Work Text:
They remind Dazai of them, in different ways. It’s both a comfort and something he wishes he could ignore sometimes.
Kenji is like all five of them at once. Well, when they weren’t being deviously mischievous, that was. But he is simpleminded, and exudes brightness and happiness, and is never not smiling, and to Dazai, that is what they represent in his mind, and what he knows they were to their father, as well: an overwhelming sunniness and picture of innocence (yes, they could scheme, but ultimately, they had been innocent), blissful naivete, and purity, and he sometimes thinks amusedly that some of them could have possibly become Kenji’s strange and surreal mix of that personality and deadliness, had they had a chance to grow up more.
The Tanizaki siblings, when they’re together, give off that same, dangerous gleam in their eyes and catlike grin, even if, granted, their antics are of a much more naughty type than those the little ones had in mind back then. But, apart (or together in a serious situation), they are ever the picture of good agents, even though Naomi is technically only a clerk and without an ability. They are smart and quick-witted, protective of everyone they know in the agency, and strong in differing ways, and for the most part, these are traits that everyone here contains, but with Junichiro in particular, the addition of his humbleness along with his kindness and fierce loyalty towards them all are what strike a chord in Dazai’s heart in particular. He is also one of the five youngest in the agency, and the whereabouts and status of his and Naomi’s family are unknown, which happens to be the case for nearly everyone, but with the kids, this fact especially resonates with him.
If there is anyone in the agency who is the most childlike, besides himself (he knows how he appears: he intends it to be that way, of course), it would ironically be one of their oldest members. Ranpo is lazy, laidback, sometimes pouty, and yet at the same time one of their most valuable assets, and although Dazai respects him just as much as everyone else does for his “ability”, and finds his juvenile moods cute sometimes (he smiles sadly, once, seeing him give puppy eyes at Fukuzawa for something, the childlike pout meeting the stoic, unmoved expression bringing memories floating back to the surface), a part of him, deep down, is unnerved, and annoyed. Pot calling the kettle black, perhaps Kunikida would say, but that’s precisely it: watching Ranpo is like looking into a mirror, and remembering the way he once acted, and still does – and how fake it all is, unlike for Ranpo. Even so, it’s bittersweet to reflect on how much more genuine his carefreeness was back then, even if only a little; Dazai is safer here, and more free to be himself, and show however he is truly feeling, he knows, subconsciously… and yet he still never has felt as safe and relaxed here as he had in that bar. …At least not yet.
A part of him envies them, envies Ranpo and Kenji and the Tanizakis’ ability to be so… free. If only his mind would let him be like that, Dazai wishes.
Yosano’s protective and caring streak is fierce and deep, just like his had once been. She is a doctor, and so she is naturally inclined to help and care for people, which Dazai will always respect, no matter how terrifying she can be sometimes. Her ability can save anyone (except himself, isn’t that ironically fitting), no matter how fatal their wounds, in the blink of an eye, and Dazai can’t help but think about this some nights, the if onlys echoing through his mind in a painful, throbbing reminder over and over again, as he selfishly wishes for things that couldn’t have been, wishes that she could have been the savior that fateful day that he had been too inadequate, too useless to be.
Kyouka is newer, and she is special, someone that Dazai cherishes close to his heart, even if he doesn’t show it that much. For so long, she was lost and afraid, wanting to be better than she had been but not knowing if she even could due to forces beyond her control, and her situation is painfully reminiscent to that of his, a struggle that Dazai hadn’t even realized he had been fighting until those last few moments before the point of no return, when he had learned, and realized, everything about why he was the way he was, even as it had been too late for him to do anything to help.
He did not make that mistake with the girl that had come from the same place he (and he) had, though. Dazai decided that, that day, when he heard her speak so bleakly, terrible, terrible flashbacks ringing through his mind, and he made sure she was saved, because he was not going to let anyone else die, not again (and not when he wasn’t the only one, this time, who cared). And now, she is yet another orphan here who is happy, and loved, and can smile and laugh and enjoy life despite how much her life prior to this showed otherwise, and when she runs, her pigtails flying behind her and her stuffed bunny in her arms, Dazai sees someone else, much smaller, in her place, and he is relieved as he feels a sting behind his eyes.
When he first joined the agency, he was innately wary of Fukuzawa. The man seemed stiff, and stoic, and difficult to want to trust, and even though he accepted Dazai without hesitation after he passed his exam, even knowing his sordid past, the reminder of cold, stabbing betrayal in a moment when it mattered the most still plagued his mind, as it still does, and Dazai was wary. He had naively, childishly, blindly believed that that man would always be on his side, as long as anything and everything Dazai did was good enough justification in his eyes. But it hadn’t been, then, as the rug was so cruelly pulled out from under him and the truth, the truth that such notions had always been lies, hit him like a ton of bricks, that day.
The fear of it happening again, if he somehow grew close enough to anyone in this strange, new environment (little did he know), was enormous.
But Fukuzawa is not like how his old boss was. No, he couldn’t be more different, and there’s some sort of irony in how the former appears closed-off and serious, and the latter appears friendly and cheerful (at least at first), but if you know who they are, you’ll take the first and refuse to touch the latter with a ten-foot pole. Dazai has only had the two of them as his bosses before, and anyone who is a better person than his former one isn’t saying much, but he knows without a doubt that his new one is the best there is. The agency president is incredibly intelligent, very strong, and forthright, but that’s not what’s the most important, which is that there is no leader who cares for and wishes to keep safe their subordinates more than Fukuzawa does, and Dazai knew that he would die for them if need be before the president himself had even told them as such (before it nearly actually happened).
Still, when he said it out loud, already believing it to be true hadn’t kept Dazai from crying to himself later once he could get alone, finally realizing completely and with such heartbreaking obviousness that this was how it was supposed to be, this was what he had needed, deserved, what they had deserved, and Dazai wished (wishes) with all of his aching, shattered heart that fate had brought his friend here, instead of there, with him (with his broken, useless, burdensome self).
Kunikida, though… Dazai can only smile when he watches him, during the times when his partner isn’t being bothered by him, for once: smile and feel his chest tighten up painfully as he is made more aware of his memories than with anyone else in the agency.
His partner is temperamental, and easy to tease, and meticulous, and strict. At the same time, he is strong, and noble, and loyal, and easily moved by others’ plights because of how caring he is, a kindness that isn’t obvious until you know him long enough (he takes after his mentor, their leader, in that regard). To Dazai, all he can see in Kunikida is both of them, and it is the most painful, terrifying, aggravating, and yet most beautiful thing at the same time. What makes it even worse/better is how much he knows his partner worries about him, with the tracker, and other, more subtle, things. He can never bring himself to stop treating him the way he does (after all, it goes with the goofy, mindless persona he has to always uphold, no matter what, his mind tells him), but a part of Dazai desperately wishes his partner could know how much he means to him, in ways that Kunikida could never possibly begin to imagine or understand, and how much the tiny, deeply-hidden, scared part of him appreciates the care he extends towards him (that they all do, really), more than he knows the other man even realizes.
The “terrifying” part of the resemblance he sees in Kunikida comes from that crisis back then, with Dostoyevsky, and Fukuzawa nearly dying, and when something happened that Dazai had been “absent” from, that he only found out about later, when Kunikida appeared in his hospital room, shaken and tearful and dare he say broken, crying muffled and fragmented phrases about a kid and right in front of me and unable to do anything to stop it (it was the same situation as with that hacker kid back then, except a hundred times worse, because while that had been hard on him, it hadn’t made him like this), which led to Dazai later catching alone that man, and beating him into such a bloody pulp no one would ever be able to tell who the corpse had once been, unable to care about acting in a way he hadn’t for years now because of the knowledge of what that monster had done, and what it had done to Kunikida, and because of the memories, making him feel sick to his stomach, and panicky, and horrified, and terrified, all of his broken-ness coming to the surface at once. He had burned all of his clothes later (he had at least had enough sense to change them entirely beforehand), sleeping for what felt like days, after he had vomited everything he had to eat before it all on the first day (Atsushi had helped him through the bout, not understanding what was wrong or what he might have done to cause it but never questioning him even so, bless the boy).
Kunikida, though, was strong enough to recover from it, eventually (at least Fukuzawa was still with them; he doesn’t even want to think about how it might have been if he wasn’t). That’s good, Dazai thought, and thinks. At least he is all right now, and at least he isn’t the only one Kunikida had to help him then, because he was, and is, never any good with comforting people (he knows that painfully well; after all, you can’t help someone else piece themselves back together if you’ve long since fallen apart yourself). …He had gotten his partner’s revenge for him, though, and revenge for Kunikida himself. That was something he could do, and had done, this time.
This time.
…Even so, it gives Dazai some amount of peace knowing he at least hadn’t failed someone again.
And Atsushi? Well…
If he is honest, Atsushi is the least like the lost friends of his past, at least on a surface level. He is skittish, and even now, insecure and sometimes unsure of himself, and the way their first meeting had gone was so strikingly different to how his previous subordinate had first approached him, wild-eyed and feral and desperately hungry for strength and attention (and Atsushi seeks the exact same thing, in a much, much milder and uncertain way, and it is because of this that Dazai pushes them together without worry, and has no more concerns about them fighting each other instead of with each other anymore). He’s also kindhearted, and loyal, and brave, though, which is how nearly everyone at the Armed Detective Agency is, and his ability is incredibly strong, too. …By all accounts, though, he’s still a fairly ordinary boy.
But he is his mentee; the orphan he rescued, after Atsushi had coincidentally rescued him. He tries so hard, and wishes to make up for his shortcomings he believes he has (that he doesn’t, but Dazai knows what it’s like to hate yourself, and feel useless, even if it does no good, so he can’t talk) so much, and although he seems so ordinary on the surface, when Dazai is in a pensive, nostalgic, and more peaceful mood, he looks at the boy and sees someone else in his place, and a part of him likes to think that maybe him finding him wasn’t just an accident; likes to try to comfort himself, just a little, by thinking that maybe it was fate, that maybe Atsushi was brought to him on purpose… by someone, if there really was a heaven up there.
Because what Dazai knows for sure, if nothing else, is that there isn’t anyone he would want more than such an ordinarily extraordinary person as his friend.
Just like Odasaku had been.