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He remembers being younger.
He remembers being younger but feeling so old, the weight of the world crushing his shoulders, collarbones, breaking his back and neck and feeling himself scream without sound.
He remembers.
Dazai has always been disgustingly cruel. It's a coping mechanism, mostly, to take lives with a clever twist of his hand (always, always, always with a borrowed scalpel) or personally take over torture sessions guised as practice.
It was fun. He laughed at the tears of men who begged him to be merciful, who cried and cried and cried like abandoned children on stormy nights.
He laughed at soft-hearted women and gentlemen. Cruelty is in his blood, flows through his veins like fucking liquid gold, makes his fingers itch when they're too idle for too long.
In reality, Dazai has never understood humanity. If disemboweling lesser men and mercy-killing women is what it takes to make him feel something, then he's going to do that for as long as he's able.
He'll glady become a God if need be; he's already got the qualifications.
The ADA believe Dazai is a good man, and he wishes that one day, they'll stop investing in such lies.
Yosano has seen him gut a man from crotch to jaw in one fluid movement.
Fukuzawa has given him the command to grant scum of the earth with bloody interrogations, dressed in the white of death (in his favorite of Mori's outfits, no less) and not a single trace of light in his eyes.
Kunikida has seen him, bruised knuckles and bleeding hands and broken bones, laughing and laughing and laughing into the sky. Kunikida has seen him, bruised and with blood dripping from his mouth, smiling a smile even the Devil himself would fear.
Dazai can't (refuses to) let the kids see him on his bad days; they are too young to witness their mentor spit hatred like he was born to do it.
(He was.)
But, he digresses. Dazai has always been cruel. He wishes, one day, someone will put him out of his misery so he doesn't have to do it himself.
It's never the heroes that kill the villains, not really. Monsters kill monsters, and that is always how the world will work.
Dazai asked Mori, once, to kill him. He was beaten within an inch of his life as a lesson for daring to ask something so stupid.
Actually, now that he thinks back on it, Dazai was beaten after every failed mission and wrongly asked question and every time he spoke out of line without a valid excuse.
Fukuzawa doesn't remind him of Mori, not at all, but it is a bad day at the Agency when he comes back with a solo mission he should have finished successfully.
Dazai doesn't act differently; he's used to this. He stands at the president's desk and tells his boss what exactly went wrong, how he miscalculated, how the suspect they were after slipped between his fingers and was off before Dazai could even process what was happening.
He stands at attention despite not meaning to and lets Fukuzawa berate him, lets his boss remind him exactly what he did wrong and how he can do better next time and when he's done, Dazai tries not to remember.
(It doesn't work.)
Fukuzawa's hand only raises up to push loose hair out of his face, but Dazai flinches back so hard he loses balance and falls on his ass, arms automatically coming up to cover his face.
Oh. Oh, this is bad. He moved out of position, and this means two days in one of the empty torture chambers with some of the scum that like to make him bleed while he gets fucked. Mori will have his head for this, he thinks, resigning himself to his fate and peeking up from around his arms like a child.
He doesn't see Mori. Instead, he sees the president of the Armed Detective Agency at the other side of the room, arms behind his back and looking like he's going to be sick.
For once, Dazai is glad the door is closed shut behind them.
"Sorry, Boss," he croaks, moving from the floor slowly and standing at attention again, his head bowed just enough to show his regret for stepping out of line. "I won't fail again."
Fukuzawa makes a sound in his throat that shocks Dazai into looking up, arms still firmly behind him and waiting for a strike to come.
It never does.
"Boss?" He asks, confused. He's never seen the boss look so stricken before, not ever, but Dazai doesn't know what he did to warrant such a reaction.
He sees the president swallow, then slowly pull his hands out from behind his back and set them at his sides. Dazai watches them like a hawk; if he's going to get hit, he might as well see it coming. "At ease."
Dazai's position relaxes just enough to be noticeable, his arms now firmly at his side. He's still horribly confused, but his reaction only serves to make the president breathe deeply through his nose, as if composing himself. "I'm not going to hit you, Dazai," he says lowly, not moving to step any closer.
"Why not? I botched the mission," he frowns. The president has every reason to knock some sense into him, why isn't he doing anything? "If you're worried about lawsuits..." He tries to joke, cracking a half a smile in an attempt to keep the air in the room from swallowing him whole.
"Whoever hit you is in your past, now. We are not the Mafia," Fukuzawa stresses, shuffling forward with his arms still at his side.
Oh. Oh shit. All at once, the memories recceed and Dazai gasps in an attempt to pull in some of the air that's been sucked from his lungs, a hand coming up to keep pressure on his chest. It was something Odasaku did when Dazai was feeling particularly anxious about something; he's learned how to do it himself over the years. It won't be the same, but it helps.
But he made the President worry about him. He let his trauma get the best of him and now Fukuzawa is looking at him like he was some sort of wounded animal, like he was too fucked up to function in the work area, even when Mori hasn't touched him in years.
Dazai is beyond grateful that the President can't touch him, even if he wanted too. No Longer Human has always been his friend in this life.
"This won't happen again," he hisses through teeth clenched shut, slowly removing the hand from his chest and shoving it gracelessly into his pocket. "We will not speak of it."
For several long, heavy seconds, the air in the room is tense and horrible and Dazai just wants to leave and finish his report. He doesn't make eye contact, doesn't want to become what Mori sees in him.
"You are excused." It's all Dazai needs to scurry from the room, stopping in the hall to collect himself before returning to the office. Admittedly, it takes longer than anticipated.
By the time he steps back into the main office, he's a blank slate. He decides to adopt some of Ranpo's mannerisms after that little incident, fixing his posture mid-step and loosening his shoulders.
Sitting down in his new skin and reflecting off of Kunikida's emotions, he sits back and puts down his failures in his report; it's quick and efficient and he complains loudly when he's done to let everyone else know how bored he is.
By the end of the night, he'll drink to forget his slip up today and stumble into Kunikida's apartment for affection, reeking of hard liquor and desperation and finding comfort in the barely-there scent of cigarette smoke in Kunikida's home.
All in all, he'll never be able to truly forget the crimes committed on his body, in his soul, but he refuses to let them win. If that means he avoids Fukuzawa like the plague for two weeks and refuses eye contact for even longer, then so be it.
He'll be okay one day. Oda would be proud.