Characters involved: Lortel Kehelland and Megumi Fushiguro
Convergence Suitability:
Timeline:
From game start, Megumi and Lortel found they had very similar ideas, approaches, and priorities, which led them to start up a working relationship, swapping information and spitballing theories. They found working together came easily and went smoothly, but didn’t start to engage on a more personal level until Megumi ran across Lortel outnumbered in a fight with Hosts and intervened, saving her life.
The dream banquet continued their push into a more personal relationship. Megumi introduced Lortel to one of his dogs. Lortel asked Megumi to dance. Getting a clearer look at his less composed side (because he was awkward as hell about it), she found it rather endearing (and honestly adorable), and kissed him for the first time—just on the cheek, though.
Her disappearance from Manhattan happened here. While she was gone, Megumi learned from Noah that she’d remembered dying in her canon update, which gave him some nasty new things to worry about.
She returned during the Jaws TDM, and they easily found agreement on their idea of love being the people you choose to keep around you.
Lortel found herself underground with the new arrivals, while Megumi stayed under from the dream for some days after everyone else woke up, undergoing his canon update. Lortel’s dreams took her to his lowest moment – after he’d been metaphysically waterboarded in a lake made of blood and negative emotions in physical form. She stayed at his side, promised to wield him until he was able to wield himself again (after being possessed, he was in the mindset that he was nothing better than a tool), and they had their first real kiss.
After waking up, he came down to the tunnels after her. They reunited in the battle with the rat king, where they also had a pretty excellent d20 roll for team synergy. She continued offering him her support in the aftermath of his trauma.
At Aventurine’s party, he kissed her first, after she jokingly implied that he’d never have the guts. They continued flirting, to the point of other characters making note of it, and both admitted to having a crush on someone else playing during the game of Never Have I Ever. (Gee, whoever could they mean.)
It all came to a head when they took the census they’d been planning to try and hash out the different types of vessels, as Megumi’s father point blank asked if they were fucking. After a quick break to utterly die of embarrassment, Megumi suggested that if everyone thought they were together anyway, they could just…be together for real! To Lortel's touched and enthusiastic agreement. They’re goin’ for it.
They continued to grow closer in the following weeks! They started spending most of their nights together, as both had lingering nightmares and issues from their canon updates that were helped by each others’ presence. They went on a real date, or as much of one as can be managed in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Lortel admitted to him that she hadn’t been exclusive in any of her relationships in Manhattan, fully expecting him to reject her for it, and he firmly did not, telling her that he just wanted her to do what was best for herself.
Ye Olde Medieval TDM was another big whammy of feelings for them. They had a nice sweet moment before the games started, with flower crowns and Lortel realizing oh shit, I love him. She was ready to support him through the very complicated feelings of seeing Gojo again, after Megumi killed him while possessed. In the hide and seek game, she (seeker) tried to tell him (hider) to run and save himself before she hurt him, but he refused to leave her there. Torn between using her powers to force his hand and risking both their lives on faith, she eventually relented and let him try to save them both. This led to him physically hauling her with him and managing to find Yuji, and using their paired keys to get all three of them out, alive—repaying her faith in full. In the final test, their similar pasts overlapped, lonely childhoods and absent parents and worth found only as objects and tools all bleeding together. Though Lortel was ready to dismiss it as pointless to resist, Megumi spurred her to make a different choice with him and try to run away—together.
On returning to the waking world, the combined stress of having died several times in the dream, repeatedly hunting and trying to kill those she cares for, and finding Noah gone drove Lortel to catastrophic breakdown. Megumi moved in for the week to look after her, and they finally exchanged I love yous. Lortel even gave him a pet name (“my love”), which she hadn’t done for anybody, before!
They became intimate during the week of weird hyperattachment to one’s tethers. Once the week’s hold over their mind and natures finally broke, they managed to have an actual conversation about what intimacy would, should, could mean for them, what they wanted, and how to navigate that.
Some other notes:
First, they’ve bonded over having some very similar issues in their pasts: both came from broken homes and were sold off as children, and both have complicated relationships with their respective fathers.
Second, they've continually, mutually surprised each other with their care. During the banquet, she called him a "wonderful use of her time"—leading him to basically short circuit as he tried to process anyone, at all, valuing him for something other than his abilities or his name. He showed her over and over that he cared for her, kissing her first, asking her out, taking her on a date, all to her continual and unending surprise, as if she couldn’t believe anyone would want to spend time with her for her. In the depths of her breakdown, he showed her, without words, just how much he always thought of her, leading her to her own emotional short circuiting. Slowly but steadily, their surprise has faded into acceptance.
Third, they've rescued each other, over and over. He’s saved her life more than once, saved her from loneliness, saved her from herself. She saved him by hauling him out of the darkness at the bottom of his own soul, saved him from giving up, saved him from himself.
Megumi has always had a low sense of self worth – between his father being mostly absent in his early memories, mostly being looked after by an interchangeable lineup of Toji’s girlfriends (many of whom were not much better as parents), and then sold to his father’s family purely for his abilities as a jujutsu sorcerer, he’s quick to assume that when people show an interest in him, it’s not about him but about what he can do – the Zenin family name, the Ten Shadows technique, his connection to Gojo. While other people in Manhattan have contributed to making him feel wanted on his own merits, nobody has done so more than Lortel, who constantly assures him that he’s wanted, he’s valuable, and he’s enough, and his family and his sorcery have nothing to do with that.
Lortel has always been a child of two worlds, belonging to neither—a penniless, worthless sewer rat whose only value was her acumen and cunning, and a terrifyingly powerful business magnate with the means to manipulate the world as she saw fit. Nothing was more valuable, to her or to those who fed off her, than a single gold coin. She was a pitiful person never intended to love or be loved by anyone, a villain who would die alone. She did anything to survive—including ruin countless innocent lives just to save her own. She never believed she could have worth to anyone that wasn't transactional—never trusted anyone, ever, so as not to be disappointed when they inevitably stabbed her in the back. It wasn't until she arrived in Manhattan that she had, for the first time ever, true, real relationships. Ones founded in mutual concern, care, friendship, and ultimately, trust. While other friends showed her the way, it was Megumi who spurred her to walk the path of change. To become a better person, the person he saw in her, because she wanted to be worthy of his esteem and his faith. He offered her his trust, twice over—a thing more valuable to her than any amount of gold ever could be. And he's continued to show her, ever since, that she is loved—not for what she can provide, but simply who she is.
Abilities and Appearance Gained:
Megumi:
Megumi will get Lortel’s rainbow sheen to his hair and patches of her scale patterning. Both of them will also have the same permanent, persistent, mild echo to their voice.
Parts of Megumi’s ability have already made use of kind of a void inside the shadows – this is the space he moves through when he teleports between shadows, and the space he’s dragged enemies into to let them suffocate. The void will still functionally work the same way, but will feel less like a vacuum of darkness and more like a lake of it; while enemies aren’t being literally drowned by water when he drags them in, they’ll now feel like that’s what’s happening. Moving between shadows will also give him the sensation of moving through water, rather than empty space.
But, you know. The whole getting psychically waterboarded into a catatonic state by Sukuna is still a bit of a sore point for him, so this new dimension to his power is rather Uncomfy.
Lortel:
Lortel will get the largest of Megumi’s facial scars and the sea green of her limbs will now taper, at the very ends, into shadow. Both of them will also have the same permanent, persistent, mild echo to their voice.
The shadows aren't just an aesthetic change. Shadow will become infused into her very body—and the water which she can become. She’ll become able to manipulate herself, creating fused tendrils of shadow and water from her own body that she can wield freely. As this mastery grows, she'll be able to shift and shape herself in finer, harder, more abstract ways—like a suffocating blanket of dark mist, or a shield of shadow and water.
Unfortunately for her, this ability will be exceptionally dangerous to use—for if any of her water is siphoned away or otherwise cut off from her, she’ll suffer massive and grievous injury as a result. Every single use of these powers will constitute a risk to her life.
no subject
Convergence Suitability:
Timeline:
Some other notes:
Abilities and Appearance Gained:
Megumi:
Lortel: