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Chuuya etched another hash into the brick wall. Sixty-four sleep cycles. He couldn’t track days with no sunlight, nor were the timings of meals a reliable way to track it. Some occasions, he received food mere hours apart - others, he went without for four or five sleep cycles.
Sixty-four sleep cycles since he had last seen the sun. Since he had last stood up. Last laughed. Last spoken. Since he had last seen another person.
He was fine.
It was cold and cramped, but he had a small mattress covering a little more than half the room - if it could even be called a room. It was nothing more than a cage built with bricks instead of bars. The poor excuse for a mattress was no bigger than a pet bed. He wasn’t entirely convinced it wasn’t a pet bed. But it was better than nothing.
The water jug in the corner had been refilled while he was asleep, and as he had come to expect, a large bruise was forming on his elbow. They had taken blood again.
Whoever they were.
He didn’t remember the events leading up to his capture - he remembered being with Dazai, having a picnic under a cherry blossom tree, petals falling around them. The next, he had woken up in complete darkness, all alone.
But it was fine.
Chuuya was coping. He was keeping a relative track of time. He kept his mind active thinking of stories he could write one day. He couldn’t keep his body active, couldn’t even lie down without needing to bend his legs, but keeping his mind healthy was something.
He was sure people were searching for him, trying to track down whoever had captured him, trying to piece together where he was being held. The feeling of helplessness never went away. If he had access to his ability, he would have escaped and returned home within hours. But it was gone.
Arahabaki was still there, he could sense the god’s presence, albeit a lot fainter than it usually was. But his pull on gravity had left him.
Sixty-four sleep cycles. Any day now, someone would break in and take him home.
---
Three hundred and eighteen sleep cycles were scratched into the brick wall.
His stomach was rumbling - he had gone to sleep without a meal. But missing one wasn’t the end of the world, Chuuya assured himself. It would arrive eventually, they had to keep him fed if they still wanted his blood. One less meal wasn’t the worst it could be. Once it had been seven after he had refused to eat the rotting meat left in the metal tray.
He had learnt not to turn down food the hard way.
When he had first been held, he hadn’t trusted the measly portions of leftovers tossed into the metal tray. Not when he had discovered some portions were drugged. They always left him with bruises and light-headedness when they drugged him with sleeping medication.
Though any meal made him feel drowsy, now.
As if on cue, the tray was pushed through the gap in the bricks - never going all the way through, just enough he could reach the food. Just enough he couldn’t see light or an escape.
A singular potato stared up at Chuuya, his mouth watering. A whole potato? That was more than his last three meals combined.
‘Are you seriously getting excited over a fucking potato , darling?’ Dazai raised an eyebrow from where he was sitting in the corner, as far away from the potato as he could get - which, admittedly, wasn’t far at all.
Chuuya ignored him. He had learnt to ignore Dazai entirely since his unexpected arrival around sleep cycle two hundred.
Chuuya tore into it - it was tepid, as though it had been left on the side for an hour, and the middle was still raw, but in the dank cell, it was heavenly. Within seconds, it was gone. Chuuya drank from the water jug before shuffling back to his usual position, leaning on the opposite wall to Dazai.
‘You didn’t even leave me any - you really are cruel sometimes, Chuuya.’
He didn’t dignify him with a response, instead giving into the lull of sleep.
---
Sleep gave him no peace.
Conflicting and contradicting memories intertwined - sunsets and laughter clashed with shivers and the void.
Chuuya’s eyesight had grown used to the darkness over time, but the neverending frigid air was something he had yet to grow used to.
He awoke to a figure lurking over him, poking fun at his height. The figure promised he would never leave, he was there to help, he was there because he had promised to spend the rest of his life with Chuuya, wherever that may be.
Chuuya hadn’t hesitated when he went to embrace the figure, hadn’t stopped to consider the logic, had only seen Dazai, warmth, safety. Only to watch him fade to nothing as soon as Chuuya touched him.
Dazai wasn’t there.
No matter how much his eyes tried to tell him.
The vision they saw wasn’t him.
It never would be.
---
Chuuya sat up, panting. He ran a hand down his face - despite his shivers, he was sweating. It was just a dream.
‘It was just a dream, babe.’ Dazai’s eyes were both full of concern and empty. It’s not him.
Chuuya scratched another tally into the wall. Three hundred and nineteen.
No tray of food was waiting for him. All he could do was wait. As he had done for three hundred and nineteen sleep cycles.
Dazai’s method of getting his attention today was telling atrocious dad-jokes. Any other time, and Chuuya might have laughed at them. Now they just made him long for something he would never see again.
‘Want my coat?’
Chuuya didn’t look up.
‘You’re shivering again, Chuuya. You only have one layer on. Take it.’
He knew if he took it, Dazai and his warmth would leave. He didn’t know if that was good or bad now. But he could cope with a bit of cold - he had dealt with worse. Namely being stuck up a mountain in a snowstorm with Dazai wearing only a thin jacket, with no shelter, and no communication. Yosano had scolded them both when they finally returned, days later, but he knew behind the reprimenment was relief they had returned.
Chuuya wondered if he would receive the same welcome if he ever returned now.
Unlikely.
He doubted they were still searching at this point. Why would they? Three hundred sleeps and no sign of him? It was only natural they would give up. Move on to other cases, cases from clients, cases that could be solved. He would just turn into another mystery, another file laying in a storage closet gathering dust, another memory best forgotten, lest he continue to hurt them in his own helplessness.
The tray was pushed in, now housing a bowl of steaming broth. ‘Careful, don’t burn yourself.’ He didn’t listen to the warning. It was food and it was hot, it was the first time something had arrived steaming . The liquid scorched his insides as he drank it straight from the bowl, not pausing until he had finished it. It lacked any flavour, but the unmatched warmth more than made up for it.
His movements grew sluggish as the drugs kicked in. He frowned - they weren’t usually this quick. Dazai hummed from the corner as Chuuya laid down once more. The last meal had been drugged, too. Usually they left it a while before taking more blood from him. Usually he had longer before he was sent back to the world of dreams.
---
Chuuya could make out a tree. He couldn’t make out any details, the image blurry. The sound was muffled. He could make out two distinct voices but no exact words.
The ground wasn’t the usual green, instead a much lighter colour coated it. Snow, perhaps?
No, not snow. Some of it was pink.
He was fairly certain snow wasn’t pink.
The voices were chatting amicably, occasionally breaking off into a different sound. He couldn’t identify that one.
He wasn’t sure he would be able to recognise exact words even if he could hear them. When was the last time he had heard a real person speak? When was the last time he had spoken? Could he still speak after going so long without doing so?
Bright oranges and pinks coloured the background of the image. A sense of calm came over him. This was nice. Chuuya wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but it was nice.
---
When he awoke, the room was quiet. He felt warm. It couldn’t be from the broth still. His clothes weren’t this warm. Chuuya’s shirt had once been white. He couldn’t tell in the darkness, but he knew it was a lot closer to grey now. His trousers had holes in the knees. His feet were bare.
Or they should be.
But now something covered them.
Cautiously opening his eyes, Chuuya sat up slowly. As his eyes adjusted, he felt around, expecting to find the hard bedding. Instead, his eyes widened as his fingers fell upon something soft.
A blanket.
He had been given a fucking blanket. After five hundred days exactly. He felt Dazai’s judgemental stare as he immediately pulled it tighter around him. He should have been suspicious of it. He knew that. But being embraced by something other than darkness felt like a dream come true.
Chuuya was fine. He was convinced he would be fine.
If only he had known what was coming.
---
Meals came few and far between. When they did arrive, he was lucky to have more than a mouthful of it at best. But he made sure to scrape the tray clean of any remnants of food every time. The figure always commented on how low he had sunk, but Chuuya ignored him as usual. He wasn’t real. Never was, never would be. The pieces of food of questionable origin left on the tray? That was real. The water jug that was scarcely refilled? That was real. The blanket - the wonderful blanket - that was real.
The voice telling him how shameful he had become? That was not.
No matter how hard the voice tried to convince him otherwise.
But he was fine.
Wasn’t he?
Yes, Chuuya reminded himself. He had been through worse. He was sure he had. He couldn’t remember what had been worse, like he couldn’t remember the name of the face behind the demon eyes that watched over him. But he was--
He was Chuuya. That was his name. He thought it was, anyway.
It wasn’t as though he needed to know it - what good was a name if he had no one to recite it back to him?
---
Once upon a time, only one in every few meals was drugged. Now every bite he ate made him fall asleep within seconds. If he didn’t demolish the food before he surrendered to sleep, it would be taken away. Each bite may have been drugged, but the meals were still far apart. He had to make every piece count.
Once, he had been able to move around the tiny room. He had found that if he lay diagonally across the floor, he could just straighten his legs. Now even lifting his arm to reach for the scraps of food felt like he was carrying the weight of the world. He had given up trying to lift his head seventy sleep cycles ago. His collection of tally marks had filled one of the four small walls a while ago.
He had fit six hundred and fifty on one wall.
Chuuya wasn’t sure what he would do when he filled the other three walls up, too.
The man’s sneer burnt into him. He vaguely recalled the man once saying kind words to him. Now all he said were bitter remarks about how far he had fallen, how shameful he was, how weak he had become.
He didn’t disagree.
---
The next time he woke up, he winced, immediately closing his eyes again. Blinding white bled into his vision, a cacophony blasting through his ears. He tried to move his arms to cover them, but they were held down. Panic surged through him. There was no freezing stone beneath him, no hard bedding, no cosy blanket. Bright light and blazing sound had replaced all of that. Was this a dream? His dreams didn’t usually carry this level of clarity. But this change was impossible. Everything was gone, routine shattered, the darkness he had feared but eventually accepted now exchanged for something harsh and exposing.
A loud beeping entered his senses, followed by a melodic sound much closer to him. It resembled the sound the man had made, but that wasn’t possible. This sound was soothing, the man had only instilled fear and hatred and shame.
He felt a sudden sharpness in his arm before everything faded away.
When he came to, the bright light had been replaced with darkness once more. The loud beeping remained. The melodic sound was still there, a lot quieter than it had been before - further away, now. When Chuuya opened his eyes, he knew the scene before him was the work of the figure. He had created a new reality. It was strange, too different, everything was overwhelming, everything hurt. He didn’t know where the room he was so familiar with was. Why the man with no name had changed things. He knew it was him, it had to be. There was no other explanation for the chaos before him.
Chuuya had spent over seven hundred days ignoring the man. He could ignore whatever reality he had been engulfed in, too.