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zukosdualdao · 22 days

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i'm literally insane about the last agni kai and the lightning scene(s). i swear i've rewatched it 10+ times since my last rewatch of the show (which was my first watch in years) and like. azula sees katara come into view from behind. zuko doesn't. he follows azula's gaze and sees katara and is immediately horrified. he doesn't even think or hesitate because he doesn't have time and for once he doesn't have to look back at azula to figure out what she's doing because he knows what she's doing and he won't let it happen. time dwindling into slow motion as a haunting score plays? and zuko literally yelling out "no!" because that lightning absolutely cannot hit katara. as soon as he sees it there's no chance of that ever happening. and then katara watching in horror as the lightning flashes against features in what is probably one of the most hauntingly beautiful animated moments of the show? zuko hitting the ground still convulsing with lightning and katara crying out "zuko!" and immediately trying to run to him before azula attacks again? and the next scene we cut back to with them, zuko is groaning weakly and trying to lift himself up, and we see katara literally gasp in surprise as she realizes he's still alive (i'm sobbing because i do quite literally think she thought he was dead) and immediately tries to run to him again, nevermind that she knows azula is still there, and the hand katara uses for healing is already doused in water as she reaches for him. but then azula starts attacking again. and zuko, despite literally being in so much pain that he can't stand and can barely even move at all without whimpering, still tries to reach for the spot where he can see azula attacking katara. katara is forced to hide from azula's attacks. and as azula is mocking "zuzu, you don't look so good" down to zuko, the perspective shot is such that you can SEE that katara is also looking at where he lies prone in the distance, surrounded by flame (probably wondering how much time they have before it really is too late) before looking back up at azula and realizing she needs to defeat her as quickly and handily as possible so katara can get to zuko. obviously katara would have done this anyway (the whole reason they were THERE was to halt the continued cycle of the imperialist regime of the fire nation), but the scene is specifically framed as katara trying to figure out how to stop azula so the obstacle to her getting to zuko is no longer in the way. katara's defeat of azula was epic and deserves its own post. but then after making sure azula is securely chained, she runs to zuko, looks at him with such immense sadness and horror and fear as she hears him in so much pain, tenderly turns him over so she can get a good look at the wound. and she cups his head? briefly but so gently? so that he won't hit it as she turns him over? and when she tries to heal him you can tell she is so genuinely unsure if it will even work, and so relieved that she starts crying tears of joy when she sees it has (at least enough to keep him alive and somewhat lessen his pain.) they thank each other (and you can tell it's still really hard for zuko to talk and his eyes are barely open but he thanks her anyways i'm.) and she thanks him back and!!! when he starts to try to sit up she makes a little surprised face and then immediately helps him to do so (and puts a tender hand to his chest while she does!!!) and obviously that last shot of them standing together is also one of emotional support, but katara's hand on his back is also partly because i still think (and certainly katara still thinks) trying to walk/stand on his own would be a bad idea, so it's definitely not happening.

#y'all. let me tell you right now. there was a way to write and animate this scene that didn't play on a dozen romantically coded tropes #and this. uh. wasn't that!#zutara #i know this is basically just reciting what happened ( i almost included the actual way katara defeats azula but that wasn't the point of t #is particular post and also would have made it even longer.)#but #there is nothing about this sequence of events that does not make me feel like i am on drugs.#also you Know zuko immediately after this was like: alright well i guess i've got shit to do! then promptly falls unconscious again. tbh #the joke is on him if he thinks katara is letting him out of sight for a While #atla #zuko #katara #this isn't even particularly analytical i'm just gushing #i'm not joking i will never be over it.#the last agni kai #sozin's comet

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polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 5 months

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How do you imagine the conversation between Megumi and Gojo when kid Megumi tries to tell him of the Zenin’s abuse would go? What would be the last nail that convinces Megumi that it’s pointless and that they know but don’t care? Is what happened going to be talked about in sea glass garden?

It’s probably not going to be discussed in sea glass gardens.

I’ve been turning it over in my head again and again, and the limitation is really Yuuta’s POV. I don’t see Megumi confessing what happened back then to anyone, especially considering how he was just retraumatized by the Zenin. At the same time, I don’t like the idea of it coming out of anyone but megumi. It’s an intensely personal thing to him. I don’t like the character implications it would have if other people told Yuuta about it behind his back. So it probably just won’t come out in this fic. If I do end up making it a series, it may come out there.

I imagine that when Megumi told him, it was the worst possible time.

Gojo would have had to have been at absolute peak burnout. Like, he hasn’t had a break in a week, let alone slept style burnout. He was a teenager who was mentally and physically exhausted and in a moment where he honestly, desperately wanted to be a kid again.

He had just fielded endless demands from a lot of people more than twice his age who were all very angry at him at all moments for no discernible reason while they sent him off to do the work of a hundred sorcerers without any real support or help. He didn’t even have one of the assistants to help—why would he need someone to drive him? He can teleport. Why would he need someone to do the veil for him? He can manage that and the job.

And I want to emphasize that all of this was a very targeted scheme by the higher ups. This won’t be in the fic (again, because Yuuta’s limited POV), but in my mind, before Yaga brokered the deal with the Zenin having partial custody, negotiations about Megumi’s care (re: gojo loudly shouting that he’s not giving him back while the Zenin threaten war to secure his immediate and absolute return with no further contact from gojo) deteriorated to the pint where Nanami, Shoko, and Gojo straight up fucked off with the kids.

Megumi and tsumiki still think it was just a vacation gojo randomly decided they all needed, but they were actually low key fleeing the country to maintain custody. Fleeing used incredibly loosely, because gojo could take the Zenin clan in a fight. But it had gotten to the point where the Zenin were going to fuck around and find out, and gojo was faced with the option of 1) just start killing whoever shows up to try to reclaim megumi by force or 2) not being there when they show up. He chose door number 2.

This had an unintended consequence they all didn’t realize, which was forcing the higher ups to contemplate a world where they lost control of the three of them.

Nanami was less important to them compared to how the other two were, just because he was still a student, wasn’t even a first grade yet, and didn’t seem to have anything particularly special about him on his face. But Shoko was the only healer they had and Gojo was, well, Gojo. They were impossibly valuable assets to the jujutsu world that they couldn’t lose.

Now, the sane thing to do is to actually take steps to make their employment one they wanted to actually stay in. The higher ups are not sane. They did not pick the sane route. Instead, they tried to find ways to make sure they couldn’t leave again.

The approach they took to Gojo was basically that idea of the elephant tied up to a stick—train him young, break him young, and he won’t realize that he can rip the stick clean out of the ground without any effort at all. They wanted him eternally exhausted, off kilter, and seeking approval he wasn’t getting. He couldn’t have time to seek out a life outside of the jujutsu world, because that would give him options the higher ups did not want him having. Then, when he was ready to break, they could start rewarding him and affirming him and chain his happiness to them. He had to be second guessed at every turn and rewarded when he did what the higher ups wanted. Treat him like an infant when it comes to decision making but an adult when it comes to evaluating him.

That is to say that Gojo’s mindset when this was happening was not just simply “he was tired and frustrated.” A group of extremely manipulative, extremely dangerous people all got together and made a comprehensive plan to break him, and they had been executing it for a while then. He was a child. And he wasn’t the Gojo Satoru that we meet in season 1 yet.

The Gojo Satoru that he grew up to be was a product in great deal because of this time in his life, when he was overwhelmed, exhausted, and had what little of his childhood he had left taken away from him by a bunch of greedy old fucks. He became the protector that he didn’t have growing up.

The other thing feeding into his mindset was the fact that the Zenin had not fucking taken this custody agreement with grace.

Like. Any compromise was an insult to them. It was bad enough that the ten shadows had lived outside of the jujutsu world for his entire childhood thus far—the idea that he spent most of his time with gojo instead of them was unbearable. They wanted Megumi in the Zenin compound, being raised in the Zenin manner, following Zenin traditions and taking the Zenin name. The only reason why they accepted the partial custody offer was because the Zenin leadership knew it was the best deal they were going to get.

It was a political game. Under no circumstances could they just shrug and let the Ten Shadows be raised by their enemies without a fight. They’d go down in history books as the failures who went and lost another ten shadows after they just came off the death of the previous one, to their sworn enemy no less. And that’s only if the more opportunistic members of the clan didn’t take this failure as a chance to unseat their authority entirely. They had to bring megumi back into the clan somehow.

They also knew they could all fight Gojo and still lose. Which would be a definitive humiliation in the eyes of the jujutsu world. Trying to take megumi by force was just. An absolute last resort.

Gojo wasn’t budging on keeping Megumi with him for his primary care. It wasn’t happening. But partial custody gave them the win of returning him to the clan, even if it was only for a short while.

It also gave them the wiggle room to try to get more time with him.

They have in roads with the higher ups. And they know how much work Gojo gets. They know gojos completely overwhelmed and as vulnerable as someone like him ever gets.

They had gotten an inch, and they wanted a mile. So they were pushing too.

Constantly, endless haranguing for a new custody arrangement that gave them more time with Megumi. They wanted every two weeks instead of every month. Then every week. Actually you know what? They should just change it from weekends entirely—they get megumi for a week every month instead of a weekend. 50/50 custody. Actually? Gojos so goddamn busy, and megumi can spend so much time getting care from his family if he’s with the Zenin. They should get primary custody, and maybe gojo can visit when he’s less busy.

It was a moment where Gojo felt like he was barely holding together the arrangement they did have as it was. He had to go intervene the last three times that someone else tried to pick megumi up because the Zenin straight up would not let him get in the car unless Gojo was there to force them to. He fought so fucking hard to keep megumi with his sister 98% of the time, and this, this was the only agreement that got the Zenin to stop trying to light his fucking dorm on fire, and he was fighting tooth and nail to keep it from getting anywhere past that. The Zenin were exhausting him, and he was of the mind that it was either this or kill them all and he was trying to not kill them all. This was it. It was the best they could fucking do. He was trying to not go the route of mass murder like some people, and that apparently involved some fucking compromises.

That’s the mindset he was in when Megumi told him that he never wanted to go back to the Zenin again.

And I want to emphasize that from megumi's perspective, this was a huge act of vulnerability. particularly in light of the fact that he walked into the meeting half convinced that gojo already knew.

It wasn't because of anything Gojo did, per se. It wasn't even a judgment on whether gojo would let this go on. It was just because Gojo seemed to know everything.

It was the six eyes. They were too young to understand what it let him do, fully, and he always seemed to see and know everything. The teen parenting trio teased them about it, sometimes, not in a mean way--just in the sort of way where you tell a little kid that santa can see them being naughty. Gojo sees everything, including Megumi sneaking his book under his covers to read past his bedtime.

but this left megumi with the mistaken impression that Gojo had to know from the start. This impression had been reinforced by the Zenin (mostly Naoya) who were purposefully misleading him about Gojo already knowing and approving of what they did to him.

Megumi also just wasn't a kid who was in a habit for asking for help. Especially when he thought he wasn't getting it.

He grew up in really unstable circumstances with no adult he could rely on. His dad canonically would just go out and find a sugar mama between killing people, and I see a lot of them as resenting the baggage that was Megumi and treating him a little cruelly. He didn't remember it all that well back then, and he completely forgot it by the time he was a teenager, but he had a lot of reasons to distrust the adults in charge of him. And even as a kid, he was pretty stoic. he was not about to cry and beg for help when it was. not. coming.

Asking Gojo for help anyway was probably the biggest act of trust and vulnerability that Megumi was capable of, back then. He was saying that he trusted that Gojo cared about him and wanted to protect him to go against what his entire way of living thus far was telling him to do.

And it took a grenade to their relationship when it went bad.

I think that Megumi and Gojo remembered the conversation differently immediately after they had it. And that Gojo remembered it differently from how he initially did after he learned the truth.

It's just the natural bias of human memory. They both walked into the conversation with different understandings and preconceptions and that colored what jumped out to them.

In megumi's mind, he told Gojo all the important parts, the bad parts, the parts that meant that Gojo shouldn't keep sending him back there. he told them that he didn't like it there, that he was always getting hit there, that they were always touching him and making him wear weird clothes and wouldn't call him his name no matter how many times he asked. He wants to just stay with Tsumiki from now on. Gojo promised he could stay with Tsumiki.

But Gojo was burnt out, exhausted, and had a lot of misconceptions as to what everything megumi told him meant.

The thing about Megumi getting hit there--Gojo knew he was getting hit. But he thought that Megumi was talking about the other kids hitting him, because he was getting into fights. Because that's what the Zenin told him.

Megumi was showing up with scrapes and bruises. They all asked about them. Some of it was explained away as just like, the normal bruises and cuts a kid collects because they're tiny and the world is very big and they have the motor control of a potato alarm clock. But anything they couldn't explain away as just your average cut was blamed on Megumi getting into fights with kids his age and giving as good as he got. Maki actually was a favorite scapegoat, though neither megumi nor maki know it. She was around his age, and had plenty of reason to be at odds with him because he had the best technique in the clan and she had none at all. The best day either of them had growing up in the compound, the day where they got to play together, ended with all three of them getting beaten horribly for running off. If it was just Maki and Mai, no one would have cared, but Megumi had every second of his day planned and the entire schedule was fucked irreparably now.

Of course, the teen parenting trio had a lot of questions about this, namely "what the fuck happened to him," and were promptly told that he got into it with this little psycho a year older than him who had a heavenly pact and was bitter that megumi got the clan techinque and she didn't. And to Gojo, shoko, and nanami, who had just dealt with Megumi's dad, a bitter psychopath with a heavenly pact who made it everyone's problem? They believed it. The Zenin promised they'd punish maki and keep her apart from Megumi from then on out, which quickly turned into "Megumi wanted to prove he could win the next fight and ran off to track her down and have a rematch and these new bruises are the result. Kids, huh?" or "we kept maki far away this time and Megumi went out and fucked with some other kids. What do you want us to do, cut him off from every other kid in the compound?"

As if they hadn't already cut him off from every other kid in the compound

The Zenin's lie also had a huge amount of credibility to it because Megumi was already getting into fights at school. He was a holy terror who couldn't go a week without being in the principal's office. They thought he was in some kind of phase. (He was actually lashing out under the stress of being abused and having no control in his life and trying to reclaim his own sense of autonomy and fairness by fucking up any kid who started shit and acted like a bully). but yeah--kid who couldn't go two days without punching another kid in the face and getting punched himself for his trouble, getting hit? Yeah, uh. no shit.

So Megumi said he was always getting hit there, and he remembered it as a very explicit proclamation that his extended family were beating him every time he set foot on their compound. Gojo heard it as "I keep getting into fights with everyone there because I've got the disposition of a rabid wolverine and you have had to make the trip to the principal's office many, many, many times as evidence of that."

But uh. When you tell someone you're getting beat by your bio family, and they, in a very tired, very frustrated tone start trying to get you to reflect on what in your own behavior might have caused it and how you might have provoked the situation, it doesn't exactly leave an impression of an adult who's going to go to bat for you.

And like. Gojo was trying to actually do the parenting book thing? He was tired as fuck and not thinking entirely straight and had been putting off talking to megumi about how he cannot keep biting the other children for a while. He thought he needed to get megumi to reflect on how you're probably going to get hit if you hit them first and how he should hit less children, even if they are little assholes.

It was that kind of recontextualization. Like, Megumi just didn't have the words to properly explain what was going on. I've talked in another post, somewhere, about how the Zenin forcibly bathing Megumi was like, a regular thing when they had custody. it happened every time he went there. They were control freaks who felt entitled to him and who wanted him to look exactly how the ten shadows was supposed to look, and they weren't about to trust the grooming skills of a six year old to get what they wanted. They'd hand him off to the servants, and Megumi would have all of his things taken from him, and he wouldn't get a single say in anything from then on. They'd decide how his hair was styled. What clothes he wore. Where he went, what he ate, everything.

But Megumi didn't have the vocabulary to be like "Hey the Zenin habitually steamroll every boundary and preference i have in a way that reflects alarmingly on their understanding of my autonomy and personhood. Here's a list of ways they've done that." He put it in the way he experienced it, which is that they were always touching him and making him wear weird clothes.

But Gojo knew this kid, and he knew that Megumi hated anyone touching him at all. He got pissed at Gojo for ruffling his hair and Tsumiki for trying to hold his hand. Megumi had a very low tolerance for being touched, and Gojo skewed his interpretation with that in mind.

The worst he imagined was the kind of touching where like, your Great Aunt Bertha comes in for Thanksgiving and you're like, eight and you don't even know this woman but she has weird smelling perfume and you don't want to hug her but she wants to know where her hug is and your parents are getting mad at you and you end up in this weird, uncomfortable, sweaty hug that you wouldn't have picked but it isn't like, an active source of distress after. He didn't get "the dust from the car wheels haven't even settled before I'm getting forcibly bathed by strangers over my very explicit protests."

This was also filtered heavily through his expectations of how the Zenin would treat the ten shadows based on his experience as the six eyes.

like. people just get fucking weird about techniques that are on the scale of the six eyes and ten shadows. People were fucking weird about gojo when he was a kid too. He thought it was normal for your relatives to cry a little when they saw you and beg to be blessed with a touch of your hand. It wasn't until he went to jujutsu tech that he met normal fucking people.

He thought Megumi was surrounded by an entire clan of people who were treating him like the Second Coming of magic jesus and were weird as fuck about him as a result. a clan of vaguely sweaty great aunt berthas fresh from the plane and demanding their hug. stuff like that, or being required to dress in Zenin fashion when he was there... like, it's not stuff you kill an entire clan over, and that's what gojo thought the alternative was. it sucks, but it's two days a week where you have to wear the stupid clothes and suffer through some distant relatives wanting to hug you.

same thing with the name thing--it's the Zenin's millenia-old practice to call the ten shadows "the ten shadows." gojo knew that would happen from the start (but didn't realize how much it bothered Megumi) and it's not something you decide to trigger a war that will probably end with him slaughtering a clan over. He can ask them to cool it with the ten shadows thing, but he doubts they'll listen.

and the last misunderstanding that the had was around Tsumiki.

Gojo thought this was, ultimately, megumi getting worked up because he couldn't stay with tsumiki every single day of the month. Tsumiki was worked up plenty over it herself. And gojo just wasn't in a mind to hear again about how he wasn't fighting enough to keep them together when he nearly went to war to manage this much.

And the thing is, he wasn't the Gojo from season 1 yet. That gojo was still being made. And his belief that no one should take childhood from the children? It was still being fully formed.

What he heard, again and again and again, was that there was time to grow up. He heard it from the higher ups. yaga. nanami, when he's pissed at gojo's antics. all those fucking parenting books trying to teach him not to raise a serial killer. And he didn't want megumi to grow up fully. He wanted him to stay a little boy.

But he thought that this was one of those tough lessons you get when you're growing up that a parent is supposed to walk you through, which is that you dont always get what you want. You need to make it work.

This is what lets Megumi stay with Tsumiki the rest of the time. This deal. Megumi may not fully understand it right now, but putting up with his weird relatives a couple days a week is the reason why he gets to stay with his sister the rest of the time. They worked hard to get him such a good deal, and he needs to just... try, okay? No more picking fights and antagonizing his cousins. Behave. Just... wear the stupid clothes and ignore them on the name thing. Okay? Gojo will ask. he'll ask them to call him megumi and let him wear his own clothes but if they say no, well.

This is the best deal they've got to make sure Megumi stays with Tsumiki. They just. sometimes you put up with stupid, annoying shit because the thing you're trying to save is worth it, right? Gojo does a lot of that.

Gojo walked away thinking he had done a semi okay job getting megumi to understand that sometimes life sucked and you had to put up with annoying fuckers like the higher ups or the zenin because the only alternative was to throw out the baby with the bathwater, and you were willing to put up with the bathwater for the baby's sake.

Megumi walked away thinking he was just told by Gojo to suck it up and take the hits nicely because they'd take away Tsumiki otherwise.

And that was his last nail. Gojo obviously knew all along, just like the Zenin said, and he needed to just shut up and take it or they'd take Tsumiki away from him. So he shut up and took it. He didn't want to lose his sister.

After, Gojo just about tortured himself with the memory. It seemed so obvious in hindsight and so stupid to miss. It was right there. Megumi told him.

A part of him wonders what's the use of the goddamn six eyes if he always sees what's happening too late.

#sea glass gardens #debating whether i should still sit on the full matter with the zenin and why they got cut off or discuss it via ask #i really don't think it's ever gonna come out in sea glass gardens like i think it would take a long time for megumi to feel comfortable #talking about what happened. and i don't want tsumiki or gojo or nanami to reveal it because that's a betrayal of megumi's privacy and i #don't like that for their characters #if i make it a series i'll probably get into it is the thing but i don't know if this will ever become a series #i just have too many projects #if y'all have any strong opinions about it let me know

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