Work Text:
“Dazai,” Atsushi asks one day, “how did you come to be here? At the Agency, I mean. How’d you join?”
Everything in the office slows down at the question. It doesn’t stop - no one wants to be that obvious - but it’s clear everyone is listening in.
Dazai merely blinks at Atsushi from where he’s currently lazing at his desk. “Two years ago,” he answers, cheerful and nonchalant. “Took the entrance exam and everything!”
Usually, this would be enough to sate Atsushi - an answer that doesn’t really answer anything. But not this time. “No, I mean,” Atsushi presses with uncharacteristic determination to get a straight answer. “Why? How did you get around to… well, leaving your... former occupation-” for the most part, so far everyone had been carefully ignoring Dazai’s mafia past, so Atsushi pushing this question was unexpected- “and joining the Agency?”
Dazai stills. He eyes the weretiger, and the others, cautiously, as if weighing his options. When his eyes meet Ranpo’s, the other gives him a thumb’s up, and so he sighs. “Okay, then,” he heaves a dramatic sigh and then his voice goes high and sing-song, “I guess it’s story time, everyone~! Gather ‘round, nosy children!” he mocks.
Kunikida makes an irritated huff at the biting comment, but otherwise, most of the Agency do, in fact, gather around Dazai like nosy children. The only exceptions are Ranpo, who stays seated in his chair, and Yosano, who’s leaning against Ranpo’s desk.
“Alright,” Dazai claps his hands together with a smack and a wavering smirk. “Story time! Where should I start?”
Usually Dazai’s mask is perfect, but it’s cracking, and he’s seeping out, and it’s very visible.
“Maybe… how you joined the mafia in the first place?” Naomi eagerly suggests, looking immensely curious at this peek into their most mysterious member’s history.
Dazai laughs. “That’s… a bit too far back,” he says. “How about… when Mori became boss,” he decides. They nod, and Naomi pouts, and none of them say a thing. The bandaged man looks into the distance for a moment, seeming lost in memories.
Still, they are silent and patient, even as Atsushi wrings his hands together and Kyouka stops him to clutch one of his with hers tightly.
“I was there, you know,” he remarks all the sudden.
When he doesn’t continue, Kenji prompts, “Where?”
Dazai’s eyes darken, and redden. “When Mori killed the old boss.”
Yosano sucks in a breath, and Kunikida lets one out. Kyouka asks, “So he did kill him?”
“Yes,” Dazai says, “he did. It’s not really a secret, in the mafia. Bit of an open secret, I guess, everyone knows but no one really talks about it.” He shrugs, shoulders tense. “It’s just that way.”
Atsushi gulps. “Yeah…”
After another moment of silence, Kunikida interjects with a question, “Why were you there?”
Dazai waves a hand. “Mori was looking after me, and he needed, wanted, a witness, I suppose.” He doesn’t go into more detail.
Kyouka grips Atsushi’s hand tighter - so tight he actually winces. “Dazai.”
“Yes, Kyouka?”
“What was it like for you?” she questions.
“What do you mean?” he plays off with a guileless smile.
“In the mafia,” she clarifies bluntly. “What was it like for you in the mafia?”
Dazai stares at her. He licks his lips, and considers his words. He meets Ranpo’s green gaze for a second, before tearing his own gaze away. “Not… as terrible as you are all probably imagining it was. It wasn’t that bad, actually.” At their encouraging nods and continued silence, he seems to gather up some of the courage to continue. “You already know, I was high up - one of the executives. I actually became one pretty much immediately, since Mori was the boss and my… caretaker.” There’s doubt in the credibility of that last word, and it doesn’t sit right with the Agency, but they let it slide in favour of hearing more. Yosano winces. “My partner was Chuuya, Nakahara Chuuya.”
Kenji’s eyes brighten. “He’s the one who could walk on the ceiling without his hat falling off!”
Dazai actually snorts out a startled laugh at that, a miracle given how tense and uncomfortable he clearly is. “Yeah, that’s him. Hat rack,” he insults. “A stupid chibi, too.”
“Why were you partnered together?” Kunikida asks. “If that’s not too much,” he quickly adds as Dazai’s dangerous eyes flash at him.
They soften. “No, it’s fine,” he waves a hand. “Chibi and I… I suppose we were partnered together for practicality. His ability, For the Tainted Sorrow, has another- level, to it. Only catch, though, is that while it’s immensely powerful and destructive, and extremely useful at times, it also destroys his body, and he can’t control it well. Or at all, really. Once he uses Corruption, that’s what it’s called, there are only two ways to stop him from simply annihilating everything around him, friend or foe or innocent bystander: either I use my nullification ability on him, or you wait he wears himself out and dies from the strain.”
“It would kill him?” Atsushi’s eyes are wide and horrified. “He can’t stop it himself?”
“No.”
“That’s… that’s terrible,” the weretiger says.
Dazai hums, and doesn’t refute that statement. “We were Double Black,” he says, and the younger ones make some confused noises.
Kunikida and Yosano, though - their eyes go wide at the admission. “Double Black?” Kunikida exclaims softly. “Didn’t they…”
Dazai doesn’t need to know what Kunikida was going to say to simply say, “Yes.”
Kunikida purses his lips, but doesn’t say anything more. Yosano nods, and mouths a faint, ‘Thank you for telling.’
Dazai dips his head and smiles, and when Tanizaki asks what Double Black is, he just shakes his head and tells them teasingly, “Maybe when you’re older~”
They don’t do anything but smile back at him.
“So,” Naomi coughs lightly. “And then what happened?”
“Well, me and the chibi got partnered up when we were fifteen,” Dazai continues, “and when I was eighteen, I left the mafia.”
“Why’d you leave?” Tanizaki asks, head cocked in curiosity.
“A friend of mine died, and it was Mori’s doing,” Dazai says, his voice going dull and tired. “And his last words to me went along the lines of, that since, to me, there is no difference between good and evil, right and wrong, not killing and killing…” He shakes his head to clear his wandering train of thought. “None of that matters to me, I just wanted- want,” he corrects, “to not be, well, bored, and find some purpose in this life I have been given. And so he said he wanted me to be a good man, to help save people.” His gaze strays to Atsushi, and Kyouka beside him. “He had a thing for orphans, collected them and called it a family.” He snorts, somehow both disdainful and fond and grieving all at the same time.
Atsushi perks up. “Are they- are they still around, then?”
Dazai’s gaze darkens once more. “No,” he says shortly.
The pale-haired orphan drops his head. “Oh.”
Dazai ignores it. “And so I left. Faked my death, blew up Chuuya’s car, flipped Mori off on the way, the works,” he says jokingly. “Spent two years in hiding to clear my colourful record, and then joined up here, to try and be a good man, just like Odasaku wanted.”
Ranpo suddenly asks, “Have you succeeded?”
“Not enough. I don’t know if it’ll ever be enough. I know I can never be a good man,” he holds up a hand to quell their incoming protests, “but I’ve been working on the saving people part, and I think it’s been going well.”
He gazes, once more, at Atsushi and Kyouka, a soft smile on his face.
“Do you miss anything about the mafia?” Finally, Yosano contributes a question, in the lull of quiet silence left by the last one’s answer.
He snaps his gaze to her, considering her question.
“You can be honest, Dazai,” Kunikida says gruffly, but kindly, at his hesitation. “We won’t begrudge you for missing things.”
“Then, yes,” he says, finally, at that. “I miss the stupid small slug. I miss the freedom.” At their looks, he quickly backtracks. “Not that I’m not free here, it’s just… there are some- moral constraints, obviously, that I hadn’t needed to worry about before.” He shrugs, once again awkward and tense. Then he continues, “Some more of the members, like Hirotsu, Gin… even Akutagawa, maybe. I don’t know, that relationship is complicated.” He absently waves his hand at the thought of it. “I miss drinking at the bar with Ango and Odasaku…”
“Ango? As in Sakaguchi Ango with the Special Abilities Department?” Kunikida questions.
“Yeah, that’s the one.” Dazai’s face wrinkles, and it takes a moment for most of them to realise that it’s anger showing on his face - it’s such an unfamiliar emotion to be so blatantly displayed on his face, it’s almost hard to recognize. “Traitor,” he condemns under his breath. At their looks, he just mutters, “Triple agent, spy.”
They leave it alone.
“Well,” Dazai exclaims, a beaming, fragile grin on his face, “this was a fun, sharing, bonding experience! Let’s never do it again!”
And with those words and a flutter of his long, sandy coat, he’s gone, out of the door.
“Do you think we pressed too much?” Atsushi murmurs, concerned.
Kunikida hums, his gaze lingering on the doorway Dazai had just swept his way out of. “Possibly...”
“No,” Ranpo cuts in. “He needed that. We’re not going to see him for a few days though. Maybe a week. Or even two.”
“Will he be okay?” Kyouka asks softly and a bit guiltily.
“Yes,” Ranpo confirms with a wave of his hand. “He’ll be fine.” He smirks as the Agency simultaneously let out sighs of relief. He sticks a loli in his mouth, and it begins to stain it blue. “Possibly even better than before, who knows?”
Atsushi smiles at them all, shaky but wide and happy. And then he says, purple-yellow eyes crinkling, “That’d be nice.”