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Chuuya only slips up two weeks after Dazai leaves.
“Oi, Dazai," he says, without thinking, "What's the plan?”
There's a terrible silence behind him.
Chuuya realizes his mistake the moment the words leave his lips.
When he turns to look where his mind had conjured Dazai to be, there's solid empty space. It throws him for a moment, because it still isn't something that Chuuya is used to seeing. It's been far too long since he's had to look over his shoulder and not see his partner there, and for a second the gaping hole he's left behind looks like Chuuya's eyes are playing tricks on him.
But it's the truth.
Dazai left, and this is all that he's left behind –
Nothing.
It's his second mission without his partner, and Chuuya is lost.
Akutagawa is standing on his other side, stricken and unbalanced, because it's been two weeks and he still can't deal with anyone saying Dazai's name.
Chuuya shakes the thoughts out of his head.
“Snap out of it,” he snarls, more to himself than to Akutagawa. He inhales sharply, calming his nerves. It's okay, he has a plan. He doesn't need Dazai for it. It isn't like Chuuya has never had solo missions before.
He turns to face Akutagawa, feeling awkward and out of his depth. “Just do what I say, okay?"
Akutagawa nods.
Chuuya knows already that this isn't going to work out.
But he explains his plan to the younger boy, and Akutagawa listens carefully. He nods in all the right places, even if he's been even more of a mess than usual and Chuuya can't even trust him to watch his back right now.
He listens, and nods, and then when the time comes for action – he messes up anyway.
The mission is a disaster. The building burns down, evidence lost, and the two of them barely get out unscathed. It's Chuuya's second mess in as many weeks and Mori is going to have his head. Chuuya's been in a bit of murky water to begin with, with his partner turning traitor – everyone is a little cautious around him. If Dazai – coldblooded, born to be a mafioso, probably Mori's future heir as well – if Dazai could stab them all in the backs, then assuming that Chuuya might follow him is not that farfetched.
Except it is, because Chuuya hates him.
He wouldn't follow him if his life depended on it, and especially not now.
But that's not so easy to explain to anyone.
And now the mission is a disaster, Mori is going to want to know why, and Chuuya is going to have to tell him that he can't deal with Akutagawa the way that Dazai did.
He doesn't know how.
Dazai had tried hard with the kid. Dazai, who knew nothing about training a subordinate besides blood and threat and torture – Mori hadn't set the greatest of examples. But Dazai held on to his methods and followed in his footsteps, making Akutagawa's training as brutal and insane as his own had been – as traumatizing, even, but it didn't work for Akutagawa.
It only made him this angry, desperate mess, that only Dazai could control. Could hold back. And sometimes, Chuuya is afraid that that's how he meant for it to be.
It's not Chuuya that anyone should be worried about, after Dazai left. It's Akutagawa.
/
He sends Akutagawa back to the base first.
He's in no rush to return himself, not at all eager to have to see Mori's face, so Chuuya stumbles far enough from the scene of the disaster and slumps down on the nearest bench he can find. It's terribly late, and the sun might even rise soon – his internal clock is a bit messed up right now and he can't tell for sure.
He sits on the bench, setting his hat to the side, and stares at the empty street. The place is dead silent, with only the lost ones still awake. He wonders where Dazai is now. If he's even alive. There's a handsome sum on his head for anyone who can bring him back alive, not necessarily unharmed, but Dazai is the master of disappearing. If he doesn't want to be found, he probably isn't going to be found.
He burnt Chuuya's car down before he left.
That's how he knows he doesn't intend to come back. And that's how he knows he doesn't intend to die.
It was one last challenge, one last fuck you thrown into the wind, so that Chuuya would be seething the next time they met. It's almost funny, because right now, Chuuya isn't angry. He's just – lost.
A little hurt.
Okay, maybe a little angry.
The place is cold, and dead silent, and while he usually likes the silence, now it just makes everything more unsettling. It makes Dazai's absence that much more obvious. Dazai talked when he was nervous, he talked when he was upset, he talked when they had failed – the worse a mission ended up being, the more he'd try to fill the silences with his own personal brand of stupidity.
Sometimes Chuuya wanted to smash his face against the concrete and scream at him that his constant chatter wasn't fooling anyone and was only pissing Chuuya off. His stupid attempts at hiding his feelings were all just stupid and Chuuya could see right through them.
He often did smash his face into the concrete, but he never did get around to the second part.
The silence is starting to drive him crazy.
Maybe he'll go drink it away.
He pushes himself off the bench, sets his hat back on his head, and wanders away in search of a bar.
The first one he finds looks shady as heck, which makes it the safest place for him to go to. The place looks run down, and there's no shop name on the door. One of the windows is cracked, like someone had tried to punch it but ended up more hurt than the door. It looks like the sort of place Chuuya could call home, so he pushes the door open and steps right in.
The bartender is a youngish sort of man, who greets Chuuya with a quiet smile. Chuuya takes a seat on a stool, ordering in a tired voice.
There are a couple of other people in the bar as well. The blonde guy next to Chuuya is drunk out of his mind, and he's whining about his disastrous love affair to an absent audience. The guy next to him is slumped against the counter, presumably asleep, and Chuuya has to tilt over to get a better look at him.
And then his stomach falls to the floor.
It's – Dazai.
Dazai is fast asleep, using one arm as a pillow, the other clutching an empty glass. The man is paler, skinnier in a mere two weeks, and his coat – something that was once white, Chuuya can tell, but he's never seen it before – is covered with grime and dirt and things that Chuuya doesn't want to identify.
He's seen Dazai in terrible states, malnourished and starved, insides on the outside, bones bent out of shape and blood of too many people on his hands – but somehow this, seeing him in a white coat asleep at a bar, is what shakes him to the core.
For a second, he's absurdly terrified that Dazai will wake up and see him.
The bartender sees him watching him and smiles sympathetically. “The poor man was dead tired when he came in," he says. "Didn't even drink all that much. Thought I'd let him sleep awhile.”
Chuuya nods mutely. He could get up and leave. Right now. His heart is beating insanely in his chest, and he tightens his grip around the glass.
He should get up.
He should call Mori.
The traitor is here, the traitor is in plain sight – he should make him bite the curb and shoot him in the head.
He should move, do something, leave.
But he doesn't.
He isn't sure how long he sits there, but the blonde finally stumbles his way out the door. The bartender starts putting things away, letting Chuuya keep his untouched glass while he cleans up, and – Chuuya doesn't know what to do.
Dazai is right here, almost within an arms reach.
And he's never felt more lost than now.
“Oi,” he says, against his better judgement. “Oi, Dazai.”
Dazai stirs a bit, but doesn't move. It's unlike him – he's always been a light sleeper. They're trained to be awake and alert at the first hint of danger.
If he's passed out like this, in public – he's either that confident that he could hide away from the mafia, or he's burned himself out entirely. Chuuya isn't sure which option he hates more.
“You bastard, wake up,” Chuuya says loudly.
Dazai's eyes snap open.
He sits up immediately, eyes zeroing in on the threat – and once he recognizes Chuuya his eyes widen to impossible proportions.
There's a terrible, terrible silence.
Chuuya can see him sizing up his options. The door is behind Chuuya, there's no way Dazai could get to it first. The windows aren't an option either. The more they stare at each other, the more Dazai looks like he's going to throw up, and for once it looks less like his usual staged disgust for Chuuya and more like actual horror for the situation he's let himself get into.
"I thought I'd never see you again," Dazai says, grimacing. His eyes are sharp, still calculating, looking at any way he could escape.
Chuuya can read him too well, and he hates it.
"You're in the first pathetic bar I found," Chuuya deadpans. "Are you even trying to hide?"
"Is that concern?" Dazai asks, but there's no teasing in his voice. He pushes his stool back and stands up, rummaging in his dirty pockets for change.
"You wish."
Chuuya pulls out money from his own pockets and sets it down on the table. He leaves way too much, but he can't bother looking down at the notes. If he looks away from Dazai for a second he'll disappear – that's how it's always been.
Chuuya can't let him pull anything this time – not when Chuuya has been dealt the upper hand for once.
The bartender is watching them, gaze darting between the two of them in confusion.
"What do you have to say for yourself?" Chuuya asks.
Dazai looks at him like he doesn't recognize him.
He looks at him like he's confused.
It gets to him more than it should.
"Huh?" Dazai asks.
"Aren't you going to say anything?"
Dazai had left in the middle of the day, when he knew that no one would be looking for him. The dark was theirs, the night was theirs. He never would have made it away in the night.
But he left in broad daylight, when anyone could have seen him, and yet – none of them did.
The worst thing is, Chuuya should have seen it coming.
After all the shit that went down with Odasaku, Dazai wasn't – stable. He was never stable, but now he was even more of a mess, because he didn't feel like winning anymore.
And that was all that Chuuya had been able to count on him for before – Dazai would always come out winning. He'd always try to get the upper hand, to try and one up everybody else. But then he stopped. Odasaku died, and he stopped.
He was as empty as he always was, but this time – without a direction to pretend to keep walking down.
"Give my regards to Akutagawa," Dazai says, almost tired. "I'll see you around, Chuuya."
He has his hands in his pockets, and tries to step around Chuuya, like he really thinks that a traitor could get past him so easily – and Chuuya spends an entire second in pure shock about the nerve it must take to do that.
The stupidity.
He shoves Dazai to the side, raises an arm, and punches him right in the face.
Dazai crashes to the ground, toppling one of the stools over. He's quick to get up again, his reflexes still as sharp as always – but on any other day he would have seen the punch coming before it even hit him. He isn't doing well. At all.
It makes Chuuya even angrier.
He throws another punch, another kick, but Dazai dodges them both, and then he grabs another bar stool to use as a shield but Chuuya breaks right through it with ease.
"Impressive," Dazai grins, but it's forced and tense. For once Chuuya has caught him unguarded. Sleeping outright in the open – he really was asking for it.
The bartender is cowering across the bar, whimpering into his hands.
"Shut up," Chuuya snaps at him. "I paid you too much already. And you," he turns back to Dazai. "You're coming with me."
“Oh?” Dazai arches an eyebrow. “Did you miss me all that much?”
“You're coming to with me to Mori,” Chuuya's voice rises. “And he's going to destroy you.”
Dazai shuts up.
He seems to know that he can't annoy Chuuya out of this one. He's well and truly fucked.
He's a traitor, and he will be killed for it. It's as simple as that.
If Chuuya is lucky, he'll get to do the honours.
“What makes you think I'd come with you?” Dazai asks. There's no emotion in his voice. It reminds Chuuya of back when they were kids, back before Dazai had decided that faking cheer and foolishness was the answer to everything. Back when he was just as cold and emotionless on the outside as he was on the inside.
Chuuya pulls out his gun. “You don't freaking have a choice.”
Dazai smiles with only half of his face. “I'm offended, Chuuya. Did you forget my death wish so soon?”
“Why would I shoot to kill? I'll let you bleed out while I drag you back to the base.”
He means it. It's odd. He's fantasized about hurting and killing Dazai too often in his life, but he's never meant it this much before.
His anger is usually loud, and temporary, but this feels cold.
This feels permanent.
Before, as much as he hated him, Dazai was his partner. Now he's just the man who stabbed them all in the back.
Who left them all behind.
And Dazai understands that as well, because he raises his arms in mock surrender and lets Chuuya lead him out the door.
/
He puts his gun away once they're outside. There's no need to call attention to themselves. Dazai knows he's a dead man if he tries anything – Chuuya has made his point.
“Are we going to walk all the way to the base?” Dazai asks, his voice carefully mild, in the way it gets when he's trying to talk down to someone.
“Shut up.” He doesn't know yet. The base is far. Could he call Hirotsu–san? Anything else is too much of a risk – Dazai could easily disappear in a crowd.
Dazai stuffs his hands in his pockets. The white coat puts Chuuya on edge – it reminds him of Mori. He wonders why Dazai would willingly put on something like that when he'd never bothered to hide his hatred of his mentor.
“What's with the freaking coat?”
Dazai shrugged. “I've turned over a new leaf. Can't you tell?” He tugs at the front of his coat pointedly, waiting for Chuuya to say something. Chuuya doesn't get what he's supposed to notice.
“Can't I tell what.”
“It's symbolic. It's white. It's like I'm a good guy.”
He's grinning again, and Chuuya thinks he's being made fun of, but he isn't sure in exactly which way.
“You can't even see the white under all the dirt and blood,” he snaps, and he's once again surprised that he has zero concern about whether any of that blood was Dazai's own. There isn't any space inside of him for concern anymore. “It's fithy.”
Dazai shrugs. “It's the thought that counts.”
“The hell, Dazai? Are you trying to be a good guy? After everything?”
For a second, Dazai looks stricken. It's not an expression that Chuuya is used to seeing on him. And then he wipes it away, carefully blank, pasting his usual look of disgust over it. “It's just a coat, Chuuya.”
He doesn't say anything after that.
Chuuya should call Hirotsu. He should put an end to this – this madness, whatever it is. He doesn't even want to know why Dazai left anymore, because whatever reasons he might have had sure as hell couldn't have been enough.
He grips his phone in his pocket. Hirotsu, or maybe Higuchi. Even Tachihara might pick them up.
He glances over at Dazai again. He's watching Chuuya carefully, plotting something for sure. As if he'd come quietly after the effort he put in to escape. The godforsaken coat hangs loosely around his frame, hiding most of the bandages from view. There's a woolen cap tucked in one of his pockets. Probably a pathetic attempt at disguise.
“A cap? Seriously?”
“It's better than your hat,” Dazai shoots back.
“My hat is classy. Yours is for old women.”
Dazia pretends to cough. “Classy,” he says, choking up again.
Chuuya lets go of his phone, letting it drop back into his pocket. “Keep walking,” he snaps.
“Yeah, yeah, okay.”
There is no conversation after that.
It's late at night – closer to morning, actually. Chuuya usually gets about four hours of sleep on a good day, and this is clearly not a good day. Dazai, for his part, never seemed to sleep at all. He had really been the perfect mafioso.
Except for the part where he turned bloody traitor.
He doesn't feel betrayed, not exactly. Even now, after he's seen Dazai's stupid face again. He's just lost, and confused, like he doesn't know what to do with himself anymore. He's scared to look over his shoulders these days because he knows there's no one there.
Dazai was never his friend, or someone he could even like – but he was still someone like Chuuya.
Raised in blood and violence and unquestioned loyalty with the hope of someday finding something that could mean a home.
They were partners, from back when they were still young – and their survival had become so intertwined with each other that Chuuya had let himself think that would be how it was till the day he died. He shot up the ranks because of Dazai, and now he's lost, alone, the corruption in his veins with no one to hold it back anymore.
“Are you going to ask me why I left?” Dazai asks at last. He keeps his gaze pointed away. The white coat is really pissing Chuuya off – it makes him angrier than the question.
“Do I look like I care?”
“You do, actually. A little.”
“I don't.”
“Suit yourself. How is Akutagawa?”
Akutagawa was shit, that was how he was. He was a freaking walking disaster. “He's not your responsibility anymore."
Dazai grins. “You see? You do care.”
Chuuya throws another punch, quick and hard, but Dazai's hand comes up to block it.
“I'm going to predict something now,” Dazai starts. He doesn't look unsure anymore. The usual arrogant glint in his eyes is back, and it makes Chuuya want to kill him.
“No, you're not,” Chuuya growls, and he kicks him down to the floor. Dazai stumbles and tries to stand his ground, but he's tired and weak.
Chuuya steps on his head and grinds it into the ground.
“I could make you bite the curb right here,” he spits. “I don't need to wait for Mori.”
Dazai tries to say something, but Chuuya steps on him harder. He hopes his skull cracks. A hand reaches up to try to push his foot off, but the fingers shake and don't grasp anything.
Chuuya grins, baring his teeth. “Let me ask you, then. Why did you leave? Oda died? You felt guilty? Thought you'd live a new life and atone?”
Dazai chokes on something that might have been words.
“You only realized you were killing live people when it happened to someone you know?”
“I – “
Chuuya grinds his face harder into the ground, cutting him off. “I don't know what you're trying,” he grits out, “but whatever it is won't work. You should know, of all people. You should know there's no way out but hell.”
Dazai coughs, and doesn't try to retort. Chuuya finally lets him go, but Dazai doesn't get up. He stays there, lying on the ground, frowning into the distance.
“You should know,” Dazai says, a full minute later. His voice is dark and hoarse, almost dangerous. “You should know that that's something I'd never forget.”
He pushes himself up into a sitting position, dusting himself off. He makes a face as he rubs his hair. “Do you know how hard it is to find a decent public bathroom?” he whines, but Chuuya is still stuck on his previous words.
That's something I'd never forget.
There's no way out but hell.
Dazai wouldn't forget that. That was true.
He'd never try to atone for anything – he knew that there was no point. Trying to atone was an insult to the crime. It was believing that it was something you could make up for.
Dazai didn't believe that. He knew he couldn't atone for being – himself.
“Then…" Chuuya searches his face. "Why…?"
Dazai looks a bit lost. A little bit hopeless. Like he doesn't know what he's doing anymore than Chuuya does, and that's what finally snaps Chuuya out of his fury.
Dazai is just as confused as he is.
“I made a promise to a friend,” Dazai says.
Chuuya just stares at him. “A promise,” he says dully. “To Oda?”
Dazai looks uncomfortable, but he nods stiffly. Chuuya sighs, running a hand over his face.
He's never known Odasaku. He's heard Dazai talk about him every day, like a child excited about a new friend – but he's never known him.
All he knows is that he was dangerous, in the worst way. Not just because of his skill, or his talent, but because he could make Dazai seem almost – human.
There was no room for being human in the mafia, and Dazai had known that better than anyone. It was the reason he'd let himself be led into all this in the first place.
On one of those days that their mission had been a disaster and they were stalling for time before they had to go back and report and be punished for it – he'd confessed in the dark that he didn't feel things. Not now, not ever.
The reason he'd joined the mafia was that he thought if he stood by all the violence, on the brink of death, maybe suddenly he'd feel like someone. Maybe he'd feel something.
But he never did.
And that was just Dazai's life – running from one place to the next, in hopes that something could make him a little more human. From his past life to the mafia, from Mori to Akutagawa, until finally he'd stumbled into Odasaku.
It's dangerous, for Dazai to be human.
Sometimes Chuuya thinks Mori burned any hope of it out of him on purpose. But Odasaku was a wrench in his plans.
"A promise to Oda," Chuuya repeats slowly.
"Yeah," Dazai says. He smiles a bit, and it's sad and terrible and dangerous. "With his last breath, would you believe it?"
Chuuya presses his fingers into his temples, frowning as he thinks.
He's going to regret this. He's going to regret this till the freaking day he dies, but –
“Go,” he says, waving a hand. “Get lost.”
Dazai looks surprised. He might even be feigning it, he might have planned this – but Chuuya doesn't care enough to check. “Go, or I really will call Mori,” he snaps.
Dazai stares at him for a moment like he wants to say something, but doesn't know how.
He'd never figured out how to say things that mattered.
He'd perfected the art of saying everything but that, so it was his silences that Chuuya listened to most carefully. Only the silences meant anything, when it came to Dazai.
He stares at Chuuya now, in complete silence, with the emptiness in his eyes that never really left – and Chuuya looks at him properly for the first time since Odasaku's death.
For the first time in far too long.
And then Dazai disappears without another word, his horrid white stained coat swishing behind him as he melts into the shadows.
/