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The partners ran, in perfect lockstep, jumping over obstacles as they chased the shadowy figure down Yokohama's twisting back alleyways. Kunikida quickly outpaced Dazai, his longer limbs giving him an advantage that was only compounded by the fact that the shorter man was still recovering from the sniper's bullet which had knocked him out of commission for weeks on end.
They'd been on a seemingly normal patrol of the downtown area when another gunman had taken aim at Dazai - but missed, this time, fortunately, then immediately turned and ran. He had a significant lead of at least a full block on the pair from the Armed Detective Agency, but neither man was willing to give up on the chase. It was a shared, unspoken thought between them that this slightly less accurate gunman was the best lead they had had so far regarding whatever Fyodor was currently up to. If they were lucky, the man could even lead them right to where the ever-sneaky Rat was hiding.
So they ran, Kunikida and Dazai, the agency's best-matched team, united in one purpose: to catch the man who had tried to shoot at them.
And they rounded a corner, coming face to face with a blind alleyway, and the thought of imminent triumph lent speed to both sets of legs.
And they saw the man standing, hands on his knees, at the end of the alleyway, panting and exhausted and having seemingly given up entirely.
And, as they ran forward, Kunikida once again pulled ahead of Dazai, notebook ready in one hand and pencil in the other, halfway through writing a word which might have been "Rope" or "Handcuffs" but, in Kunikida's adrenaline-shaky handwriting, looked a little bit like Triumph....
...and Dazai, being slightly behind the other man, saw what was happening a second too late, too late to cry out to his partner (friend? more?) that shit, shit, shit, it's a trap.
The man with the gun faded away into the mist, as though he had never been there in the first place (and, perhaps, he hadn't).
Instead, they came from every side, from between walls and behind trash cans and from the mouth of the alleyway, blocking the pair in:
Children.
Children with staring eyes and gaping mouths and tears glittering on their cheeks. Children in ragged clothing that does nothing to hide how long it's been since any of them have had a proper meal. (The images come to Dazai's mind unbidden: Atsushi gulping down bowl after bowl of tea-and-rice like a starved wildcat, Kyoka's eyes widening with pure joy when she realized that she could have a second helping of tofu).
Children holding guns in their shaking hands, with grenades strapped to their chests, with half-zipped backpacks filled with ticking dynamite.
There's no escape. Kunikida knows it. Dazai knows it too. Fyodor had tried this trick once before, and Kunikida's survival then had been so much a pure miracle that it might as well have been written in the Book itself.
But that had been one child, and this was....
No way out no way out no way out.
Dazai's brain was screaming the words at him. But somehow, somehow, Kunikida wasn't panicking. Instead, he puts shaking pencil to trembling paper and writes. Three pages, three flashes of smoke, one after the other:
Bolt cutters.
Wire cutters.
Scissors.
The poet kneels. "Come here," he says to the nearest child, a girl with a bandolier of grenades encircling her from shoulder to waist, like some fucked-up parody of a heroic soldier fighting for hearth and home. Kindly, slowly, with gentle movements so as not to scare the child, he begins to cut away the deadly apparatus strapped to her body.
His partner's eyes glitter with unshed tears behind his glasses, but the gaze he gives the other Detective Agency member is steady and sure. "Run, Dazai," he says, wording it as a command rather than a request. "Give the President a full report on the situation."
A primal bolt of fear shoots through Dazai. There's a part of him that wants to run, to get away from this horrible gruesome scene, just one of the many dark and terrible things he's seen in his already dark and terrible life.
Another part that wants to accept this, go up in a blaze of glory, the sort of heroic suicide he had always insisted waited for him at the end of things. A beautiful death, and one he wouldn't even have to put any effort into.
But, for once in Dazai's life, neither of these parts is the largest or the loudest.
Save Kunikida. Save him. Save my partner. Save my friend. Save my-
"Go. Get out of here." One child runs past Dazai, then another. But it's not enough. It's not enough. He can hear the ticking, louder and louder. There are still eight children, then seven.
"Yes," Dazai says, trying desperately to keep his voice level. "Let's get out of here, Kunikida. Let's get back to the Agency and...." He doesn't finish the sentence. He knows it's hopeless. Knows that Kunikida will never, ever compromise on his ideals.
The taller man looks up at Dazai. He doesn't look afraid, or sad. He looks angry.
"What's the point, Dazai?" His hands move steadily as he talks, snipping wires, sawing through ropes, ripping apart padlocks and combination locks and puzzle-locks they could never hope to undo if they had all the time in the world.
"What do you mean? Kunikida, you aren't.... you can't be..." Giving up, Dazai thinks but doesn't say.
Because giving up has always been Dazai's area of expertise. He's scarred wrists and plots he never quite trusts anyone enough to share, while Kunikida is carefully written schedules and dependable wake-up calls and the smell of the exact same coffee order five mornings a week.
"Fyodor knows me, Dazai. Knows me inside and out, understands my weaknesses, what makes me fucking tick." He grits his teeth, spitting out the words as he works. Thank you,mister, a child whispers, their words hanging in the air for a moment before fading in the stifling Yokohama air. "He tortured it out of Katsura and I proved it true with that girl, back when we were going after Pushkin. I'll never compromise my ideals, I won't, I can't. He knows how to get me, and so he's not going to stop. They're just going to keep coming and coming and fucking coming, and I won't be able to save them all, but it's not just that, I'll be holding you all back, you and the President and....and everybody. Fyodor knows me too well, and I'm nothing but a liability to the Agency because of it."
"You're not..." Dazai tries to say. The words stick in his throat: Not a liability. Never to me.
Damn you, Kunikida, you could never be a liability to me if you tried.
"This is what I can do for y....for the Agency. Take away a weakness, a power that Fyodor holds over us. I know you understand, Dazai. You're infuriating, practically the bane of my existence some days if we're being honest, but you're smart. You understand. So go. Run."
Dazai nods. He closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Swallows. He'll never forgive himself, but it's what Kunikida wants. He has to honor....
He opens his eyes.
Five children stand together in a cluster, holding hands like it will somehow protect them from the instruments of death strapped to their backs and looped around their necks.
Suddenly, they're not grimy, tear-streaked, explosive-chained weapons, pawns in Fyodor's twisted chess game that he plays against the entire world. Through the fog of his own tears, he sees their faces shimmer and change, into smiles and wide eyes he knows oh, so very well.
Suddenly, they're Oda's children.
And Dazai realizes that there's another promise he has to honor, one far older and deeper than Kunikida's dogged determination to die a martyr's death.
"I'm picking the right side this time, Odasaku," Dazai says under his breath. "I'm on the side that saves people."
He has only one chance to act. He can see numbers glistening in the panels of jury-rigged bombs, ticking endlessly downwards, minutes turning to seconds. If his hunch isn't right, he will...Kunikida will...
Dazai doesn't think.
"I'm on the side that saves people, Odasaku!"
He jumps.
He flings his entire frame forward, arms outstretched in a move that he must have subconsciously picked up from watching Atsushi fight. Kunikida is taller and broader than him, but Dazai's bony knees collide with the breadth of Kunikida's chest, and the larger man goes down. He coughs, the wind knocked out of him, as he falls to the garbage-strewn alley, Dazai on top of him, shielding him with his own body, as the ticks turn into....
With a sound that's something like "boom" and something like "no" and something like that last, sad smile that Oda had given Dazai on that long-ago day, the bombs go off, the guns retort sharply, and....
Nothing.
Bullets fizzle away into nothing. Dynamite sticks flicker away like so many blown-out birthday candles. Grenades crumble to dust as suddenly nonexistent pistols slip from the nerveless fingers of the children. The weapons and explosives, which had been created using some unknown Ability, disappeared as they came into contact with the power of No Longer Human.
For a moment, silence.
The children - real, not Ability-created, begin to weep openly as they realize they are not about to die. Dazai clutches tighter to Kunikida's vest and tie, holding on to his partner like a lifeline. And Kunikida - stoic, brave, Kunikida, a moment ago so resolutely ready to face his own death -
Kunikida laughs.
It's not sarcastic. He's not making fun of Dazai. It's an open laugh, genuine, honest and free. It makes the other man feel like he is flying, even though both Ability users are pinned to the ground, struck by the weight of both each other's bodies and the situation they had just somehow, miraculously, avoided.
Finally, Kunikida asks: "How did you know?"
And Dazai, confident, cocky Dazai, Dazai who always has a plan, always thinks at least three steps ahead, quietly admits: "I didn't. I guessed. I thought there was a chance, maybe, because of the gunman disappearing, and there just being so many of them, but...." The admission sticks in his throat, but he forces it forward, into the too-warm air. "I didn't think. I couldn't let you die, and my body just....moved."
Kunikida's hands tighten where they have gripped Dazai's shoulders. "But...."
The teasing prankster, now serious as though he had somehow switched personalities with Fukuzawa, shakes his head. "You're wrong, Kunikida. You're not a risk, not a liability. You're the best damn asset that the Agency's got." He tries to laugh, but it comes out weak, brittle, broken. "Doesn't the president always say that you're the only one who can keep a wild card like me in line?"
"But Fyodor...."
"Fuck Fyodor," says Dazai, with uncommon vitriol. "He'll send kids at us again and again, because he's a sneaky little rat bastard who doesn't give half a fuck for anyone's life but his own, and we'll keep saving them. Each and every one. And coming out of it alive too, just to spite the bastard." Now Dazai smiles, and it's trembling and glittering with tears, but it comes from the very depths of his heart, from everything he feels but has never quite been able to say about Doppo Kunikida.
"Where did this come from?" asks the poet beneath him, his chest heaving as he struggles to return his breathing to normal. One hand has moved to grasp the spine of his notebook where it lies beside him, as though to reassure the Ability user that his most beloved possession had not been destroyed in the explosion-that-wasn't - but the other hand is rubbing lightly up and down Dazai's back, as though...as though....
As though Dazai, like the notebook, is a precious thing to Kunikida.
"Where did what come from?" Dazai knows exactly what Kunikida is going to ask, but he pretends he doesn't regardless. Even a serious situation like this one has room for some of the pair's trademark lighthearted teasing, right?
Kunikida smiles, directed fully at Dazai, softly, impossibly fond. "This sudden determination to save m....people," he corrects himself at the last moment.
Dazai doesn't feel himself consciously making the decision, and yet, the words are out of his mouth before he has really considered them: "There's something I need to tell you. Someone I need to tell you about. I should have done this a long time ago, Kunikida, I....I just..." The story has felt too raw and ragged within him, scraping against his insides. LIke it would tear up the inside of his mouth if he tried to talk about it. But now, maybe, just maybe, he thinks that the soft things he feels about Kunikida might counteract the painful feeling of talking about Odasaku.
He makes a decision.
"Let's get these kids back to the Agency. Have Dr. Yosano take a look at them. And then - could I buy you a drink?"
Kunikida's smile widens. He presses his forehead lightly against Dazai's. "You may."
XXX
Once the children are settled (Kenji, Atsushi and Kyouka keeping them occupied with games and sweets pilfered from Ranpo's stash as Yosano gives them each a check-up) Dazai takes Kunikida to a bar he has not been in a very long time. When Kunikida admits himself rather unfamiliar with the wide array of available liquor options, Dazai buys them both glasses of deep amber whiskey, the finest available.
For several minutes, they sit at the bar in silence. To Dazai, it seems as though nothing has changed. The bar is still dimly lit. The single cubes of ice in each of their glasses are still smoothly, perfectly round. Even the wise-looking cat he had taken to calling "Sensei" perches in his accustomed place, although he slinks closer as soon as the two men sit down, demanding pets which both Dazai and Kunikida happily provide.
"His name was Oda, but I called him Odasaku. At first to annoy him, and then because he liked it," Dazai begins without being prompted. "We....we worked together. Back in the Port Mafia. He was - was kind of like my first partner." And my friend.
Dazai isn't surprised when Kunikida doesn't react with any particular extreme emotion to the knowledge that Dazai had once belonged to the Port Mafia. He doesn't share it around, but Akutagawa and Chuuya and even Mori are constantly bringing it up. Even if they weren't, Kunikida is clever, bright, observant. He'd surely figured it out soon after Dazai first joined the Agency.
"He loved alcohol and ate more curry than was probably healthy for him. He had these orphans. Adopted them. Called them his kids. Was gonna raise them, to be good people. He...he was the one who told me to..." Finally, as he recalls Oda's words, his voice breaks ever so slightly. "To be on the side that saves people." People I care about. People like you.
Somehow, without even knowing the full story, Kunikida's eyes penetrate somewhere deep into Dazai's soul, wresting the truth of the matter out and bringing it to light. "He'd be proud of you," he says.
Then a pause. Each man drinks, Dazai gulping and Kunikida taking small, measured sips. Then an offer, nearly offhand, but filled with meaning:
"I can come with you. The next time you...." Kunikida doesn't finish the sentence. He doesn't need to.
Dazai nods. For the first time since they'd arrived at the bar, his usual wide smile seems to sit properly on his face. "Odasaku would like that. I'd like that too."
Kunikida stares into his glass, watching the perfectly round ice cube slowly swirl around in equally perfect circles. "I'd like to tell him thank you," says the poet with some difficulty, clearly not quite accustomed to showing so much open emotion all at once.
"For what?" Dazai raises his eyebrows. He doesn't understand.
The blonde shrugs. "Just figure if he'd never set you on that path, you'd never have wound up....here. At the Agency. As my partner." He pauses. "And then I'd be stuck working with, I dunno, Ranpo or Kenji or something.
Suddenly, the poet feels spindly, bandaged arms wrapped around his shoulders. "Kunikida, Kunikida, did you just make a joke? Did you? I think you diiiid!"
"Yes, and if you ever tell anyone that I did, I will get the President to fire you immediately."
"And another one! You just made another one! Two in a row! See, Kunikida, this is why I'm the best partner for you! I'm a good influence! See? See?"
A smile. "Yes, Dazai, yes you are."
Dazai makes one final decision. He holds up his cell phone, squeezing into the space next to his partner, pushing until he takes up nearly half of the barstool on his own. "Take a picture with me, Kunikida? Please please please?"
The poet rolls his eyes. "Alright, fine. If only because you bought the drinks."
And if the lighting is too dim, and the glare off of Kunikida's glasses is too bright, and Sensei keeps trying to get his nose in between them each time Dazai clicks the "Take Photo" button?
And if the look Kunikida gives Dazai still has exasperation and irritation tinging its edges, even though it's mostly fond?
And if it takes Dazai no fewer than four tries to properly capture himself pressing a gentle kiss to Kunikida's red-flushed cheek at exactly the moment the flash goes off?
It doesn't matter.
The picture's still perfect.
(Dazai makes it his phone background and his laptop background and, when Kunikida isn't looking, his partner's laptop background as well. He also has a copy printed out and leaves it at Odasaku's grave during his next visit, where Kunikida, as promised, does indeed accompany him.
He gets the feeling that Odasaku likes that quite a lot.)