Work Text:
For the first time I see an image of my brokenness
utterly worthy of love.
Therapy, Akutagawa had come to realize, was hard. Not hard like the kind of work he was used to, not so bloody and adrenaline-fueled, nor so fast-paced; therapy didn’t mean antiseptics and bandages, but it involved mental scars and that was always more painful. He figured the whole thing would be way worse if the therapist wasn’t someone with ties to the Mafia, at least this way he didn’t have to hide the iron aftertaste on his mouth or the way he clenched his hands at his sides every time a particular detail was mentioned.
He still didn’t know what had prompted this new aspect of his life, maybe it was the fact that he had been dead and then undead and then alive, maybe Mori thought he needed to process that. As if he hadn’t been resurrecting himself since he was twelve, as if he hadn’t put his bones together again and again, with only his sister as his witness. The truth about living in the slums was that you were both doctor and mortician, you learned the trades young if you wanted to make it past 15, and Akutagawa had grown to be very good at both. He didn’t care that he had died, only that he had done so in terms he hadn’t agreed to.
At least that’s what he told himself, anyways. His therapist would argue that this wasn’t healthy but she was in good terms with a criminal organization, so really, what did she know? It was fine. He was fine. Nobody had seemed to care about his mental wellbeing when he was out there murdering people, but you die once and suddenly everyone wants to check you in the nearest mental hospital. They should've known he was used to death, he had seen it and caused it way too many times for it to be an uncomfortable topic; and no, of course his hands weren’t trembling because of that, of course he didn’t wake up in the middle of the night feeling breathless, a pressure choking his neck as if a sword had just cut through it.
The worst part of the whole ordeal was that his therapist insisted on having the stupid weretiger over sometimes, like some kind of fucked up tea party in which you discussed your traumas while trying to deal with your complicated feelings towards your enemy. Enemy? Rival. Part time companion. Forcibly assigned partner. Whatever the weretiger was to him. He didn’t seem too keen on these invitations either, Akutagawa imagined he was having a harder time assimilating what had gone down in that ship; not because the detective was stupid (that, too) but because in a way Akutagawa had died for him, and that put both of them in awkward positions.
He hated to admit it, but what the fuck was one supposed to do when the person you hated the most in this world turned out to be the person who could understand your past like no one? Their storms had been born out of the same clouds, in a way, they shared hatred and pain and scars and everything that made them different and similar. Sometimes Akutagawa would look at the weretiger and see an altered version of himself, a Ryuu from a parallel universe, like looking through a distorted mirror, but that meant nothing. He couldn’t afford himself to give any meaning to the way his shoulders relaxed slightly every time the other looked at him, because that wasn’t just a look. It was an olive branch being held in front of his hands, waiting for him to take it.
What was he supposed to do? He had been raised in anger, he did not know what to do without all that fire. What was kindness supposed to feel like? Was it kindness the day Atsushi let him lean on his shoulders? the day they sat together on a bench, wordless, letting the air clear everything between them? He did not have a name for these moments, for he had never been shown something that didn’t bite back. In a way, he was more comfortable around the weretiger when they fought, because Akutagawa knew the language of battle. He had walked on its beat for years, he knew each attack granted a response, and he knew how to reply back, but this? it felt too fragile, and he had never learned how to dull his edges.
Unconsciously, he had been writing a story for the past months, it went something like this: boy meets boy. Boy hates boy. Boy tries to kill boy. Boy is forced to work alongside boy. Boy realizes he will never be as utterly seen by someone else than he is by boy. Boy is fucked up. It’s not like they were friends, but they weren’t strangers either, they knew too much of each other’s nightmares for that.
The story also went like this: he was leaning against a wall one night, and Atsushi was there. They were talking about something work-related, some mindless case they had just gone through, it didn't’ matter. What mattered was the way Atsushi had looked at him and said “good work”. What mattered was the way he hadn’t chided Akutagawa, hadn’t berated him. He had brought this up during a session and his therapist had asked him about his insecurities, his traumas, his fears. Turns out being told your entire life you weren’t good enough left some mark on you, something that shaped your brain. Sometimes Akutagawa felt Dazai had cracked open his skull and moved parts of his brain around, so much that now he wasn’t sure he functioned properly.
In times like this he remembered something his therapist liked to say: the most awful things are quick to learn, however it takes us eternities to know beauty. He hated to admit how much he thought about that quote, how much of it was right and applied to him. Maybe in another life, the life he could see in Atsushi’s eyes, his ability to discern goodness wouldn’t have been stolen from him, but in this life he looked at the weretiger’s hand on his shoulder and wondered: why?
What in God’s name made him redeemable? What did the other man see that was so worthy of trying? Maybe he felt the same pang in his chest, like a sort of hunger for being seen. Had he been someone with imagination he would think Atsushi saw his cuts, his jagged ends, his brokenness, and decided to try despite all of them; but that was an insane hypothesis, because no one could be that blind.
The story Akutagawa had been writing also went like this: sometimes he was scared that everything he had managed to build in months would crumble in seconds. Like the sword cutting through his neck, it would also cut through his life as if it was paper, and all the things surrounding him would wither apart. He hadn’t told his therapist this, because he knew what she would say: “you are so used to misery you cannot believe goodness has found you”. Goodness had never seemed interested in accompanying him, so why would that change now?
☂
Goodness, however, was accompanying him right now, for he was once again sitting on a bench with Atsushi after a particularly extenuating mission. It seemed that these moments existed as liminal spaces in which nothing was found except them and the way they lingered around each other. Akutagawa knew these were special paragraphs in that peculiar story, lines that not even himself could deny the meaning of.
The night was warm, Summer was approaching. Some crickets had decided to join as the night’s very own orchestra, and they were singing their song in tune while both killer and detective sat trying to catch their breaths.
“Good work today, too.”
There it was again, the olive branch in front of him. Akutagawa’s hands trembled and he would have liked to blame it on exhaustion but deep down he knew it was nerves.
“Yes, good work… You, too.” Peace was made not by offering but by accepting. It had been five months since Akutagawa had died, and much like the biblical flood, his dove had also taken months to rear its head with olive.
“You know, you asked me once why I kept doing this, if I was so scared of everything, if I was so weak my knees made terrible noises because they wouldn't stop shaking.”
Akutagawa remembered that, but he hadn’t thought Atsushi would. For him it had been an offhand comment said during a tense moment in one of their first missions together, now, though, he wanted to know the answer. It terrified him in a way, how little time had passed compared to how badly he wanted to pick apart the man sitting next to him, learn everything about him. He already knew the bad, but he surprised himself by wanting to know the good as well.
Silence extended for some seconds, letting the breeze fly between them. They sat apart, as if they wanted to physically mark the invisible lines that put them in different worlds.
“I’ve been thinking about it, I mean, actively thinking about it. I guess I’ve been thinking about it ever since I joined the Agency. Why keep putting myself in danger’s way like this? Just because I have an ability? You know, at first I did it for the whole… Well, the self-worth thing, yeah. I thought maybe my existence could be redeemed and justified if I could at least put it to use…”
“You know that’s not true, weretiger.” How hypocritical of him, telling Atsushi his worth went beyond what others perceived him as, when his own worth had been in another man’s hands not so long ago.
“Yeah, I know. I know that now. I think that it doesn’t really have to matter, what my motive is. Whether it’s courage on my part, or faith in the agency and our mission, I think all that matters is… To show up, every day. To at least try. Like, like the thing you do at therapy. I think there’s already a lot in the attempt of things.”
“What’s the point if you don’t succeed?”
Because it had always been about that. Success read as survival, success read as approval. Akutagawa hadn’t known a life in which failure was something he could afford, so really, what was the point? He was facing forward into the night, but he could still see Atsushi turning his head to look at him. He guessed there would be something stupid in his eyes, like fondness. He tried to bury down the hope in his throat.
“The point is that things will get shitty, and bad things will happen, and nothing will ever be easy., but you still try because there are people worth doing it for.”
He could die on that bench, he would die on that bench because there was so much hope on his lungs it was drowning him. For the first time in years he felt not the grim tar of the slums but the breeze of something better, something that could potentially be good. The problem was, he was such a stranger to it that it was choking him. Here he was, sitting next to a man that he had sworn to kill, someone who he knew to the point of remembering the sounds his bones made when broken. He forced himself to swallow, forced himself to calm his hands.
“Like who?” And what a stupid question that was, filled to the brim with expectations and wishes.
“Like, the detectives at the Agency, the interns too, Kyouka-chan… You too, lately.”
“Me?” He managed to choke out. He had been so startled that he was now facing the weretiger., which was a mistake, because he couldn’t look at his eyes without feeling nauseous, drowning in colors and the sheer emotions he showed. So easy, so plainly in the open.
“Well, what can I say, you go to a couple therapy sessions with a guy you hate and suddenly things start making sense! No, that’s not true, I didn’t hate you before the sessions, I haven’t hated you for a while, I guess. I mean you’re stubborn as all hell and you refuse to listen to anything I say which is really bothersome especially when I got a better plan than yours, but... It's hard to hate someone when you understand what they’ve gone through. Besides, you’re not so bad now that you don’t mindlessly kill people. Which sounds awful but it is an improvement. Oh wow I am rambling, I’m sorry, this is all too much, maybe? I just mean, I just wanted to say that, like-”
“Weretiger.”
“Yeah?"
“I don’t hate you, either.”
This was the truth he could offer for now, Atsushi had dangled an olive branch in front of him months ago and now here he was, responding with a key. He hoped (when had hope become such a recurring word in his dictionnaire?) the door it opened didn’t lead to more tragedy.
“Oh, right. Yeah, that's good. Right.”
For some reason, they couldn’t hold their stares for much longer after that. They basked in the awkwardness of the moment, Akutagawa thinking that he had been wrong in calling this a door: this was a dam breaking in half and he had to be careful else he became a flood. He had thought about this, he had judged himself for imagining this could even be a possibility. To be seen, to be utterly seen in your entirety, and to not be dismissed after it; to be seen as someone worthy trying for. His therapist would call this progress, but he didn’t care for a name, only that it was real.
The crickets called each other back around them, singing songs of community, their voices an echo in the night. After some time went around, they decided they had rested enough to go home for the night, whatever home was for each of them.
They walked together, leaving the bench behind, the crickets singing goodbyes. Maybe this was kindness, the way Atsushi had talked to him that night, maybe it was kindness the way he had said “you too”, as if it was a truth, undeniable and incorruptible.
The story Akutagawa had been writing went like this: therapy was hard, but maybe the point was to show up every day.