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As the sword owned by the man he once trusted, a man he once revered as someone near and dear to his heart plunged through his torso, Ranpo’s breath caught within his throat. Blocked by blood and the bittered feeling of regretful guilt he wouldn’t forget even as the darkness of the world overtook his sight and blood spilled from his lips. Pain shot up through the gap between their lips whilst their vision went blissfully white; this was it, this was the end.
Ranpo Edogawa was going to die.
Everything seemed to slow as the puncturing feeling flowing through his heart stagnated and pushed through the flesh…the world went silent. He could hear murmured apologies and soft-spoken comforts that had been forcefully pressed into his heart, the words from a man he never thought to question being thrown into the face of a fate he couldn’t have escaped--words that drowned out the screams of his family.
Many people had told him that dying would be painless, that greeting the Grim Reaper would only be an uncomfortable conversation before he was later passed onto the hands of whatever God that was preferred.
That is not what happened.
Instead, as his body drained of blood and his soul seemed to quiet, there were only a small collection of thoughts that seemed to stick out amongst all the realizations of his impervious death.
The first one, the one that screamed louder than the other’s, was that he hoped Atsushi was able to get out, free himself from the clutches of death surrounding them and find the rest of the Agency…at least whatever was left of them. Ranpo didn’t want Atsushi to die, he didn’t want him to fall victim to the trials and tribulations of war that were sure to stick to the rest of them--he didn’t want them to experience the horrors of death.
It had taken Yosano well-over three years to break out of the war-torn shell she had been when joining the agency ...Ranpo doesn’t know if he could handle that again. If he would be able to stomach telling them everything would be alright despite knowing it wouldn’t…despite knowing everything he had worked so hard to build, the family he had created from nothing was being torn down by someone he used to think was a friend. If he could handle listening to the terrorized screams that boomed through the Agency dorms in the middle of the night, he didn’t want to watch Atsushi have to rebuild himself back up after everything.
He had just started getting better, had just started to heal.
He didn’t want to have to go looking for Atsushi at Dazai’s grave, or listen to him cry towards the sky, asking what to do in Dazai’s name.
The next thought, the one that mixed with the first and thrummed through his veins like a heartbeat that wasn’t his own, was that he failed. His family died once again, and this time…there would be nothing left for him to return to once the war was over. There would be bodies to bury and a member to trade--nothing would be the same.
He should’ve been more careful, Ranpo was supposed to be the one that made sure they all lived through this war, made sure they all got home safe and sound in the end.
He was supposed to be the one that protected them, he shouldn’t have allowed the other’s to get injured and yet…there he lay within a pool of his own blood, watching as Fukuzawa came to terms with the inevitability. Watching through cracked, blood hazed eyes as the man he revered as his father, the person that protected him from the monsters in the world and made sure he had a haven to fall into, readied himself for battle.
Readied himself to fight the man he loved to the death…someone he trusted that simply threw away his heart and all their memories together.
His gaze flickered towards Ranpo’s body, as if thinking of picking him up and running away, of saving him before things got too bad.
As his eyes glinted with finality…Fukuchi’s sword pierced through him.
Giving Fukuzawa a matching wound to the boy he had saved all those years ago, the kid that he had grown to love after all these years.
It was cold; goosebumps rose on his skin as a flush of cold washed through Ranpo’s body…and then the world went silent.