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Not as the monument in the smoky rain
Grimly endures, but that would be
Only a moment's inviolable presence,
The moment before disaster, before the storm,
In its peculiar silence, an integer
Fixed in the middle of the fall of things
“Lion and Honeycomb,” Howard Nemerov
Shibusawa reeked of death, decay, and fermenting fruit--as sweet and as rotten as the poisoned apple in his grasp.
The toxin from the silver knife stabbed into Dazai’s back had run rampant through his system, paralyzing him, forcing him to listen limp and unspeaking as Fyodor backstabbed Shibusawa in turn, though perhaps marginally less literally.
No Longer Human had always been a cold hum of power through his veins, an electric current that often made him want to scratch his skin off to be free of it. Once that was drained out of him and crystallized, though, it wasn’t as liberating as he’d once dreamed.
The idea of being free from his ability and freed from the agony of living should have been beautiful. Welcome. Instead, his sluggish mind was recalculating--a step behind Fyodor Dostoevsky and struggling to catch up to him before death could fully claim him.
But it was fine. He’d planned for this possibility.
There was always an ace up his sleeve that his enemies overlooked, ignorantly buying into a carefully curated series of lies, misdirection, and deliberately cultivated resentment that spanned seven years. The perfect cover-up for what was inevitable, always.
No one ever truly accounted for the unshakable, illogical, irrepressible loyalty that comes with loving and being loved by Nakahara Chuuya.
And Dazai knew, even as he slipped into the clutches of the poison, that this would not be the day Chuuya failed to come for him.
----
Dazai Osamu had never planned to live in a shipping container again. During his time in the Port Mafia it had been a choice: he had made more than enough to put himself up in a penthouse as the other Executives had. In retrospect, he knows now that living in the dump had been a way to punish himself, to reinforce his worldview, and to keep him from growing so attached to anything or anyone that it would hurt when he inevitably lost it.
Obviously, that hadn’t exactly worked out.
But he never expected a shipping container to one day become a luxury.
Rebar and shattered glass greet Dazai as he shields his eyes from the sunlight that pounds down on him as he slides sideways through the gap between a collapsed subway entrance and the fallen asphalt street that had once covered it. The storm the night before settled the concrete dust that still makes a haze of the sky on dry days, stinging the eyes and settling in the lungs. Dazai’s learned to trust the rain--he always slips out after thunder rumbles over the bay, rain pinging on all of the corrugated metal surrounding them.
It’s too bright today, the storm passing too quickly, and it leaves him feeling overexposed and too obvious as he ducks into what used to be a sprawl of alleyways and is now nearly a cave system. A curb he once shattered a government informant’s jaw over is ironically still whole, sheltered by two buildings toppled into each other like dominos. The scent of blood and the muted sound of gunshots don’t haunt his memory as they likely should, but never have--a life in the darkness and one in the light never did make much of a difference to him.
Now he lives in the gray.
He retraces his steps from the week before, but the traps he set between their new home and the ruins of the Kanagawa Prefectural Office are still in place, undisturbed. He ransacked the government building months ago, stealing physical files for something engaging to read and to determine where everything went wrong. He picked over the nearby konbini for food within the first few days.
Nothing is disturbed from how it was when he last took this route, but his instincts are screaming a warning at him, hair on the back of his neck standing up.
He’s always trusted his instincts.
By the time Kunikida has stepped out of the shadows, Dazai has his gun out and aimed at the detective’s head, staring down the muzzle of Kunikida’s own weapon.
“Hello, partner!” His cheer is out of place in the situation, but it always was. Kunikida’s frown is the same as he remembers it too, though a crack through his glasses reflects the light that filters down from a gap in the ruins. His hair is longer now, shaggier than he’d ever have let it grow before the world fell apart.
Unlike Dazai, though, Kunikida could have escaped the ruins of Yokohama. Instead, he stayed. Dazai knows that’s in large part because of him.
Neither of them lowers their weapons on recognizing each other.
“Tanizaki, you can come out now! You know your ability doesn’t work on me. I’m assuming that’s how you knew it was me.” Not that there are many people left in the first place. Process of elimination would have done just as well. Yokohama is a ghost town, in many ways quite literally. It had been from the moment the fog fell on the city.
Tanizaki wears grief poorly, haggard and gaunt. Dazai knows that look well: he saw it in the mirror after Oda’s death while he lived in solitude and grief for two years, until he joined the Agency and had a reason to put on his mask. Tanizaki’s grief has translated into fury, and his hands shake as he flanks Dazai from the left with his own gun trained on his former coworker.
Dazai doesn’t resent him for it. Naomi had been everything to him and was lost even before Yokohama was ripped to the ground. In the end, despite what Fyodor had claimed of his schemes, and despite Shibusawa’s machinations to collect their powers… it was only ability users who survived the cataclysm to follow.
But they didn’t cause the schism that runs through Yokohama. Or the ruins they’re standing among.
“Where is he, Dazai.”
Dazai steps back slowly, positioning himself where he can see the both of them, his smile fixed and unnatural. Kunikida is brutally efficient and the better hand-to-hand combatant, but Tanizaki was irrational long before loss put its claws in him. He’s the greater threat right now because he won’t wait for a response the way Kunikida is.
“You’ll have to narrow that down, Kunikida.” He breaks his name up into syllables, his smile widening as Kunikida’s glower deepens. “There are quite a few people missing…”
“Don’t joke about them!” As he anticipated, it’s Tanizaki who lunges and Dazai twists to the side to dodge the blow, then catches the illusionist by his arm and hauls him into place.
In the Port Mafia, everyone knew that to aim a gun at Dazai meant giving him another weapon to use--he was known to saunter unarmed into a conflict and then destroy his enemies with their own weapons. Tanizaki is learning that lesson now: his back to Dazai’s chest and his own gun pressed against his temple, Dazai’s original gun once again aimed at Kunikida who went still the second the boy was taken hostage.
“Ah, sorry about that. I didn’t want you in my blind spot.”
He means that, now, in a way he did not before. He knows that a sharp detective like Kunikida can put together the scar that trails from eyebrow to cheekbone and gather that he’s lost some if not all of his vision in that eye.
It’s a weakness, but not enough of one to throw him off. After all, Dazai went years covering one eye just for the aesthetic of it. Now he wears his scars openly. When you have to scavenge for supplies just to live, bandages become something to save for when they’re absolutely necessary.
For a time there, after the cataclysm, Dazai had significant reason to give his bandages away. To him.
“Nakahara Chuuya.” Kunikida is nothing if not persistent, and even with Tanizaki held hostage it seems he’s counting on Dazai’s questionable better nature to keep him from shooting the boy. “You’re sheltering him, and keeping him from being held accountable.”
No. He’s not counting on Dazai’s better nature--he doesn’t believe in it, anymore. No one does: the fact that he willingly went with Shibusawa is something that the Agency, the Mafia, and the government are convinced means that he was in some way behind the attack, and the fact that it was his partner that finished the job means that there’s not a soul in or out of Yokohama who believes them innocent. The fact that this isn’t his first brush with a member of the Agency since the event would have only deepened their mistrust.
So if it’s not belief that Dazai would hold back…
Dazai swings the gun pointed at Kunikida up by instinct, and the gunshot leaves his ears ringing. But he still registers the yelp and the plink of glass and metal shattering to confirm his suspicions. Even before the rifle scope is destroyed, he has his gun back on Kunikida who was kept in place for that single moment by him holding Tanizaki hostage.
“Hello, Poe! I assume Ranpo is up there too. You should come down now.”
His mood has abruptly just taken an upward swing, an uncommon reaction to having a sniper targeting him. But the sniper wouldn’t be there without very specific company.
Ranpo Edogawa must be the last normal person in Yokohama, though the term ‘normal’ has never fully applied to him. With pure deductive reasoning, he must have been the first to guess the nature of the mist, and had gone right to his American admirer to shelter him within one of his novels just in case.
It’s the only reason he’s still alive. And whatever state the world is in, it’s better for having Ranpo still in it.
As brash as he’s always been, Ranpo clambers up the rubble into the middle of a hostage situation, plopping himself down on top of a pile of bricks and concrete dust. He leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees as sharp green eyes read Dazai head to toe from a distance, a scrutiny that would be uncomfortable if it weren’t once so familiar. He offers his conclusion in the tone of a pronouncement, haughty and superior and irreverent.
“You. Are a moron.”
Dazai guffaws at the assessment, and even in his ears the sound of his laughter is grating and wrong, stuck in the back of his throat like a sob. He was wrong. One person in the world understands what happened. Because he read it off of Dazai in an instant.
“Kunikida, put the gun away. He’s not afraid of it, and he won’t shoot any of us unless we threaten Nakahara.” Ranpo waves a hand imperiously, and then slides down the rubble to amble towards Dazai while gesturing at Tanizaki. “Go find Yosano. She’s the reason he let you get the drop on him. He’s too smart to retrace an old path unless he needed you to find him.”
Tanizaki hesitantly steps forward, and Dazai drops that gun to the side, ready to shoot the boy in the knee if he attacks again but no longer imminently threatening his life. The gun trained on Kunikida remains steady until his former partner lowers his own weapon. By the time Ranpo is crowding into Dazai’s personal space, peering up at him, he’s willing to tuck both guns into the small of his back, held in place by a belt stolen to account for all of the weight he’s lost.
“Shibusawa’s dead. Dostoevsky's in the wind. And you and Nakahara went underground. You’re the two most wanted criminals in the world, now! You wouldn’t believe the bounty they have on you.” He scoffs, shaking his head. “As if money means anything here.” Even in the rubble, surrounded by devastation, Ranpo sounds both arrogant and judgmental, looking down on the idiocy of the rest of the world and reveling in his own brilliance. It shouldn’t be an endearing quality, but it somehow is to those who know him well.
Ranpo’s still instinctively searching him for clues, his constantly assessing mind taking in his poorly fitted clothes, the scar and the haze of his left eye, the scrapes on his hands, the scent of roasted and charred fish that clings to the fabric of a once-white coat. As Ranpo’s busy scrutinizing him, Poe joins Kunikida to be lanky and worried and protective side by side as if Dazai’s going to snap Ranpo’s neck if they blink. He and Ranpo are standing close enough that he could do it in an instant, if he was everything they believe of him.
As if he and Ranpo hadn’t been thick as thieves while he was at the Agency, both reveling in finding someone to match their intellect. After all, it took a genius to fully appreciate a genius. And Ranpo always liked to be appreciated. Now Dazai just appreciates that he’s alive. He never should have bet against it, even if Ranpo’s lack of ability was a death sentence in Yokohama during the conflict.
So he allows the scrutiny, not hiding from it or trying to deceive him. They’re close enough that when speaking quietly his words make it only to the detective’s ears. Close enough that he can see the moment Ranpo believes him, despite everything.
“He would have died before doing this deliberately.”
----
From the moment Doc Glasses had called in a favor, Chuuya suspected this was going to end badly. The combined force of every ability that bleached bastard Shibusawa had ever collected--hundreds of crystallized powers ripped from the dead across multiple countries--was writhing before him, manifested into physical form and looming over the whole city.
But Chuuya could fight the physical. He might be no bigger than a fly in the perspective of that behemoth, but he was a damned stubborn fly. And he could swat back pretty damn hard. Hard enough that the same government who had carefully crafted him to be their weapon knew that he was the only possible threat to another monster they had enabled. One singularity pitted against another, with the entire city at stake.
So flinging himself from a plane, calling on the power buried within himself, that was the easy part. He’d die, or he’d win. And either way, he’d end up able to kick Dazai’s ass for getting caught up in this--whether in person or reunited in a hell they’d earned their way into side by side.
He’d never been the suicidal half of Soukoku. But it was as good a day to die as any, and if they were right about Dazai’s fate then it wouldn't matter. He’d still make damn sure the enemy who took them out wouldn’t be walking away either. And if it happened to be a giant fucking dragon that finally did them in, at least he’d look badass as hell dying to destroy it.
The familiar words were lost to the wind ripping past him in his free fall, but the effect was still the same. Arahabaki flared to life within him, unleashed.
Usually, Chuuya was only barely aware while his Corrupted form rampaged and tore universal constants apart in borrowed human hands. This time seemed different from the start--he wasn’t in control, but he was uncommonly aware. It had him calling Dazai’s name in an inhuman scream that he could feel tearing through his throat, filling his mouth with blood.
It hurt. Everything hurt. He was being ripped apart and made to feel it all.
A skyscraper tore free from its foundation beneath his palms and slammed into the face of a dragon, again and again, cramming down its throat and shattering a ruby the size of a bus that adorned its skull.
He saw the moment the prison of abilities around Dazai broke. The moment his partner jolted mid-air at the concussive force of the dragon’s explosion, jaw tensing, seeming to come back to himself in an instant. Then light seared through Chuuya’s eyes in the explosion. Blinding. Disorienting. He lost sight of his partner, and that moment was enough.
With the explosion, the unnatural fog blasted up into the air around him like a mushroom cloud. Enveloping him. Consuming him.
This time, his scream was echoed from below, a body falling out of reach.
“Chuuya!”
There was no moment of separation between himself and Tainted, between himself and the singularity that was Arahabaki. No instant where he was forced to fight his ability. It seems that despite every existential question, every reassurance given to him… he has been reduced to nothing more than a shell for the power within him.
The world exploded.
And Chuuya felt every agonizing moment as gravity itself rended Yokohama to pieces. The earth cracked, buildings tumbled, the water of the river and bay rose in opposing swells towards him. In the center of a maelstrom of death and destruction, he could see it all, feel it all: his ability tearing through him until it destroyed him. He could feel the city he loved and sacrificed for crumbling beneath his power.
The last thing he remembered was the long crash back to earth that punched a crater into the landscape of Yokohama, a figure that hauled him from the new lake he had created and dumped him on its shore. It wasn’t mercy. Mercy would have been to let him die.
Through the pain, a heavily accented voice crooned mockingly at him as the light faded.
“Well done, Chuuya. You played your part perfectly. Do remember to send Dazai my regards.”
----
Dazai wouldn’t say that interior design is one of his many skills, but for Chuuya’s sake he’s put more effort into this shipping container than he’d ever spared for his own when he was younger. He’d had months of oppressive silence to work through, after all, and an entire abandoned and destroyed city to raid for materials. He could obtain anything he could carry, as long as he did it while avoiding the drone cameras panning across the wreckage, the military forces scouring the city for them, and the ability users out for his blood.
The stretcher he’d first gotten Chuuya stabilized on was stiff, plastic and uncomfortable, and Chuuya had whimpered in pain even in his unconscious state as he was strapped to it for hours in the abandoned and battered emergency room. It became the first addition to their shipping container, along with the cooler full of blood transfusion bags, bandages, and medications. It was also the first thing to be replaced.
Once it was clear he’d dragged his partner back from imminent death, the next necessity for their home had been obvious. The stolen futon is covered in soft sheets and blankets, with downy pillows he could wedge around Chuuya in order to keep him comfortable despite the bandages that created a patchwork across his skin. Even once bones were set and splinted, his neck braced and the gashes stitched, it was the marks from Corruption that remained a concern. The runes and symbols that had once traced his skin only when Arahabaki was unleashed had been seared into his flesh as deep burns that had made even the lightest touch excruciating.
And Chuuya felt it. Every bit of it. Dazai’s ability to read Chuuya made even the slightest flinch from his unconscious partner as obvious to him as a scream.
He began rigorously raiding for medical supplies, then. A lightweight set of cracked plastic drawers at Chuuya’s bedside holds pain medications in vials, syringes, bandages, antiseptics. Everything he could get his hands on in one nighttime raid after another, just to keep Chuuya comfortable and stable, to help take away his pain while Dazai forcefully kept him from dying.
Fate, or god, or the universe persisted in making a cosmic joke of him by ripping away everything he loved, again and again. This time he was determined not to let go. Regardless of the cost.
So keeping Chuuya alive had taken priority. Once he had forced a stalemate with fate, what consumed his thoughts became keeping his partner hidden and safe in a world that would never stop hunting him.
Their shipping container sits sheltered among hundreds of near-identical boxes, some tipped and toppled by gravity and by the tidal wave that had ultimately saved Dazai from the fall. By all appearances, their home is merely a small part of the mess of metal in one of hundreds of abandoned and half flooded shipyards and piers along the coastline of Yokohama. Even should someone find the right shipyard, determining the right container would prove difficult. Accessing it? Even more so.
He sets traps behind him wherever he travels, because the moment something or someone follows him, it becomes imperative that he loses that tail before he can lead them back to Chuuya.
Chuuya, who lay still and quiet. Far too quiet.
Health. Safety. Then the necessities. He had raided a camping supply a week in, when it became clear that Chuuya would not be in any position to leave anytime soon. That trip had required an entire day to make it there and back again from a shopping outlet, trekking through stifling pitch black and crumbling subway tunnels, detouring around flooded routes, worried for Chuuya the entire time. From there he had picked up a camp toilet, a kerosene burner, and the ultimate prize he had gone for—an intact solar generator.
With that stolen generator, he’d been able to give them real working lights and a fan to keep the air from being still and stifling. He never again wanted to leave Chuuya to lay still as death in a metal coffin.
Still, Chuuya slipped further away from him.
So it was comfort he tried for next.
The collapsible bathtub started as an indulgence, stolen from a homegoods store along with a small pot and pan, some cleaning supplies, and soap. He fills the tub a bucket at a time from the bay now. He never expected that the end of their world would involve quite so many chores, but between washing Chuuya, himself, the bedding, their clothes, and then refilling for the next day, he’s always got something to keep his hands busy.
Non-perishable food items are carefully stacked in the corner, neater than any organizational system Dazai would have done for himself: he’s had a lot of time sitting in the container, and an anxious sort of energy had settled over him until he’d organized and reorganized their meager belongings multiple times.
In the opposite corner, tucked where Chuuya could see it from the bed, is a growing collection of things his partner might like. Dozens of books, ranging from survival guides to medical texts to history books to stolen government files to novels to poetry are carefully lined up on a rickety folding table, giving Dazai things to read aloud to him. Wines carefully retrieved from cellars beneath rubble sit in crates beside wax-coated wheels of cheese stolen from abandoned restaurant kitchens and grocery stores. These things will only age well in waiting for him.
And atop it all, a battered old hat sits as the crowning jewel.
Using the records from cracked and abandoned and dying cell phones and laptops at the government offices, he had calculated the trajectory of the plane, the velocity of Chuuya’s fall, the wind speed. Then he searched a few hours at a time, spread out over weeks, until he finally fished Chuuya’s most prized possession out of the rubble. He’d occupied the next few days trying to reshape it and to free it of concrete dust.
In the eyes of a seasoned detective, every foot of their shipping container home tells a story—one steeped in desperation and fading hope and insurmountable guilt. He can tell Yosano and Ranpo are judging him by it, but he’s beyond caring.
“Chuuya, I’m home! And I’ve brought guests!”
Four years apart meant that Dazai was already fully aware of how much he could end up missing a grumbled, bickering reply to his every word. It’s even worse now with Chuuya right in front of him and yet not responding.
Chuuya’s breath wheezes through lips that Dazai has carefully coated in balm so that they don’t grow chapped and crack. Lurid scarlet marks trace the sides of his face, down his exposed arms, to the backs of hands, blending at his temples into hair that has grown out into a riot of loose copper curls that reveal just how long he’s been in this state and how carefully Dazai’s been keeping him clean and cared for down to the ridiculous hair that was always one of his primary vanities. Blue eyes move beneath his eyelids, but his body remains still under the sheet carefully draped over him.
But Chuuya can hear him. Dazai knows it, by the shift of his partner’s breathing, by the twitch of the fingertips on his right hand. He doesn’t say as much, because his former coworkers will think he’s crazy. That he’s seeing things. To be honest, there are days that Dazai wonders that too. But after eight years now of memorizing his partner’s every gesture, breath, and move, he knows that he’s not wrong.
Yosano is the first one in, dropping her bag down beside her as she settles on her knees at the bedside, taking Chuuya’s thin wrist in her fingertips, counting his pulse as she looks him over and takes in the new marks and the straight scar down the center of his throat, framed by a stiff brace. “You performed a tracheostomy on him?”
“Had to. That first night I needed to manually pump air into him until he started breathing on his own again.” It’s all a bit of a blur, now—he’d used everything he’d ever learned by meandering through Mori’s clinic, watching as he indebted the criminal underworld of Yokohama to him one shady emergency surgery at a time, from poking through all of his medical texts while waiting to be given the gift of a painless death, from watching informants be kept alive against their own will to have them spill more secrets. “His airways are still damaged. The fall…”
It broke his neck. Along with so many of his bones. In some way, it’s a mercy that he’s been comatose since the cataclysm. Safer for his body.
But not for his mind.
Chuuya doesn’t dream. But he remembers. And trapped in this half-alive and half-waking state that’s bad enough.
Yosano is frowning, and Dazai can see that she’s coming to believe him too, beginning to throw off the narrative written about them and to apply her own reasoning. She knows Dazai. She trusted him, once. And if nothing else she knows how cunning he is. No plan of his would ever do this to his partner. And if the disaster had all been to his plans, he would have moved on to the next phase of whatever scheme he had instead of spending the intervening months playing nurse to one of the casualties.
Her mouth sets in a grim line. Violet eyes fix on Dazai’s. And in that moment, an angel of death offers her mercy.
“This is going to take a few sessions. And I’m going to have to re-break some of the bones so that they heal correctly.”
The relief is staggering.
“I’ll use my ability on him between each session.” Otherwise, Chuuya will rip her and everything around them apart in a panic as the doctor butchers him again and again until he heals fully. “I have morphine for him, if you have to give him time between treatments. Or if we can use it on him beforehand.”
The fact that he hasn’t just used the morphine himself says something to both of the members of the Agency. He knows, because he would draw the same conclusions. Only two years as a detective, and he can still think like one of them now. They know Dazai’s proclivities. The fact that he hasn’t just committed suicide or spent the time in a drugged-out haze lets them know just how important Chuuya is to him. He’s hidden this particular vulnerability for years, but laying it out into the open now is how he can still save Chuuya.
“My ability would treat morphine like poison.” The bag unzips, and Yosano’s hand dips in to jostle her equipment in a clang of metal against metal. “This is going to be hard for you to watch. Harder for him, though.”
Dazai had never much been prone to guilt, so he never became inoculated against it. Now it’s rampant in him, unfamiliar and urgent and guiding his every decision. It would have driven him to extreme lengths to drag Yosano to this shipping container as soon as the Agency made the mistake of leading him right to her. In a blast zone of 160 square miles turned into a rat maze of rubble, and with an anchor to return home to every few hours, he’d needed them to come to him first. And had needed to do it in a way that wouldn’t lead the rest of the world hunting them right to his doorstep.
Ranpo’s reemergence spared him having to make enemies or casualties out of any of his former coworkers just to get Yosano here.
Ranpo also knows that Dazai would have reverted right back to the demon he’d been branded as if it saved Chuuya. Yet the detective still insisted that he and Yosano took the mission of following him on their own—as two of the most seasoned members of the agency, it would be insulting to imply that they couldn’t counter Dazai’s ‘nefarious schemes’ if needed.
Because he knew that it’s not a scheme. Just desperation.
Now Ranpo raids Dazai’s supplies, grabbing a can of cut peaches swimming in honey and cracking it open to slurp up the contents, casually rifling through their things. Meanwhile, Yosano draws a hatchet from her bag.
The first time is the hardest. Dazai tenses at the apparent threat to his partner, his fingers flexing as he fights the instinctive need to reach for the guns at his back and protect Chuuya from a danger he can see coming.
He stays back, though, kneeling on the opposite side of the futon with his hands behind his back to keep from reaching out too soon, unwilling to risk nullifying Yosano’s ability when she’ll need it the most.
Arterial blood sprays across clean black sheets, light explodes into a cloud of silver butterflies, and then Chuuya screams. The world lights up scarlet. Then with an ease born of years of practice, Dazai captures Chuuya by the wrist before he can drag all of the matter around him into the event horizon of Tainted. Blue light casts the interior of the shipping container in harsh light as No Longer Human flares into the space between them, the only thing that can hold back Chuuya’s ability.
Chuuya’s panting from the pain, eyes open but unseeing yet, thrust abruptly back into the agony of the rest of his injuries.
Ranpo slurps down another can of honeyed fruit as he settles down beside the table and steals Dazai’s stolen government files.
Yosano raises the hatchet.
“Again.”
Silver. Red. Then blue.
“Again.”
----
It was four weeks after the cataclysm that Kyouka and Akutagawa hunted him down on one of his foraging trips. The two assassins had seemingly melted out of the shadows, Kyouka with all of the stealth that Paul Verlaine had trained into her, and Akutagawa with none of the subtlety that Dazai had tried to beat into him. It was Akutagawa who gave them away and provided him the time to dodge the silver flash of Kyouka’s tanto blade. The rabid dog of the Mafia had gone mad at the disappearance of a sister he’d expected to long outlive him. For him it was personal. For Kyouka, it was a matter of principle.
Neither of them were inclined to listen. Especially once he triggered one of his traps and collapsed the subway line on them.
He knew it wouldn’t kill them—Rashomon and Demon Snow would shred through the rubble in moments. It was Dazai who couldn’t escape injury as the tunnel imploded. The slash of Rashomon had no effect on him, but the way the rubble was blasted away by their abilities was nothing he could avoid in the dark, or disable with a touch.
The pain was blinding, literally—blood stung as it poured into his eye, down his cheek. But he’s endured his fair share of pain and could deal with it once he was safely away. The distraction of the trap was the only chance he would have to slip back to the surface.
It was all a rather poignant confirmation of how the Mafia and the Agency alike viewed his defection and Chuuya’s disappearance. No one doubted their guilt. The only variance was how to act towards them, knowing their crimes. And for some it seems that those actions would be influenced by torn loyalties.
Atsushi watched him from a distance once Dazai was back in the light, eyes like a sunrise and white fur sprouted along arms that ended in deadly claws. The weretiger’s ability could have cleared the distance between them in moments. No Longer Human would have nullified the tiger but also would have left him in arms reach with the potential to grapple with him.
Instead his protege stared down Dazai’s aimed gun with regret etched across his expressive face as he watched from a distance as another twisted father figure turned against him.
He still let Dazai go, escaping just before the ground heaved beneath his feet, sliced to ribbons and consumed by darkness.
Approaching either organization directly was clearly off the table. He couldn’t leave Chuuya to rot by being caught, and more than anyone it was his partner they would be after.
But they had confirmed Dazai was still in Yokohama. He would be hunted relentlessly every day that they stayed, but he couldn’t move Chuuya safely. He would have to learn to avoid ambushes, and to cover his tracks at every step.
His paranoia ran as deep as his protectiveness, hand-in-hand.
He would do whatever he had to, to bring Chuuya back and keep him safe.
----
Yosano is sprawled on the cheap plywood floor of the shipping container, back to the corrugated metal wall and a bottle of the pilfered wine in her lap. Thou Shalt Not Die has always taken a toll on her, and using it again and again in such quick succession, pausing only to snap bones and realign them, has been taxing even for a woman as resilient as her. None of them are well fed or well rested in the wasteland of Yokohama, and Dazai had entrusted her with a Herculean task.
So he doesn’t begrudge her stealing a bottle of Chuuya’s wine. He can’t. Not after what she has given back to him.
He strips the bloodied sheets off of the futon and tosses them into the tub, then gathers Chuuya into his arms so that he can flip the mattress with his foot. Neither of the detectives seem all that surprised by Dazai then settling onto the futon with Chuuya, drawing his partner’s head into his lap, knees framing him protectively as he sleeps. And it’s finally sleep that has claimed him. The difference is almost startling.
Dazai drags his fingers through Chuuya’s hair, a repetitive motion he’s grown used to, reminding Chuuya that he wasn’t alone. He’d been so gentle with it early on, the only part of Chuuya he knew wouldn’t hurt him to touch. Now Dazai doesn’t have to shy away from the scarlet that meets at his temples and his hairline.
Chuuya will hate the vibrant red scars, but Yosano could do nothing for them because they were no longer injuries. They’ll be etched on his skin for the rest of his life, painting a monster out of him, making him question his own humanity every time he catches a glimpse of his reflection.
That is a battle for another day, though. For now, it’s enough that Chuuya will be alive to face those fears.
A hand ruffled through hair. A flip of a page. A swig of wine. They wait in silence until Ranpo sighs and drops the file.
“I already knew all about the government calling in Nakahara, and about them covering up Shibusawa’s attacks six years ago. And I don’t know how you ever missed that your friend was a turncoat several times over, he’s so obvious when he lies.”
Oh, Ango would hate being discussed like this. In the old days, Dazai would have prodded Ranpo further just to listen in amusement as the detective ranted about how inept Ango is. Now all he registers is that the traitor is still alive. He doesn’t know how to feel about that. He never quite knows how to feel about Ango.
“But putting the warrant out for your capture wasn't what he wanted. He thought you’d traded sides. Everyone did.”
“I hadn’t noticed.” Dazai replies, droll. He finds a tangle in Chuuya’s curls, gently unsnarling it by touch so that he can keep his good eye on their visitors. “Ango’s far more adept at that than I am. I’ve only done it the once.”
When he left the Port Mafia for the Agency. Though by Ranpo’s pointed look at the sleeping hat rack with his cheek resting on Dazai’s thigh, the detective disagrees.
“Fair point.” Dazai grants, conceding to the silent correction. It’s clear where Dazai’s loyalties now lay, and it’s not with the Agency or the Mafia. It’s all held in Chuuya’s tiny, brutal, scarred hands.
“Your allies were all turned against you. He really wanted to take you both off of the board.” Ranpo doesn’t need to explain his worry—while the detective has the keener intellect, Dazai is the strategic genius of the two of them, the one devising battle plans for the Agency’s most sweeping conflicts. And Chuuya remains a nuclear bomb, controlled only by his bond with Dazai. Of course they were targeted.
“Don’t count us out of the equation yet.”
It may be a somewhat cryptic conversation to Yosano’s ears, but as long as Ranpo understands what has happened, then he’ll beat it into the skulls of the rest of them over time. There’s no use belaboring the point.
Besides, Dazai can tell by the slightest hitch in Chuuya’s breathing that he’s waking up. That he’s trying to reorient himself. Dazai trails his fingertips feather-light down the tense line of his partner’s now healed neck, letting the gentle wash of his ability respond to Chuuya’s instinctive grasp for his own. For years the faint hum of No Longer Human against Chuuya’s skin in his first waking moment has acted as silent proof of who’s got him after Corruption, and let him settle no matter where they’d found themselves. The familiar reassurance lets Chuuya go limp again, no longer rallying himself for a fight and instead letting his thoughts slowly clear.
Dazai resumes gently combing his fingers through soft red curls.
“I didn’t think he was your type.” Yosano drawls from the floor, tipping the open wine bottle in their direction, reading the intimacy of their position and drawing her own conclusions. For Ranpo, it’s all just neatly categorized data, transformed into facts that support his instinctive conclusions. Yosano reads the people in a way Ranpo doesn’t ever bother puzzling out. “How long has this been going on?”
Dazai huffs a sardonic laugh, looking down at the troublesome shrimp in his lap, one of his arms still curled around Dazai’s knee. “There’s never been a ‘type.’ Just Chuuya. Anyone else was just a placeholder.”
“That is equal parts terrifyingly sociopathic and disgustingly sentimental.”
True. But he won’t apologize for it. Not to her, not to Ranpo who makes a retching sound, and not to Chuuya whose nose scrunches faintly.
“…sociopathic is right.” His voice is a muffled croak where his face is pressed to Dazai’s thigh, but he’s still lax, still exhausted. Months of being bed-bound cannot be counteracted by Yosano’s ability. Even with Dazai’s meticulous care to feed and hydrate him and work each limb through motions to keep him from losing circulation, he’s been drained by months of inactivity. He had been a pint sized dynamo even without his ability and no one would call his body weak even now, but he’s lost much of the muscle tone. He likely aches all over from the healing too. “Where…”
All three of them fall silent at his first words. And all three of them can tell the moment the memories slam back into him.
“No…” Chuuya scrambles out of Dazai’s lap and off the futon until his back hits the wall, shoulder knocking into the rickety table with its books, sending them crashing to the ground. He flinches away from the sound, blue eyes wide in horror and unseeing. His breath is ragged and strained, and he raises his hands to cover his eyes as if to block out the memories. His hands stop halfway, suspended in the air.
“No.” Black stains his fingertips, crude runic eyes emblazoned across the back of his hands, sinuous lines of red that crawl up his arms. The panic is immediate. Dazai knows to offer his hand, knows that Chuuya will reach for it instinctively as if he can’t be trusted with his own ability. As Dazai drops down beside Chuuya, it’s no surprise that his partner holds his hand in a vice grip that would be crushing were he not still weakened. “No, I didn’t… tell me that…”
But he knows he didn’t dream it. Knows he doesn’t dream.
Yosano watches it all with some measure of sympathy that speaks of horrified realizations in her own past. Ranpo watches while filing away what it reveals of Chuuya’s mental state and his possibility as a continued threat. And Dazai pulls Chuuya up against his chest and coils arms around him, sheltering Chuuya’s body if not his mind.
Chuuya created an apocalyptic wasteland of the city he loves. And he remembers every moment of it.
The grief is understandable.
And the rage that follows is predictable too, the way it swells in him, the way he finds his target. Chuuya is anything but weak-willed, and even now as he’s reeling in devastation that will haunt him for the rest of his life, he knows exactly who he’ll be killing next.
“Dostoevsky, that rat bastard…”
Dazai presses a hand to Chuuya’s cheek and a thumb over his lips to silence him, tilting his head back to look into his partner’s eyes, holding him there with a firm grip and a piercing stare. There’s a savage sort of fury to his tone, the cold mirror to Chuuya’s own fiery temper.
“I know. I figured it out right away. Dostoevsky has a page from the book, Chuuya. He used it in order to use you. This wasn’t you. ”
Ranpo drew that conclusion already, but it’s the first time Yosano even considers it. That is the influence of the book, too—turning friends, family, comrades, the government and the world against them.
Nakahara Chuuya would die before he destroyed Yokohama. He went there prepared to die in protection of the city and in protection of Dazai. Dazai needs the two detectives to know it, to understand it, to explain it and lead others to fight the influence of the book. Dazai doesn’t want Chuuya to have to face down the Mafia, or Dazai the Agency. He’s counting on the detectives to keep that from happening. The rest of the world can hate them, can hunt them, but Chuuya would only falter in the face of his former family.
Chuuya is a criminal. But he is not a monster. He will be branded as one for the rest of his life, both literally and metaphorically, but Dazai will not let him forget that he is human.
And guilty or innocent, Dazai and Chuuya are the most devastating partnership in history. Now, they’re singularly united in one cause.
Dazai’s lips press to Chuuya’s, less a kiss and more a possessive declaration and a vengeful promise.
A threat against any that would stand between them or rise against them.
“We are going to take that page from him. And then we will make him pay.”
The Agency, the Mafia, and the world would do well to stay out of their way.
----
It took three months for the rat trap to close.
Ranpo knew it first.
The Agency had relocated temporarily to Kawasaki, just outside of the blast radius, and resumed their operations to counteract Kamui and the Decay of Angels. Ranpo was the center of the operation and for that he needed electricity, communications… a roof and running water and actual food didn’t hurt, either.
The alerts he had set went haywire as he was on the phone with Kenji and Atsushi, and he hung up immediately and sent his office chair skidding across the floor to look at the seismic activity, to pinpoint the location.
“Ranpo? What’s happening?” Tanizaki was waved away as green eyes fixed on the readings that played out across a screen.
An earthquake with no leading tremors. An explosion.
“Get back into Yokohama. Now.”
“But…”
But the seismic readings were for a place hundreds of miles away.
It wouldn’t matter. Moments later, motion was detected in a city of ghosts.
“Let’s go.” Kunikida didn’t ask questions as Tanizaki had—he could recognize that Ranpo wouldn’t snap orders without a reason, and that the reason would be clear to them by the time they made it there.
And it was. It was clear as soon as they reached the outskirts of the rubble, where reconstruction had just begun.
Civilians. Unpowered, average civilians. Over three million of them; strangers, loved ones, family. They staggered out of an unseasonable fog into rubble and decay.
Undoing the destruction wouldn’t have fit narratively into the story that the demon Fyodor had written. Clearing their names at that point was impossible, and they’d racked up crimes since then in their pursuit. But with a few strokes of the pen in crowded margins, there was one last thing that they could do.
Shibusawa’s ability had always lifted before, even as it resurrected again and again after his body’s death. Over a year later, that fog lifted one last time.
Life. It was the last and greatest gift that the fugitives Dazai Osamu and Nakahara Chuuya could give to the people of a city they once loved.
Ranpo closed his tabs, stopped his tracking, and shut his eyes for just a moment.
And then he helped Soukoku disappear.
----
The humidity makes Dazai’s skin tacky with sweat, makes the bandages on his arms and neck itch, makes being curled around a tiny furnace a discomfort that he masochistically refuses to give up even in his sleep. Outside, birds begin their infuriating morning revelry, obnoxiously dragging Dazai to consciousness.
Chuuya breathes slowly, still in his arms, eyes closed.
Usually, Chuuya is the first awake--carefully rationing into the kettle the coffee Dazai disguises himself to trek into the nearest village to buy, scrambling eggs from said obnoxious birds, using Tainted to continue his latest construction project on their little stolen bit of countryside, as if competitively building a much better home than Dazai had been able to fashion around him in ruins.
The thought resurrects old anxieties. Memories of sneaking through ruins for every supply, paranoid of leaving a trail.
Memories of Chuuya still as death, confined to a bed, silent.
He doesn’t like those memories.
Chuuya snatches his wrist the second Dazai digs a finger in between his ribs, too light a sleeper after being hunted for so long. “Poke me again and I bite your finger off.”
His voice is hoarse with sleep, and Dazai grins down into his hair while his arm is dragged back around his exhausted partner. Chuuya presses Dazai’s hand against his chest over the steady drum of a heartbeat to silently reassure him.
“Give me five fucking minutes to wake up, then I’ll get around and make your breakfast, you leech.”
“Says the one clinging to me.” Dazai teases, drumming trapped fingertips against Chuuya’s toned and tanned chest demonstratively. “But I guess you can’t be a leech if you’re a slug. Closely related though.”
“Bite me.” Chuuya grumbles, bracing himself to sit up, but Dazai tightens his arm to make it impossible without a struggle.
“Ah, see, I would but then I wouldn’t be dodging the leech accusation very well.”
Chuuya snorts, and then peels Dazai’s arm off of him over whining protests. Dazai watches as he stretches with a yawn, eyes tracing over scars that are fading to pink as they age, refusing to tan with the rest of him but no longer as startling.
His partner rolls off of the bed and then pads barefoot across creaking wooden floors that neither of them have an inclination to fix, more comfortable in their learned paranoia with the idea that any step into their home would alert them immediately.
Glancing at the clock Chuuya waves a hand at him absently as he steps into the bathroom. “It’s about time. Go let doc glasses and the detective pick your brains.”
The system they’d worked out involved a rotating schedule of check-in times and a series of clicks and beeps and static on an old radio, comprehensible only to them—proof of life and relaying information, relying on Dazai’s intellect and battle plans to get them through the new conflicts.
It keeps Dazai’s overactive mind busy, even in their semi-retirement. It gives him something to do, and it will let them know if anyone ever catches their scent.
They won’t. And if they try, they won’t live to regret it.
Retirement suits Chuuya, and Dazai lingers as he watches the slug get ready for his day—torn jeans and a t-shirt he’ll end up peeling off when the afternoon heat gets to him far more reminiscent of his early days as a street rat than the years he spent as a wealthy crime lord. He tames his hair into a loose ponytail, then ties on his boots to go gather more eggs. Even dressed down and with otherworldly markings painting his skin, Dazai finds him captivating.
He hadn’t been kidding when he answered Yosano. It’s only ever been Chuuya for him. From now on it only ever will be.
And Chuuya is alive. So vibrantly, sometimes obnoxiously, always undeniably alive. Still weighed down by misplaced guilt, but working through it as they fashion a home around themselves in seclusion.
Dazai has beaten fate, defeated the enemy, and will take out anyone who dares to break their peace.
It’s enough.