silence as Megumi’s memory and mind both lapse, and he goes temporarily insane. Only for three seconds, he swears. He wants to put the gun in his mouth. It feels so heavy in his hands, and so many people have whispered strange things to him over the years. The administration told him something he’s never been able to let go of.

He has all the necessary qualifications, he thinks as a mad giggle breaches his lips and overtakes the sound of the waves, because he is balls deep in the target three times a week and twice on Tuesdays. He wakes and walks and breathes for Itadori Yuji. He has the advantage of being close to the target because the administration wants him to assassinate the love of his fucking life.

Megumi takes a sharp breath in and blinks himself back to reality. Or whatever’s closest to it, he supposes. He’d run the fountain pen over his wrist that day with the gun in the wall, outside the higher-ups’ impossibly perfect room, and the ink had come out pink. The same colour as Yuji’s hair. Not green like the exterior said it should be. That’s how he gets them, the dreamers, and makes sure nobody can trick him into living in a dream that isn’t his own. No one else knows the ink is supposed to be pink, much less the exact shade.

Now Megumi straddles his love, perched on his lap over the covers, and he rests the handgun in his palm and positions it very carefully so that the barrel is pointed down at the centre of Yuji’s forehead. He even goes so far as to rest the end there, so that metal touches Yuji’s flesh. He’s always been a heavy sleeper.

Megumi is so close. He cocks the gun in his hands, and he puts his index finger on the trigger, toying with it.

But at the edges, he starts to break.

Tears bleed out of his eyes, and he catches his breath all of a sudden, and then he feels like he’s going to vomit, and he’s pulling the gun back in close to his chest and taking it apart in his cold, shaky hands and throwing his leg off of Yuji and over one side of the bed and pouring every last bullet from the magazine into his hand and onto the carpet.

He can’t do it. Sobs wrack his tired frame, and he can’t do it again.

“Yuji,” he gasps into his closed and shuddering fist. He stumbles to the bathroom, throws the gun in the tub, bars himself against the sink and locks the door and stares with wild eyes into the mirror. He remembers blood running down his knuckles. He can’t do it.

But the assignment, something in the back of his mind still whispers.

He lets himself split and shatter and throw up in the toilet all from the bathroom floor until he’s been there so long his knees ache. He thinks there might be bruises on his skin where he’s gripped his own wrists. He tears at his hair, claws at his temples.

“You still sound like Sukuna,” Inumaki told him warily once before one of his many botched missions in the time between speaking to the administration twice and never again. Megumi had tilted his heavy head to the side and responded, “That’s funny. I still feel like him, too.” It had made his teammates just as nervous as it should have.

He sees it in his own gleaming eyes in the mirror when he hauls himself up to scoop ice cold faucet water into his acid-filled mouth.

He’s calm again when he finally steps out, and the night is still black.

You don’t have to kill him, someone told him once. A long time ago, between one wall and another. Just lose him for a little while. Let him wander down in Limbo.

Megumi steps out with his body swaying from side to side. His gaze catches on the bed. Yuji has rolled over, one hand extended to splay out on Megumi’s side, where the sheets are drawn back and there’s an empty space where someone should be. He seems to still be asleep, although it’s clear he senses the loss even unconsciously.

Just lose him.

Megumi’s eyes feel heavy as he shuffles over and lies down again, taking Yuji’s hand and moving it to sling over his shoulders. Megumi nestles his head into the pillow close enough that he can smell Yuji’s breath.

Through the years, Yuji has always, as far as he can remember, been a sweatpants-only sleeper. There’s no shirt or jacket or blazer to keep a pocket in.

Which is why Megumi reaches over now and slips the pocket watch out of the pocket of Yuji’s sweatpants while he’s deep in a dream that isn’t really a dream.

He holds it in his hand, this precious thing he’s so often wondered about, as it ticks in perfect time with Yuji’s heart. Megumi is used to seeing the embellished gold back and long gilded chain. What he wants to investigate is the face of the watch, to memorise its details and determine what exactly it is that makes the watch tick. It has haunted him since they met, since they fell in love. This is more satisfying, Megumi thinks, than putting a bullet in Yuji’s brain.

Two things stick out to him as he cradles it against the pillows in front of Yuji’s face. He had predicted one, after years of knowing and loving and working with him, but the other takes him by surprise.

First of all, the second hand does not move forward; it beats steadily backward, second by second, and he suspects that if he waited long enough, he would see the hour hand travel in the same unconventional manner. The second thing, though, is that the watch has no numbers. Nothing that would be helpful for actually telling the time.

Instead, the kanji used in Megumi’s name spells itself out in a circle. Three letters, four times, a perfect array. Fushiguro Megumi. Fushiguro Megumi. Fushiguro Megumi.

Tears well in his eyes again, and he feels like an endless fount of them, like no matter what he does, he will always be reduced to a grieving mess when it comes to Yuji. But the spelling of his name on the pocket watch draws him in, and he holds it close to his chest to comfort himself. He enjoys listening to it tick as much as he relishes in placing a hand over Yuji’s heart to feel it beat, to ensure he’s alive.

So long as the pocket watch still ticks, forwards or backwards, it must mean Itadori Yuji is alive.

Megumi will never understand why he takes this notion so deeply to heart, but it never proves to be wrong.

He clutches it to his chest like a stuffed animal and peers at Yuji again. And oh, damn it, he could never kill him. He works to commit every detail of him to memory instead, here in the moonlight.

Yuji’s eyelashes rest delicately against his upper cheeks. He has a faint flush to his skin from the warmth of Megumi and the bed and the heater on in the corner of the room. The moonlight runs its fingers through his hair, drawing shimmery pink lines that lie framed beautifully against the off-white ivory pillowcase. Yuji’s hand curls around the edge of the sheets, his fist somehow still relaxed where his fingers rest against the bed. He seems calmer too, now, since Megumi has returned to his side. His whole body is twisted slightly sideways so that his stomach is pressed into the mattress, trapping his own right arm. A tiny line of drool runs from the corner of his lip down the side of his cheek. Megumi scans him once, twice, three times. He never wants to forget this moment; wishes he could bottle it like moonshine and drink it down on rainy days, a personal vile of the thing that lights up his life. It would taste like saltwater and Yuji’s cum. It would smell like the lobbies in the buildings he constructs in his dreams.

Megumi wants to chain that vile to the pocket watch and hold onto both forever. He wants to save him.

But he forces himself to memorise this instead, knowing he’ll want to come back here someday and dream of it, because he can’t. He could never kill him, but he has to.

He has to.

With still hands, Megumi tucks the watch into his own pocket, rolls over to press himself into Yuji’s arms, and sleeps.

A person changes when twenty pieces of the essence of a monster are buried in the deepest part of their mind and left to fester. But Megumi’s starting to believe whoever found Sukuna’s fingers in the first place, whoever left them to take root inside of him, must have left an idea behind, too. One he accepts as his own, just like when Sukuna’s essence consumed him.

Silence lapses again, and it’s as big a tell as any, when they refuse to even humour his questions that are starting to turn into less than questions, closer to observations. Megumi slots puzzle pieces together in his mind as they speak. The presentation has ended now, stopped on a picture taken somewhere he knows intimately, and he eyes it with careful consideration. They want him to play into his hands. He stands on the edge of doing just that and pulling away completely.

He knows what will happen to him if he disobeys. But they don’t want to lose him for this. This is one of those jobs he can’t just say no to and walk away from.

“Who’s the target?” Megumi asks again, disguising the way his breath hitches with a bored sigh.

It’s the first administrator, the one who asked the questions at the start, who clears their throat and answers after a long, painstaking, dangerous pause.

“Itadori Yuji,” the administrator says.

He feels the world bend to his will as they descend.

Megumi and the others lead Miwa in circles around her own subconscious, and she takes everything in with a rather calm demeanour that none of them expected given her panic right before she went under.

“Do you promise Kokichi will be safe?” she’d whispered, clinging to Kugisaki’s hand, in the instant before Megumi’s eyes fell shut. He has to wonder how much Yuuta and Maki are picking up, and if they need to be worried about it. He tucks the thought away in a crevice in the back of his mind.

This dream takes the form of a city at night, though the streets are no less lively than any ideal daytime location would be. Small crowds bustle around a central fountain and still-open food stands. Decorative street lamps line the walkways, casting a faint white-amber glow on the faces of shades passing by and sparse tree leaves rustling in the wind. No matter where they step, the cobblestone path at their feet leads back to the fountain, guiding everyone inward, but it’s more than that. The dream hosts a simple layout, like Penrose Steps, that allows them to loop back around regardless of how far they walk. They don’t even have to turn around.

Just as he was taught, Megumi explains every aspect of the dream to Miwa, and she listens with dedicated intention. With his team of chatterers who love to talk and shout over each other, he hasn’t had someone really listen to him like this outside of alone time with Yuji in a good while.

It’s… nice, Megumi thinks.

He tells her about all the ways she can determine whether she’s dreaming or not, and when she asks about how pressed they were for time earlier, how urgently the others had acted, he explains that they can take their time here, because time moves differently when you’re dreaming. They have days here, maybe even weeks, whereas they had only minutes when they were awake.

He leaves out the part where they’d already taken her one level deep, and that hours is a category he’s skipping over entirely.

Megumi feels comfortable enough, however, to remove his pen to show it to her at the proper moment. “This is a totem,” he says, “and it’s one of the most popular ways to determine you’re in a dream.”

Miwa reaches out as if she expects him to hand it to her when she grabs for it, and he draws it back with a jolt of hostility that he doesn’t mean to express. Maki almost puts a hand out to stop her, or him, or both of them.

“You can look at it while I hold it,” Megumi tells her, “but you never, ever touch another person’s totem. That’s the whole point. Only I know the specifics of my totem, just as you will know the specifics of yours, by heart. That way, you can tell when you’re in someone else’s dream, and when you’re awake.”

“Are we dreaming now, Fushiguro?” Kugisaki asks. She keeps her tone light, teasing, but there’s a gritting of her teeth that Megumi’s sure only he picks up.

He tosses her a frustrated glance and tucks the pen back into his pocket. “Yes.”

The others drift back, over time, giving Megumi a little space halfway alone with Miwa, so he can try to gain her understanding personally. He tosses a glance back over his shoulder to Yuji and receives a subtle nod in response as Yuji raises an arm to rub at his nose. Kugisaki strolls along and mostly seems to be enjoying the scenery, and Maki keeps guard over them all, sticking close, her stance always strong and eyes always sharp. She’s been relatively quiet on this mission, but she slips little bits of information to Yuji and Megumi when they tug her aside to ask for it.

“Miwa-san,” Megumi says now, with an even tone and eyes fixed straight ahead. They pass the fountain for the tenth time and turn left. “I know this is all still new to you, and we met only hours ago, but in order to help you properly defend yourself, I need you to let me in.”

He pauses his walk and turns to face her with an imploring look. “Do you know anything about the betrayal in your company? It’ll help me know what to teach you if I know the secrets you have to hide.”

For the first time since they entered this level, Miwa shows hesitation. She wrings her hands together in front of her and casts a glance across the square. “Well, I…”

Megumi inhales slowly. He can tell by the shifts in her body language that he already has her where she needs to be. “You know who it is, don’t you?” he asks her softly.

Miwa rolls her shoulders back and follows his pattern of breathing. She ducks her head, a faint blush coming across her cheeks, like she’s embarrassed, or afraid. But she’s comfortable here, this environment dictated by tranquility, and she looks up again after a few moments to meet his eyes. “Yes, I do, Fushiguro.”

It’s Muta Kokichi, she tells him. It’s always been Kokichi.

He turns to acknowledge Maki’s response. She gazes back at him squarely, her head inclined, and lifts her hands out of her pockets. That’s all the information they need, really, just what they expected to hear, but he leaves his steady gaze on her until she picks up the question and answers it with an inquires gleam of her own dancing like a pair of flames in her eyes. What are you planning? Maki wants to ask.

I think we can get more information, he tries to tell her in return. He’s pleased to be able to say it’s the truth.

They could go down three levels, Inumaki had said. They have one more at their disposal.

“Itadori,” Megumi calls over, and before the solid name even finishes flitting forth from his lips, the molecules of the air pull themselves into a sheet just off the plaza. Cobblestones stack themselves into walls. A single room appears in front of them, closed off on three sides, a few couches and chairs scattered inside and lit by fairy lights.

Yuji’s hands do nothing.

Inumaki Toge sits in the comfort of an isolated corner in a library, where no one thinks bad things can happen outside the pages of the books. No one suspects people who are reading quietly in corners in the public library. His novel sits to the side, though, something he picked off the shelf at random and pretended to examine with interest, as he slides a small vile across the table to Kugisaki.

“You’re sure this’ll do the trick?” Kugisaki palms the vile and holds it up to the light, using the curve of her fingers to conceal it from anyone who might walk by. Suspicion shows in the winkle of her nose.

Toge drums his fingers across the table, impatient. “Have I ever steered you wrong?” he asks with one hand.

As if she’s seeing some sort of light bulb-style idea in the open air, Kugisaki tilts her head back, eyebrows raising. “Well, actually—”

He knocks on the table more firmly to draw her attention back. He’s annoyed, and maybe just a little bit drunk (or high, or both, totally not on his own concoctions, not like it’s any of Kugisaki’s business), and his sign language is a lot more expressive than usual. He’s wearing a mask, but he’s sure she can make out his facial expressions from his eyes alone, paired with the rough interpretation of his hands.

But he needs her to listen, and he needs her to understand. He keeps knocking until she scoffs and turns to him once again.

“Put that in her drink,” he spells out with immense emphasis. He doesn’t discount that there might be other people in the public library who are fluent in JSL, but he figures it’s better to get this out quickly rather than carefully. “Then get her to the room very fast.”

“Okay,” Kugisaki says, sounding serious but bored. “Like, before she passes out, fast?”

Glancing once over his shoulder, he bobs his head and draws his hands in to his chest. “It’s potent. Get her to the room and wait for the others.”

This catches her attention, and she sits up quickly and shoots daggers at him with her eyes. “Aren’t you going to be waiting when I get there? What, do you think we’ll get arrested for this, or something?”

“Well, seeing how it’s fucking illegal, it’s not out of the question.”

Toge leans forward into the table for a moment and tries to decide how to continue. He knows Kugisaki can sneak the vile around, at least, almost as good as he can. She’s the person he trusts most with it after himself, in fact. She’ll hide it in impossible layers of clothing and top herself off with flashy jewellery and behave nothing like someone who would drug a person at a bar—more like the person who would almost get drugged and then punch her would-be assaulter in the nose.

“I have some errands to run first,” he signs. “Make sure everything’s in place, things like that. Not for you to worry about.” He’s aware his sentences are getting choppy, his hand signals sloppy, and he lets out a sigh and sits back in his seat again. “It won’t be hard, Nobara. It’s just business.”

He leaves the library a perfect thirty minutes after her, down to the second. It gives him enough time to parse through the novel he never truly reads and think about the things he’s done.

Inumaki Toge sometimes looks at Fushiguro and still sees Sukuna. In his hair, in his eyes, in the fire that won’t leave him. He sees it when Fushiguro writhes in his bed in the middle of the night and Toge is the one who is called on to soothe him. Not even Itadori can do that anymore.

They used to be friends, Toge thinks. Now he just feels like a vision on the other side of a broken mirror as he watches Fushiguro fall apart.

“I need you to sit down, please,” Toge signs to him. He’s getting a little tired of Fushiguro hanging off his bad shoulder. He’s sure Fushiguro doesn’t even see what he says, but he must find the chair inviting enough, because he lets go and slumps down in the seat that’s been set up for him. Toge sets the empty glass down on the table beside him.

Gingerly, Toge crouches down and takes Fushiguro’s hand in his to prep him for the IV. He’s out of it enough that he doesn’t argue, doesn’t resist. His eyes are already half-closed. Rohypnol works fucking fast. With any luck, he won’t remember most of the evening.

Toge would ask him to hold still if he could, but his hands are busy now, and the space where his tongue used to be never did stop hurting. He thinks of the assignment, thinks of the administration, thinks of Yuuta. The two of them are not, have never been, and never will be as blindly obedient as Fushiguro is, not in the same way, or for the same reasons.

Fushiguro hums something Toge doesn’t quite catch as he slips the needle into the back of his hand. He watches Fushiguro visibly relax, melt further into his seat, before the second sedative is even administered. Toge reaches over to adjust the dials on the PASIV so that Fushiguro receives just enough Somnicin to overload his systems and nudge him the rest of the way into sleep.

He finishes settling him into place, makes sure he’s comfortable and that the drugs are flowing steadily, and then takes a seat in the chair across from him to monitor his status.

Right at that moment, Fushiguro finds enough control to muster a few words. Toge perks up to listen.

He’s making incomprehensible hand signs again, ones that are not JSL but more like symbols, or shadow puppets. Toge thinks he makes out a dog. Fushiguro holds out two clenched fists, one stacked atop the other, tugging lightly on the IV. Then he forms a rabbit. Then a finger gun, which he brings to point at his own temple before he mimes pulling the trigger. “Back we go again,” he sighs with a laugh that doesn’t sound like his own. “Down into the mindless void.”

No, Toge thinks, just you. He needs to stay awake and sober in times like this.

It has become easy to identify when Fushiguro needs a little help calming down or getting to sleep, and easy to slip things into his drinks while he’s busy studying the details of a room and trying to figure out what’s changed, even though nothing has. He becomes convinced of it every time he enters someplace he’s been before.

Toge remembers the first time Fushiguro drove all the way to his apartment in a cold sweat and banged on his door and begged him to knock him out, just so he could dream. He needs to be back down there, he told Toge. He couldn’t sleep without help no matter how hard he tried. Even the generic Somnicin stopped working, for a little while.

He watches him nod off now, his eyes glistening thoughtfully. Fushiguro looks to be just about in the same place of consideration as Toge, with twice the hallucinogenic properties. His gaze is focused on something a few metres in front of him, a scene that plays out for only him to see, that isn’t really there.

In a moment he thinks looks like clarity, Toge reaches over and taps on Fushiguro’s hand, right by the needle’s insertion point, where it’s taped down to stick in his vein, to get his attention before the drugs can pull him under.

Fushiguro’s head lolls in Toge’s direction. His eyes are unfocused, but he furrows his brow for a moment in concentration. “Huh?”

“Why is it important,” Toge asks, as slow and clear as possible, his expression open with curiosity, “to dream?”

Like a warm pat of butter in a cooking pan, Fushiguro’s grin slides across his face. It’s the one he only gets when he’s completely losing himself to the drink and the drugs and is thinking about someone else through the fog. But it falls off his face just as quickly, and he takes on a more pensive look as he turns back to that scene that isn’t there.

“In my dreams,” he murmurs softly, faraway, “we’re still together.”

Toge stays with him until he falls asleep, then waits as long as Fushiguro needs. When he wakes up, Toge hoists him out of the chair again and leads him to his room for him to lie down and act like he doesn’t want to cry.

“Yuji hasn’t asked about his totem,” Megumi slurs, not even sure he can keep himself upright anymore, he’s so overwhelmed with shock and self-loathing. His hands slip around the edges of the sink.

Kugisaki dares to take one step closer to him. “What?”

A long, hard-pressed sigh seeps out of Megumi’s lungs and leaves him with barely any oxygen at all. He can’t make it click in his mind. “Three weeks ago, I stole Yuji’s totem. He hasn’t asked about it. I don’t even think he ever realised it went missing.”

Silence spreads between them, thick and gooey, and then Kugisaki clicks her tongue and hugs herself with both arms. “Megumi,” she chides, pitying him. “Yuji doesn’t need his totem like you do. Nobody does, baby.”

They have to take her down one more level to get Miwa to confess, “Kokichi has been working from Dreamshare for months. Nobody knows where he is physically; he always communicates via messenger, and I don’t remember the last time I saw him.”

Out of every goal Megumi had for this escapade, he did not expect her to divulge something like that. He had no idea. The options in front of him now are that Miwa, given how she responded to all the information thrown at her in the beginning, is a very good actor; they’d managed to draw something out of her subconscious that she didn’t realise she knew; or she had half the puzzle before, and pieced the rest together with the context they offered her as they walked her through the dream.

“So that’s how he’s been spilling company secrets,” Yuji muses, his expression pinched in a wince. He shuffles uneasily from foot to foot, and he keeps looking around at the numbers on the doors and the nurses bustling from office to room and back again.

“I thought he was in a coma,” Miwa says very quietly. She stands against one wall, her hands clasped in front of her, looking like she’s about to cry. “And that all his messages were fake. But then I saw him, and I—I guess…”

She doesn’t remember, Megumi realises. She’s inexperienced enough that the layers of the dream blend together, and she doesn’t remember that she was already asleep when she saw Yuuta as Kokichi.

“There was an accident,” she murmurs, “right before he disappeared. I didn’t know what else to think.”

They have months to find Muta in the hospital. Months for Miwa to get to talk to her projection of him, visit him to comfort herself, pick apart what she still doesn’t know she knows via what he has to tell her.

They won’t make it that long. It’s just her, Megumi, Kugisaki, and Yuji left. The key players, the ones who know what the mission behind the mission is. Megumi suspects, on the surface, that the rest of their teammates had a guess, but they’d disguised it well. Besides, the more information Kugisaki can bring back to Utahime, the more all of them will get paid. Utahime hadn’t hired her, a former Extractor, of all people, for nothing.

Quiet beeping from the various rooms and machines that inhabit them underlay the echo of the group’s footsteps on the cold tile floor. Florescent lights flicker overhead, and Megumi glances up with only mild concern; they’re all a little wary of what’s to come, and aspects of the dream that most closely mirror reality tend to stop working the deeper they traverse. Things are stranger down here, less Penrose Steps and more backrooms. Megumi is used to it, but he can’t say the same for Miwa, or even the others, to a certain degree.

“Do you think we’ll find him soon?”

Miwa stands cautiously near Yuji, like she’s chosen the strongest-looking of them to protect her. Maybe she thinks if she can get close enough to him, she can convince him to change the scenery, too, but Yuji has no choice in the matter. Not this far under, not ever.

“‘Soon’ is relative,” Megumi mutters. He dips his hands into his pockets and his shoulders droop, because he feels heavy down here, the environment itself trying to sink its claws into his skin. He starts walking, shoulders past the others, and picks a random hall to turn into as the walls alter their positions around him. They form a diamond pattern, eight hallways splitting off of the corner they were standing at instead of the previous perpendicular four. If he isn’t careful, he’ll take a wrong step and be cut off from the others completely.

But he’s always been careful, hasn’t he? He’s good at it. He fiddles with the gun where it rests at his hip, where they can’t see because it’s hidden past the folds of his jacket.

“Megumi, don’t start getting cryptic now,” Yuji complains. The sound of the given name on his tongue in this place tastes wrong in the air. It shouldn’t be here.

Someone familiar flickers by at the far end of the hall.

Megumi’s breath stills in his throat.

“I don’t think taking him down three levels for his first job in years was really a good idea,” Yuji whispers behind him.

The lights are the next to flicker, and an odd yellow tint sticks to the air as the walls breathe, painted surfaces moving in and out. Down the hall, in the spot he saw the figure, shadows loom and seem to circulate around a fixed point. The place where someone is supposed to be is visible and palpable. There should be a room there, or something. But Megumi doesn’t see anything at all, and he creeps down the hallway with careful paces, waiting for the figure to come back and turn the corner and scare him like he’s a little kid.

Miwa lets out a shaky breath as Kugisaki says, “I don’t think we took him down. I think he took us.”

“Itadori,” Megumi hails abruptly, his spine going rigid and his feet refusing to carry him further. “Go on ahead. The domain isn’t responding to me very well.”

Yuji doesn’t need to be told twice, but as he brushes past Megumi with a sharp look. He cracks his knuckles nervously as he takes his position at the lead.

For a long time, maybe months, Megumi holds still and closes his eyes while he tries to regulate everything he needs to. His thoughts, his bodily systems, the dream. Each little attempt and change adds to the unease that spills out of him like dark ink. He wants to check the pen, but he knows this isn’t real. There’s no way it can be, with that flash of white hair at the end of the hall, unless they’re in a different hospital than he thought they were, and he modelled it on accident after another one, except it’s real after all, and he woke up without realising—

He takes so long just to decide how best to move, Kugisaki slides past him, too, Miwa in tow. She shoots him a look remarkably similar to Yuji’s. “If we’re going to find Muta, we need to start actually searching,” she reminds the group.

Time ticks by as the obvious settles into place. They’re not going to find Muta. They are ten steps into a ten thousand step maze, one not everyone will find the exit to. Megumi’s breath falters as decisions fall into place.

His hand is still on the gun when he finally steps forward to trail after the others.

“I think we should take a right here,” Yuji says between poking his head into eternally empty rooms. Every room perpetuates the beeping of a heartrate monitor, like the ticking of a thousand watches, even though there are no patients hooked up to the systems, and total darkness eclipses the IV stands and wheelchairs and beds behind the closed-off windows and sunless world. There is nothing outside this hospital.

“Kasumi, does anything feel familiar? Or do you feel Muta’s presence anywhere?” Kugisaki hesitates at the end of one corridor and the beginning of the one Yuji gestures towards. The paths stretch out before their eyes.

Megumi expects to hear disconnected IV fluid dripping onto the floor. He expects to see bloodstains on the beds.

Miwa shakes her head, and she clutches one hand to her stomach and holds Kugisaki’s with the other. “I don’t like it here,” she whimpers. “I don’t feel him here at all.”

He’s not a ghost, Megumi wants to say, but it’s wrong, so he doesn’t. They’re all ghosts down here, their bodies shells up above.

The air drops two degrees in temperature as an upset sends ripples through the realm, and Megumi stops again, glancing over his shoulder. He expects to see familiar figures crawl across the ceiling. He expects his shades to bleed out of the empty rooms and kill everyone right now. No one comes.

He’s dreaming, he reminds himself. It’s just a dream.

He fingers the trigger of the gun as it rests halfway out of its holster.

In quick succession come the events to end all time and all love. Things would be drastically different if Megumi weren't so methodical with the gun. He keeps it concealed until Yuji pokes his head into a room a few metres down the hallway, and Kugisaki and Miwa do the same well behind him.

“Wait,” Miwa gasps, and she pulls Kugisaki by the hand out of sight past a doorway. “Nobara, look—”

He doesn’t know what they've found, he'll never find out, and he doesn’t care. Maybe he'll just lose them, close off a wall between the girls and himself and pin Yuji right where he wants him. Where he needs him. His heart beats in his throat, and he can hear the ticking. He pulls the gun slowly out of his pocket. He's letting the act slip—the one where he's an Extractor trying to help Miwa Kasumi. The one where he doesn’t have ulterior motives more than three layers deep. His finger rests easy on the trigger as he lifts the heavy metal up and aims down the hallway in front of him.

Yuji backs out of the room he was investigating, a frown on his face and his hands on his hips. He looks so good in his short-sleeved shirt and his scars. He looks so sickly and pale in the light of the labyrinth Megumi has created. No matter which way Yuji turns, Megumi will find him. He made the map complicated enough that no one should be able to navigate it but him.

“Tell me more about the way you design the dreams,” Yuji asked him once before this, sitting on the couch in their living room with a mug of coffee in his hands, and he rarely even drinks coffee. Itadori Yuji, the best Extractor Megumi has ever met, leaned forward to study the papers, blueprints, and plans scattered on the table. “If I'm going to pretend to be an Architect for this job, I need to understand more than what I build on my own time.”

The dream won’t collapse if Yuji dies. All Megumi has to do is pull the trigger.

Yuji must catch a glimpse of him standing there watching him, because he turns, and a strange look washes over his face when he sees the gun. Megumi thinks he recognises fear, but also hurt, and a sense of understanding that causes his hand to shake.

“Megumi,” Yuji whispers, the sound reaching him across the distance of the hallway beneath the uneasy lights. It isn’t a question, even though it should be.

The trigger puts a horrifically satisfying pressure on the pad of Megumi’s finger as he falls into position and aims for Yuji’s chest. If neither of them move, which seems likely with how Megumi can’t bring himself to even twitch without risking a breakdown and Yuji is frozen in shock, he’ll hit him right in the heart. Cold and genuine, Megumi rolls his tone into a simple apology that doesn’t cover half of it.

“I’m sorry,” he tells his love.

Then the world shifts. Okkotsu Yuuta’s looming figure steps out of a wall that should have been solid. He wraps an arm around Yuji from behind to hold him still, and he slashes a knife across his throat.

Blood sprays into the air.

Megumi’s heart fucking stops.

Someone screams behind him, and his ears are ringing, and now Yuuta’s hands are covered in blood, and so is Yuji’s shirt and his face and his throat—oh, fuck—Yuuta steps back, and Yuji topples to the ground.

Before he can think for even a second, Megumi starts moving. His feet his the floor with harsh echoes as he sprints down the hall. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He has to do something. “What are you doing?” he hollers, rage tumbling through him and spilling over into his shout. He reaches them in seconds and shoves Yuuta aside, because he’s just standing there over Yuji, who stares up at the water-stained ceiling with wide eyes and clutches madly at his throat, because he’s still alive, he’s still alive—

“Yuji,” Megumi chokes out. He’s not sure what he did with the gun. He drops to the floor on his hands and knees and crawls to his side. Shakily, he slides his hands into place around Yuji’s throat, nudging Yuji’s hands aside to put pressure on the wound.

The slash in his neck.

The chance result.

Kugisaki barks instructions, distantly, something to Miwa and something to Yuuta, but Megumi doesn’t listen. Tears slide down his cheeks to mirror Yuji’s, both mixing with the wide pool of blood on the floor. It seeps towards the walls, and the rest of the map doesn’t matter all of a sudden, and neither does the mission, or any of it. This is all too real now, all too present.

Only two things linger at the forefront of Megumi’s thoughts.

Yuji sobs, which doesn’t help to still the flow of blood, and Megumi holds him down the best he can. “I’m here,” he whispers, quivering, as blood stains every line on his hands and gets on his pants, too. “It’s okay, Yuji, I’m here.”

But Yuji stares up at him with wide, half-seeing eyes, fear overtaking him. Fear, and the small hope, the faint desperation, that pumps through his body and out through his throat with every beat of his weary heart. He meets Megumi’s eyes, and he must be in so much pain, but past the blood bubbling up in his mouth, he tries to speak.

“D—” Yuji stammers, choking on the words, his own voice, his own fluids. He can barely get the message past his lips. “Th—Dow—We—”

Megumi tries to cup his jaw with a few fingers while maintaining pressure on the wound. His own blood runs cold, but safe and sound, inside his veins. “What is it?” he asks through tears. “Tell me, Yuji, I’m listening.”

“Mm.” Yuji’s eyes close as he struggles onward, and finally, Megumi makes out a few sparse words. “Meet you,” Yuji says. Then again, “Meet you.”

His body seizes, and Megumi’s stomach churns. Yuji whimpers with the effort and claws at the floor at his sides. Blood on his fingers. Blood at his back.

Slowly, understanding settles into place, and a calm he doesn’t like inches closer to Megumi. He blinks a few times, his vision going blurry. Just like that night in the bedroom. He couldn’t fire the gun.

There’s another way, Mei Mei had told him. What Yuji is saying and what Megumi is thinking are not exactly the same. The message processes two ticks to the left. But he’s still got the watch in his pocket, after all this time, and it weighs heavy as he offers a slow nod and tells Yuji, “Yes.”

He lifts his hands off of Yuji’s throat, lets the blood pour out, and cups both hands around his face instead, holding Yuji steady to meet his eyes, to make sure he knows. Make sure he hears. Solid and firm and fierce, Megumi says, “I’ll meet you there. I’ll see you on the other side.”

Silence sets in, a divide between them and the others, as Yuji begins to still. The blood is thick now, covering a whole section of the floor. Megumi doesn’t bother to tend the wound any further. He smooths his fingers over Yuji’s cheeks, stains his hair red, and murmurs sweet nothings as Yuji’s body relaxes beside him. He doesn’t even hear the beeping of the hospital monitors anymore, or the voices of their teammates turned traitors. The mission is over. The meaning is lost.

“It’s okay,” Megumi whispers. “You can rest now. I’ll find you.”

He repeats it, over and over, in the hopes it will follow Yuji down, as his heavy eyes close and his skin goes cold. Megumi watches, and waits, and stays right with him until he knows Yuji doesn’t need his comfort anymore. He waits until Yuji is dead.

Kugisaki comes up behind him as he sits quietly with his hand on Yuji’s chest, and he can tell she’s livid before he turns to look up at her. “What... the fuck just happened?”

His attention drifts as she scrounges the scene for details and takes in the sight of Yuji’s body with horror plastered over her face. Megumi’s gaze focuses down the hall, where it’s Miwa, to his surprise, fierce and able, who pins Yuuta against the wall and holds him there. She looks angry, too, covering up her fear.

Across the way, Megumi meets Yuuta’s dark eyes.

“I have no idea,” Megumi mutters, ice cold as he sheds his shock and makes way for fury, “but I’d love to find out.”

Itadori Yuji is dead. It hurts, a lot.

He’s dead, that is, until he wakes up on the quiet shores of an ocean.

Megumi wakes up soaked in sweat as the idea courses through his mind and boils beneath his skin and whispers in his ears and refuses to leave him alone. He isn’t sure if it followed him into his dreams or if he brought it back up.

He sits upright in bed, and the room spins sideways. His breath comes in heavy gasps. The idea clings to his arms and mirrors his movements as he throws on the bedside lamp and scrambles to find his pen in a panic. Behind him, he can hear the endless ticking, and it doesn’t stop, it won’t stop, but something tells him it will, and he feels pressured into listening. He hears it. It consumes him.

Yuji lies peacefully in the bed where he fell asleep, unmoving and unbothered by Megumi’s sudden upset. Megumi wonders how deep he is and what he might be dreaming of, and for how long he’s been there.

He finds the pen and pops it open. The metal flashes green in the lamplight.

He digs the tip into the most sensitive patch of his own skin and draws haphazard, meaningless lines onto his wrist, over and over and over and over and over.

The check in is smooth; no one at the front desk questions Megumi’s identity, and why would they? He thanks the staff and follows their instructions down one of the long, sterile hallways.

He always gets mixed up in places like this. The door back to the waiting room isn’t where he left it when he comes back out, and all the rooms are the same. He glances at the numbers on the doors as he walks past and looks for 724, dodging equipment and a few bustling employees on his way. He doesn’t bother knocking once he finally finds the correct room.

Sunshine paints cheerful yellow patches on the white walls, and a single colourful drawing is hung up above the bed. Now that the rain has broken, it’s not so gloomy inside, despite the unsettling quiet and the sight of a body lying in the bed.

Megumi pads over and hovers over the blue sheets and stock-still form, arms laid straight out, head lying squarely on the pillow. Megumi raises one eyebrow and glances at the IV line standing next to him. Nothing changes.

It’s a private hospital, one to which he had to announce his visit ahead of time, but now that he’s here and allowed to roam free, he makes himself comfortable.

“So,” he says to the air and blank space as he takes a seat on the edge of the bed, nudging the patient’s legs aside to make room for himself. He settles the lunch box he brought on his lap and pops it open, revealing a perfect meal of grilled salmon, onigiri, and edamame that someone else made for him. He removes the chopsticks from the inside of the lid and breaks them in half as he continues, “I quit Dreamshare. Not dreaming itself, but the work. I’m not doing any more jobs.”

Megumi brings a clump of rice to his mouth and chews thoughtfully. “I don’t think I’ll ever do another job again.”

The comatose patient, of course, does not respond. Megumi lifts one leg up to tuck underneath himself on the bed while the other dangles over the side. He eats in near silence for a minute, even the heartbeat monitor muted. The sun creeps across the empty walls. Nurses and doctors rush past in the hall.

“So I’m sorry,” he says, tapping a few stray pieces of rice off his chopsticks before he reaches for the fish, “if you’re alive in there.”

Megumi finds the nearest bathroom and shoves Yuuta inside by the shoulders.

“Fushiguro, stop—”

He cuts off Yuuta’s protests with a hand fisted around his collar, yanking him forward, forceful and fast enough to make him stumble. Megumi reels back a fist and hits Yuuta hard across the face. Blood spurts from his nose as he’s snapped into silence.

“Who hired you?” Megumi’s voice, blown up by the echo of the bathroom and the rage rushing through him, comes out as a roar.

“Nobody,” Yuuta squeezes out on instinct. He moves to clutch his face in his hands, but he doesn’t get the chance.

Megumi hoists him up again and then knees him in the stomach. He doesn’t let him fall, just holds him hanging by the collar, as he drags him further and almost trips over him. Yuuta barely manages to find his footing before he’s forced back and shoved violently against the wall.

“Nobody hired me,” he tries again, the words bubbling in his throat around the blood from his nose. It’s not enough. Not even close.

“I don’t believe you,” Megumi snaps. His shoulders quake, and his nails dig into skin, and he’s just mad. He doesn’t even know why. Yuji was about to die anyway. But Yuuta stepped in and stripped it away from him, interfered with the assignment, took Yuji right out of his hands.

He draws back and hits him again, and again—in the face, in the stomach, wherever he can make it hurt. He kicks him in the shins. He smacks him with the back of his hand. Yuuta tries to stagger forward, and Megumi shoves him back again. He drops his hand to balance himself out, and it brushes something at Yuuta’s hip, right where he punches his fist into the wall to pin him where he stands.

It’s the knife. Covered in Yuji’s blood.

Megumi rips it out of its sleeve and holds it up and presses it into Yuuta’s throat and growls, “Who fucking hired you, Yuuta?”

This elicits a whimper, and Yuuta’s eyes go wide, one already swelling, his whole face battered. His chest rises and falls in quick succession as panic floods through him. “Megumi,” he chokes out. “You know. You must.”

Megumi digs the knife in a little further. He didn’t get to kill today, and the instinct just won’t stop cycling through him, its grip strong on his wrists, the idea in his mind—

He feels like Sukuna. Still, always, forever.

Megumi grits his teeth and drives his knee into the wall just to the left of Yuuta’s stomach. “What happened to Maki?”

Half insane and half desperate, a laugh slips from Yuuta’s throat, and whatever light might have glistened in his eyes before is gone. “Maki wasn’t that deep. She’ll be fine.”

Megumi’s hands shake as the confirmation slices through the air between them. Yuuta didn’t just slit Yuji’s throat. He killed Maki, too, to get her out of the way as he dropped down two levels alone, leaving two PASIVs unmanned, against procedure, against his better judgement—and now he’s trapped down here with Fushiguro Megumi, reliant on a half-drunk Chemist and the woman he just murdered in her sleep to find a bigger kick to pull him out of the nightmare.

“You idiot,” Megumi breathes hot and close to Yuuta’s ear.

He can feel him shaking, struggling to hold himself up against the wall, and Yuuta asks quietly, “Are you going to kill me, Megumi? Send me to Limbo as retribution for your boyfriend?”

For a moment, Megumi holds very, very still, save the breath moving through his lungs and the buzz of his hands from the dire rush of his pulse. “No,” he says at last, bitter and slow. “I’m not going to kill you. But I’m also not going to thank you—” In one swift motion, he steps back, lets Yuuta drop a little, and tosses the knife away to send it skittering on the floor of some empty stall—”for doing my job for me.”

Yuuta doubles over himself and puts his hands to his chest and gasps for breath. It takes him time to process what Megumi just said. Then he peeks up at him and narrows his eyes, confusion dawning on his face. “Wait, what?”

They’re both still covered in Yuji’s blood. They both breathe heavily in the silence of a bathroom that doesn’t exist, but the dream doesn’t waver around them.

“You were…” Now that the risk of danger has eased off, Yuuta glances around, taking stock of his surroundings. His expression goes slack. He doesn’t have to say anything, doesn’t have to react, as Megumi watches the gears turn in his head, cogs fitting together. The space around him hasn’t changed. The hospital layout holds steady.

Something dark swoops low in Megumi’s stomach and flutters like the wings of a moth. This time, he doesn’t crush it down. He flicks one wrist upward like Sukuna would have, and shades in the form of two wolves push through the swinging door and come to stand at attention at either of Megumi’s sides, just to keep Yuuta at bay. “You know, I’m surprised you even managed to find us down here,” he says coolly. “I designed this level as a labyrinth, with sections of the path set to change as we moved through.”

Yuuta looks like he’s about to throw up. He clutches his bruised abdomen with one arm and tries in vain to cling to the wall with the other, still leaning against it for support. He opens his mouth, blood trickles out, and his jaw quivers as he whispers, “You—You’re the Architect.”

Megumi’s eyes flicker up to meet his as he reaches for the gun again. It’s tucked back in its holster, though he doesn’t remember putting it there.

“And you were going to kill Itadori,” Yuuta stammers. “I know why I was hired, but why—”

“Probably the same reason as you.” Megumi opens up the barrel and double checks his prep work; two bullets are housed inside the gun. He removes one now and brings it to his lips, closes his eyes, and kisses it softly before he tucks it into his pocket. “I’m sure the administration didn’t trust me. They sent you in as a backup.”

Sharp realisation of what he thinks he knows ignites a spark in Yuuta’s eyes. “You’re lying. To cover yourself and Itadori. You’re going to save Gojo, aren’t you?”

“Who said anything about saving Gojo?” Megumi closes the barrel again and runs his finger down the side of the gun as he slides it into his grasp. He holds it up and points it at Yuuta for just a moment. “After I worked so hard to trap him in Limbo in the first place?”

Yuuta seizes up and presses himself flatter against the wall. “What the fuck,” he whispered. “You killed Gojo Satoru?”

Megumi reaches down to pet one of the wolves on the head, scratching between its ears, and shakes his head. “I only killed him in his dreams. He’s fine, I’m sure. Just needed to lose him for a little while.”

For all his worth, and all his bold moves and composed demeanour earlier, Yuuta looks like he’s falling to pieces now. He’s on the verge of a panic attack, his chest heaving, his hands shaking. He winces when he grips his own stomach a little too hard.

“There’s one more thing you should know,” Megumi says. He can’t help it now; a slow, sly grin creeps over his face, and he feels methodical and manic. He glances once at the sinks, and notes that water is starting to pool in their bases, so at least he knows Maki and Inumaki are doing their jobs to get everyone out.

Not Yuji, though. And not Megumi.

“This was never Yuji’s dream,” Megumi says, “or Miwa Kasumi’s, or anyone else’s.” His voice rings out in the echoing empty space. “It’s mine. Every single level.”

Yuuta might pass out before he can even think of making it out alive if Megumi keeps going at this rate. Blood runs down his face, and shock mars his expression. “What the fuck,” he says under his shaky breath. “Was the Kyoto job even real?”

Megumi only shrugs; he’s not at liberty to explain the details of Kugisaki’s mission. All he knows is his own, and time is ticking. He wonders what the others are doing to wake everyone up.

“Good luck dealing with Maki once you get back,” Megumi hums. He lifts the gun slowly and holds it against his own temple. “I do hope you make it out before this all collapses, Yuuta. I’m about to take the dreamer and the architect down with one shot. And I have no interest in being stuck anywhere with you.”

I’ll meet you there, he’d told Yuji.

The grin still lingers on his face as the water spills from the sink and gushes over the floor, the feeling of falling shakes the whole dream, and the bullet breaks through Megumi’s skull.

Megumi stands on the edge of the rocky shoreline as a cold breeze slips around him and makes him shiver. Goosebumps rise on his arms, but he couldn’t be bothered to put on a jacket before he stepped out into the watery dawn air.

“Hey.” Yuji picks his way towards him, and Megumi catches him by the hand when he stumbles. His breath is soft and warm skin softer.

They squeeze hands, and Megumi dissolves a little more into the saltwater and relaxed posture.

Tiny waves build far out on the water and crash together as large bodies against the jutting rocks. Grey is the surface of the water and the curve of the sky, but the horizon where they meet glows bright white in a steady line. A flatlined heart monitor. Consistency at its finest. Megumi takes a short, quick breath and relaxes again into the cold. He wonders if the horizon would glow the same looking back this way across the water. If Yuji ever finishes his bridge, maybe they can stand on the other side and compare it together. He wonders, too, if the horizon glows the same in the waking world versus in a dream. The details are always too blurry for him to notice.

“It’s nice,” Yuji murmurs, scooping out a space for his voice beneath the waves, “just looking out at it, sometimes. Makes me feel like nothing matters, and we can just be for a while.”

Megumi keeps his gaze fixed straight ahead, and his hand is still in Yuji's grasp. “Mhmm,” he answers with an absent nod.

The splash of every wave breaks against the rocks to break them down, smooth out their edges over time. They ebb at Megumi’s consciousness, too. If this is a dream, the waves are made to soothe him, quell the ache nestled in his soul, and convince him to stay longer. If it isn't, he wants to be there again, in the place where seconds here would melt into days and he could stay put and stop thinking for as long as he wanted. Maybe forever. The chill folds him up in its embrace and coaxes the tension out of his tired muscles, and his body accepts it well enough to stop shivering.

He almost takes a step forward before he remembers Yuji is grounding him to the shore.

“Megumi.” He tugs at his hand, and when Megumi turns, Yuji is already looking at him with his lips formed around a pout and his eyebrows knit with worry. “You’re drifting again.”

And Megumi can feel it, hearing him but floating at the same time, somewhere out above the waves. He's not in his body. He doesn’t resist as Yuji moves and positions him however he wants. He turns him away from the water and brings him close so they're standing face-to-face. The hand holding Megumi’s lifts it up to hover between them, but Megumi’s arm is heavy and threatens to pull them both down with the weight. Yuji buoys him the best he can.

His other hand comes to Megumi’s face and brushes his cheek, tucking hair away from his forehead, rubbing gentle circles beneath his eyes. “I need you to wake up, baby,” he says tenderly, firmly. “I need you to stay right here with me.”

Megumi blinks at him and lets out another faint hum. Was he sleeping? He can’t imagine how glazed his eyes must be, just like how he looks when he's under a good dose of Rohypnol or something stronger. Yuji never liked that little agreement he had made.

“This is why I don’t like you letting Inumaki give you things,” Yuji sighs, reading his thoughts, dictating the flow of the dream. He frowns as he cups Megumi’s cheek in his palm and waits for him to lean into it with a contented flutter of his eyes. “What are you thinking?” Yuji asks.

Even though he's standing here in his lover's arms, an anchor to the shore, something deep inside Megumi tugs him out and away, a line pulling at the pit of his stomach.

“I want to go,” he says, wispy and faint.

Yuji sucks in a breath and shakes his head. Tears well in his pretty brown eyes. His frown only deepens. “No. No, Megumi, you can't.” He props his head up with his hand and jostles him lightly. “Hey, honey, look at me.”

Endless calm pulses through Megumi as he opens his eyes and complies. Yuji looks so stressed, so worried. But it’s just a dream, isn’t it?

“Where are you?” Yuji asks him.

Something clicks in the back of Megumi’s mind, as if Yuji's words have pulled some sort of trigger, a trick to get him to come back, to tether him. His mouth feels dry all of a sudden. He glances down at Yuji's hand around his own. “Here,” he says, and he thinks it's the right answer. He meets Yuji’s tired gaze. “With you.”

The response is met with a nod of encouragement, and Yuji rubs his cheek again, rough calluses on his hands and familiar warmth seeping through to Megumi. “That’s right. I'm right here, Megumi, and I'm not leaving you.”

Awareness starts to come back to Megumi, and the sound of the waves crashing into the rocks again snaps him back to attention. He inhales and turns around and remembers where they’re standing. The bridge that isn’t quite a bridge yet, just a pier, juts out to his left and disappears out in the mist.

Yuji runs his hands over other parts of Megumi’s body; his wrist, his hip, his collarbone. He brings himself around to stand behind him and holds him by the shoulders as he presses soft kisses to the back of his neck. “I'm right here,” he mumbles into the folds of Megumi’s shirt. It sounds like a sob when he says, “So please don't go places I can't follow.”

Megumi frowns as he stares out at the water, and the horizon, and the bridge. “I've followed you everywhere,” he says, and truth settles into his words. He reaches up to place a hand over Yuji’s on his arm. “I'd do it all again.”

“I know.” Yuji moves downward, his kisses trailing over Megumi’s shoulder and down his arm, until he adjusts his hand to splay Megumi’s fingers out and kiss every single one of those, too. “But you're dreaming, Megumi, and we can’t do that forever.”

Dreaming. Megumi bites the inside of his cheek. “Are you still here?”

“Always,” Yuji whispers.

Silence lapses again, and it’s as big a tell as any, when they refuse to even humour his questions that are starting to turn into less than questions, closer to observations. Megumi slots puzzle pieces together in his mind as they speak. The presentation has ended now, stopped on a picture taken somewhere he knows intimately, and he eyes it with careful consideration. They want him to play into his hands. He stands on the edge of doing just that and pulling away completely.

He knows what will happen to him if he disobeys. But they don’t want to lose him for this. This is one of those jobs he can’t just say no to and walk away from.

“Who’s the target?” Megumi asks again, disguising the way his breath hitches with a bored sigh.

It’s the first administrator, the one who asked the questions at the start, who clears their throat and answers after a long, painstaking, dangerous pause.

“Gojo Satoru,” the administrator says.

Fushiguro Megumi doesn’t remember when he became the type to go for a run every morning at 7:00 three times a week. Yuji has taken to easing him awake before he leaves at 6:30, pressing soft kisses to his hair and cheeks and drawing back the covers so Megumi feels more inclined to get up. He always peers up at him with bleary eyes in the half-light, and in those early moments upon first waking up, he gives Yuji sleepy, genuine smiles.

“I love you,” Megumi murmured this morning, pure adoration cycling through his chest as Yuji stood like an angel haloed in sunlight above him.

Yuji laughed like bells and rubbed him on the shoulder. “I love you too, babe. Have a good morning, okay? I’ll see you later.”

“See you later.”

Now he runs with pounding feet and steady breath down a quiet suburban street, glancing in the windows of the small businesses he passes. Rich scents of fresh coffee and baked goods greet him from various open doors, but he checks his watch once and pushes on; he can take a break soon, but not yet.

He’s pretty sure his motivation stems less from offsetting a full day of sitting at the office and more from the bliss he’s come to find in the early morning air. Hardly any people wander the streets yet, and he can even make it out of his apartment building without talking to anyone. Quiet doesn’t quite cover it. A sense of peace envelopes the world at this hour, as the sun peeks over the horizon and casts gentle rays through the town, dew still nestles in the grass, and mist fills Megumi’s lungs.

He loves spending time with Yuji, too. But he loves the time he gets to spend alone with a clear mind.

In the chilly March air, still cold enough for him to see traces of his breath, Megumi lets himself settle into his easy routine and just runs.

A little under half an hour passes before he takes a break, but he would go longer if not for the distraction. He comes up on another small café to his left with the whole front, doors and windows and all, wide open and welcoming in the morning rush of customers. He catches a whiff of the best coffee he’s noticed on this route and turns his head, and it’s then that he sees it, the flash of white, the lanky frame. Megumi’s heart stutters, and he thinks he’s seen that figure somewhere before, in passing in an empty building with lights flickering overhead, or a long time ago, in his childhood. It startles him so much, the recognition, that he scapes his feet to a stop on the pavement and redirects himself inside.

At first, he’s just caught up in the shuffle, steps into line with other people, and watches the man at the counter as he chats up the barista with a wide grin and swooping gestures. Megumi finds himself staring, and he snaps out of it and ducks his head as he moves forward. But the notion haunts him, beating into the rhythm of his heart, and it wraps around him so quickly he suddenly can’t shake it.

He knows this man, he thinks, somehow.

He watches out of the corner of his eye as the stranger-not-really backs away and takes a seat at a table against the wall, near the window. He still wears a brilliant smile, and he puts his face close to the glass and waves at a woman with a dog who walks by outside.

Megumi’s attention follows him for just a few moments more before it’s his turn at the counter. He orders from a barista whose face he doesn’t pay enough mind to to make out. Everyone else sort of fades into the background, and the man by the window is the only one who stands out, crystal clear in detail and presence.

As soon as he receives his coffee, Megumi steels himself with a deep breath, focuses on the warmth of the mug as a grounding technique, and marches straight over to the table the man sits at.

The pieces fall into place with every step he takes, and the name comes to him automatically once he’s in close proximity to this person he swears he knows. The memory forms itself around that basis. Memories, plural, fill his thoughts, and it spills from his tongue as he stops and stands there holding his coffee. “Gojo,” Megumi says.

Surprise flickers across Gojo Satoru’s face, and he turns from the window and looks at Megumi with wide eyes. The smile stretches further across his face, but confusion lingers at its edges. “That’s me,” he greets in return. “Can I help you?”

“Um—” Megumi gestures to the empty chair across from him, and he’s pleased that Gojo offers him an enthusiastic nod, telling him to go ahead. He slides into the seat and places his coffee on the table in front of him without taking a sip. “Do you remember me? My name is Fushiguro Megumi. We used to, um…”

Gojo blinks at him patiently, and then finishes for him, abrupt and blunt-toned, “Did we used to work together?”

Megumi blinks back and lifts his head, straightens his back. “Yes,” he says quickly. “Yes, I think we did.”

“Ahhh, that’s right.” Gojo slumps back in his seat and waves his hands in the air. Megumi doesn’t want to say he seems crazy, per se, but there’s something odd about the way he moves, jerkish and wild. His icy eyes dart around, too, even as he says, “Megumi, Megumi. I remember. How have you been?”

A frown comes across Megumi’s face. He slowly lifts his mug to his lips and mutters past the rim, “Well, it’s been a while. I’m fine. I’m married, now.”

Gojo leans forward so suddenly it almost shakes the table. He squints at Megumi’s hand until he spots the ring, a simple silver band that Yuji had given him while whispering promises in his ear on a rocky beach. “Oh wow, that’s so cool!” Gojo exclaims. “You’re all grown up, huh? Hey, how’s your sister?”

Like he’s been shot, Megumi reels back, blood rushing to his head as he processes the casual remark, and the question. Gojo speaks more personally for someone with whom he only worked with. And it bothers him, too, how there seems to be a void at a certain edge in his life, and he feels the memory of Gojo taking up space there, but he can’t grasp it. Scribbled-out pictures drift towards him, and he can vaguely make out the shape of Gojo standing with Tsumiki; Gojo cooking at the kitchen counter; Gojo in the front seat of a car driving Megumi in circles. In the wake of these images, Megumi feels the void open wider instead of being filled.

He clears his throat and stares at the coffee he hasn’t really touched. “Gojo,” he murmurs, “Tsumiki passed away. Has to be… fifteen years ago now.”

Gojo opens his mouth and then closes it again. “Oh.” He furrows his brow and leans back slowly in his seat. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, Megumi.”

Distant condolences, separated from the situation, feel wrong coming from him. Megumi tries, but he can’t reconcile his own memories with this man. It’s Gojo, he knows it is, but this Gojo is drawn apart from what Megumi thought he knew of him. He doesn’t seem to recognise Megumi as much as he claims he does, nor has he made any attempt to pick on him as he usually would.

But he remembered Megumi’s sister, even though the connection makes Megumi sick to his stomach.

“…Right,” he says under his breath, raising his mug to his lips in the hopes that drinking will soothe him. Rich flavour bathes his tongue, and it goes down smoothly, warming Megumi from the inside out. He lets his eyes fall shut for a moment. Then he fixes his gaze on Gojo and asks, “Why did you quit? When we worked together?”

For the first time since he caught sight of him from outside the café, Megumi watches Gojo’s expression falter. He loses his carefree grin and slings one arm over the back of his chair as he sips his coffee, too. “You know, I don’t remember the exact reason. It really has been a while. I think something came up…” His brow furrows. The mug settles on the table with a clink. “I was forced to stop, for some reason. I don’t miss it, though.”

Megumi is half certain he knows what Gojo is talking about. Along the lines of an accident at work, he had to leave rather abruptly. “What do you do now, then?”

“Oh, you know, explore, mostly.” Gojo waves one hand in the air. “The clan basically pays me to run errands for them, so I have a lot of freedom to roam around in my own time. The others are still around—”

“The others?” Megumi asks.

“Shoko,” Gojo replies, “Mei Mei, et cetera. You know, I haven’t heard from Suguru in a long time, though.” He glances up at the ceiling, like there’s a ghost there only he can see, then shakes his head and goes back to his coffee.

Megumi’s shoulders relax, and he chuckles faintly. “I saw Mei Mei recently.”

“Really?” Gojo perks up, his eyes going wide, and doesn’t even get distracted when a few teens having a lively conversation walk in and take up attention. He focuses those blue eyes on Megumi, like he’s the only thing in the world, like he wants to hang on to every word he has to say. Megumi’s pretty sure it’s not because of Mei Mei. It’s an uptick from his forgetful act, and it sends a chill down Megumi’s spine. “How was she?”

“Annoying. Same as always.” Megumi rolls his eyes. He leans back in his seat and considers the hand on his shoulder, and the crows that always seem to follow her around. Meeting with her is one of those events that feels both light years away and incredibly recent. She’d had something important to tell him that escapes him now. He can’t put his finger on it, but he thinks it had to do with Gojo, which is likely. Or maybe it was work. Or both.

He glances out at the other side of the street and the sunshine blooming across the nearby rooftops. More people wander outside now, anonymous figures who bustle from here to there, all with their own lives to live. He really can’t place exactly when he had met with Mei Mei. She’d given him an idea to chew on. A theory about a matter he’d been having trouble with. That if he…

“Oh, and I teach,” Gojo pipes up, catching Megumi’s attention once more.

With a sharp breath, Megumi turns back to him. “You teach,” he echoes. “Like how you used to mentor me in the early days?”

Gojo laughs, boisterous and free, his head tipped back. “None of my students are as interesting as you, Megumi-chan. Or as grumpy.”

Megumi’s in a good enough mood that he just lets out a huff through his nose with a smug, half-sheepish grin on his face. “Anyone who reminds you of Yuji or Nobara?”

A flash of fondness passes over Gojo’s eyes, and he sits forward again and dives into a rant about these three students who, actually, are quite similar to them, but the quietest of them is not dark and brooding like Megumi, he says. Megumi huffs out another laugh and wonders how many more descriptors Gojo is going to apply to him. Bringing up Yuji brings them to the wedding, and they talk about life at home and all the odds and ends of living with someone else. He tells Gojo about how Yuji always leaves his toothbrush in the wrong places, but also how he takes extra care when dusting the shelves Megumi keeps his books on.

Gojo lives alone, he reveals, but the others are around. He’s said that twice now in the same manner. “Shoko, Mei Mei, et cetera. Haven’t seen Suguru in a while.”

Only slightly does Megumi dip into discomfort at this repetition, and then they change topics and he lets it go.

They talk about the weather, how it’s different here in the suburbs instead of the city, nicer, calmer. Megumi explains his earlier thought process about the quiet mornings, and Gojo says he still has trouble sleeping at night, and if he’s up late enough, he’ll just stay awake to watch the sunrise alone.

It’s nice, just to catch up. He doesn’t remember the last time they talked like this.

Megumi glances at his watch, and he doesn’t want to, but he has to leave soon to get home and ready for work on time. He stands and takes his empty mug to the dish receptacle, but then returns and stands off to the side to address Gojo one last time.

“Can we meet again sometime?” he asks as he zips up his jacket.

Gojo grins brightly and nods before he even finishes speaking, like he’d predicted what Megumi would ask. They leave in their own time, and Megumi glances over his shoulder down the street in the direction of the café before he disappears. He feels both lighter and heavier for the chance to talk to Gojo again.

Yuji greets him from the kitchen when he gets home, and Megumi takes off his shoes in the door and pads over in his socks to join him. He leans into Yuji’s back and kisses him on the cheek.

“Hey,” Yuji laughs breathily. He’s got two bento boxes laid out on the counter to prep for lunch, and he fills both with a heapful of rice and collared greens before laying strips of beef on top. As soon as he has a second, he turns to kiss Megumi back, sweetly on the lips. “How’s your morning been?”

“I saw Gojo today,” Megumi announces, reaching over to pluck a chopped mushroom from the counter and pop it in his mouth.

“Those are for later,” Yuji scolds, and then he stops, processes the words, and freezes in place. “Wait, are you serious? You saw Gojo? Did you talk to him?”

Warmth spreads through Megumi from Yuji’s back. He runs his arms around to cradle Yuji by the waist and nods against his shoulder. “Mhmm. We talked for around forty-five minutes, maybe? I didn’t even finish my run.”

Carefully, Yuji eases away from him and moves over to the fridge to pop out two small bottles of water. “Is that why you’re late coming in?” he teases, but there’s a wariness to his tone, an edge that doesn’t match his cheery demeanour. He places the bottles on the counter and busies himself with tasks that keep his back turned.

Megumi crosses his arms over his stomach and watches him from behind, trying to get his attention by eyeing the back of his neck. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just surprised, is all.” Yuji carries over a pair of sweets for dessert and tucks them into the empty compartments in each box. He glances over at Megumi, thank goodness, and meets him with a tiny sparkle in his honey brown eyes. Still, he sounds befuddled, musing, “I thought something happened to Gojo. Didn’t he move away a few years back?”

Arms falling back down to his sides, Megumi lets his shoulders raise and lower in a single shrug. “I guess he moved back into town.”

The conversation fizzles out as Megumi helps tidy the kitchen and put dishes away, and then it’s Yuji’s turn to walk out the door and Megumi’s cue to go rinse himself off in the shower and change into his work clothes. They kiss at the door while Yuji puts his shoes on, Yuji’s hand fisted in the front of Megumi’s shirt for balance, one of Megumi’s palms pressed against the wall behind his head. Yuji is already halfway out the door by the time they pull away from each other. “I love you,” they both say at the same time, and both of them laugh.

“Have a good day,” Megumi tells him, and he steps back inside.

Late in the evening, when they’re both bone-tired after work and dinner and moving through their day to day life, Yuji and Megumi curl up on the couch with a shared blanket over their laps. They’ve got a Korean-American film playing, Past Lives, and short words and phrases in Korean that Megumi can understand drift through his consciousness as he nods off against Yuji’s shoulder. They’re on his favourite part, the long, meandering montage where Nora and Hae Sung speak to each other through a series of video calls, and the respective sceneries of New York and Seoul flow past around them as they converse in quiet voices about their day-to-day lives, one call after the other after the other shot and stitched together. Megumi loves this scene, as well as the single song that underlays the whole thing so subtly it turns wonder into art.

He thinks of the other film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the amnesia, and the trippy visuals, and the coming back together, as soon as he hears them mention Montauk, and then the opening scene is playing in miniature view on Hae Sung’s laptop. It feels like three layers of a dream: the film within the film within the peaceful space Yuji and Megumi have built for themselves.

He loves this scene, but he’s so comfortable with Yuji at his side that he lets the lilting music make him drowsy enough to miss half the captions and can only rely on those short words and phrases to get by.

He’s not quite sure where they are, just that it’s sometime before the end, when Yuji runs his fingers through his hair and scratches gently at his scalp. “You awake?” he mumbles into the crown of Megumi’s head. He’s so warm, and so steady.

Megumi takes in a long breath and deflates again on the exhale, sinking further into Yuji and the couch. “Mmm. Mhmm.”

Humour dances in Yuji’s tone on top of the music as he replies, “Uh-huh, sure.” Megumi can hear him smiling.

“What are you thinking about?” Megumi asks him, his voice thick and vulnerable with sleep, eyes still closed. He thinks he hears Hae Sung’s nameless friends talking about the rain in New York, and it pours down from the speakers moments later.

For a minute, Yuji doesn’t answer, and Megumi wonders if he’s not really awake, either. But he receives a faint hum soon enough as Yuji’s hand snakes around to drape over Megumi’s shoulder instead. “Honestly? When I proposed to you.” He tangles his fingers into the folds of Megumi’s shirt and rubs at his skin beneath it. The movie keeps on playing, woven with the low sound of his voice. “I was thinking about this movie when I realised I never wanted what Hae Sung and Na Young went through to happen to us. I wanted to stay with you for the rest of my life.”

Megumi gropes around until he finds Yuji’s free hand and knocks the remote aside as he squeezes it. “You’re so sappy,” he says to the screen.

“Plus…” Yuji leans in to murmur in his ear, kissing the side of his face and his neck on his way before circling back to murmur in his ear. “I knew we had more than eight thousand layers of in-yun. I couldn’t waste that.”

He can talk about in-yun and what happens to the main characters because they’ve each seen this movie twice before. They know the end, intimately, before they’ve even seen through the middle. The first time had been when it first came out in theatres, while Megumi was travelling for work, and they’d seen it cities apart on the same night, followed by a lengthy video call of their own to discuss the same factors Yuji brings to light now.

“I’d find you,” Megumi tells him, “even if we didn’t get married in this life. I’d find you in our next one and love you there, too. It’d be something better, probably.”

“But our life is so perfect,” Yuji says. He watches the movie and squeezes Megumi’s hand back. The waver in his tone is hardly noticeable when he adds, “You’ve said that to me before.”

“Maybe.”

The second time they’d seen it was on this same couch, wine-drunk on a celebratory bottle when they’d finally settled into their apartment. Megumi was so tipsy he’d let Yuji coax him into having sex with him even knowing how much trouble Megumi has after he drinks.

They’re not drinking tonight. The movie plays on as Megumi rubs slow circles over Yuji’s chest, feeling ever so slightly more awake now. It takes Yuji a few minutes, but he picks up on the hint and tips his head down to find Megumi blinking at him with milky, patient eyes.

Yuji’s lips meet his as the music swells on the television set. His mouth is open and inviting, and Megumi dips his tongue inside and swirls it around Yuji’s. He angles his head to get a better connection, and Yuji cups the back of his head in his hand and ushers him closer. Megumi’s leg brushes his knee as he adjusts it to slide himself onto Yuji’s lap. He’s already lying sideways, and now he eases himself around until he can put his legs on either side of Yuji’s waist. Yuji guides him with his hand dropping to the small of Megumi’s back, and Megumi nudges him into the back of the couch and keeps kissing him, lazy and loving.

The pads of Yuji’s fingers, the whorls of which Megumi has long since committed to memory, run along the skin beneath his shirt just above his waistline. Hae Sung and Nora are at his back. The night swallows them as one in-yun-bound being, two falling stars dancing around each other until their light combines.

In the spaces where they separate, Megumi meets with Gojo, and it’s flatter and darker than when he lets himself be consumed by Yuji’s presence and their life. He’s introduced a new shape that doesn’t quite fit.

“You know,” Megumi says by way of greeting as he slides into the booth across from Gojo, “you didn’t seem surprised when I told you Yuji is my husband now. I kind of thought if you ever found out, you’d be annoying and pester me for the details.”

They tumble into conversation like they’re old friends who didn’t take a huge gap in their relationship.

Gojo watches him with amusement in his unsteady eyes. “It was kind of inevitable, wasn’t it? You two were always so obviously in love. Picking fights, getting dangerously close to each other’s throats—”

Megumi swallows a sip of water wrong and pulls the glass away from his lips. He plops the glass down on the table as he clears his throat. “Ah. I should have known you’d be an ass if I gave you any leeway.” He leans back in his seat and rolls his eyes toward the ceiling, where odd light fixtures hang down above each table. An amber glow shrouds half the restaurant. “Don’t you have anything better to keep you entertained?”

A hearty laugh builds in Gojo’s chest, and he leans forward to maintain the distance between them, splaying his fingers out and resting his chin in his hand. “Keeping an eye on your relationship status has always been quality entertainment, Megumi-chan.”

Megumi sinks into the mundanity and familiarity of the conversation as a waitress brings around food he doesn’t remember ordering. He must have been on autopilot, or too distracted with whatever topic was at hand, but at least he’d been aware enough to order something he actually likes. He picks up his chopsticks and thanks the waitress before she leaves.

Maybe he just misses having someone to talk to, even though he and Gojo were never big on sharing information before, or maybe he missed him more than he thought. But Megumi finds himself opening up and even smiling on occasion. Gojo is mellower than he used to be.

He’s contradictorily more paranoid, too, though, beneath the surface. His eyes constantly dart around to scan the places they visit, and he picks at the skin on his fingers, but Megumi ignores it. Maybe it’s something to do with what happened to make Gojo leave before.

“Were you in the hospital after your accident?” Megumi asks in between bites of udon. He furrows his forehead and studies Gojo with a curious look. “I feel like you should have heard about it when Yuji and I got together.”

Gojo pokes around at his food—he’s not actually eating much—and blinks at him with wide, clueless eyes. “What accident?”

Megumi hesitates and sets his chopsticks down instinctively. “The reason you had to leave? I—I thought you—”

“Oh, that.” Gojo waves one hand around and brushes it off with a scowl that quickly lightens again. “It wasn’t really a big deal. It’s been so long, I forgot about it!”

The air changes all of a sudden, the restaurant falling close to silent, as Gojo reaches across the table and rests his hand near Megumi’s. His gaze softens, his lips curl into a sad smile, and Megumi swears he’s never seen him look like this before. Look at him like this. It makes his heart twist in his chest and his breath lodge on something sticky in his throat. It doesn’t feel right.

“I understand,” Gojo murmurs in the piercing quiet, “and I always have. So don’t worry about it, okay?”

Megumi hears glass shatter from another section of tables. His ears ring in the wake of the noise, and everything goes so, so still. “What are you talking about?”

Another laugh from Gojo warps the air and catches Megumi so off guard he jumps in his seat. He doesn’t remember Gojo’s mood swings being this dramatic and flighty. “Oh, so you’re like that. Denial is a river in Egypt, Megumi-chan,” he hums, returning to his food like nothing happened. “You want me to let you in on a little secret?”

No, Megumi thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He shakes his head a little to clear it and presses his hands together between his thighs. They’re shaking. “Sure,” he answers breathily. “What is it?”

Gojo’s smile stretches out as the restaurant resumes its regular functions; sound comes back to the air, and the lights glow a little bit steadier, a little sharper.

Gojo’s eyes are so bright they’re blinding. He glances over his shoulder, then behind Megumi, until he seems sure no one is listening. Then he leans in close, cups one hand over his mouth, and that of his grin doesn’t waver once. He’s like a cat who’s just eaten a bird, and sleek black feathers are still stuck to his face. He meets Megumi’s eyes and whispers, “None of this is real.”

The glass cracks inside of Megumi. He stops breathing.

He remembers inception.

Neither of them finish their food, and Gojo picks up the bill and leaves first, alone. Megumi remains for a few minutes to stare at the wall and wonder how he missed it the first few times they met.

He returns home after he knows Yuji is already done with work, so he knows he’s there, somewhere in the apartment, even if he can’t see him, when he closes the door behind him and leans against it. His head falls back with a dull thud. Even the apartment is too still. No breeze runs through the open windows. No clocks tick that he can hear.

Megumi opens his mouth to call through the stillness, “Gojo’s lost his mind.”

It begins after that. He’s standing on the rocky shore, and he thinks of how Yuji built the bridge, and how the horizon has never looked quite right. He feels unnaturally sedate and unfocused.

Megumi bites the inside of his cheek. “Are you still here?” he asks Yuji.

“Always,” Yuji whispers back.

“Hey.” Megumi takes in a shaky breath and glances over his shoulder to where Yuji clings. “I have a weird question. When was the last time you heard from your brother?”

Yuji frowns through the kisses as he rests his lips on the folds of Megumi’s shirt. “Choso? Like, two weeks ago. I think.”

Megumi watches, uneasy, as Yuji’s eyes start to lose their focus, too. Yuji blinks a few times and tries to summon a proper response. “I mean, it must have been a couple weeks ago. Or… longer? It feels like it was yesterday and years ago at the same time.” He shakes his head and glances up at Megumi. “Why do you ask, anyway?”

Ahead of them, the horizon glows, crystalline. Megumi wonders if it would look different in a dream than in real life. He swallows his own voice and has to stop and start again. “Just wondering.”

They make their way back to the city streets together, hand in hand, and approach their house that has always looked bigger on the outside than it really is inside. Megumi traces the outline of the roof and the walls as Yuji moves forward and fiddles with the key. They didn’t have to choose. He’s not sure where the thought comes from.

So many people have whispered strange things to him over the years.

Yuji finds him in the kitchen one day with a knife positioned carefully in his hand, pointed at his own stomach.

“Hey,” Yuji gasps, moving over quickly and wrapping both arms around Megumi from behind. He runs one soothing hand over Megumi’s shoulder and uses the other to wheedle the knife away from him and set it on the counter where he can’t quite reach. Megumi doesn’t resist, just stands there and stares at the cutting board, where a half-chopped radish waits. “What are you doing, Megumi?” Yuji asks him. “Are you okay?”

Megumi tries to wipe the distressed expression from his face. “Um, yeah. Sorry.”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to apologise.” Yuji moves to cradle both of Megumi’s hands in his, tangling their fingers together and drawing him close. “I just want to make sure you’re all right.”

Worry lines the rise and fall of his voice as it rumbles against Megumi’s back. Maybe he should be worried.

Late that night, Megumi wakes up in a cold sweat, which doesn’t make any sense, because he hasn’t dreamed in a long time—there wasn’t anything that could have distressed him—and yet, he lies there marinating in the feeling that being asleep was wrong. He turns to peer at Yuji in the dark, and he’s struck with the stark memory of being here before. They’re in bed together every night, but this is different. Distinct. Megumi feels like there’s supposed to be something in his hand, and that he’s missing whatever it was that scared him. He gulps down fresh oxygen and sits up and stares at his hands instead of his husband.

He crawls over to the other side of their bed and folds himself into Yuji’s embrace, rests his head on his chest, and listens to the steady beating of his heart. He wants to stay here, but something tells him he’s already leaving. Tears prick at the backs of Megumi’s eyes.

He’s been in an apartment identical to this one, but not the same. He’s walked every street outside in another life. The taste of saltwater coats his lips, and he thinks of the bridge. This is why he quit Dreamshare, he tells himself, but it’s been so long since he’s felt this trapped in his own head.

Yuji makes breakfast in the morning, and when he turns around to bring the plates from the kitchen to the table, his throat is sliced open and gushing blood.

Megumi jerks backward so fast he bangs his knee on the table and tumbles out of his chair. He hits the floor with a painful thud. His heart hammers in his chest. His eyes go wide. His mouth flounders around words he can’t voice, and then he blinks, and Yuji is fine, the vision gone.

“Shit,” Yuji hisses, depositing the plates as carefully as he can on the table and rushing to Megumi’s side. He puts a hand on his shoulder and the other on the back of his head, supporting him. “Megumi, what was that? Are you okay?”

Megumi has to fight every instinct not to pull away. He keeps hearing that in Yuji’s voice—are you okay, are you okay, are you okay?—and with the way Megumi has taken to scanning his surroundings like Gojo does and scrutinising every physical aspect of the world around him, he’s not sure he can safely answer yes.

“Yuji, something’s wrong,” he stammers instead. His hands won’t stop quivering. His lungs heave in and out to try to keep him alive. He runs his fingers through his hair, so forcefully it hurts, and curls in on himself. His hip hurts now from falling, and so does his knee, and it feels so real.

But pain is in the mind.

He sucks in breath after breath and thinks, this is how he felt when he came out of Limbo.

The sea laps at his numb feet when he finds himself well enough to go stand outside and try to recover. Megumi hugs himself as the grey expanse stretches out and loops back in around itself. Water cycles over and over as it rushes in to shore and out again. Waves crash in a steady rhythm against the rocks and threaten to knock Megumi over. He wonders for a moment if he should just let them.

But Yuji stands nearby to make sure he stays safe, even though Megumi told him he needed a few minutes alone. He’s cold, the water icy, his jacket draped over a large, flat stone behind him, but he doesn’t care. Megumi chews on the inside of his lip and tries to remember where he put his pen and when he last saw it. Without it, standing at the edge of the water down the path from their house is the only thing that makes him feel truly grounded and alive. Even Yuji slips through his fingers in times like these.

It’s been a while. He closes his eyes tightly and lets the sea breeze kiss his face.

A shorter while passes before Megumi can bring himself to turn and look at Yuji. He’s still sick to his stomach and doesn’t want to move or leave this spot, but he can feel his love’s eyes on the back of his head, and he finds Yuji standing at the ready at the top of the path. Concern warps his expression as he twitches forward and waits to see if Megumi needs anything.

Megumi rubs the back of his hand against his nose and tries to reassure Yuji with a faint nod. But an idea is blooming in the back of his mind, spreading like fire, like blood in water. It makes its home inside his veins and squeezes between his cells. A stowaway. It’s an old one, a thought he hasn’t had in years, not since well before he and Yuji got together for good and decided to spend the rest of their lives that way. But it never died. It never left him.

His gaze sweeps the row of buildings at the top of the rise—what he can make out from here, at least—and Gojo’s words, sticky and palpable, thread their way through his mind.

None of this is real.

Megumi’s hands shake as he walks back up the way and lets Yuji wrap an arm around him and lead him back inside. The apartment is quiet, soft from dusk light, and as comfortable as ever. Megumi wants to say he feels okay. He wants to stay here, so badly.

But he needs to be sure. If he doesn’t check, it will haunt him for the rest of time. He settles down on the couch and stifles tears and leans his head against Yuji’s shoulder.

He doesn’t know where his pen is, but he knows where to find the pocket watch.

“Megumi.” Yuji’s voice breaks ever so gently through the film that shrouds him, and he runs a soothing hand up and down Megumi’s back. His murmur comes against the crown of Megumi’s head. “You know I love you, right?”

On top of everything else, this slips through Megumi’s defences with ease and settles to rest right beside his heart. “Of course,” he answers.

“Then you know I’m always here for you. And I’m here to talk things through if there’s something bothering you. So please tell me, okay?”

Megumi pauses and grunts softly as he readjusts in Yuji’s arms. He buries his nose in Yuji’s neck and soaks up the warmth he finds there. Strong arms cradle him better than his own ever could. “I know,” Megumi says with a sigh. “I love you, too.”

Saying so feels like a lie, though, as the night grows cold around them.

They sit together until Megumi can ease himself out of the comfort position and sits back to let Yuji lay on his lap. He finds the remote and clicks on the TV just to have some background noise; neither of them really watch anything or pay attention to what channel he chooses. Megumi’s gaze traces invisible patterns in the sunlight that falls across the carpet. He runs his fingers through Yuji’s hair, taking reassurance from just having him in his hands, having Yuji there to peer up at him with his big brown puppy dog eyes. Yuji doesn’t smile at him or expect him to smile back. He just watches him, the sensation of eyes on the bottom of Megumi’s chin, on his throat, in the shell of his ear. He sucks in a breath and sighs it out and feels Yuji’s presence glide down his throat and mingle around his teeth. Even if nothing is real, he has this. He has to have this.

He looks down at Yuji and watches him instead when those big brown eyes flutter closed.

The sun has set by the time Megumi decides he can’t take it anymore. Yuji is sound asleep, gone to the world, and Megumi doesn’t have much of an issue climbing out from under him and replacing himself with a throw pillow to support Yuji’s head.

He climbs up the stairs one at a time to the attic—apartments don’t have attics, he thinks vaguely, but it’s never been weird before—and pokes his head into the dark, dusty space. He hoists himself up and shuffles over to a stack of small boxes in the corner. The dust kicks up and makes him cough when he moves them around, but he finds the one he’s looking for quickly, because it’s smaller than all the others and totally lightweight. There’s only one thing in it, after all.

Megumi crouches on the wooden floor and tears the box open. At the bottom, the pocket watch waits, still as golden and gilded as it was years before. He hesitates for only a moment before he flicks it open.

And for another moment, all he can do is stare.

The silence presses in around him. His stomach crawls up to his throat and threatens to choke him. If he were standing up, his knees would give out beneath him. The world ends in between the tick of two seconds.

The second hand is moving forward, steadily. His name does not replace the numbers that circle the face.

Megumi tries as hard as he can not to throw up as he staggers to his feet and clambers back down the ladder. His eyes are wide and his breaths short and fast as he clutches the watch to his chest.

This isn’t real. It echoes through his mind as he makes his way to the kitchen, a hand against the wall for support. He knows where he put them. This isn’t real. But the memory is. He knew where the watch was. He can’t find his pen. He’s not awake. This isn’t real. Megumi’s heart pounds and pounds and pounds and the pocket watch ticks and ticks and ticks, and he doesn’t want to look at it again, but he doesn’t believe it, even as facts and figures hit him in the face like bricks that beat him bloody with the realisations.

He doesn’t remember where this started. He doesn’t remember when Gojo left.

Gojo came back.

Gojo came back.

Megumi throws open one of the smallest, highest cupboards in the kitchen and finds six of Sukuna’s severed fingers on the shelf.

He stumbles backward and smashes into the opposite wall.

“Megumi?” Yuji’s drowsy voice cuts through the silence and the ticking to pierce his heart like a knife. A knife. Across his throat. Yuji’s awake. He’s not. He rounds the corner into the kitchen, except he doesn’t. None of this is real. Four layers of the only thing that is—the worry, the desperation, the love (or is it? Is it?)—mould his face as he takes in the sight of Megumi.

And it wasn’t just the crash, Megumi realises, against the wall, that woke Yuji. He’s making a steady, high-pitched whining noise as he sucks oxygen through his teeth and tries to blink his vision into place. It’s blurry at the edges. It’s not even real.

“Megumi, baby, what’s wrong?” Yuji is in front of him in an instant, cupping his cheek and trying to meet his eyes, but it’s wrong, it’s all wrong. Megumi doesn’t even know why.

His hand is shaking so bad he almost drops the watch, but he can’t say anything, can’t make his tongue work. He just holds out the heavy object and presses his closed fist into Yuji’s chest. He waits, desperate, until Yuji picks up on what he’s trying to do and holds out his hand to take what it is Megumi wants him to have.

Megumi sees the realisation strike him too. He sees the shock cycle through Yuji. It binds them together in a way he never wanted it to.

He doesn’t want this.

His heart beats blindly in his chest as Yuji stares down at the pocket watch, then looks up at him, then back again, confusion and horror and disbelief written all over his beautiful face.

“Megumi,” Yuji whispers, sounding sick. They’re one in the same.

All Megumi can do is nod and nod as sobs he can’t fight back wrack his body and tears flow freely down his cheeks. He presses his back against the wall. It isn’t real.

In the near distance, in an abandoned yard with the ocean in its sights, a train whistle sounds and rattles through the house.

Megumi wakes up panicked and in pain in a bed he didn’t fall asleep in. He sits bolt upright, his elbows digging into the pillow, and someone’s hands fly to his shoulders and push him back down.

“Megumi! Megumi, it’s okay.” Kugisaki. Her voice echoes through the pale room, and when he finds stability in his vision, he sees her tawny hair and eyepatch and pink-stained lips and a baggy sweatshirt hugging her frame. “It’s okay,” she soothes again. “You’re safe. This is real.”

“Can you follow the light please, Megumi?” Someone else’s hand hovers above his face with a pen light, and he recognises Ieiri’s voice, but he’s disoriented and can barely focus enough to follow her instructions. She reaches out when she’s finished with the light and puts a hand on his face to hold his eyelid open.

“How long has it been?” Kugisaki whispers to him, poking her head in around Ieiri’s prodding, and she sounds concerned and completely in awe at the same time. “How long were you down there?”

Automatically, the answer comes to him. Megumi licks his lips. “Seven years.”

The dream is already slipping away from him. He can’t get a good grasp on it, and all the details are fuzzy. He turns his head and sees Yuji lying awake in a bed opposite him. Maki hovers over him and provides the same comfort Kugisaki did for Megumi.

Megumi’s mouth feels dry. His head hurts.

He sees Yuji, and he remembers.

He never wanted to see this in Yuji—the paranoia, the delusions, the trouble getting to sleep, the refusal to wake up in the morning when he reached it.

“Yuji,” Megumi whispers, prodding at his shoulder. “Are we getting up?”

Yuji has the pillow slung over his head and curls in on himself away from Megumi’s hand. “It’s too bright,” he mutters back, but Megumi knows that doesn’t mean what he thinks it does, or at least it’s not the only problem.

They lay in thick silence until Yuji throws himself out of bed abruptly and walks himself to the bathroom without looking back.

Megumi sits up and rubs his eyes, leans back, brings his knees to his chest. He squints blearily through the watered-down light of the bedroom and waits for Yuji to come back out. He can hear the sink running, then the shower, and he just sits there. He holds as still as he can, because the room does feel a little too small—it always will. He watches as Yuji returns and starts checking the walls, studying the pictures they have hung up, and Megumi half expects him to pull out a measuring tape before he sits down on the edge of the bed and removes his pocket watch from the bedside drawer.

Folds of the sheet catch Megumi’s hand as he runs it along the mattress. He holds it there and tamps down the desire to breathe in, wanting to keep as still as possible until Yuji speaks again.

“Is this real?” comes his small, wary voice after he’s been staring at the watch for a few silent minutes.

Megumi inhales slowly and can’t stop himself. “No,” he says. “Nothing is.”

His answer is met with a pillow chucked with over half of Yuji’s strength at his face. It hits him in the nose and hurts, and he’s lucky it’s not the watch. He shoves it down with just as little grace and glares at Yuji over top of it. “Hey—”

“Fuck you, Megumi!” Yuji propels himself off the bed and staggers backward, away from him, the watch clutched to his chest. His eyes flash with unshed tears. “Don’t do that to me!”

Megumi’s throat tightens, and he throws himself off the other side of the bed. He stalks over to the armoire and grabs a pair of pants to tug on before he slams the door shut. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you,” he bites over his shoulder. “I don’t have the answers for you, Yuji. We shouldn’t have built our same damn apartment in Limbo.” He struggles with the tie of the pants and keeps his eyes off of Yuji as he spits out words like rotten fruit. “We shouldn’t have built anything. We should have shot ourselves the first second we got.”

“You promised we’d be okay.” Yuji’s heavy footsteps thud on the floorboards. He breathes hot coals and agony. “You promised.”

“Was I okay after Sukuna?” Megumi whips around to face him, his expression drawn taut and hands clenched around the fabric of his own clothes. “After I was stuck down there alone?”

It was lonely. It was so fucking lonely in the void of his own subconscious.

Claws cut through his shirt and dig into his chest when Yuji says, “I feel like that’s half the problem, though.”

Megumi freezes and tilts his head to consider him very, very carefully. “What do you mean?”

As if he senses he’s made a mistake, Yuji hesitates, but after a moment to ponder it, he folds his arms across his chest, begins pacing anxiously, and says it anyway. “If you weren’t constant on all planes,” he muses aloud, “if I didn’t have you there, I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t be so confused.”

Megumi folds his arms to mirror him without realising he’s doing it. He holds his ground, stands firm as Yuji moves back and forth in front of him. “What does it matter, then, if this is real or not,” he whispers, “if I’m here? Does being together count for nothing?”

Yuji falters and turns to look at him, half folded over himself. “Are you saying you—” He catches himself, makes an odd, startled noise in the back of his throat, and brushes the tips of his fingers against the sleeve of his shirt as he eyes Megumi up and down. “Are you saying you’d stay here? I mean… you’d stay in Limbo? As long as we were together?”

A moth’s wings flutter in Megumi’s chest. He knows he’s caught some loose thread in Yuji’s mind, and he’s not as kind as everyone was to him. It’s obvious most of the time that the dream has escaped Yuji. He doesn’t remember much close to the beginning, or the end.

Megumi takes his opportunity, wraps his fingers around that thread, and tugs. “Of course I would. I’m used to it by now.”

Instant and vehemently, Yuji shakes his head and shuffles toward him. “No. No, we can’t. We have to get out of here, Megumi, and get back to Kugisaki, and—and the others—”

“I thought you said this was the real world.”

Megumi cuts him off with a sad, strained look. He bites the inside of his lip and wrinkles his brow upward. Shit, he really is the best person for this job. He’s the right proportion of coldhearted and affectionate, and he knows what will work on Yuji, because he knows what it’s like. He’s been to the edge and come back from it twice. He’s walking through this right along with him. Even as the words slip from his tongue, he doesn’t believe them himself. The thought is destructive and unstoppable once it takes root in the mind. Megumi is tired of all of this.

He won’t harm him. Fushiguro Megumi will not kill Itadori Yuji with his own hands.

And yet.

“Right,” Yuji manages to choke out, as he slowly unfurls the hand locked in a death grip around the watch and brings it out to look again. The muscles in his fingers shake as he releases them.

Even though he checks his pocket watch over and over again, Yuji still busies himself studying the details of every room and trying to figure out what’s changed, when nothing has. He still moves his hands like he expects them to raise buildings out of the earth. He still dreams.

Half-asleep and dazed and doubting one night, Yuji maps out patterns in the ceiling with his eyes. Megumi can see them flickering back and forth, up and down, like they would if his eyelids were closed and he was trapped in R.E.M. His hands rest on his stomach, and he fiddles absently with the sheets pulled up to his chest.

Megumi lies on his side next to him and draws circles on his arm with his thumb, not the pen. He doesn’t touch that anymore.

He has to follow Yuji around the house, when he gets anxious, at least, because he still has a responsibility to love and care for him and whisper to him whatever will get the job done best. But there are days when Megumi doesn’t want to get out of bed, either. The world is so heavy on his shoulders. Right now, he feels like he can barely move, and that if he tried, he’d be buried under a mountain of vertigo and fatigue. He wants to close his eyes and never open them again. He struggles to keep his gaze on Yuji, on his lips, as his eyes droop closed. He doesn’t remember the last time they kissed.

“Megumi,” Yuji utters on a faint exhale. His voice pulls Megumi out of the ocean of his thoughts.

Stillness sets in, long enough that Megumi’s not sure Yuji actually had anything to say to him, until he offers a soft hum in response. “What?”

“Why do you keep a gun in your nightstand?”

Megumi pauses his invisible sketching and opens his eyes. He shifts an arm under his head and lets the quiet stretch out again.

A breeze sidles through the open window and rustles the curtains, offering an impermanent glimpse of the stars in the ink black sky. The bed is warm, and it’s cold outside. The ceiling fan spins and spins overhead.

“You know what we have to do to get out of Limbo,” Megumi murmurs at last.

Yuji’s expression remains eerily blank, brimming so full with shock and confusion that it wipes his glassy eyes clean. He turns his head, his jaw slack with a question he can’t put to words, and his eyes bore into Megumi’s. “You’re different, you know,” he says. “Ever since you came back the first time. Even before Sukuna. It’s like… you’re a different person. It scares me.”

Megumi shrugs listlessly, but the movement is enough to tempt the weight into crushing him against the bed. “You know where to find me,” he responds. He’s not thinking. His mouth barely moves.

Yuji goes back to staring at the ceiling, and between the two of them, Megumi can hear the gears in Yuji’s head turning, and turning, and turning.

Yuji is the one to comfort him in the aftermath of Sukuna, that influence like a hideous drug, and the comedown leaves Megumi with memories he doesn't want to relive. Megumi clutches his head as he buries his face in Yuji’s chest and cries. He spends the morning recovering from nightmares, and a plate of untouched eggs sits on the coffee table behind him. All he can do is fold himself into Yuji’s embrace and pray it stops.

But he sees it all the time, the blood spattering through fake air, and he feels the nonexistent weight of the gun in his hands. You don’t have to kill him, Mei Mei told him. But Megumi did. He did, he did, he did.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out as Yuji pulls him ever closer. His warm arms squeeze tight around Megumi and keep him from clawing out his hair. He can’t get the image out of his mind of the moment Gojo turned and looked at him with those calm, understanding eyes. He can’t get rid of the sound of the gunshot, or Yuji and Kugisaki’s screams. He heaves with sobs that won’t leave him and whines repeatedly into the collar of Yuji’s shirt, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“It’s over now,” Yuji murmurs into his ear as he presses soothing kisses to what parts of Megumi’s head he can reach. “You’re okay, Megumi. It wasn’t your fault.”

His back hurts from staying curled up like this for so long. His hands hurt from clenching and unclenching them. He feels the burn of acid in his veins as he raises the gun and points it at Gojo’s back. If neither of them move, which seems likely with how steady Megumi’s hand and confidence are and how enveloped Gojo is in the dream, he’ll hit him right in the heart.

Megumi starts wailing all over again and rocks forward in Yuji’s arms. He can’t get any closer, but he doesn’t know what else to do. Every time he feels like he’s about to calm down, the memories and the panic well up inside him again. It hits him in cycles, and waves. He swallows down huge gulps of air that are stifled by Yuji’s chest. He wants to be by the ocean. He doesn’t want to be here.

He hears broken glass cracking as he punches the mirror in the bathroom of the bar.

He feels his pen scrape against his wrist.

He senses Sukuna beneath the waves, waiting.

He buries his fists in Yuji’s shirt and shatters.

“You know,” Yuji whispers, and Megumi has to shut up for a minute just to hear it, so he can hang on Yuji’s every word instead of whatever shit his mind keeps feeding him. His body quakes as Yuji drags a slow hand down the length of his spine. Yuji takes a breath.

“You’re not the only one who went down there with him.”

Megumi lets go of his hold on Yuji’s shirt. “What?” he asks, voice breaking.

Yuji takes the opportunity to reach one of his hands around to connect it with Megumi’s. He lets him squeeze when he needs to, but Megumi’s muscles feel weak now, like he can barely grasp anything. “Kugisaki and I were there with you,” Yuji reminds him. “We listened to Sukuna, too. We let him lead us down the rabbit hole.”

Frustration scrapes through Megumi, and he shakes his head. “It’s not the same.” He doesn’t know what else to say, so he gasps out another repetition to replace his previous apologies. “It’s not the same, Yuji. You’re never going to—It’s not—”

“Hey.” Yuji finally loosens his hold on him and forces him to flatten out from his balled-up form if he wants to stay glued to his side. He cups Megumi’s cheek in his hand and forces him to look up at him. He speaks very calmly, clearly, and firmly. “What I’m trying to tell you is you need to let us share this burden. You are not alone, and it was not your fault, Megumi. You didn’t choose this.”

Megumi doesn’t know how to answer that. He tries, his mouth open wide, but his throat is worn raw, and he can’t justify the voice in his head—the one that tries to convince him he wants to hurt Yuji—when it wants to force a laugh out of his tight chest and make him tell the truth. He thinks he knows the truth, but he can’t remember for sure. Everything is so hazy, between the beginning and the end.

“Am I a different person now?” he asks instead as he searches Yuji’s gaze. “Are you going to resent me because I’ve changed?”

A wrinkle appears on Yuji’s forehead, and all Megumi wants to do is smooth it out. “No, baby,” he whispers. “You’re still Megumi. You’re still the love of my life. You haven’t changed, and I’m not going to leave you, I promise. We can get through this together, okay?”

Megumi still shakes, but he accepts the answer for now and forces his head down until Yuji lets him lay it on his shoulder. Yuji resorts to rubbing his back, and Megumi settles as best he can. He doesn’t really believe him, just like he doesn’t believe the walls or the sky of the weight of his own hands. But Yuji is here, and that should count for something, right? He wants it to.

Megumi heaves out a long, unsteady breath and says, “Okay.”

Nobody but Megumi knows how long he stayed in Limbo the first time. He had to scout it, for his own peace of mind, before he left Gojo there alone. It wasn’t all bad; there were shades that behaved like normal human beings, and there was an endless sea.

There was something else, though, something he forgot a long time ago, when he was halfway back to coming up.

He had to plant ideas, too. To convince himself. To complete the assignment.

Ideas are a disease no one will ever find the cure to. A bullet through the mind is the only solution he’s ever had.

He can’t be sure what wakes him up. Time is fluid and unending, and it’s four in the morning and just past midnight at the same time. Megumi sits up and rubs both of his hands over his face.

Yuji’s side of the bed is empty.

Cicadas fill the summer air with their buzz, but the sound is half-drowned beneath the aircon as it kicks on and leaves Megumi to shiver above the covers. He glances around the quiet room, perfectly still, and wonders if it’s possible for a place to be too perfect. Too clean. Too calm. With his arms above his head, Megumi arcs his back in a long stretch before he rises.

The closed bathroom door is his first stop, even though the light isn’t on underneath; Yuji might have kept it off to avoid waking Megumi. Megumi knocks once, then swings the door open to find no one inside.

A frown creases his face as he pads across the bedroom to poke his head out into the living room instead. “Yuji?” he calls, softly, because his voice is weak and rough with sleep, and he doesn’t want to disturb the peace. No response comes, so he wanders out and checks over the back of the couch and the armchair, then turns around and heads into the kitchen. Yuji isn’t asleep somewhere else, or making himself a midnight snack, or anywhere. Megumi almost convinces himself it’s later than he thinks and Yuji already left for work, but no, the clock on the microwave tells him otherwise.

“Yuji?” he calls again, a little louder, a little more concerned. He works his way through to the other side of the apartment, where the office sits unused and untouched, tucked away in the back corner. “Hello? Where—”

He feels it before he sees it. Before he smells the iron or tastes the traces of salt in the air that shouldn’t be there, a chill jabs its sharp claws up the length of Megumi’s spine, and he knows.

He loses his breath completely as he peers in through the half-open door. He can’t even see anything past the wooden frame, much less in the dark, so he reaches out ever so slowly and pushes the door the rest of the way open. Moonlight from the hall cascades into the room and merges with the shadows, the corners, the glistening patches on the far wall behind the desk.

Yuji is there.

All the oxygen leaves the room as Megumi steps around the desk to find him.

The pocket watch hangs loosely around Yuji’s neck and rests just below his sternum. He slumps against the wall, his head sagging forward, his arms twisted awkwardly. The gun sits on the floor centimetres from his open hand.

In the dim light and ugly air, Megumi swallows once. “Yuji,” he says, taking a step forward. He collapses before he can make it any further.

And then he crawls, drags himself, rough carpet scraping up his knees, bruises on the heels of his hands as he scrambles close and almost crashes into the wall beside Yuji when his hand slips in blood. He ignores the spatter on the wall above him and focuses on sitting as close as he can so he can wipe it away from Yuji’s face, his eyes—his hair is matted with it—

“Shit,” Megumi stammers. He’s crying. He’s crying all of a sudden and he can’t stop. He pushes wildly at Yuji’s hair, this way and that, trying to fix it, trying to make it better. He cups Yuji’s limp head in his hands. “No,” he whispers. “No, no, baby, wake up. Can you open your eyes for me, Yuji? Please, can you open—”

Yuji doesn’t open his eyes. He lists forward when Megumi shakes him by the shoulders, and Megumi rushes to catch him in his arms and cradle him close. He shoves him against the wall again. Forceful. Desperate. He rakes his hair back with his fingers and pulls at his eyelids.

“Yuji,” Megumi says, a harsh command. His voice rattles in his chest. He sucks in breath after breath as hot tears flow down. “Yuji, you need to wake up, right now. I didn’t mean any of it. I didn’t mean it. Please, you have to wake up.”

The cicadas crescendo outside the curtained window. Moonlight ignites Yuji’s broken face.

“Please,” Megumi says again. He says it until he’s sobbing. His shoulders quake, and he says it over and over. Baby, wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

The world tilts sideways. Megumi lifts Yuji and tries to get him on his feet, but neither of them can stay upright. He tries to breathe. His throat tightens. His hands shake so badly he can barely prop just Yuji’s head up to look at him. He traces the bloodied curve of his jaw. His eyes are so wide his head hurts. His voice is swollen with pain and fever before he even screams.

“Yuji, wake up!” Megumi begs, and he bangs a fist against the wall. Another harsh sob breaks from his chest as he rocks forward on his knees. “Please! Fuck, oh my gods. I don’t want this, I don’t want this. Yuji, look at me. Just look at me, that’s all you have to do, come on—” Megumi’s voice shatters in six different ways. He grabs Yuji by both bloody cheeks with bloody hands and jerks his head forward, up, facing him. “Yuji, for fuck’s sake, look at me!”

He doesn’t. His body is warm, so warm. He weighs ten times himself. He weighs nothing. He droops in Megumi’s arms.

Was it the gunshot that woke him up? Megumi lurches forward and scoops Yuji to his chest again and sobs. He doesn’t want to see the wound in his skull. He doesn’t want to see the light leave his eyes. This isn’t happening. It can’t be. Yuji—he’s holding the pocket watch—he must know something, and Megumi’s always had so much trouble telling the real from the fake, the dream from the waking world. He’s had panic attacks in dreams before. He’s lost himself, fucked up a million times, seen dead bodies, all within the confines of his own subconscious and the spaces he’s shared with others. Yuji must know something. He’s alive somewhere, up there, and Megumi finds the artery in his neck and presses two fingers against it and there’s no pulse.

The oxygen lapses again, and he feels so dizzy he might pass out. He heaves in a breath like he’s about to vomit. His fingers dig into Yuji’s back so hard it would hurt if he weren’t—

“Yuji,” Megumi says, the name strangled, flat, drowned in tears. He clings to him and wants to die. He clings to him and screams his name. “Fuck, please, Yuji. Yuji!”

His voice is drawn out in long, grating sobs. He grits his teeth. He squeezes his eyes shut and sees stars. Everything shakes. The dream is collapsing. This isn’t a dream. Megumi holds on tightly and begs and begs and begs and begs and begs.

He could stay here forever, trapped in an endless loop on this level of hell, and it would feel real every time. Every second. The pocket watch ticks and ticks.

When seconds and hours pass in tandem on the floor and the sun sticks its fingers in through the windows, he doesn’t know why the ticking is what calms him. It’s not a good feeling. He swallows bile back down in the back of his throat, and his mind goes numb to the sound of that watch.

Megumi shuts up and sits back on his heels. He props Yuji against the wall again as carefully as he can and reaches for the watch instead. Blood stains the golden chain as he lifts it over Yuji’s head.

If Yuji is dead, why is it still ticking?

For longer than he knows, Megumi sits on his heels on the floor of the office they never use and stares blankly at his lover’s corpse and lets the steady sound drive him mad.

Water torture in audio form. A question he may never answer.

It’s a while before he does it, but he reaches for the gun. Sobs still gently shake his shoulders. He keeps his eyes on Yuji. He doesn’t open the pocket watch. He doesn’t want to look.

Would it matter, he thinks, if the second hand were moving forward or backward? If he could see his name spelled out in a circle? Either way, Yuji isn’t here. There are only so many places he could go to find him. But Megumi told him once that he’d follow him everywhere, and he always has. His heart pumps in off-kilter beats, like wings fluttering inside his chest.

“Yuji,” he murmurs, and leans forward to kiss his forehead, smearing blood all over his own lips. “I’m here.”

He feels oddly calm now. That’s never been a good thing.

Megumi doesn’t bother to check the pocket watch or measure the walls or study the details of the room. He leans in and takes the gun off the floor, and its familiar weight fills his hand. He’s held this gun so many times. He’s held it to his own temple before, pointed the barrel at his own skull.

So did Yuji. He stares down at him and feels sick as he rises unsteadily to his feet.

If this is a dream, and Yuji was right all along, and nothing Megumi ever did made a difference, he will wake up warm and comfortable and safe in his bed, and Yuji will be lying warm and comfortable and safe beside him. He will be breathing. Megumi will step into the daylight and speak to his friends how he used to, years ago. He’ll catch up with Kugisaki and visit Inumaki for reasons other than the fierce need to drug himself to sleep. He’ll spend time with Maki, reconcile with Yuuta, and maybe even find Miwa and apologise to her. He’ll say to hell with the administration and suck up whatever punishment they give him and never look back. He will destroy every last one of Ryomen Sukuna’s fingers himself.

He takes a few steps away from the body and fiddles with the trigger. It clicks, the watch ticks. The cicadas sing. The dawn sneaks in beyond his notice.

This could be a dream. He could be stuck in Limbo. He’s gone back and forth too many times already, would he even know? He’ll pull the trigger, and he’ll wake up.

Or he’ll just be dead.

He’ll never come to his senses and descend for the last time to rescue Gojo. He’ll never see anyone again. He won’t have any more dreams. Either way, Yuji is gone. Either way, his blood still coats Megumi’s hands for the second time; two times too many. Either way, he’s not here anymore.

And Megumi promised he’d always follow.

His hands aren’t shaking now, as he raises the gun and clutches the pocket watch to his stomach. He’ll see Yuji again, he tells himself. In another life.

He puts the barrel in his mouth.

Kugisaki Nobara knows her best friends well. She sees them in herself every morning in the bathroom mirror; she sees Yuji in the small creases in her eyepatch and Megumi in the curve of her scowl.

She misses them, badly.

Her hair is pulled into an untidy bun, and she was lucky Utahime managed to scrounge up a change of clothes for her so she could shake out of that soaked fitted top and flowing skirt. It’s comfier to lounge in yoga pants and a sweatshirt when you’re slumped in a chair in the corner of a hospital room waiting to see if your friends are ever going to wake up again.

Nobara dozes while she waits, but she doesn’t dream. They’re doing enough of that for her.

She went out about an hour ago and found a garden with fresh flowers that she picked herself, mostly daisies. But, because the Gojo clan has a bottomless well of money to spend on groundskeepers to take good care of their plants even in the wrong conditions, she managed to find a cluster of white egret orchids right outside the hospital. She took two and sweet talked the nurses into giving her two vases so she could put one on Megumi’s side, and the other on Yuji’s. She wants them to both be able to smell the flowers when they wake.

They share a patient suite, but they look wrong, lying in separate beds. Nobara gets up every few minutes and checks on them both. She squeezes Yuji’s hand, then pads over and squeezes Megumi’s, and imagines she’s doing it in the place of the other. She’s never once seen them separated—not after Sukuna.

Nobara is sitting on the edge of Megumi’s bed and staring at the scars on his face when a quick rap comes at the door.

“Hey,” Maki says as she enters, walking smoothly to hover over Nobara’s shoulder. She, too, casts a steady gaze on Megumi’s slack face. He looks perfectly relaxed and unharmed, like he could go on sleeping forever.

A chill whisks through Nobara. She prays to the gods he doesn’t.

“How goes the fuckton of paperwork?” Nobara asks without looking up. She folds a fist under her chin and pretends to look thoughtful.

Maki lets out a long-suffering sigh and finally lets go of her stiff posture to lean into Nobara’s back and hug her from behind. Her cheek comes to rest on the top of Nobara’s head after she presses a soft kiss there. “It’s never going to end, I swear to god. It’ll only get worse the longer they’re here.”

She’s still shaken up, Nobara knows, and she rubs a soothing hand over Maki’s arm in front of her. “It won’t be long,” she tells her.

A dry laugh escapes Maki, and she pats Nobara’s hand. “You say that, but how do you know?”

Nobara turns to peer over at Yuji, his intact throat, and the steady rise and fall of his chest. His head is slumped a little to the side on the pillow. The blankets are tucked up to his shoulders, courtesy of Nobara herself. She glances back at Megumi and squeezes Maki’s hand.

“I know them,” she whispers. The egret orchids glisten in the early morning light. Nobara nods firmly to herself. “I know them.”

And she does.

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die, that you will see, painted in pure white and gold, all your best moments and all your mistakes. For Megumi, these are wrapped into one memory that he cannot let go of no matter how hard he tries. This is what he sits with when he contemplates death, not anything else. He sips his coffee and stares into space and frowns as it turns over in his mind.

Someone comes to his table before long and hovers just over him. He doesn’t pay attention at first, thinks it’s just a waiter checking around, but the figure doesn’t go away, and irritation prickles at the base of Megumi’s skull.

He looks up, and it’s Yuji.

Yuji, dressed in a shirt Megumi is pretty sure used to belong to him, and to Yuji again before that. Yuji, a faint, hopeful smile ghosting across his lips as he meets Megumi’s eyes. Yuji, scars healing up and beautiful, who tilts his head to the side and says, “Hey, Megumi.”

Megumi stands up so fast, his chair scrapes against the concrete and nearly falls over backward. “Yuji,” he breathes as he throws his arms around him. “What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be gone for weeks.”

Yuji folds him up in the embrace and laughs, and Megumi feels so warm and comfortable and safe in his arms. He breathes in Yuji’s ocean-scented cologne and rests his chin on his shoulder. His eyes fall shut as he holds him tightly.

“The request was withdrawn,” Yuji explains, keeping his words light and unserious. He never likes to talk about work much, both because of the fact that it’s illegal, and to guard Megumi’s sanity. He keeps him an arm’s length from the concept of Dreamshare at all times. “I decided to just catch the first flight back once we were through with the debrief.”

Faint birdsong drifts through the outdoor patio, mixed with quiet conversations and the sound of dishes clinking together. Yuji doesn’t pull away until Megumi does and ushers for him to take a seat on the other side of the decorative metal table. A waiter comes around to bring them water, and Yuji orders one of the largest breakfast sandwiches on the menu while Megumi opts for an espresso and pastry.

He’s been doing better lately. Yuji only decided it was okay to leave when Megumi stopped having nightmares every time he closed his eyes. Megumi hasn’t been drinking, and Inumaki shipping off to Paris right alongside Yuji kept him away from the sedatives and roofies. He props his arms on the table and smiles as Yuji glows in front of him.

“How was the flight home?” Megumi asks.

Another laugh bubbles in Yuji’s throat, and he shakes his head, not exactly saying it was bad, but more dismissing the very notion. “I wasn’t even paying attention to the flight. Kugisaki and I managed to get seats next to each other, and I stared out the window past her head the whole time and thought about getting back to you.”

Megumi covers a snicker with his hand as the waiter sets his coffee down, then leans in to whisper-laugh, “You’re so stupid. Why didn’t you just book the window seat? I’m sure Kugisaki was ‘catching up on beauty sleep’ the whole time, wasn’t she?”

“I’m not stupid,” Yuji argues, but a wide grin wipes any traces of exhaustion, any stress, clean off his face and makes him look dopey in the daylight. He lays his hand flat on the tabletop like he’s about to make a business deal. “I’m just absolutely, completely smitten with you, Fushiguro Megumi.”

He sticks a third of his sandwich in his mouth at once as soon as he’s finished talking, and Megumi buries his face in his hands and blushes from his hairline to his collarbone, the closest he’ll ever get to full on laughing.

“That’s basically the same thing, to you,” Megumi groans into the flesh of his palms.

“I’m serious, though.”

Megumi hears it in Yuji’s voice, the subtle shift, the notes of affection. He’s still smiling when Megumi opens his eyes, but his gaze has softened, and familiar creases of worry that have only eased out a little in recent weeks crinkle around his eyes. He’s framed by the hazy glow of the sun behind his head, his pink hair alight, and he puts his sandwich down in favour of reaching both hands across the table to open them up for Megumi to hold.

Hesitant, and a touch confused, Megumi slides his hands forward too and lets their fingers intertwine.

“I really love you, Megumi,” Yuji murmurs to the air that isn’t Parisian, but is just as good, or even better. He tilts his head to the side as the smile spreads across his face. “And I’ll always come back to you. We have over eight thousand layers of in-yun, remember?”

The words settle like dust and amber around Megumi’s heart, in the pit of his stomach, in his pocket. He drinks them in and takes the smallest breath as the confusion steadies out. He doesn’t know what Yuji is talking about, yet he does, somehow. He sees forever in those honey-brown eyes, and feels a connection that roots deeper than their souls in the closure of Yuji’s hands locked with his. A memory he didn’t know he had floats back to him, of a late evening falling asleep on the couch with a movie he’s never seen playing across the screen. His head rests on Yuji’s chest. His heart beats calmly. Peace settles over him like a shroud.

And he feels it now, gazing into Yuji’s eyes, awake, alive, and loved. He feels so at peace. He wants to get better, he thinks, if it means he gets to feel like this forever. He wants to be in love with Itadori Yuji for the rest of time. He traces the promise into the sparks in Yuji’s expression and finds it outlined in the curve of his jaw. He sees memory after memory after memory unfold between them, all of them beautiful and broken and terrifying and true. He knows happiness. He knows grief. He knows what it’s like to want to stay.

“I love you too,” he says, and he means it, earnestly. “So much, Yuji.”

The moment drifts away from him only slightly as they topple back into regular conversation. Megumi doesn’t mind; he sits back in his chair at a café in the quiet regions of Tokyo and sips his espresso and listens to Yuji speak.

“Hey,” Yuji says when there’s a lull, and he wiggles the hand of Megumi’s he’s still holding back and forth once. The concern comes back to his face, but he’s full of love, too, Megumi can tell. Whatever he’s about to say, Megumi knows he wouldn’t say it if they weren’t in a good place. He’s always found it amusing, and amazing, how they can read each other like open books.

“I’m not going to pressure you,” Yuji says, his eyebrows raised and head inclined, “but I wanted to run something by you quick, if that’s okay. It has to do with Dreamshare.”

Curiosity stirs in Megumi’s chest. Anxiety, too, but it’s lessened by the sweet caress of sunshine on his face and espresso on his tongue and Yuji in his grasp. He takes a breath to steady the tiny flash of fear and nods for Yuji to go ahead. “Sure, what is it?”

Yuji meets his eyes and does the same, breathing in very slowly, like he’s steeling himself. But he sounds excited, and hopeful, and so dear when he lets the words launch carefully from his lips.

Forever waits in his eyes. He squeezes Megumi’s hand.

“Kugisaki just picked up a new job,” Yuji tells him. “And… she thinks it’d be a good fit for you. She was wondering if you’d like to help.”

Megumi is silent for a beat too long, but as soon as Yuji starts to stammer, “Sorry for bringing it up, I know you wanted to quit Dreamshare for good—” Megumi pushes himself forward and takes Yuji’s other hand again.

“It’s fine,” he says, and he lets the smallest smile ghost over his lips. “Yuji, it’s okay, really. I’m glad you asked. Having something to work on might be good for me.”

Hesitation and disbelief scrunch up Yuji’s features, but he relaxes as Megumi rubs circles into the back of his hand with his thumb.

“Let’s talk about it, okay?” Megumi says. It’s not a yes, or a no, but it’s something. He bobs his head goodnaturedly and makes sure Yuji is looking at him. “Let’s set up a meeting with Kugisaki, see what we can find out about the job. Then we can go from there.”

Yuji’s shoulders fall—slowly, but they do—as he softens again and nods along to Megumi’s words. “Yeah,” he agrees, already sounding reassured. “Okay, yeah. That sounds good.”

“Hey.” The smile still tugs at the corner of his lips, and Megumi slumps forward over the table and gazes up at Yuji with fond eyes. “I love you,” he says again, sweetly, coaxingly.

Yuji can’t help but smile back, and he wiggles Megumi’s hand around again and rubs his thumb against his other hand in the same way Megumi did. “I love you too,” he says through his grin and his bubbly laugh and his sandwich and his fears and eight thousand layers and more of in-yun wrapped around them like crimson thread. He says it again, once more, just because he can. “I love you, Megumi.”

“I’d follow you anywhere,” Megumi tells him. “You know that. And I’ll find you, no matter where you go.” It’s a promise, but he keeps up the teasing nature as he adds, “Ever fly to Paris again, I might just have to go with you.”

“I know you will,” Yuji murmurs back. “And hey, maybe you should. Paris kind of sucks in the summer, actually, so I was kind of glad to hurry back. Don’t tell Kugisaki I said that, whatever you do. But we should go again sometime, maybe, in the spring, or like, dead of winter, when it’s not so hot, and—”

“Yuji.” Megumi bumps his chair back and leans clear across the table and kisses him. He lets go of his hand to hold him by the collar, and he doesn’t taste salt, or iron, or coffee, or Paris. He just tastes Yuji. He feels him, steady and strong.

Yuji kisses him back, angling his head to the side and cupping his cheek in his hand, right there in the middle of the café patio.

He’ll find him, Megumi promises. And he knows, no matter what, Yuji will always find him, too. In quiet cafés, in their dreams, anywhere. They’d cross oceans to reach each other over and over just to feel this way again. Just to remember that they’re loved. Distantly, as he folds himself into Yuji’s soft lips and holds his hand and brushes his knuckles against his throat, he promises.

In a city forgotten, an endless bridge built with love and care and wonder finally comes to an end, at a point in the distance that can be reached, given enough time. The taste of salt douses the fresh air. Gulls cry as they soar overhead. The horizon glows bright white in the distance.

On the other side of the vast blue ocean, someone waits.