Chapter Text
She should kick her out, stomp on her face then leave her to rot in the storm. She should be doing many things that aren’t putting her hands on the other’s body so she can assess her injuries.
She shouldn’t be feeling a surge of protectiveness, since they aren’t partners under the banner of Port Mafia anymore.
She should be reporting this, even if Boss has rescinded any orders to capture the traitorous Executive. She should be hauling Dazai’s ass to the torture chambers. She should be interrogating her about her whereabouts over the past two years. She should be grilling her about the kind of means that she’s used to stay under the radar for so long.
She shouldn’t be feeling white-hot anger at the thought of someone else getting to drag Dazai close enough to the brink of death.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” Dazai tells her, lipstick smudged from the raindrops still clinging to her messy hair. “A painful death is so not in my plans, Chuuya.”
“If you can continue yapping, then you can stand on your own,” she gripes, but she’s carrying her partner in her arms anyway.
It’s only because she’s still intoxicated from the wine that she’s had earlier tonight. It’s only because she can’t pass up the chance to personally witness Dazai look so ragged, almost like a drenched rat skittering towards her. It’s only because she doesn’t want to deal with her doorstep stinking with a mackerel’s blood.
It’s only because she will forever remember this moment and lord it over the bastard.
It’s definitely not because she’s the slightest bit vindicated and satisfied when Dazai faints immediately, deeming her presence safe and trustworthy enough to be fully unconscious around.
She carefully doesn’t think about how she still has clothes in Dazai’s size in her closet, about how she has a full first-aid kit with lots of bandages, even though she’s not the type to need something like that at all.
“In the end, you always come back to me,” she says into the silence of the night and the outside rain. She doesn’t need an echoed response to know that it’s the absolute truth.
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end