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A figure stands at the edge of a high-rise tower, body turned towards the sea on the other side of Yokohama. The red scarf he wears flaps in the wind, a telltale marker of the Port Mafia boss. Dazai Osamu, the youngest and most ruthless leader in the history of the mafia, stands on the knife-edge of the skyscraper with his face tilted towards the sky.
Below it, Oda runs.
He pushes past civilians, innocent passerby, tourists. Turns down multiple alleys like he’s memorized them, feet pounding against gravel. His phone’s nearly crushed in his hand, but he doesn’t let go of it- not once.
“Save him.” Ryuunosuke’s sister hadn’t cried, but it was close enough. “Please, save Dazai-san.”
Port Mafia headquarters stand right in front of him. His skin crawls, but he runs in. His muscles burn with exertion and fatigue, and he keeps pushing himself past the lower-level subordinates whose hands twitch towards their guns. He staggers against a wall to catch his breath; none of them shoot. They only watch as he finds the button he’s looking for, presses it, and eases into the elevator.
It’s glass, all glass on every side, and the ground rushes away from him in mere seconds as the elevator begins its ascent.
It’s the fastest way up, but not fast enough. Any moment now, Dazai could be falling.
He blinks, and he’s back in the bar- Lupin. Broken, hoarse words play in his head, like a broken record. “It was dreadful... it was really dreadful.”
God, if only he knew. If only he knew the extent of the Mafia boss’s pain, if only he hadn’t be so harsh, then maybe...
Maybe...
The last bitter smile as the man who took away Ryuunosuke’s sister left the bar, the scarf that turned to the color of blood in the light, that person saying Odasaku within minutes of meeting... these are Dazai Osamu. The man he still has time to save, or try to.
So as soon as the elevator doors open, he runs. Somehow finds the door leading to the roof though he has never been here in his life and wrenches it open. The stairway echoes with his pants and murmured prayers as he takes the stairs two, three at a time; his phone is still clutched in his hand.
Please don’t be dead, please don’t let me be too late, please let him live.
He’s reached the top. He kicks open the door, and it clangs to the side. The first time he sees is that red scarf, and without meaning to, he yells. “DAZAI!”
For one horrible moment, neither of them move. For one terrible heartbeat, Oda thinks he’s too late.
Then the Port Mafia boss turns around, and somehow manages to smile. “Odasaku,” he says, and the wind carries it over. “Have you come to see me off?”
Dazai’s too close to the ledge; everything in Oda wants to run after him and pull him back. Instead, he forces himself to walk, one excruciating step at a time, slowly, until he is directly in front of Dazai. “That’s not funny.”
”It’s not meant to be.”
Mafia boss and civilian trade stares. Oda focuses on the glint of the setting sun caught in Dazai’s eye, and wonders if there is any way to save a man that wants to die.
“You’re going to fall if you stay over here.”
”Yes, that’s the idea.”
”Can I ask you not to?”
Dazai laughs, and it’s a brittle, broken thing. “Only a few hours ago you wanted me dead. What changed?”
There’s a lot of answers Oda could give him. He could tell him about the dreams he has sometimes- the ones where they drink at that same bar with someone else, or the ones about early mornings spent smoking or chatting about the kids or angry chibis. He could tell him about the déjà vu that hits him in the middle of the day: putting too much spice into curry, the weirdest urge to eat hard tofu, the roll of bandages he puts into his pocket by habit.
He could tell him that he has no desire to see anyone die, not even him. He could tell him that an entire organization runs under his command and that the people in it need him.
(Other people need him too.)
He could pick any one of those. He doesn’t. “I want you to live.”
Dazai’s face crumples. Everything that keeps the Mafia boss standing upright seems to falter, as a breath punches its way out of the other man’s lungs and his hands press into his face. “Don’t say that to me. Not like that.”
”Dazai-”
”I fought Mimic,” Dazai’s voice grates against the silence, “and I won. I killed Mori and took his place. I made enemies out of everyone, expanded the organization, made the lives of people important to me miserable. I did it all for you, and now you want me to-”
His voice breaks, and he staggers backwards. Panic screams in Oda’s ears, fear spikes through his core, and he shoots a hand out, grabs a handful of Dazai’s shirt, and pulls him back over the edge- into his arms.
Dazai, who by all means should be fighting the grip, doesn’t, and somehow that’s worse. “... I’m so tired.” A hoarse whisper. “It’s the 276th universe... I want to stop. I want to die.”
The Mafia boss’s hands find the front of his shirt and cling on; he’s just a child, and Oda wants to tear the universe apart for putting such a heavy burden on Dazai’s shoulders. He wants to punch something. Scream.
In the end, he holds him, folds Dazai securely within his arms, and stays there. Every now and then, a shiver goes through the other man; he doesn’t let go.
By all means, he should not be touching Dazai, at all; this is the leader of the worst criminal underground organization in the country, after all, and a man who ruined the lives of so many innocent people. This is a man who has used other people as steps to his throne, building his kingdom from their failures and their successes. This is a man that many other people would have called “irredeemable.”
But the thought of calling him that hurts. Thinking about Dazai jumping from here does too. He and Dazai are not friends, but maybe in a past life they were. Maybe in a different universe, they are.
When he ran up this high rise tower to get to Dazai, saving him wasn’t even a choice.
He pulls in a breath, and then releases the other man enough to see his face. ”Come back down, Dazai. We’ll figure it out there.”
Dazai smiles- wan, but genuine. “You go first,” he says. “I’ll be right behind you.”
It’s fair; today has been a long day for the both of them. Anyone would need a moment to themselves. So Oda just nods and let his arms slip away from Dazai entirely; they feel oddly empty when he does so. He walks back to the door he ran out of, but his gaze always strays back to the Mafia boss. Every time.
And every time, Dazai looks back, smiles, and waves.
That smile stays with Oda long after he’s closed the door, long after he’s taken the elevator back down, and walked to the front of the building to wait.
Dazai doesn’t come down.
They find his body later, behind the building. The paramedics tell Oda that it was mercifully quick, that he died as soon as he touched the ground. They tell him he died with a smile on his face.
They take his body away, pick it up and roll it away in a stretcher. Ryuunosuke, his sister, and a white-haired teenager watch it roll away. A man in red hair stares in the ambulance’s direction long after it’s gone.
Oda excuses himself, walks to an alley just beside the building.
He punches the wall. And finally, he screams.