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001. (EIGHT)
There is blood
everywhere.
In his eyes, in his mouth, in his hair, under his fingernails, coating his skin, soaking through his clothes. He can’t feel anything. He can’t feel his skin and he can’t feel his arms and he can’t feel his legs and he can’t move. He can’t move but he is moving and he’s flying and he’s laughing and he’s screaming crying laughing dying he’s-
He’s in pain.
There is a tingling feeling. There are marks running up and down his body. They look like blood. They aren’t blood. He wishes they were blood.
Their voice is in his ear. Their voice is in his ear and in his head and it’s so loud it’s so goddamn loud he can’t-
You know you want to give in.
It would be so easy to give in.
Come on, vessel. You were made for this.
You were made for me .
Just give in, and all this pain could go away.
Just give in.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t know how this started or how to stop it, or what to do or how to control it. He is merely an overseer, nothing more than a passenger within his own body. Control has been ripped from his hands like it’s nothing and now he is
nothing.
They are in control. They are controlling his body like a drone and they are turning it into a weapon. He watches helplessly, shaking with pain and drowning in blood, as the building implodes, killing everything and everyone inside. He never wanted this. He never wanted any of this. He doesn’t want to be a killer.
But it’s not up to him. It’s never up to him.
It feels like he’s dying. The pain intensifies with every moment and it feels like his very skin is shredding, molecule by molecule, ripping apart until there’s nothing left but bone and blood and muscles and organs and his heart, splayed open but still beating, still working hard, even after death.
He has died before. Not him, not this body, but he has seen it. Watched as another him, with the same flaming-red hair and scared eyes, finally collapsed, broken body lying like a bloody rag doll. He feels like that bloody rag doll now, tossed around from place to place as they control him, shooting masses of energy in every direction and killing everything in sight.
The marks are growing. They are red and growing and he can feel them and they’re burning and he’s screaming and he’s crying and he just wants to
die.
That would be better than this.
He wants his body back. He wants control back. He wants his life back. He wants them to leave his fucking body alone and he wants to feel like himself
again?
But then,
has he ever really felt like himself?
He can’t remember. He can’t remember anything, other than the horrible image of not-himself bleeding out on the floor, face frozen in an eternal scream as blood and organs gushed from his stomach. The blood was neverending, pouring from every orifice in his body. His arms and legs, bent at unnatural angles. The blood matting his hair and the sickly shade to his skin. Suffering, encased in a single human being. He will never forget that sight.
He’s starting to think that will happen to him, soon enough.
Please, won’t you leave me alone?
I don’t want this.
I don’t really want to die.
I don’t want to be you.
I want to be me. Whatever that is.
They seem to falter. Just for a moment, a flicker of doubt. His figure freezes in the air, hoarse laughter mixed with screaming cuts out. The pain floods back in, more intense than before. The wind is knocked out of his chest (?) and the sensation returns to his limbs.
He starts to fall-
Very well, vessel. I will give you control.
For now.
-and he hits the ground.
Everything hurts.
There is so much blood.
His bones feel broken and the marks are still there oh god the marks are still there and blood gushes from his ears and his fingernails have been torn off and his skin is burning and bleeding and ripping and sewing itself back together and his bones are unbreaking and
the pain is fading and
the marks are
still there.
He just wants them to go away.
He just wants all this to go away.
He just wants to
sleep.
003. (SEVENTEEN)
He’s used to it, now.
The unnatural tingling that starts in his fingers as the words tumble from his lips. That’s why he ditches the gloves (Although he would never tell that to anybody. He'll never tell any of this to anybody). As the tingling grows, so do the marks. Red and crying with pain and drowning in blood. They swish and swirl across his skin as if it were a blank canvas and they had free rein.
Usually, they don’t.
But right now,
they do.
The blood never stops. The first drop falls the moment he first summons the strength, and the last drop never truly comes. Weeks later, he’ll stumble into an office bathroom and spit out a clump of blood, trapped in his throat, begging to come out. It seeps from his fingernails every night, dribbles from his ears when people speak to him. They never truly leave. They’re inside him, forevermore, whether he likes it or not.
So, he learns to deal with it. He carries napkins with him everywhere he goes, prepared for the odd sneeze or cough that carries blood with it. It’s manageable. He’s fine.
Most of the time.
When he relinquishes control, though, drops the gloves and lets them take over, that’s when he’s not.
So he does it again, seventeen years old with the whole world at his feet. He takes off the gloves, closes his eyes, and takes the plunge.
It
is
fire.
The blood is the most prominent part. As his limbs contort in ways that shouldn’t be humanly possible, the blood seems to seep out of his very skin. He watches, detached and immobile, yet still very much in pain, as they laugh and laugh and laugh and throw him around like a cruel puppetmaster and their abused puppet, and they laugh and he laughs and they laugh and-
You should give me control, vessel.
You would not live to regret it.
-he feels his body and soul ripping.
I’ve told you this before, Arahabaki.
My name is Chuuya.
In his mind’s eye flashes a corpse. The same corpse that has been haunting his nightmares since he was eight years old. Arahabaki taunts him with it. They’re cruel in their ways, but he understands - after all, if he was an immortal god stuck in a child’s body, he would most likely be upset as well.
He’s not the same child anymore. He’s older, wiser. Knows more about the world, about himself. Knows that if he doesn’t stop, if he doesn’t stop giving them control-
he will die.
He doesn’t want to give them control. It’s painful and gruesome and murderous and bloody and he feels it for weeks on end, feels like he’s rotting from the inside out, like there are maggots inside his veins and arteries tearing them apart and ripping his lungs to shreds and clawing at his heart and leeching into his brain but-
there is the doctor.
The doctor with the leering smile and
cold hands and eerie eyes and
there is the boy.
The boy with the bandages and
suicidal jokes and empty eyes and
a deeper understanding.
He doesn’t want to let them down. Doesn’t want to let the boy down. Because he knows -
if he lets them down,
it will be the boy who will, one day,
die.
He will never let that happen. Not as long as he lives.
002. (SIXTEEN)
He doesn’t know how it really starts.
The words echo in the back of his mind, and they’re out of his throat before he can stop them. Somewhere, a god smiles. All their plans are falling into place.
He thinks he’s dying.
Eight years ago, he experienced something like this. The horror of seeing not-him bleeding out on the ground combined with the god recently shoved into his body had led to the relinquishing of control, the destruction of the government building and the worst pain he’s ever felt.
This is just as bad.
He’s splitting apart, reforming, tearing at the seams, getting stitched back together all at once. His mind feels fractured, ripped away from the safety of his body. There is blood everywhere and he doesn’t know what to do or where to go or how to act or anything and it hurts so much he can’t breathe he can’t move-
he must be dying.
There’s no other answer.
Fire runs like rivulets in his mind, intermingling with blood and the marks stretching across his skin. It’s the marks that concern him the most. Bright red and painfully hot, they stain his skin like iron tattoos. He wants them gone. He wants them to go away and the pain to go away and everything to go away and-
Give yourself to me, vessel.
You are close to the edge. This is your prime form.
Give yourself to me, and I will make you immortal.
You can live like this forever.
…that is the opposite of what he wants.
Do they realize how much it hurts? Do they know the true pain of having your body deconstruct, only to reform without you? His body - weak and small and sickly and pathetically human - is not strong enough to withstand it. Not strong enough to hold onto the energy and the raw power and the god inside who yearns to get out, who claws at his ribcage like a wild animal trying to escape-
I don’t want this.
Go away.
For the first time in his life, they ignore his pleas.
It’s blinding, maddening, painful,
betrayal.
He does not like them. They do not like him. But he thought they had an
agreement
understanding.
He was wrong.
He watches with a detached, outsider’s vision, blurry with pain pain pain pain as they soar around, hijacking his body like it’s the simplest thing in the world. The blood is heavy, thick, growing with every minute, staining his skin and his hair and falling from his eyes like a certain hallucination ability. He certainly feels like he’s under it, like he’s hurting hurting bleeding dying-
How do I stop this?
-drained like a grapefruit until he’s nothing but a hollow shell, full of brittle bones and shriveled organs, all the blood sucked dry from his body-
You can’t.
-and somewhere, a god’s smile grows.
He is dying. He is dying and he has always been dying and he always will be dying and he knows, if this goes on any longer, he truly will take his last breath, dying out here on this empty, empty battlefield, void of fighting because he killed them all -
(Chuuya!)
There is a voice.
He doesn’t know where it comes from.
Then, he remembers, there’s the boy, with the maddening ability and the fake smile and the dead eyes, the boy who he understands - and the boy who understands him. The pain lessens, bit by bit.
(Chuuya, wake up!)
A flash of blue. A moment of clarity. Time speeds up, his wounds begin to heal (?) before it reverses. Everything goes back to excruciating pain.
He will not be able to save you.
Time unwinds again-
He already has.
-and he falls.
000. (DAZAI)
The funeral is nice. Beautiful, even.
Kouyou says a few words. That makes his eyes water, they won’t lie. Mori says something as well. That just makes them want to punch him in his insincere face even more. Even Akutagawa speaks up. He’s proud, even though they know they have nothing to do with it. He stays in the back, hidden underneath a hood. He doesn’t know why they’re here. They weren’t invited.
But,
he couldn’t miss it.
Stupid, stupid Chuuya. Why would they do that? Sacrifice himself for a few measly foot soldiers?
He knows why. He always did care too much for his own good. Either that, or-
-or they just don’t care enough.
It’s most likely a mixture of both.
He doesn’t want to get up tomorrow morning. They have his new job to get to, but they don't want to go. He wants to find a river and jump into it. He doesn’t know why this affects them so much. It’s not like they’ve seen Chuuya in years.
You know why it’s affecting you so much. It’s affecting you because you love(d)-
Still, they have a promise to keep. And, dead ex-partner or not, he’s determined to keep it.
It’s time to say goodbye.
004. (TWENTY)
He knows it’s too late. He knows.
He knows, yet he still went ahead and did it.
There wasn’t much of a choice. He’s dying anyways, has been ever since he first dragged them out all those years ago. His body is frail, failing. If he can save his subordinates, even if just one of them, he’ll take it.
And so, he does.
He removes his gloves. Carefully, gently, sets his hat aside. Tosses off his coat. Utters those goddamn words . Awakens the beast yet again.
It’s been… a few years since he’s done it, a few years since the only person who could stop it left.
It’s worse than he remembers.
Blood blood blood so much blood everywhere, from him, from the enemy, from his own subordinates, but mainly from him- running across his skin, crisscrossing with the red marks which he doesn't think will ever leave. He feels like he’s on fire. He feels like he’s frozen. He feels like he’s
dying.
(For once, he’s right.)
The instant it begins, he can tell it’s the last time.
They’re fighting with more raw anger and vigor than ever before. It’s animalistic and beastly in a way, one he feels is fitting for the situation. It takes mere seconds for the enemies to get obliterated. Once they’re gone, once his subordinates have made it out, they turn on the planet, on themselves, blowing up trees and scratching at his own skin. It rips and tears beneath his nails, revealing muscle and tendons and veins and oh god more blood more blood more fucking blood-
He can’t stop. He can’t fucking stop hurting himself he needs to destroy something something anything just not his fucking self please oh god no somebody HELP SOMEONE HELP HE’S DYING HE’S DYING HE NEEDS FUCKING HELP
PLEASE
ANYBODY?
He knows nobody’s coming.
He will die all alone.
After all, everybody leaves him.
It’s inevitable.
I will never leave you, vessel.
I have always been at your side.
He knows that, but it’s not really helpful. Especially when they’re the one trying to kill him. They’re the one ripping his body to shreds.
He doesn’t know how long it’s been. It feels like it’s been hours. There’s no more skin left on his face, just a mutilated mess of blood and arteries and muscles. Guts spill out like there’s no tomorrow. Meanwhile, they’ve moved on to his arms.
He feels strangely… numb. He’s glad. At least
now, he doesn’t
feel anything.
His body is reaching a limit. It’s all ending, soon.
You know… for a vessel, you weren’t bad.
Oh?
Yeah. Thanks for finally giving in, kid.
I guess I’m finally leaving you alone now.
I’m glad. It’s… nice, for it all to be over.
Yeah.
Well, it was fun while it lasted. Maybe I’ll see you around, Chuuya.
Not a vessel. Chuuya. The thought warms his (beaten, bloody, broken) heart.
Time stops-
(Goodbye, Dazai.
Chuuya, wait! I-
You couldn’t save me this time.)
-and starts again.
Nakahara Chuuya is no more.