Work Text:
It was supposed to be a quick errand, an up and back trip through San’in. But somewhere along the way he led his bike down an all too familiar route. One he’d been down many times but had never had the courage to ever act while he was there. Stopping a fair distance away outside a suburban home, Chuuya parks his bark under a tree.
Ironic, he feels like a stalker. It’s like any other stake out mission, on which he would’ve usually been accompanied by Dazai or later-ward members of his team. Only that, instead of spying on a mafia enemy or a target, he was cowardly hiding from his past. A past that he wanted to know more than anything, but felt like a past that wasn’t his own.
Sometimes he would see flashes, hear the singing of a woman. He’d hear her soft voice play a lullaby, one just for him. A blue sky on a spring morning, the air fresh and clean. Dreams were a foreign concept to him, yet he was greeted by scenes of a life he could not remember.
Memories.
They were his own. That was the only explanation.
For the last few months, they had slowly been coming back to him, reminding him of who he once was. Maybe it meant he was human, maybe it was a side effect of the explosion. The only man who’d have the answer to either of those questions was long gone by now. All memory of a monster whose real name was only known by a dead man left behind in the head of the child he’d made his puppet. But that child was gone as well.
Now there was only Chuuya, Chuuya who had survived indescribable hell and back. Chuuya who had fought for even the slightest hope that there would be a tomorrow.
He was drawn back into reality by the sound of an engine stirring, followed by a car pulling into the driveway of the house. From where he’s seated on his parked bike, he can see the door to the car open. He watches as a young girl - can’t be older than eighteen - steps out, closing the door behind her. Holding her head down, she speeds inside of the house.
From the other side, a woman also exits the car.
His mother.
Saying he remembers her as clear as day would be more than a lie, but just looking at her makes him feel like he’s known her since the day he was born. Which, arguably there were multiple days on which he was “born”, but as long as he understands what he’s trying to say, it doesn’t really matter.
She still looks as pretty as he remembers. Long muted ginger curls pinned behind her shoulders, fair blue eyes and freckles all over her face. Her face is long and her nose is narrow and buttoned. There are slight imperfections and differences between he and herself, but more or less;
She looks just like him.
He recalls the photo Pianoman presented to him all those years ago. A five year old Chuuya stood with a stoic expression. His face was short, rounder, cheeks fuller, but they shared those same freckles. Equally piercing blue eyes, ginger locks, and that same button nose.
He was a product of science, but he had been a product of her genetics long before the lab even came along. He was her precious baby boy.
That boy was gone.
He wonders how she must have felt, losing her firstborn son at such a young age. At five years old, her son disappeared, she had been told the child died. But Chuuya’s sure, he knows that there was no body presented to prove that. Did she spend every night grieving? Wondering if her baby was still out there? Did she think that they were all delusions?
It had been seventeen years.
Seventeen years since she had last seen a face that looked even remotely close to hers.
He’d thought about going up to talk to her. He’d lived with the knowledge of where she resides for the last three years, and each one the urge never once weakened.
He wanted to, and yet he didn’t.
Why was that?
Would she even recognize him? Would she believe it was all some sick joke? Perhaps it was because he didn’t want to burden her with the knowledge that her son was alive, that she’d missed his entire “childhood” the same way he had missed it himself. Maybe it was because he felt so detached from his past, that some days the idea of talking to his mother seemed like he would’ve been taking the life of someone else. Of the boy before him.
Maybe it was because he was afraid that she wouldn’t care, that she wouldn’t want him.
He knows more than anything what it’s like to not be wanted, especially by people he considers family. But to not be wanted by his own blood? That’s knowledge he knows he would never be able to live with.
So he shouldn’t feel nauseous when the girl comes back outside, opening the back of the car and helping his mother grab the plastic bags inside. Groceries, he assumes.
The woman and the girl don’t stand far apart. Infact, they’re almost joined at the hip. He watches as they chat, laughing and giggling, the girl rolling her eyes a few times and the woman simply smiling and nudging her. The girl places another bag down and raises her arms up to stretch her muscles.
That’s when he really gets a good look at her face.
He’s almost disgusted. The girl is by no means ugly, no. She’s very pretty in his opinion, but he’s driven mad by the way he feels like his own face is staring back at him for a moment.
The girl's hair is much longer than his own, and it’s the same shade of red. Her face is definitely more feminine than his, but he can recognise those freckles and button nose anywhere. He’s seen it in the mirror a thousand times. The brown eyes throw him off for a moment, but it’s just a matter of his fathers genetics. The man had brown eyes and blonde hair, and looked nothing like Chuuya.
He’d realised just who this girl was, and he can’t say he was happy.
When he first caught wind of her existence, he thought that she was just a rumour, that there was no way she was real.
Kage Kashimura, sister of the late Chuuya Kashimura.
He had never seen her before, not in the last three years. That must’ve been why he’d managed to lure himself into a false sense of security. But the rumours were true. She really did exist.
The girl was allegedly around fifteen years old, which meant she would’ve been born around two years after Chuuya’s disappearance.
He felt…sick.
Their first born child, their only son disappears, and they just…have another child only two years later? To what, replace him?
When Dazai had vanished from the Port Mafia, Chuuya waited four years, holding onto the love he harboured for the man as each day passed, not wavering one bit. He had never found himself searching for love from anyone else, knowing that it would never be the same.
And no, it isn’t the same, he knows that.
If not for two years, Chuuya can’t expect them to wait seventeen. Seventeen years only to find out that their son has known of them for the last three. But at the present time, they don’t even know he exists.
Present time, Kage exists in his family, his sister. His fucking biological sister. Just knowing she exists feels different from how he sees Kouyou. His older sister figure. Kage was younger than him, she was his own blood, and she doesn’t even know he exists.
Chuuya exists only in their memory, under a different surname.
The thought is humorous, but he can’t help but wonder if they’d ever heard of Yokohama, of the Port Mafia. To them, his organisation was like some sort of myth, an encounter they’d never have to make.
He wonders if they’ve ever heard of the Sheep. A group of rag-tag teenage juveniles making a life for themselves in the wreckage of the explosion that (while they would never know) he had caused.
How funny would that be, they’d never know that the tales of Arahabaki were all actually just their alledgedly dead son playing timebomb.
He watches as his mother and Kage head inside, and Chuuya watches with a solemn expression. He can’t feel regret, as there is no point in time where he was conscious to make a choice that would have made any difference. From the beginning he was destined to be separated from his blood family.
Perhaps one day he’d finally muster up the courage to say something to them.
But today was not that day.
Sighing, Chuuya kicks up the stand on his bike, revving the engine as it whirrs back to life. For now, he has another family back in Yokohama. And while they may not be blood, they’re his own nonetheless.