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polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 4 months

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It may have already been said somewhere and I just missed it, but how long was the partial custody for Megumi with the Zenins? I assumed it was once a month for a couple years, but I guess it also could’ve been every weekend (poor Megumi)

Maki remembered it as one weekend a month, but she was also like, six or seven when the Zenin still had partial custody, and whenever I have the memories come through that kind of haze of age, I always have them be kind of hit or miss in its accuracy. For example, Maki remembered Megumi as being five, but he was actually six when the arrangement started.

It started as one weekend per month at the beginning, which is how Maki remembers it--that was the number that the clan leadership brought to everyone else when they finally got Gojo to agree to partial custody, and the number that people bitched about and celebrated in turn whenever they were pissed that they only had him for a weekend a month or thrilled that they finally got some kind of time with him. If you ask Maki what the arrangement was, she would say it was one weekend per month.

In my mind, that's not an entirely accurate number. And it was mostly because the Zenin were constantly, constantly pushing their luck to get more time with him.

There was more than one time where they'd refuse to hand Megumi back over unless it was gojo personally come to retrieve him. Gojo was the only one who had the firepower to actually force them to give Megumi back--if he wasn't there and they wanted more time, then they'd just. Keep Megumi. And it wouldn't be until Gojo pulled himself away from his missions and showed up to personally pick him up that they'd suddenly cooperate again. If Gojo was out of contact or just too busy to get there--and the Zenin would ask their contacts in the higher ups to make sure he was--then they'd get a few extra days with him.

Which is another one of the reasons why Megumi's relationship with the adults suffered so badly during this time in his life. From his perspective, he was barely hanging on by a thread and struggling through each day with the Zenin, and he'd finally, finally get to the end of the weekend, and Naoya would come up and tell him that Gojo hadn't bothered to send anyone to pick him up and that they'd get to keep him all week. It would crush him every time.

But in reality, Nanami would be parked right outside of the Zenin compound, having arrived early to get him, pissed as hell and fuming on the phone through this endless phone tree of assistants trying to get Gojo on the line so that he could come back to get Megumi himself, because the Zenin wouldn't even so much as let him through the front door.

Back then, the trio were just young and easy to take advantage of and were honestly, really, desperately trying to make this somehow work. They had no idea how bad it was for Megumi on the Zenin compound and didn't want him to just. fucking hate this people that they assumed he'd build some kind of relationship with. They'd always downplay how fucking pissed they were at his family too, because they were trying to keep it together for the sake of the kid, who actually didn't want it together to begin with. So when they finally got him back, and Megumi asked why no one had come to get him, they'd never say "Your shithead bio family wouldn't goddamn give you back when we first showed up and Gojo had to threaten to rip Naobito's spine out his asshole so they'd let us take you home this time," it'd always be something like "You know, bud, your family really, really wanted to spend a little bit more time with you" or "Your family only wants Gojo to pick you up and Gojo was just really busy this time."

Eventually, Megumi stopped asking. He had already decided that they didn't care enough about him to come. He didn't need them to say it out loud.

In my mind, Megumi's pride is something that's always been very important to him. And I don't mean that he's prideful--it's that he knows what it's like to be kicked when he's down, but he won't give them the goddamn satisfaction of making him cry too. It's about maintaining dignity. He has no intimation about whether he can win every fight, but they won't get him to fucking beg for mercy when he loses it. Even when he was facing up against Sukuna, he never once begged for mercy or let him see him flinch.

In my mind, a lot of that was born during this time of Megumi's life. He was in a scenario where he was helpless and afraid. He asked for help, and he didn't get it, and that cut him deeper than anything the Zenin ever did to him. So he wasn't going to repeat mistakes. He wasn't going to ask for help that was. not. coming. So the Zenin keeping him past when custody was agreed to was another thing he just sort of started swallowing and not fighting on when it kept happening, which made the teen parenting trio think he didn't mind as much when it happened, which made them a little bit more lax when it came to the zenin overstepping. If megumi hated it there, he'd make more of a fuss when he had to stay longer, wouldn't he? He'd say something instead of just quietly getting in the car. And they were all so busy with missions that it was hard to die on the same hill every time pickup rolled around.

Like. Fuck. Gojo was staying up for a week straight by official design because he had so many missions that he legitimately didn't have time for sleep scheduled in it. This was the kind of mission load he got more and more whenever the Zenin's monthly visitation weekend rolled around, because the Zenin were pulling strings to keep him busy. Nanami showed up on time to do pickup, got turned away at the door, spent three hours on the phone trying to get someone to tell the Zenin to give him the fucking kid back, all while fielding hacked off phone calls from assistants trying to get his ass to go on his own missions. They had Tsumiki at home losing her goddamn mind because they promised her that her brother would be back today and he wasn't and they needed to figure out who was managing her while the trio were all off on their own jobs (because while they had somehow not died in a house fire when Toji left them on their own for months they all quickly learned that a seven year old really really should not be left on her own for a week), and forcing the Zenin to give Megumi back meant that they needed to make arrangements for him too. things slipped.

Like. I want to be clear, the teen parenting trio failed majorly around this time, but they failed because they were specifically set up to fail by adults who were dedicating all of their time to tearing them apart. There's this like, entire saga back then with how they were manipulated and how this got so bad that lives in my head that only comes in through as patchwork in the text of sea glass gardens itself. the audience only sees the effects and how bad it got, and in retrospect, it seems obvious that the Zenin never should have gotten any time alone with megumi, especially if they're pulling shit like refusing to give megumi back when their time with him is up.

But it's like this:

They each have twenty four hours in the day to use. Let's assume eight needs to be for sleep. That leaves sixteen hours in the day to fit in food, personal errands, missions, studies, hobbies, and taking care of Tsumiki and Megumi.

So the Zenin would say, great, make sure they have seventeen hours worth of missions on the day that they're meant to get Megumi.

Nanami wouldn't get quite the same treatment as Gojo. It would be more obvious with Nanami since he could never manage at the same level as Gojo, and he'd make sure that no one scheduled him for missions when he was supposed to be collecting Megumi.

But they would schedule him immediately before. And immediately after. And it's impossible to tell when missions end for certain, because it depends on how fast he finishes the fight. Now he's rushing to be there on time for Megumi. He can't just send Ijichi or Shoko--they're already refusing him half the time, they'll just laugh if they send a noncombatant to get Megumi--and there's already higher ups trying to divert his fucking car onto the next mission because he's late for that.

If they don't give him Megumi, that's hours of trying to get ahold of Gojo, because he accidentally destroys phones like they're made of soap bubbles, and it's fucking hard to figure out where he even is in the world in that moment. More likely than not, he's going to have to leave and come back tomorrow, where he has another fifteen-sixteen-seventeen hours worth of missions going on tomorrow. He already lost three hours to trying to get Megumi. With the seventeen hours worth of missions, that's twenty hours in his day gone, and he's got four hours to what--sleep? He hasn't even finished his commute yet, let alone getting food, showering, getting Tsumiki in order--

The Zenin giving him Megumi when he asks means he needs to get Megumi home. He needs to make sure there's groceries in the house. He needs to make sure that Megumi has his toothbrush and doesn't need any bandaids and drank enough water recently. Just chatting about Megumi's day with him represents resources--time, energy, mental space--that Nanami's on extremely short supply of.

Gojo, meanwhile, doesn't get seventeen hours worth of missions--he gets thirty hours worth of missions to cram into a twenty-four hour day. He's gojo satoru. he'll figure it out. And he gets that workload every single day in his week. There's a lot of curses, and only one him. They're desperate. There's a huge influx of curses, and a personnel crises, and if the ends don't meet then people die. He's the only special grade that even does missions anymore. People needs him to make it work, and he doesn't really need sleep anyway. He can handle the load, because he's gojo fucking satoru and can do what no one else can.

Getting the phone call that the Zenin refused to return Megumi again means he has to travel back from wherever the hell he is in the world, go to the Zenin compound, knock on the door, tell them to give him back his fucking kid, only for them to immediately return him with minimal grumbling when they were telling Nanami three hours ago that he'd need a tank and an army to so much get them to open the door. He's got a million and one things to do, and he knows that if he makes the trip all the way back to get Megumi, all he's going to be doing is walking him from the Zenin compound to the car. It takes the wind out of his sails. It feels like task that anyone could do even if they'll only technically cooperate for him, so it has this manufactured sense of being a waste of time.

It frayed their already thin nerves even farther, because Gojo started feeling like he has to do everything and Nanami felt frustrated with himself and Gojo because it's impossible when he does it but the Zenin comply as soon as Gojo flies back from the other side of the goddamn world just to do a custody pick up. And then all the other little things that are falling apart--like the fact that they need to get groceries, the fact that neither Megumi nor Tsumiki have done their homework for Monday and also they're out of toothpaste--build into a huge, exhausting burden when they'd normally be nonissues.

If Megumi's with the Zenin, he's in a secure location where they know he has food. They know that there's adults there making sure he's eating, sleeping, isn't running into traffic, etc. Fuck, the issue is that they're too attentive to him--they want to keep him and take care of him for even longer.

And Megumi doesn't seem to mind. He stopped asking them to pick him up on time weeks ago.

The Teen Parenting Trio were out of their minds with exhaustion, felt like everything was falling apart, and the fact that the Zenin kept violating the custody agreement just... almost seemed to solve more problems than it caused. If they fought it, it would mean endless hours of more work for them, when they were already too busy to even get proper sleep. If they just let them get in a few more days, then they knew Megumi was getting three square meals and had adult supervision. It means they don't have to pick up groceries, because they have enough for one kid but not too. It's less toothpaste they have to buy and less meals they have to prepare, and they were just so goddamn tired that they couldn't do that stuff to begin with.

The Zenin would sometimes get more than a weekend because they would bend over backwards to make the Teen Parenting Trio too overwhelmed to force them to give Megumi back after a weekend. On the weekends where they were set to get Megumi, they would just take all or most of their clan off the roster entirely and push their workload onto gojo and, to a much lesser extent, nanami. They would arrange circumstances to make them frustrated with each other and at each other's throats instead of showing a united front. They were a lot of very experienced, very manipulative adults putting 100% of their effort towards breaking a group of grieving teenagers, and they succeeded in a lot of ways.

Megumi just started shutting down after he didn't get help when he first asked, so the teen parenting trio didn't realize how bad it was for him there, but the visits that went long were always the worst for him. A part of him would always worry that they were never coming back. The Zenin would always tell him that they hadn't come because they didn't care about him or didn't want him because he had misbehaved, so he'd constantly feel like he was on the verge of losing tsumiki and being trapped there forever.

Megumi never, ever has admitted it to anyone, but he still has nightmares about being trapped in the Zenin compound without a way out, even with all the years buffering them. He doesn't want to tell Gojo or his sister. He hates that he's fifteen and still having nightmares of them. He always told himself that Gojo had kept his word and that there was nothing the Zenin could do to get past Gojo, so there was nothing they could do to force him back there.

This last week felt a lot like being trapped in one of those nightmares.

When Megumi was a kid, there were a few very rare times that Gojo let Zenin have him more than once a month. Which, again--in hindsight, he can't believe he ever did that. He hates himself for it sometimes. In the moment, though, it made sense. They'd always give him back to Nanami without a fight if Gojo caved and let them have him twice a month instead of once. It was less of a headache to give them a couple extra days in the month than fight them for a week about returning him on time. There were a few anniversaries and events that were important to the clan that they kicked up a huge fuss about getting Megumi for as well, and this was nominally supposed to improve clan relations. Fuck it, letting them have Megumi for the anniversary of whatever was the sort of compromise Yaga said they were supposed to be making.

For the most part, it was one weekend a month. That was the original agreement. that was what it was always supposed to be. But there were a few months that it was two or three times a month. There were a few times it was for a week instead of a weekend. And the Zenin were constantly fighting for more time.

I never set in stone a definitive amount of time that the arrangement went on. In my mind, it went on for around a year and a half before the Zenin overstepped and they had to go no contact, but I'm not married to it. It's nebulous.

#sea glass gardens #the zenin really really just hit megumi with all of his vulnerabilities at once #they really did hurt him in a way that is hard for him to verbalize #megumi spent his childhood stuck on that compound trying to run down the clock until gojo would come get him and terrified that he #wouldn't come or that megumi wouldn't make it that long #now he's fifteen and he feels like he's six again and he knows that he cannot run down this clock #gojo isn't going to get him in time. he is not going to make it.#he was so scared of dying in that fucking compound as a kid and he thought that it was finally happening #really the only thing that could hurt him worse than what the zenin have already done was to find out that they “love” him #he just could not take that right now #he feels like the monsters under his bed just crawled out and dug their teeth into him and the only consolation is that that's what monster #do. you don't expect more from them. at least it's predictable.#if you tell them that the zenin did it because they loved him all along it would just break him. they are the worst thing that ever happene #to him. they have hurt him more profoundly than anyone else alive. and they cannot goddamn tell him they did it out of love.

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