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He was surrounded by void.
His senses were muddled and diminished, eyes blind and limbs floating away. He couldn’t feel a single thing; any semblance of thought was so far away. His body was empty, hollow, inhuman.
Dazai blinked, dull colours flooding his vision. Despite being in full colour, they felt more empty than monochrome. He rubbed his thumb along bandaged wrist, desperate for some stimulation. To prove he’s alive; to prove the heavy air that weighs his lungs isn’t just some fluke contrapted by his dying brain.
Maybe he was already dead? Maybe this was some eternal hell? Fitting for a sinner like him.
Dazai dug his bitten nails into his wrist, thoughts strangling around his throat. They suffocated his airways, depriving him of the oxygen he desperately gulped to no avail. Panic clawed at his empty insides, painful enough to slice without bleeding.
There was a distant pang of pain, metal scent suddenly so overwhelming it choked him. Oh. He managed to show raw skin, digging in it deep enough the swell crimson drops. The panic he felt disappeared instantly, feeling him with the familiar void he craved as much as he despised.
The void was comfort. It was familiar. It would never leave him. It was the one constant in his life. Forever there, etenerally taunting him. Reminding him he was- would never be human.
No matter how many people surrounded him, no matter how many people try to shine a light on him; this was only it. It was the pure, raw him. People viewed him as however they please, but there was nothing to him. An empty space encompassed by a false skin.
Someone, anyone please… His brain desperately pleaded, lips sewn shut. He was alone, he reminded himself. It didn’t matter whether there were warm bodies around him or not; he was forever, always cold and by himself.
And yet he cried for help. Cried for someone to save him. Save him from his thoughts and body.
Save him from himself. Take his broken, shattered self and repair it. Take his inhuman self and put life into it.
What a childish thought. Dazai knew no one could save him. So far past repair, it was almost comical. How desperate he reached out for a humanity impossible to him.
Putty. Malleable, shapeable, disposable. That was all he was.
Dazai breathed, greedy lungs joyfully expanding with the stagnant air. He leaned back against the rough wall, flickering gold catching the corner of his eye. Water dripped from a broken pipe, joining the rest with a hollow drop. There was no other person, no other being on the Earth with him.
It was only him. Only he could deal with his own issues. Afterall, every single thing wrong with him was all his fault. So it only made sense that he had to solve them himself.
So why, why did that knowledge erupt pain within his shell? Why did it force fire against his eyes, taunting him with tears he’d long forgotten how to spill?
Why was he still hoping someone would reach a hand out to him?
Pathetic, truly. Numb replaced the weakness he had. He stared at the opposite wall, eyes dull and blank.
He wasn’t surrounded by a void, no. Dazai was a void.