Chapter Text
A thick, heavy kick to the gut awoke Dazai, sending blood right up his gut, grazing quickly up his throat and out of his lips, spewing onto the floor. Reflexively, his body attempted to keel forward from the force of impact, but was quickly made aware of the restraints around his arms, wrists, neck, thighs, ankles and stomach. A little overkill, but it was apparently doing its job, keeping Dazai at bay.
There was only one thing more horrifying than hearing a voice emanate from the shadows. Hearing a Russian voice emanate from the shadows.
In the corner of the room, out slunk Fyodor, the space beside him unusually empty without the presence of a certain clown that Dazai couldn’t stand.
“Well,” Fyodor clicked his tongue, a sound that morphed into a chuckle, that disgustingly sultry voice. “Seems you’re in a spot of bother, now, aren’t you, Dazai-san?”
Dazai physically cringed at the words, the vagueness that even he couldn’t replicate. Dazai liked to think he was mysterious and cool, when he really wasn’t, but Fyodor took it to another level, like some lonely teenager who really just was begging for attention. Though, he reminded himself not to think such things of an international terrorist.
“Fyodor, what a pleasure it is!” Dazai smiled before his lips went loose, his face wincing again at the feeling of Fyodor’s foot smashing against his guts again. “Or not,” He croaked.
“If that’s what you’d like to call it,” Fyodor mewled, retracting his leg and shifting his weight to one side of his hip. “What a happy reunion this is, in your eyes.”
“Very h-happy.” Blood trickled down his chin, almost choking on it.
The Russian drawl to Fyodor’s voice was nothing short of bone-chilling. Dazai wasn’t afraid of Fyodor, per-se, but there were times where even he was frightened by his actions. Time and time again, he’d felt just out of reach of putting him to an end. Close, but no cigar.
“Let’s talk, Dazai,” Fyodor crouched, hand grabbing a fistful of Dazai’s thick hair, pulling his head back to meet his eyes. He still had that same ignorant and mocking smile indented into him.
Dazai was hardly able to speak without his words becoming coated in blood. “Talk about what?”
“Everything! It is about time we catch up, no? I have much to discuss with you. And you have much to discuss with me.”
“Is that clown still dicking you down?” Fyodor clenched his hair and pulled on it in response to his snide comment. “Ow. Sorry.”
Fyodor sinisterly smiled at the pain on Dazai’s face. That look of being lost, but not giving up. It was so idiotically determined.
“When I said discuss things,” Fyodor began, shoving Dazai’s head back before standing again, letting his head whip back and hit the back of the chair. “I meant much more exciting things than that. There is so much more to life, do you not think?”
“I think you’re asking the wrong guy,” Dazai managed to laugh, disheartened. “My hobbies include trying to kill myself and trying to kill myself again .”
Fyodor began pacing, tormenting Dazai even more, it seemed. He didn’t understand why he was here. Why he’d been kidnapped. Why he was taken by Fyodor.
“There is much more, even to you, and you know it,” He chided. “That ‘much more’ is one Chuuya Nakahara, is it not?”
Dazai lowered his head and scowled at the man. After everything they’d been through together in their lives, Dazai felt as if he had the right to get annoyed over someone using Chuuya’s name in vain, particularly Fyodor. Despite the rift in their worlds created by Dazai joining the Agency, they had always found their way back to one another. The alliance, proposed by Dazai himself, was a driving factor in pulling them back together.
“Let’s talk about something else.” Dazai commanded, disregarding the fact that he was the one who was currently strapped to a chair. He gritted his teeth, arms tensing in the grip of whatever was binding his wrists.
Fyodor turned his head to look at Dazai, a wistful expression on his face. “Oh, how I love how feisty you get when someone mentions him. It’s adorable.” He dragged out the word ‘adorable,’ rubbing salt in the wound.
“You’re out your depth if you’re talking about Chuuya,” Dazai pressed. “I’d be careful if I were you.”
“I don’t mean any harm talking about him,” Fyodor reassured him. “I would just like to know a few things. After all, you are exceptionally close with him, are you not?”
“There you go again, asking all this vague shit-” Dazai reigned it in before he could be hit again, laughing sheepishly. “Close with him, huh? You could say that.”
A horrible feeling then surfaced in the pits of Dazai’s stomach, and it wasn’t just the internal bleeding. It stung him. He looked up at Fyodor as if his eyes were locking onto a target.
“What are you going to do with Chuuya?” He spoke, the realisation evident. After Yokohama, if there was one thing Dazai wasn’t willing to let Fyodor destroy - no matter how capable he was - it was Chuuya.
“Nothing, nothing!” Fyodor waved his arms innocently, beginning to circle around Dazai’s chair, his heels coming screeching to a halt every once in a while just to put Dazai even more on edge. “I merely wish to know exactly what it is that makes you two so… entwined, shall we say. Perhaps just as much as Nikolai and I.”
Dazai became entirely freaked out when Fyodor took a small pocket knife up to him, not phased as he did that, but completely lost for words as Fyodor simply leaned over and cut a strand of his hair off. He shuddered as Fyodor retracted, placing the knife back in his coat pocket along with the hair. What a freak.
“You love him, no?” Fyodor asked. “Surely.”
“Ha-ha.” He pretended to laugh, deadpan. That was the furthest thing from an answer to Fyodor’s question. It didn’t indicate either a yes or a no.
“Regardless,” He continued. “You have a deep bond with him that many others cannot replicate. Such is the result of your history. A God of Calamity residing within him… What a powerful weapon.”
“Chuuya is not a weapon.”
“You are so quick to label anything that is far from a human human, aren’t you?”
“Chuuya’s not inhuman, either.”
Fyodor clicked his tongue at his stubbornness. Dazai was often a man of too many words, and became irritating when he wasn’t. He did wonder what he meant by his last statement, though. Quick to label inhuman things as human? If Chuuya was merely an example, who else was he meant to insinuate?
“If anything were to happen to him,” Fyodor said, Dazai’s blood pressure rising indefinitely at the words. “I have no doubts you would spring into action almost immediately. Convincing the world you hate him, yet finding it so difficult to stay away.”
“It's the other way around. He’s a dog,” Dazai spat. “He’s useful to me. But not in whatever ways you have in mind.”
“A dog? You might as well bark at this point, Dazai-san. You did go chasing after the Port Mafia even after you left, did you not?”
“I- Stop it.”
“Is he so broken because of you that he finds it acceptable to let you back into his life? Is that why you formed that petty little alliance?”
“Keep your nose out of the Agency’s business. You almost sound jealous,” Dazai felt blood bubbling behind his teeth again.
“You two are so pro-active. What would happen to Yokohama if the two of you were separated? That trust? That bond?”
…
Unbeknownst to Dazai, in the next dim room over, Chuuya had found himself in the exact same situation. Wound to a chair, though trying to move by scraping it along the floor - his attempts to move were futile.
“Who the fuck is in here, damn it?!” He yelled through the soundproof walls. “I’m bored as fuck! If you’re trying to kill me, come and do it already!”
Irritated by his inability to stay still for even five minutes, a man stepped into the room, his figure becoming illuminated in the light. He groaned, shoulders slouched as he shook his head when his eyes scanned Chuuya’s body.
“Why did he have to give me you?” Nikolai whined. “I would have had so much more fun tormenting Osamu-san!”
Chuuya nearly growled at the mention of Dazai, trying to kick his feet, but finding them stuck to the legs of the chair, too.
“Dazai?” He asked, desperately. “Where the hell is that fucker?! And who are you?”
Nikolai felt his legs turn to jelly as Chuuya shouted, already feeling drained from having to talk to him. While Dazai and Fyodor were practically having a battle of wits next door, Nikolai and Chuuya were already fighting like literal children.
“I would tell you, but I can’t be bothered, so I’m not going to!” Nikolai grinned, pulling his staff from his coat and twirling it around before stabbing it down against the cold, concrete floor of the desolate room.
Chuuya’s head was pounding, physically, feeling the blood rushing through his veins. He could hardly keep his head perched on his shoulders, his eyelids flickering as he would have felt the urge to give in to sleep if he weren’t so angry.
“Now, now,” Nikolai stepped forward. “I wouldn’t be worried. You’re in good hands.”
“The good hands of a fucking jester? The hell even are you, anyway? You run away from the circus?”
Nikolai simply stared at him, his face falling flat as he pushed up the patch over his eye. He stuck a hand back into his cape.
“Hey! Answer me, bitch!”
Nikolai’s hand appeared next to one of Chuuya’s, and he looked down, exasperated. So he was an ability user - the cane wasn’t just a bad magic trick.
“Wh-“ He tried to talk before his hand was pulled through the small portal, appearing next to Nikolai, his gloved hand grasping Chuuya’s painfully.
“Let’s not make noise, now. I’m simply here to kill time before my darling Fyodor gets back!”
Chuuya nearly choked on his breath at the mention of Fyodor.
Nikolai stayed a comfortable distance from Chuuya as he pulled off Chuuya’s own glove, revealing a stubby and rough hand covered in cuts and bruises, along with a tiny tattoo on his wrist - a picture of a slug. Nikolai grinned.
His fingers coiled around Chuuya’s index finger, leaving him confused, before snapping it backwards with a deeply disgusting crack.
Chuuya hurled in pain, his hand freezing to the touch. He lurched forward as much as he could in the chair he was bound to.
“Fuck!” He yelled, strained, his eyes stinging red. “The- The hell was that for?!”
Nikolai hummed as Chuuya’s screams of agony filled the room. An ecstatic laugh jumped up his throat, overjoyed with the tortured sounds Chuuya let escape himself.
“What’s the p-point of this?” Chuuya managed to stutter over the pain of his broken finger. “You having fun yet, asshole? What do you want from me?”
Nikolai flashed another toothy grin, accompanied by a hollow, eerie, dry giggle. The fact he refused to tell Chuuya what he was doing here was even worse. Where was Dazai when he needed him? Nearby, apparently.
A second snap! followed by guttural, choked screaming again filled the room, bouncing off the walls and reverberating through Chuuya’s head. Two of Chuuya’s calloused fingers were now bent completely backwards, twitching, the skin aching, contorting in ways that were anything but painless. Chuuya wanted to cry, hard. He was practically seething as his breathing reached a speed it never had done before, finding it hard to get enough air into his lungs while Nikolai snapped the bone on his middle finger now.
“Two down,” Nikolai sang. “Wonder if we’ll get through all of them before Dostoy makes his return! He sure is taking a long time…”
“Answer my question,” Chuuya begged. “What am I doing here, clown boy?”
Nikolai stared at Chuuya’s hand as if playing eeny-meeny-miny-moe as if to decide which finger to fracture next. It sent bullets of sweat down Chuuya’s back.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” Nikolai grinned. “That’s my darling Fyodor’s job!”
Chuuya felt his throat being ripped to shreds through shrieks as Nikolai forced back his ring finger now, another gory noise coming from his broken hand becoming brutally mutilated.
…
“You’ll never tear us apart,” Dazai grinned up at Fyodor, his face bloody and bruised now, blood steadily flowing from his mouth like a waterfall. “He always finds his way back to me.
“We’ll see about that,” Fyodor smiled sweetly as Dazai continued to try and wrestle his way out of the chair. He was one of the most powerful people in all of Japan, Dazai - just what exactly was keeping him bound to this chair that he couldn’t break? He tried to calm his mind with the thought that Chuuya would find him soon. Yes, Chuuya would come for him - everything would be okay. Chuuya would find him, kick their asses and get Fyodor long enough for them to make their escape, Chuuya would scold him and lecture him on how reckless he was, reprimand him for being an idiot, and would be once again reminded of how much he cared about Dazai.
Little did they know, it’d be a long time before they ever saw each other again. As the same people to one another.
“Go on. Try anything. We’ll find our way back to one another.”
A cloaked figure stepped out of the shadow where Fyodor had been a few minutes prior to his torrent assault on Dazai’s restrained body, kick after swift kick. He managed another laugh, maintaining eye contact with Fyodor.
“What will everyone do when Double Black is finally disbanded?” His hand reached out to Dazai’s chin, the pads of his fingers lifting his limp, bashed head. “Why don’t we find out, Dazai, dear?”
“We’ll always find each other.” Dazai’s words were cut off as he felt a shock go through him - but not in the sense of an actual electrocution. A hand placed itself on top of his head, not Fyodor’s, but the figure dressed and masked in black. He fought it for a moment before his head dropped, falling asleep.
…
“Dos-kun!!” Nikolai pulled his hand out of his coat at lightning fast speed, Chuuya crying out in pain as his hand fell, his fingers still bent backwards, bleeding. Nikolai threw his arms around Fyodor’s neck, planting a chaste kiss on his cheek.
“Sweetheart,” Fyodor gently pushed him away, but with force. His voice was quiet, in a far different register than it had been when talking with Dazai. “Not now.”
Nikolai’s lips formed in the shape of an ‘O’ and he nodded with quick understanding, moving a distance away from him and placing his hands on his hips, letting Fyodor take over. A few short moments passed and the cloaked figure who’d put Dazai unconscious with their ability entered the room, all three of them stepping up to Chuuya. He looked up at them like he was being met by angels of the afterlife.
“Where is he?” Chuuya growled. “Where’s Dazai? You said his name! That one!” Chuuya pointed at Nikolai.
Fyodor’s head turned to look in Nikolai’s direction. He was met with a shrug, and Fyodor literally facepalmed, sighing disappointedly at Nikolai. A whine left his lips and Fyodor merely rolled his eyes.
“I didn’t mean to!” Nikolai objected. “Don’t be mad, Dostoyyy!” He pleaded, pettily.
“Yes, yes, I know,” Fyodor waved his hand dismissively at him as he looked back down at Chuuya. “It’s fine. Not like he’ll remember in a few moments, anyway.”
“Excuse me?” Chuuya spoke up, his voice beginning angry, but fading into shock and astonishment. “Remember- Remember what? Hey! Remember what?”
“Dazai.” Fyodor affirmed.
“What?”
The ability user’s fingers laid themselves on top of Chuuya’s head, just like Dazai, and his body went heavy, trying to turn away like a cat touching water, before he promptly fell asleep. Dazai and Chuuya’s bodies sat perched unconscious in their respective chairs, only a wall separating them. And they had no idea.
“We’ll always find each other.”