Work Text:
A dream.
Summer heat beat down mercilessly on his unprotected head. Sweat formed on his brow; black hair stuck to his face in clumps.
The park was empty save for the two of them.
He was sitting under a tree, looking up. Chuuya, perched on said tall, blood-red cherry tree, smiled sadly down at him - and that was how he knew it was a dream, such a gentle smile was something Chuuya would never deign to show him –
...Blood-red?
He woke up gasping: his eyes darted wildly, glanced at the digital watch flashing red numbers at him. 12:15.
As always, the park was empty.
It shouldn't be empty at this time of year, but even the rowdiest of children would not venture out into the blistering midsummer heat. He knew he wouldn't. He liked to curl up at home, turn the air conditioning to max and wrap himself in a blanket for the entire day. He was weird like that.
...But then, why was he here?
"Shitty Dazai, I asked you a question."
Chuuya was mad. Chuuya was always mad. It felt comforting, like a routine he could always depend on to get a hold of his life, so he countered almost effortlessly.
"Ah, but Chuuya's voice was so tiny I couldn't hear you~ By the way, is Chuuya so high up because you like to be tall?" He said as if lecturing a child - which, make no mistake, Chuuya was to begin with. Familiar, angry, tiny Chuuya threw tantrums and screamed and forgave Dazai's many mistreatments of him just like a lonely child. How lovely, how convenient. How predictable, the way Chuuya's face was growing redder by the second and his hands were curled into fists and he looked like he wanted nothing more than to jump down and punch Dazai's face.
But he didn't.
Appalling. Unusual. Not like him. Wrong. Something was wrong, with him, with Chuuya. Words assaulted his mind at the speed of a bullet, crashed into him like a freight train –
"Chuuya?"
Dazai asked, tentatively – ah, how he hated the word. It was a surrender, a white flag he had been forced to wave going against certain kinds of people but certainly not against Chuuya. Not against small, predictable, familiar Chuuya.
Who was this person?
"Dazai." Not-Chuuya answered.
Placidly.
Calmly.
Unforgivable.
But before he could voice any of the thoughts that raced through his mind, Chuuya continued. "I really, really hate summer."
He said.
With no hatred, no malice.
And Dazai didn't know how to answer to that – the sad smile on Chuuya's face prevented him from any witty comebacks, but he remembered something. "What did you want to ask me about?"
"Ah, that.
What time is it?"
He was a little disappointed, but more relieved. It was disappointingly and yet so calmingly normal.
"12:13."
"Is that so."
And that was how the sparse, unusual conversation between them went. Chuuya didn't talk. Dazai was left to fend off his own demons. Chuuya waited. Dazai tried to mentally reason out the strangeness of his partner's behavior. Chuuya –
Chuuya jumped down and ran.
"Chuu –"
Dazai stood up and chased after him purely on reflex.
But Chuuya was stronger, faster. He ran across the park, through the grass, even though Dazai knew he would never subject his tacky, expensive shoes to such rough treatment. He reached the street - empty, naturally - just as Dazai nearly caught up.
He smiled –
And threw himself onto the road –
Onto the path of a truck rushing forth out of nowhere like a bullet, like a freight train –
And as Chuuya mouthed two words as the life faded out of his eyes and the tang of blood hit his nose and blood spattered on his face Dazai could feel himself breaking –
Just a little.
He woke up gasping like a drowning man.
The time had been 12:15.
What time was it?
12:00, the clock on his bedside helpfully supplied in red numbers.
Red like Chuuya's blood.
Dazai remembered. The scent of his blood. The look in his eyes. His final words. The scenes that were so vivid they could not have been a dream, for dreams did not have the aftershock of Chuuya’s screams, the suffocating scent of blood, his whispered farewell.
Bye-bye.
See you again tomorrow. It's okay, we will meet again, we have all the time in the world – something like that.
Ridiculous. Insane. Un-Chuuya-like. Unforgivable.
The park, as always, was empty. Chuuya was perched on one of the lower branches of the cherry tree, just like he remembered.
He was humming something – a song, a poem? It didn't matter. He noticed Dazai, stopped humming and leaned back against the trunk, looking at the clear, cloudless sky.
Too bad. It was a good melody. A lovely tune, a beautiful, familiar voice.
"Dazai," Chuuya said in mock-disgust once he was within hearing distance. "Still regrettably alive, I see." And then, in a calmer voice, "What time is it?"
This time, Dazai answered. "12:07."
"Is that so."
So ended Chuuya's script, and they spent the next few minutes in silence only punctuated by the crickets’ cries. But Dazai didn't like the nagging feeling he'd been having the entire time he had been here, so he spoke up.
"Chuuya."
"What is it?"
"I'm bored. Chuuya is boring."
"And you are a waste of human skin." Chuuya half-heartedly fired back an insult that might as well be a light breeze of wind. "What do you want?"
"Who are you?" The question escaped him before he realized it.
Chuuya's eyes widened in surprise.
He shouldn't have said that. He should have kept quiet and not alert Chuuya to something very wrong he's feeling about this entire situation. A stupid mistake he definitely would not make again.
Something told him he would not have a chance to make that mistake again.
And because his intuition has never been wrong, he was ready when Chuuya leapt down from the branch, graceful and lithe as a black cat, and snagged the other's arm before he could escape from the cool shadow of the cherry tree.
"L-Let me go!" Chuuya panicked, screamed, desperately tried to tear away; Dazai could probably hold him back for two more seconds at most.
But that was already enough. He had already seen the terror in those blue eyes.
And so Chuuya overwhelmed him with brute force and ran away; Dazai gave chase purely on reflex. Chuuya took a hard right at the gate, steps echoing on the pavement, shadow darting about the park's outer walls; Dazai had to skid to a stop to avoid throwing himself onto the road.
Chuuya whipped his head back at him in fear –
In retrospect, it was almost beautiful. The way the entire ground trembled; the way gravity pulled the steel beams suspended in midair by flimsy steel cables down to Earth, forces of nature turning blunt edges as deadly as the sharpest swords –
And as they impale Chuuya's body, his legs, his stomach –
He smiled again and mouthed those two words again before even that was swallowed by a tearing scream; and Dazai saw nothing but red from rage, from fresh blood –
He woke up trembling like a terrified child.
The time was 12:15.
The third time. He tried to make Chuuya leave the park. Stubborn Chuuya refused, as always.
Dazai was left staring at his glassy eyes and broken neck barely five minutes later.
Fourth time. He took Chuuya by surprise and dragged him away from this cursed park.
His strength didn't hold out. As they fought Chuuya tripped and fell; his head cracked open on a jagged rock neither had noticed in their struggle.
Fifth time...
What was it?
Seventh. He tried to kill himself.
Chuuya jumped down to tear the gun away from him; his gloved hand closed on the trigger. Dazai looked down in disgust at the smoking gun on his hand, the still-warm body and the bullet wound straight through the other’s heart.
Eighth, ninth, tenth. A pair of bloodied scissors, a noose made of bandages, wide-open eyes still visible five stories below.
Eleventh, twelfth. The warm, familiar body riddled with gunshot wounds. Chuuya's scent tinged with the smell of blood invading his senses.
He remembered the thirteenth and fourteenth time well.
It had been an experiment. He had wanted to see what would happen if Chuuya died before 12:15. Thirteenth, he shot Chuuya at point-blank range, at 12:06. Fourteenth, he stabbed Chuuya with his own knife; the time, 12:11.
Both times, he woke up in a sweat. The time was 12:15.
If there was anything strange, it was that Chuuya did not resist. He ran straight towards death without a second thought.
Acceptance.
Like a death row prisoner headed for the gallows.
Like a man who had nothing else to live for, who looked at a bottle of sleeping pills and saw peace.
Annoying. For the first time in his monotone, boring life Dazai felt annoyance, because if there was one thing he knew about those who sought death, it was that they could not be predicted. Chuuya could not be predicted, Dazai did not know what he would do – and the thought sent him into a rage. It felt wrong. That was not Chuuya. The Chuuya he knew was kind no matter what he blabbered in his drunken rants; the Chuuya he knew was easy to read, and always angry and ridiculous and always too compassionate for his profession.
This was not him. This sad-smiling foreign doll was not him.
And so the fifteenth time, he pushed Chuuya onto the path of the incoming truck; praying for this cruel imitation of Chuuya to disappear, for this dream to end.
The blinking 12:15 stared back at him.
...How many times had it been?
He could not remember.
Dazai Osamu was not a man interested in self-preservation, not by any means. He didn’t care about himself any more than he cared about other people. He had tried to commit suicide many times – it’s just that the attempts never stuck.
In a way, it could be said that he was not allowed to die.
How many times…
If he were to count it in times, it would be in the hundreds, thousands. If he were to count it in days, years would have passed. Years of the choking scent of blood, red-stained orange hair, a broken body that did not even resemble the tiny, angry man it once was.
And people wondered why he always wanted to commit suicide.
Dazai Osamu was not a man interested in self-preservation. It was simply that he was selfish; a selfish, good-for-nothing who stole the life away from all those around him. It was for that reason that he was now alive, looking down at this dead body that foolishly leapt forward and took a sniper round for him.
In that moment, what ran through his mind was, rather than any trace of compassion, blinding jealousy.
Even though he wanted death more than anyone else. Even though Chuuya surely wanted to live more than he could ever hope to.
Why him?
Why save the man who could never empathize with anyone by sacrificing the man who had the capacity to understand people?
Why did Chuuya get to die?
Jealousy, rage, indignation at the worst injustice he had ever witnessed. Those were the emotions running through his mind at the speed of a bullet as he smashed the blinking digital watch under his feet.
The time was 12:15.
The summer heat beat down mercilessly on his unprotected head. Sweat formed on his brow; black hair stuck to his face in clumps. The park was empty save for the two of them.
He was sitting under a tree, looking up. Chuuya, perched on said tall, blood-red cherry tree, looked down at him. Dazai couldn't see his expression.
“Chuuya?” He started.
“What is it?”
“Are you interested in a double suicide with me?”
“I’m not one of your groupies. Of course not.”
“Hmm.”
The next few minutes passed in silence, punctuated only by the chattering of the crickets and the song Chuuya was humming. He wondered what song that was. It sounded nice.
12:13.
He braced himself for the signal to end everything.
As if on cue, Chuuya leapt down from the tree, sparing a momentary worried look back at Dazai (he did not understand nor deserve it). Dazai chased after him on reflex, but this time he ran faster, used more of his remaining strength, tried harder to catch up; but made sure to stay a reasonable distance away. Chuuya sprinted across the grass without paying attention to the mud getting all over his shoes, reached the crossroad, took an almost imperceptible breath as the traffic lights turn red, and –
.
.
.
.
.
If Dazai could have any wish granted, he would wish for a clean, painless suicide; a supporting actor exiting from the stage in such a graceful, honorable manner that it would take the breath away from any spectator. He made sure to tell anyone who would listen to him more than a second – which is to say, all the women he ever encountered – of his only wish, his ideal (Kunikida would glower at him from across the room at the word).
This, this was far from any ideal he could have conjured up.
Burning rubber. His own bones breaking to pieces. Harsh sunlight blinding him from the blood he would have seen all over his body. Pain so blinding that he wanted to scream despite himself.
And yet Chuuya had gone through this a thousand times over. It almost made him want to laugh. This time, Chuuya never had a second to react before Dazai used his own body as a leverage and flung him away from the street, taking his place. He never had a chance to scream or weep at the inevitable tragedy about to unfold.
He did not need to. After all, it only took a second. But to Dazai who had to feel his body break to pieces, that second felt like an eternity for him to think.
About this cruel dream.
About whether Chuuya could be free from this loop with his sacrifice.
About a god, any god at all, willing to look at his sham of a life and judge how much it was worth.
(Probably a few pennies. That’s around the amount of money he currently had, anyway.)
About his wish finally granted, even though the execution was far from tasteful. Scratch that, it hurt like hell.
And finally, Dazai decided; that even if this choice was nothing more than his hypocrisy and selfishness, if the last thing he could see were Chuuya’s eyes, brimming with tears but very much alive unlike the thousands of times he had failed –
…Yes, maybe it was not so bad after all.
.
.
.
.
.
Once again.
He failed once again.
For maybe the thousandth time, Chuuya swallowed back his tears. There was no point crying for this battered, bloody corpse in front of him, but it still hurt. It never stopped hurting.
Slowly, he hobbled over to where Dazai lay, his blood-stained face forever frozen in a peaceful smile. With a smile like this, he looked so alive – only he was not, and Chuuya scolded himself for entertaining such naïve thoughts.
He failed. That was all.
He would not fail next time.
There was no point crying, because he would save Dazai no matter what it would take. That was the promise he made to himself the first time he had to stare down at Dazai’s corpse broken beyond repair, in a truck accident just like this. He swore that he would never let this be the reality.
Chuuya spared a glance at the watch on Dazai’s wrist – hands lingering for only a second on the rapidly cooling body – and closed his eyes; willed the darkness to swallow him like it had done a thousand times before.
The time was 12:15.