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onlymexsarah · 2 months ago

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Burning Flames IV | Eris Vanserra

Pairing: Eris Vanserra x Archeron!reader Summary: Since you became High Fae there were only two things that scared you: your deadly power and your attraction toward the male you should hate most after Tamlin, Eris Vanserra. Warnings: mention of smut, Eris Vanserra being Eris Vanserra, my english and probably spelling mistakes since I'm also sick A/n: I apologize for my lateness, but uni is kinda taking all my time away. I was dying with the need to write about this scene, and I hope you'll like it🫶🏻 if you want to be add at the taglist just ask! Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5

"Eris is coming to the Winter Solstice celebration at the Hewn City." Rhys informed the Inner Circle while you were discussing alliances for the probable war against Briallyn. "He's shaken by Tamlin catching you two meeting with him," he nodded toward your twin and Cassian. "and wondering if we'll balk from the alliance now that there's the slim chance Tamlin might reveal it. Or decide to sell him out first. We need to remind Eris of our continued commitment, and that he is...important to us. That we have his back."

You heard Cassian snarling with disgust while your sister Feyre echoed the expression.

"So buy him a present," Feyre said, waving a hand. "and tell him we all send our love."

You snorted amused at that. "Don't you have some old, dusty jewels? Give him one of those." You said obvious while you rested your arm on the chair's back..

"He'll want more than that." Rhys said, mouth twiching, and his eyes fell upon Nesta.

Nesta. Rhys wanted to use Nesta to win Eris over. The thought alone made you sick. Why her? Why Rhys thought that Nesta alone could make Eris swung at her feet? He had saved your life, not hers. Actually, he would have let Nesta die if it hadn't been for you and Elain.

But of course, Rhysand couldn't know that. No one knew Eris had saved your life during the war, and strangely enough Eris had never bragged himself nor made any comment.

From what Cassian had said it had seemed that Eris had been interest in flirting with your twin, and you had to admit, he had never tried to flirt with you in any occasion. Actually, he had tried to break your patience. So it did make sense, you supposed. Nesta was the most logical choice.

"You want me to dance with Eris?" asked Nesta caution.

"I want you to seduce him." Rhys' words made your stomach twisting with an unease sensation. You didn't know why you were reacting like that, and you told yourself that it was because you didn't want Nesta close to someone like him. It wasn't because the thought of Eris giving his full attention to someone who wasn't you made you sick. No, you could never want something like that. Someone like him.

"You really think that Nesta's dancing with Eris will solidify his loyalty?" you hadn't meant to make the question sound so...disgusted, but thankfully no one seemed to notice. Actually, most of them echoed your tone.

"I think Eris is our ally, and will expect to dance with a lady of this court at the ball no matter what." Explained Rhys to you, probably mistaking your disgust for worryness. "I won't let Feyre within five feet of him, Mor might kill him, and Amren is more likely to scare him off than win him over, so you, Nesta and Elain are the only options, but from Cassian's report Eris hadn't seem too friendly with you."

Cassian should learn when to shut up, you thought annoyed. Of course Cassian would say that, because Eris had made sure to annoy you at the meeting with Lucien, Vassa and Jurian.

"Was Cassian wrong?" asked Rhys carefully, reading something in your eyes that you quickly hide.

"No." You said with a lazy smile. There was no point in telling them what had happened during the war, probably Eris had already forgotten it too. "He was completely right."

Rhys watched you for few more seconds with his violet eyes that sometime seemed like they could look right inside your soul and read it. You checked your mental shield and found it intact, the fire that you pushed down burned brightly around your mind, protecting it.

***

The black dress you had chosen for the night fell comfortably over your body as you walked down the hall of Hewn City's palace. You had opted for something elegant yet less reveling than Mor's and Feyre's. The straps fell lightly down your shoulders, the bodice had a sweetheart neckline with what looked like black flames over your collarbone. You still had to decide if it was a hint that Rhys knew about your power still lingering in your body, or it was for pure imagine. The flames seemed to fell down your body in a lovely silky gown that captured the lights with each step.

Unfortunately, you now had to wear gloves, because the burned scars had expanded all over your hands, and the gloves was the only way to hide them. Thankfully, since it was winter no one ever questioned them, and tonight you had put some long, black, silky gloves that matched your skirt.

You were currently behind Rhysand and Feyre, between Elain and Nesta as the two of them still were on no speaking term. Tonight was a show of power, with your sister's pregnancy annouce and your twin's beauty offered on a silver plate for the Heir of Autumn.

You had appreaciated how Elain had wanted to come, and it didn't go unnoticed to you that she had opted to wear a plain dress with just two pearls in her hair to not outshine Nesta. Elain had always been the prettiest of the four of you, but tonight it was Nesta's time to shine, and she had gladly disguided herself as plain and boring.

As you entered the throne room every eyes fell on you. Not on you, actually. On your sister's swollen belly. You heard gaspes and whispers all around you. Keir's looked torn between anger and shock, and you had to hide an amused grin.

As your eyes scanned the room with a bored expression, you took you ropportunity to look at the redhead beside Keir, knowing he would be too focus on your sister to notice your staring, but as your eyes fell on the him you found two green pounds already staring at you.

Eris was looking at you. Not at Feyre. Not at Nesta, the one supposed to catch his attention. He was looking only at you, and you hated how your heart skipped a beat.

He looked at you like he could admire you for the first time, and somehow it was true. You both knew that no one would notice your staring at each other, because everyone's attention was on Feyre.

You used every second to drank the sigth of him. Eris was dressed in Night Court black, and you could be damned for how handsomely he was. He looked like the darkest of the dark dreams that someone shouldn't have. That someone be you.

That game was dangerous, you realized. Those stolen glances, stolen moments would lead you only in a dangerous territory. But danger looked so appealing when he let his eyes slowly roam all over your body.

For a moment you felt more naked than Mor and Feyre.

Eris must have noticed the black flames on your dress because he slowly grinned. It wasn's a mocking grin, it wasn't even amused. It was one of Eris' grin that you still had to classify.

His eyes met yours again, and he did the last thing you had expected. He winked at you. He fucking winked.

You felt your cheeks getting warmer and you quickly looked in front of you again, dismissing him as if nothing had happened, and for a moment you wished it hadn't.

As Feyre and Rhysand sat on their thrones, you and your sisters went to stand at the foot of the dais, between Cassian and Azriel who looked like they could kill anyone watching at any of you in a wrong way.

Keir and Eris scuttled forward, and while the former bowed, you pointly avoided to look at the latter. "Allow me to exted my congratulations." said Keir and you knew that he didn't mean a word of it.

"And allow me to extened mine as well," said Eris with a voice that could warm even the coldest spot of the Winter Court. "on behalf of my father and the entire Autumn Court. He shall be thrilled by this news."

Rhysand mouth curled in a cruel half smile, the stars winking iut in his eyes. "I'm sure he will."

Sometime you forgot how powerful and cruel Rhysand could be. He was always gentle and kind with you, with all his family. But the moment that something threated Feyre's life? He become feral, and you were glad for it. You were glad Feyre had found Rhysand.

They gave the crowd some command to make it loose, and when Eris did to follow Keir Rhysand stopped him. "Before you join the merriment, Eris, I'd like to present you with your Solstice gift."

A long black box appeared in his hands, and you tried your best to hide your confusion. Rhysand had never spoken of other gifts beside Nesta, so what was all of this about?

As the box flew to Eris and he opened it you could see the dagger that Nesta had made. You hold your breath as Eris's face went pale. "There's flame in it." He said. "Why give this to me?"

"You're our ally, " Feyre said, a hand resting on her belly. "You face enemies that exist outside of the usual rules of magic. It seemed only fair to give you a weapon that operates outside those rules, too."

You cursed in your mind as Eris understood that the dagger was Made and started to question Rhysand. Eris culd be the monster of everyone's story, but he was no idiot. Actually, you had the suspicious that he might be smarter than he let the other see.

“Ordinarily I would ask you to dance," said Feyre kindly. "but my condition has left me unwell enough that I worry about what so much spinning would do to my stomach.” It was the truth. Feyre had bolted from dinner three nights ago to find the nearest toilet. Now she looked at you and your sisters, as if deciding who would dance with him.

You looked away, not really wanting to see Eris admiring your sister Nesta. You focused your attention on the couples dancing, and you couldn't wait to be among them. You didn't have the same passion as Nesta, but you had always enjoyed it if you had a good partner.

You had asked Morrigan to give you lessons too, just to be able to dance freely with whoever might ask you. It had been fun when you had found Cassian too at Mor's lessons, silently agreeing that you would say nothing about the other.

"One of my oldest sisters shall take my place." you barely heard Feyre's words, knowing she would be gesturing to Nesta, so there would be no point to look away from the musicians.

It was when you heard Nesta stiffining beside you and Elain elbowing you that you looked away and gave the latter a confused look. Elain only inclined her head, pointing to something in front of you.

You furrowed your eyebrow, still confused, and looked where Elain was pointing. Your breath caught in your throat as you found Eris standing in front of you with his hand strechted out.

"If I require right, you are the oldest." He said with that lover's voice that tricked your mind.

You gulped and tried to not let your eyes widining too much as you gave him a nod. "Only by few days."

Why was he not looking at your sister? It was quiet obvious that she was the one planned to be offered to him, the one who looked like a queen. Hadn't Cassian said that Eris had been flirtatious with Nesta? Hadn't Cassian said that Eris seemed to loath you? Then why was he looking like that?

You slowly brought your hand on his, as you had done the day he had saved you, and something about his wicked, sparkling eyes told you he remembered it too.

He brought your hand around his arm, and accompanied you at the center of the dancing floor with a royaly grace. Even throught your gloves you could feel the warmness that his body radiated. A warmness that somehow made your body relax. Hadn't you had asked this to the cauldron? Warm, nice fire? Not the destructive flames that burned inside you.

Eris stopped at the very center of the floor, and you could already feel everyone's gaze on the two of you. What a gossip this would be; one of the High Lady's sisters with the heir of the Autumn Court, dancong at the Winter Solstice.

"Saying that you look gorgeous would be minimalizing." Said Eris as he gently put his free arm around your waist bringing your bodies much closer than they had ever been. "But flames are supposed to be red, not black."

You would have smashed his grin if the violin's hadn't started playing. You put your free hand on his shoulder and rose your chin to meet his eyes, with the fakest, sweetest smile you could master.

You had indeed wanted the dress to be red, because it had always been your favourite colour, but the Night Court's colour was black, and you needed to appear as a unit front.

"I wouldn't want to be mistaken for a member of your beautiful, appealing court." Your tone was soft, not wanting to gain any more stares than what you already had on you, but the sarcasm was there. "I find black perfect for this dress."

You were soo the wrong person to complete the job. Nesta was supposed to seduce him, because Eris didn't rail her up like he did with you. It was impossibile in your mind to even think of being nice with him, let alone flirt.

"What is not perfect is this dance, I'm afraid." he said still with his smirk on his lips. You looked at him confused, and he leaned close to your ear making you hold your breath. "Your High Lord and High Lady look like I have just spilled icy water on them. Aren't you supposed to be the oldest? They seem to think I might eat you in any moment."

His hot breath on your neck made it ashamedly hard to concentrate on what he was saying, and you would never admit to yourself that it was only when he leaned away that you found the capacity to speak again.

"We were all convinced you enjoyed my sister's company more than mine." You managed to say, offering him that truth.

The sound of his dark chuckle was like silk on your skin. His grip on your hadn and waist tightned a little, and you would have ripped his hands away if it would have been any other moment, or any other male.

"And why would I lose time playing with her when I have my perfect match right here?"

Cauldron boils you.

It was a bad, bad, bad, bad thing that you knees almost went weak at his words. It was even worst that your stomach seemed to be dancing its own waltz inside you. It had been so long since someone had touched you like that and hell, no one had ever looked at you like that. Ever.

You told yourself that that was the reason why he was having that effect in you. You had been used to the human's beauty, then you had been too busy to save the world to even notice High Fae's beauty. Eris had just happened to be in the right place at the right time and boom, you were weak on your knees for him.

"Someone might stirr if they heard you calling me your perfect match." You said finding a surprising calm, steady voice. "The future High Lord of the Autumn Court should have no equals."

Something flickered in his eyes as he looked at you with the typical gaze full of secrets. "I have no worries of any equal since you seem so determinated to conceal yourself as a rabbit rather than the dragon that you are."

His words managed to make you shut down every...confusing feeling you had inside and rose your chin a bit higher, watching him with a bored expression. "I have no idea what you are talking about."

"Is that so?" he slightly tilted his head with the same eyes that a predator used to study its opponent. "Then I take the gloves as the newest fashion in the Night Court? Curious, I don't see many other females wearing them."

He made you do a double spin on your feet before bringing you back against his chest. "I would have thought that a princeling had more important things to think about than the fashion in other Courts." You said coldly.

You hadn't realized that the music had ended until a new dance began and Eris easily led you throught that. It was slower, lighter, but you didn't need to think about the steps; Eris was annoyingly good at leading you.

His eyes darkened a little, as if you had just insulted him. The grip on your hand tightened and you hissed in pain as his fingers pushed into the burned flesh of your palm. "Tell me, it's still about fashion?" He tightened his fingers again and you stepped on his foot angrily.

"Do it again and your father will have to name another heir." you hissed still blinded with pain. Fuck off the whole court him thing; you would have never been good at it nevertless. If Eris wanted to play with you, you would play back.

***

Cauldron boils him.

He was so down bad for you. Never in five hundred years he had met someone who could turn him on just with a glare. And the glare you were giving him was of pure challenge and threat.

He laughed at you. He laughed because it was the only thing he could do. He laughed because the alternative was to see if you would still talk to him like that if he pushed you against a dark corner of the palace, knelt and buried his face under the gown of your dress.

That fucking dress.

You looked like a night Goddess of fire, and the Mother knew how happily he would worship you if given the chance.

But he couldn't. Not until his father was alive. Not until he would be free to let you know the true Eris and let you decide what to do about the bond. Not until you desired him as much as he desired you.

"I would like to see you try without any training." he lightly mocked you, needing to see how far he could push you until you finally gave in and unleashed what you had inside. "But I could make your odds better if you just admit what we both know, Little Flame."

He grinned as he sensed the effect that the name had on you. You face stayed neutral, it was your heartbeat that betrayed you. Eris had to admit it, even if you had just entered the game of scheming, courts and alliances you were doing a great job at it.

"I'm afraid I'm not following you." You said giving the room around you a bored look. He knew you were actually seeing if any of your court was listening to the two of you.

Eris had a vague idea of what would happen if you find out about the bond in the near future. You would be caution about it at first, then after few words with Mor and the Inner Circle you would decide to break it, and why wouldn't you? He was the villain in everyone's story, and he was fine with that. He didn't really plan to change that narrative in your head, yet. But he refused to sit still while you burned yourself in your own power and the Inner Circle did nothing to stop it.

"I could train you." He said suddenly serious. "If you are too ashamed to show your precious family what monstrous power you have, you should have no problem showing it to someone who is already considered a monster."

You arched an eyebrow. "Considered?" you asked ironically. "I recall hearing quiet thrutful stories about you for just considerating what you are."

He didn't pretend to be hurt by your words. He knew exactly what you had heard, what he had done, but obviously you couldn't know the whole true. No one did execpt for one. "Careful to let your new ears believe everything they say about me."

"Because you seem so much more trustfully." You said with a ironic smile that he immediately matched.

"Train with me a day every week, and I'll answer honestly to one question of your choice." He proposed before spunning you on your feet. "Maybe you'll make your own idea of me."

Those beautiful, careful eyes studied him, and he almost knelt right there. "Why would I accept? What do you gain from this?"

His grin widened. "I'm pleased to see that those brutes taught you something useful." He mused. "Let just say I think your power will play a key part to my...succesion on the throne, and I rather have you as my ally than my enemy."

You narrowed your eyes, surely pondering every single word he had said. "I won't do the dirty job for you."

Eris knew you meant killing his father, but of course you couldn't say it out loud since Keir was still around. He admired your quick thinking, and he was extremely glad that you were smart enought to guard yourself around people like himself.

He chuckled lowly. "That is a matter I'll deal with alone." He stated firmly and the fingers on your back lightly caressed you, assuringly. "I just ask for your help when my court will need it."

Eris would never admit out loud that he already know what kind of favour he would need from you. The idea had come up as the two of your were talking, but he knew that if he had proposed it right away you would have left him on the dancing floor without a second thought.

"One day of training everyweek with one question of my choice in exchange of my help, once, when you'll need it with your court?" You carefully stated looking cautionsly in his eyes.

He gave you a grin as he leaned his face closer to yours. "Do we have a bargain, Little Flame?"

He had to call all his hundreds years of training to not close his eyes as your scent hit his nose. It was sweet, like cinnamon and caramel. It was everything he recalled to like, to bring him joy.

He smelled the shift in your scent as your faces were dangerously close, and for the first time he was glad that you were new to this world because otherwise your would have smelled the shift in his scent too. And that, would have bring the two of you in a dangerous situation.

"Yes." you said after a while. He could see that you had thought of every outcome of that bargain, you probably had thought about how to tell the others, what reactions they would have and in how many ways it could end badly. "But you have to stop calling me that."

He laughed. "You should have put it into the conditions of the bargain before you accepted it."

As he said those words he felt something stung on his back. It felt like someone was writing something on his skin with fire. It didn't hurt, it was more like a tickle, and when he saw your hand flying from his shoulder to your back, scracthing the same part on your body that tickled on his, he knew that the bargain had been sealed.

The music ended and he gave you a bow, bringing your gloved hand to his lips. He could smell the burned flash, and a part of him wanted to kill Rhysand to have let you do it to yourself. But he only placed a gently kiss on it, sensing how you, elegantly, shivered and gave you a charming smile.

He studied you for a monent. Your eyes were looking at him with what was not surely kindness, but at the same time was not hatred too. You were trying to find your place in this new, cahotic world, he understood. His eyes traveled on your dress, and his jaw clenched. You would have been a beautiful living flame if it hadn't been concealed with black, somehow a represantion of how you wanted to conceal yourself to fit in that Court.

"Let me begin the training now with a little advise." Eris said still with your hand in his. Your eyes flashed with curious. "Do not follow blindly those who walk in front of you. You might find out that black is not the colout that suits you best."

He didn't wait for you to process his words as he gave you a last, parting smile and turned on his heels, already putting his mask back on. "See you next week, Little Flame." he mocked over his shoulder as he walked away.

He heard you curse him under your breath, and it only made him grin amused. He found it surprisingly fun to rile you up, it was a kind of amusement that he didn't feel with anyone else. He needed it as a reminder that his equal was indeed like him: fierce, smart, witty and always ready to fight when needed.

He walked toward Rhysand and Feyre, still seated on their thrones, already watching him with their calculated eyes. He was sure that they were probably having a mental conversation about what they had seen, and Eris fought the urge to smirk.

"Did you enjoy the company of my sister?" asked Feyre politely with a lazy smile. He had to admit that both her and Rhysand did a great job at acting like the rulers of the Court of Nightmares.

"Your sister's company had been delightful." He said matching her smile. Before asking them what he wanted he was curious to test the waters. "But I'm curious; you showed me what I can have, Rhysand. I'm intrigued enough to ask what you'd want in return."

He saw Feyre's jaw clenching. She would never sold her sister, and surely not to someone like him, but it was still fun to imply just that.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Rhysand not betraying a single thought that was in his mind.

"I mean that whatever you want, I'll give it to you if you promise to keep her safe and away from my father." Eris said suddenly serious.

He saw the confusion flashing on both rulers' face as they surely spoke to each other mind to mind. Eris knew he was letting them see too much, but it was the only way he could be sure that you would be safe as long as his father was alive. They needed to know in what danger you were if his father ever find out what you and Eris were.

"Explain yourself better." Feyre commanded with a cold voice.

He gave her a mocking grin. "You keep your oldest sister away from my father, and train her. and I'll give you whatever you want. You wanted to reassure our alliance? This is the prize."

"I cannot force her in doing anything she doesn't want to, but I can come up with the right arrangment for that." Rhysand said calmly. "But it seems foolish for you to offer me anything I want in exchange for...her safety. Why would you care so much about that?"

He could see that both Rhysand and Feyre were trying to understand what kind of game he was playing, what kind of tricks he had in mind, so he let his mind shield opening a little, inviting them in his head to speak the words that he could not say out loud.

"Because it seems that the Cauldron gave two Archeron sisters to the Night Court, and two to the Autumn Court." Eris said in his mind, knowing that they both were listening.

Feyre's face drained of colours as Rhysand's eyes hardned and his deep, dangerous voice sounded in his mind. "Why should we believe you?"

Eris smirked and let the memory of the day he had saved you fill his mind, letting them see it. He replied the moment the bond stirred inside him, urging him to run toward you. He made them see the exact moment your eyes met and his whole existence screamed the word Mate all over again. He made them see how he had foolishly followed you to the King of Hybern, keeping you safe until you had run to Nesta. He let them see how hard it had been to return to his father and hide eveything, how scared he had been when after the war he had been sat beside his father while you were right in front of him, terrified that any gaze might give him away. The last memory was of when he had found you outside the Autumn Court's camp, and he had been so close to grab you and winnow on the other side of Prythian, not wanting you close to his father in any way.

He stopped the memories just as the one of when you had cured him started to pop in his mind, and watched careful the reaction of the two rulers in front of him. "I cannot risk for the bond to snap for her when my father or any of his allies are close. He would hurt her to hurt me, and despide what you think of me, I won't let it happen."

Rhysand studied him with a heavy, dangerous attention. "I could keep her away from you and have you do anything I want just for the chance to see her, do you realize that?"

A test. Eris knew it was a test, because Rhysand would never do something like that, but still Eris couldn't help but laugh ironically. "It would be the first time you'd do something smart, Rhysand." he tilted his head in a mocking grin.

"You should speak of this matter with Feyre then." Rhysand stated, making a good job at sounding bored. "It's her sister you are mated with."

"I could have your head in any moment if I suspect you to be a danger for her." said Feyre in his head viciously.

"I would like to think that the bond would make your sister miss me a little if you do that." he answered ironically placing a hand on his heart. "But I'll give you everything else you need. After all you are my sister-in-the-cauldron, you might find out you'll have more advantages from this situation than your boring mate."

"Go away before I test that bond theory." threatened him Feyre making his grin grew wider.

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#eris vanserra x reader #eris vanserra fic #eris vanserra #eris x reader #eris vanserra x you #autumn court #acotar imagine #acoatr #rhysand #feyre archeron #elain archeron #nesta archeron #azriel #cassian #morrigan

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osarina · 3 months ago

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ᡣ𐭩 WE WERE BORN SICK

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: that sinking feeling that's been looming over you both has finally come to fruition. truths are revealed, questions are answered, but one big one remains: is love enough for you and dazai's relationship to survive this?

AUTHOR'S NOTES: happy fridayyyyy, i can't believe we only have one chapter left of civzai, it's actually makin me emotional </3 this chapter was quite a doozy to write, and i hope it's equally a doozy to read HAHAH no no jkjk , i hope you enjoy. also do u guys want to add an arcane au to the dazaiverse .. ive been thinking heavily about it. comments & reblogs appreciated

GENERAL WARNINGS: fem!reader, port mafia executive!reader, civilian!dazai, dazai's struggles w suicide & sh, reader partakes in mafia business, dazai isn't dazai without a bit of obsessiveness and possessiveness (the possessiveness doesn't come til later but the obsessiveness starts from day 0).

CHAPTER SPECIFIC WARNINGS: hardly edited. angsty chapter. explicit depiction of suicide (past recollection of dazai), implications of past self-harm (dazai), very toxic thought processes at certain parts (dazai), past (and a bit of current) suicide ideation (dazai), manic behavior (reader).

SEE: WASTELAND, BABY! SERIES MASTERLIST

“I’ve been eager to meet you for quite a while. In all of the years I’ve known her, my little hime has never let something as trivial as a boy come between her and our work… I knew you must be special, but I never could’ve imagined just how special. I’m so pleasantly surprised.”

Dazai’s head throbs as he comes to his surroundings. He’s laying in an uncomfortable bed—a hospital bed, he thinks, he can smell the unfortunately familiar scent of antiseptic, but the walls aren’t the typical white he’s used to. He winces as he sits up, unable to recall where he is or what happened to him. Everything is too fuzzy, he remembers being with Fitzgerald, the car ride to the tea house, and-

And he remembers you.

He remembers you.

He lets out a shaky breath as he recalls the way you’d pulled him into your arms, cradling him close as soon as you got him back from Fitzgerald. God, he only got to be with you for what felt like a second. It wasn’t enough time. It wasn’t nearly enough time. You sent him off, he remembers—you sent him with two of your subordinates, the weretiger and that freaky little girl, and then…

“Shhh… Don’t speak. I want to get this done and over with.”

The gun to his back, Atsushi and Kyouka’s cries of shock, the baton to his head.

“No can do, weretiger. On orders from the boss.”

His mind tracks back to the words that had been spoken as he was teetering on the edge of consciousness, mouth going dry and eyes widening as he becomes acutely aware of the other person in the room with him. His gaze flicks up to where a vaguely familiar man sits at a desk watching him—straight chin-length black hair, inquisitive purple eyes, a long black coat, Dazai isn’t sure where he recalls this man from but he knows that they’ve met before.

“Who…” Dazai asks, voice wavering as pain shoots through his head with every little movement. “Who are you? Have we… met before?”

His wrist hurts. His mother’s nails dig into his skin so deep that it draws blood, and he doesn’t know what’s going on. He’d just been sleeping—is he still sleeping? He isn’t sure. He’s stumbling over his own feet trying to keep up with her, he keeps asking her what’s going on but she doesn’t answer him.

They turn a hall and his mother stops so suddenly that he slams right into her, nearly tripping over onto the ground. He doesn’t even regain his footing before his mother is pulling him back the way he came, he looks over his shoulder trying to figure out what caused his mother to panic so badly and he looks at—a man?

Who is that?

Why is he coming from grandfather’s room?

Is that-

Blood?

“Shuji! Shuji, don’t look back! Keep moving!”

Shuji? Who’s Shu-

“I think you know the answer to that already.” Dazai is startled out of the memory—was that a memory?—by the man’s voice. He sounds amused, and from the way that his eyes are glittering, Dazai can tell he’s finding great entertainment out of this situation. It pisses Dazai off. “Don’t you?”

“Tane-chan, you know you won’t be able to hide him forever. You’re just making this harder on yourself.”

Dazai’s breath catches. He shifts backward on the bed to press his back against the wall. Everything is wrong—the air is too cold, his bandages are itching, his head hurts, and he doesn’t know what’s going on. Who is Shuji? Why is he thinking of his mother after all of these years? And what… what was he remembering?

Memories of his youth have always been sparse and fleeting—he can vaguely recall the faces of his siblings, the anxiety he felt around his grandfather, the loneliness—but something like this… The panic on his mothers face, the pain in his wrist, the way she was dragging him around, the fear in her voice when she screamed at Dazai—was he Shuji? But then why—to not look back, to keep moving. He would remember something like that. That would be… crazy to forget, right?

What is going on?

“You’re Mori,” Dazai breathes out, clearing his throat. He hopes he doesn’t look as disconcerted as he feels, but he thinks he must. “You’re…”

The leader of the Port Mafia.

The closest thing you have to a father.

So, how does Dazai remember him from years ago? It doesn’t make sense. He couldn’t have been older than thirteen, maybe fourteen in that memory. What did he forget? When did he meet him? What’s going on? Dazai wants to scream, his mind is still slow from just waking up—he doesn’t even know how long he was unconscious, it couldn’t have been that long.

Mori’s smile widens as if Dazai just walked right into whatever trap that had been laid out for him, violet eyes flashing with a type of cruel amusement that makes Dazai sick to his stomach. Dazai has to circle back to remember what he just said, he needs to snap out of the daze he’s in. He needs to think. He made a mistake—Dazai made a mistake. He shouldn’t have admitted that he knew Mori. That was a mistake.

How does he fix it?

Can he fix it?

“You do know,” Mori says, like he didn’t actually expect Dazai to admit that he knew him. Like he’s pleasantly surprised. Again. Like Dazai just made things much easier for him. Shit. “Interesting.”

He’s going to use it against Dazai. Dazai knows it. He’s going to use it against him to hurt you. He remembers everything he’s learned about your relationship with Mori—how he pit you against that other girl, Yosano, to get results from you. And he already said it. He already said that Dazai is getting between you and your work, he’ll do the same thing here. He’ll pit you against him.

He’s going to tell you that Dazai knew who Mori was, and that Dazai is someone that he’s not—who is Shuji? Why doesn’t he remember his own name? Is that really his name? How does Mori know all of this? Who is Dazai?—and Dazai needs to be able to say something. He needs to be able to explain. How does he explain this when he doesn’t even know what’s going on? Dazai needs to remember; he needs to remember now, he needed to remember yesterday, because if he’s not the one to tell you this… If he can’t explain this…

This cannot be happening—it can’t. Right when he thought everything would be okay, when he would be with you. His throat starts to clog as anxiety clouds his head and weighs on his chest, a panic attack that he can’t afford right now. He needs to think, he needs to figure out what’s going on—Mori knows something about Dazai that he doesn’t know himself, and he’s going to use it against him to drive a wedge between the two of you. He’s going to tell you, and-

Dazai’s world feels woozy. Why can’t he remember? How does he know Mori? What was happening that night with his mother? He needs to snap out of this, needs to think, but he can’t even breathe. Fear—the mind killer.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Dazai rasps, his voice is hoarse, and he feels sick, and he hates admitting that he doesn’t know what’s happening, but he needs Mori to believe it so that he doesn’t tell you something that’s not true. “I don’t know how I know you. I don’t-”

“You might believe that,” Mori says amused, “but will she?”

Dazai stares at Mori, his stomach churns violently and his vision swims as the answer becomes abundantly clear to him.

He doesn’t know.

———

The gun in your hand weighs heavily.

You hid it in the inside of your blazer to get up to the conference room. No weapons are allowed up past the thirty-fifth floor unless you’re one of the Boss’s hand-picked personal guards—even executives are forced to disarm themselves before going up, but security is much more lax for the upper echelon. Because you’re you—the hime, second-in-command, the Boss’s daughter—the guards outside of the elevator that goes directly to the top floor wave you past the metal detectors to go on up.

A mistake.

(Who is Tsushima Shuji? It can’t be Dazai. You know Dazai. Mori must be wrong.)

The smile on your face is bland and doesn’t meet your eyes as you walk down the hall to the conference room attached to Mori’s office. You greet the guards, and they don’t notice how off your demeanor is, too starstruck over the fact that they’re being acknowledged for once. They also don’t notice the way your hand is curled around the grip of your gun in your blazer.

A mistake.

(Mori is never wrong. Do you really know Dazai?)

When you reach the end of the hallway, you toss them one last brilliant smile. This one is a bit more genuine because you’ve realized that you’ve gotten through the top notch security of the upper levels of the Port Mafia headquarters without a hitch. That you’re one step closer to finishing this. They’re so blinded by the beauty of your smile that they don’t realize your teeth have sharpened into knives and the floral perfume you wear masks a putrid bloodlust.

A mistake.

(It’s always been odd, hasn’t it? The way he approached you. The way he was so insistent on pushing himself into your life. You always questioned it. There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t as it seemed. Why didn’t you question it more?)

You keep your back turned as you slip into the room. You can feel four presences behind you—Kouyou, Piano Man, Chuuya, Ace. No Mori. No Dazai. That’s fine—you have something to take care of before they show up anyway. The conference room is soundproof; Mori designed it that way because he didn’t want the guards outside to overhear any discussion of sensitive topics. Even if he handpicked them for their loyalty, he understands that money can make the most devout man’s faith waver. Still, it’s not them rushing in that you’re worried about—it’s the people in the room with you rushing out, so you very carefully twist the nub of the lock and then reach up to fix the deadbolt. It won’t stop them, but it will slow them. You can feel their eyes on you as you make sure the door is locked, but none of them call you out for it or try to stop you.

A mistake.

(Mori always told you that the Tsushimas were like cockroaches. If they all weren’t killed, one would eventually return to reclaim their grandfather’s empire. There’d be a power struggle between the factions loyal to the new regime and the ones that still hid in the shadows believing that the Tsushima blood belonged at the head of the organization. Everything the two of you had built would crumble to ashes.)

You turn to make your way over to the conference table where the four of them are sitting. You haven’t decided how you want to go about this yet. You don’t know who all was aware of what Mori did, and because of that, you don’t know who needs to die. Treachery has always faced a death penalty—you don’t care if Mori ordered it, you don’t care that the Boss’s word is absolute, you have bled and breathed for the Port Mafia. You’ve sacrificed everything you’ve ever owned and wanted for the Port Mafia. You have made the Port Mafia into what it is today with your efforts abroad and at home—foreign governments, foreign criminal organizations, the Japanese government and other domestic mafias, all of them are just puppets that you pull the strings of to ensure the Port Mafia stays on top. Treachery against you will face the same penalty one would receive if they betrayed the Port Mafia, because you are the Port Mafia—Mori has made sure of that.

Chuuya and Piano Man share a look with one another as you approach the table. Neither of them say anything—is it confusion? Is it guilt? Did they know? Were you the only one unaware of the schemes going on around you? Were you the only one loyal? The only one you could trust?

Did they know?

(No one could ever love you without your ability at work influencing them. You’ve known that since the very beginning, but you were so quick to forget that when you discovered Dazai’s ability. You should have had more questions, you should have been more suspicious. Mori had been right from the very beginning. You were emotionally compromised. You were weak.)

Ace opens his mouth to speak.

A mistake.

“It was nice meeting your-”

Ace’s head hits the conference table with a hard thunk, his eyes wide and glassy, his mouth open around the words you didn’t let him finish speaking. Blood seeps from the bullet hole in his temple and pools around his head and the ground beneath his chair, staining the glass table and the white floors.

Instead of lowering your arm, you shift it so that the gun is pressed against Piano Man’s temple next. Chuuya says your name—it’s awful, something caught between a gasp of shock and confusion, he’s never said your name like that before. Like he doesn’t know what you’re doing. Like he doesn’t understand you. Like you’re something unfamiliar. Unrecognizable. You ignore him anyway, and the pangs that come along with it, and instead, you keep your gaze trained on Piano Man’s face.

He’s not as panicked as Chuuya, but you can tell that he’s just as caught off guard from the way his lips are twisted. He watches you carefully, waiting for you to say whatever you’re going to say—if you were going to pull the trigger, you would’ve done so immediately, he knows that. He’s always been good at reading you, better than even Chuuya sometimes.

“Did you know?”

Your voice is steadier than you expect it to be. Cold almost. Distant. You don’t recognize it yourself, you suppose it’s no wonder that Chuuya’s staring at you with such a foreign expression. You watch him just as carefully as he does you. He has a tell when he lies: he squints. Not an obvious squint, just the barest hint of his eyes squeezing shut like he’s calculating exactly what he wants to say, in what tone and with what fluctuation he wants to say it.

A subtle tell, but a tell nonetheless.

“No.”

He stares at you steadily as he says it. There’s no squint—he’s telling the truth. You don’t let out a breath of relief, but you certainly feel the weight off of your shoulders. You lower the gun, satisfied with his response, and then you walk over to where Chuuya is sitting.

You don’t raise the gun to his temple immediately. He looks up at you, you look down at him, a whole conversation is had in the silence between you, and eventually he lowers his lashes in resignation, telling you to do what needs to be done for you to feel more at ease.

He’s always put others before himself.

You lift the gun at the same time he lifts his gaze to meet yours. He could activate the Tainted Sorrow and end this before it starts, but he doesn’t—you know in your gut that if you pulled the trigger right now, he would accept the fate you delivered. Probably would take it as a better one than he deserved—it being at your hands rather than Arahabaki.

“Did you know?” you ask. The words taste bitter, rancid—they don’t belong there, Chuuya would never betray you, but you had to hear it from him.

Chuuya doesn’t have many tells when he lies—he’s a good actor, much better than people give him credit for. If he wanted to lie to you, he might be able to get away with it. But he won’t lie to you, not when he’s looking you in the eye.

“No,” he says, voice soft and raspy like he can’t believe he has to say it.

You let the gun drop to your side. It weighs heavier now—heavier than it did in the elevator, heavier than it did in the hallway leading to the room, heavier than it did when it was pressed against Piano Man’s head. You can hardly bear to keep holding it, but you’re not done yet.

Slowly, your gaze turns to Kouyou. Her expression is cold and unreadable, gaze pinned on you in the same way a lion stalks its prey through the tall grass… No, that’s not right. She stares at you with the same look in her eyes that a snake does when it’s curled in a corner, rattle shaking and hissing to try to scare off the predator that has it trapped.

“You knew,” you breathe out softly in disbelief. Your voice hardens and tightens as you repeat, “You knew!”

Before you can raise your gun—before you can pull the trigger four, five, six times, before you can riddle her body with holes because how dare she know, how dare she know and not tell you after what the previous boss did to her—the door that separates the conference room from Mori’s office opens, and your attention is drawn to the one person who caused all of this.

“Oh my,” Mori says airly, looking between you, Ace’s body, and Kouyou with an expression that is frustratingly amused. “I see you’ve been busy.”

You don’t even know what to say to that. You almost want to laugh. You think you do laugh, actually—someone does, and you think it’s you, because you feel yourself walking away, you lift your hands to your head to tug at your ears in frustration. Your vision is blurry—are you crying?

“You betrayed me,” you finally say, voice quieter than you intend, so you raise it as you repeat yourself. “You betrayed me. You. Of all people I never thought you would be the one to-”

You can’t even finish the sentence, your voice cracks over the words. It makes you feel sick, it makes you angry, it makes you want to crawl out of your skin, because how could he? To you? You don’t know why you’re so angry, why you’re so betrayed. Mori has always made it clear that his priority is the Port Mafia, but still, to do this to you. To do this to his-

To his what?

You’re not his daughter. You hate when people imply that you are, you hate being called hime, you hate being called ‘Miss Mori’, you hate when people give you respect because of your perceived relationship to him.

He’s the only father you’ve ever known. Almost every decision you’ve made has been with the motive of making him proud of you. When he seeks out your opinion specifically during meetings, your chest becomes warm with pride.

You don’t love him. How could you? Look at what you’ve become because of him.

Then why do you feel so betrayed? Why did you think he would be the last person to do something like this to you when you know the type of person he is? Why does your chest feel like it’s caving in? Like your heart’s been ripped right out of it? Why does this hurt as much—why does this hurt more than Dazai’s potential betrayal?

And he certainly doesn’t love you. He never would have done this if he did.

He’s killed people for disrespecting you—he hardly ever gets his own hands dirty, but he does when it’s you and your dignity on the line. He spends hours meticulously picking out birthday presents that he knows you’ll like. He gets sad when he invites you for lunch and you don’t join him, reminiscing about the days where you clung to the back of his coat.

He touches your shoulder, and your finger twitches on the trigger of the gun. You want to lift it, press it to his temple and pull the trigger just like you did to Ace, but you can’t. Your arm feels like lead, and when his hand slides down to your bicep to force you to turn around and face him so that your back is to the rest of the executives, you dutifully follow along.

His expression is unreadable as he looks down at you, violet eyes swimming with an emotion you’ve never seen in them before. He lifts his hand to wipe away one of the tears that had spilled over your cheeks with his knuckle, and then taps your cheek twice, chiding you silently.

Do not cry here, little hime. Not here.

“You have always been so dramatic,” Mori hums just loud enough for you to hear, but the words are fond, and the corners of his lip curl up as he looks down at you. “I would not betray you. Not ever, dear.”

You look at Ace pointedly in response and then back to Mori, the man sighs dramatically and gives you a disappointed look. The nerve, you think bitterly, narrowing your eyes on him as you wait for his explanation.

“I told you,” Mori says. “I did this to protect you. I wanted to get ahold of the boy-”

“Because you have some mistaken belief that he’s a Tsushima,” you interrupt coolly. “How did you even manage to come up with that ridiculous theory?”

Mori’s eyes flicker with something akin to interest, but shifts quickly into pity—you can’t tell if it’s genuine or mocking, and you don’t know which would be worse. He must be mistaken, he has to be. You don’t think you can handle the implications of if he isn’t, of what it might mean for you. For Dazai. Your whole relationship with him. How much was manufactured for him to get information about the Port Mafia? So he could get a foothold in the organization? Get in contact with the remaining loyalists to his family?

“Sit,” he tells you, guiding you over to the seat at the right of the head of the table. “I’ll explain everything, but first… Shuji-kun, why don’t you come out and join us?”

Your breath catches at Mori’s words, gaze twisting to the side over to the door that he’d come out of. You watch as the door creaks open, and the achingly familiar sight of his face finally comes into view. You’ve missed him—you’ve missed him, and you hate this. You should be back at your apartment with him, you should have him curled up in your arms, you should be listening to him complain about how long he was stuck with the Guild.

This shouldn’t be happening. You shouldn’t be sitting at the executive roundtable with Ace’s dead body a few feet away, and Dazai entering the room, questions of his identity, of whether or not he’s been using you for information and opportunity to take back his grandfather’s legacy.

You hoped that Dazai would enter the room angry, irritated by the kidnapping and the accusations, but you don’t think you’ve ever seen Dazai look like this before. He looks a mess, fidgeting, brown hair matted to his forehead, dark eyes wide and swirling with emotion. When he seeks you out, they’re pleading, imploring, like he already knows that whatever is about to be said is going to be bad for him.

He looks… frazzled. Nervous. Confused.

He looks guilty, and you know that Mori is telling the truth.

How much of this was a lie? All of it?

Your throat feels uncomfortably tight, gaze sliding from Dazai back to Mori.

“Tell me.”

Who are you, Dazai Osamu?

———

Despite his body being wracked with a strange sense of guilt, Dazai pushes open the door to enter the room where he assumes you’ll be waiting. You’re not the only one there sitting at the table—there’s five… no, four others—but Dazai can’t help the way he immediately seeks you out. He recognizes his mistake instantly. That highly unwelcome, and highly misplaced, guilt amplifies the moment his gaze meets yours and he sees how crushed you are by all of this. His face twists into something that he knows condemns himself more. and from the way you instantly look away from him, directing your full attention to Mori, he knows he has.

Now, you won’t meet his eyes at all.

Dazai sits stiffly across from you to the left of Mori. Nakahara Chuuya is on his opposite side, glaring holes into the side of Dazai’s head, but he can’t drag his gaze from you. He’s never seen you like this before—even back at the beach house when you’d been so close to breaking down under the weight of everything on your shoulders, you’d held yourself together as best you could.

You’re unraveling now; he can tell you’re still trying to hold yourself together, but it’s as good as trying to pick up water with your fists, your emotions spill out through the cracks carved into the walls you used to hide yourself behind. Mori hasn’t even begun talking, yet your breath is unsteady and your eyes are swimming with emotion; your fingers are still wrapped tight around the grip of your gun, and Dazai is very acutely aware of Ace’s dead body slouched over the table not even a few feet away.

And you won’t even meet his eyes.

Maybe it’s a good thing, he realizes, because Dazai isn’t sure what you might see if you do. You clearly didn’t like what you saw the first time. He just feels so guilty, and he doesn’t even know why he feels guilty because he’s not-he didn’t do any of what Mori implied. He didn’t use you, he didn’t know who you were before meeting you, it wasn’t all some scheme to try to take over the mafia. That’s ludicrous—he’s a literature student at YNU, not some gang lord. He just-

He loved you. Loves you. No ulterior motives. No strings attached.

“I said tell me,” you snap when Mori doesn’t immediately begin talking. “You love talking, so why are you holding back now? Tell me, or I’m leaving.”

Dazai feels a bit sick to his stomach when you say ‘I’ with no implication of taking him with you. He tries to get you to look at him again, silently pleading with you to just spare one glance in his direction, but you’re irritated now. He can see it in the way your fingers flex around the gun, knuckles whitening and finger twitching on the trigger—it’s pointed at the woman sitting next to you, who is very acutely aware of the fact from how stiff she is.

“Do you remember the night we took over the Port Mafia, dear?” Mori asks her, voice a low hum.

“What kind of question is that?” you answer tightly. Your lip curls up in irritation, Dazai can see you become more and more antsy and angry—he’s never seen you so out of control before. “Of course, I do.”

“And you, Shuji-kun?” Mori turns his attention to Dazai and he wants to spit in his face—his name is Dazai—but his voice fails him when he sees the way your face twists at the sound of the unfamiliar name. He stares at Mori instead, hating how amused the man becomes at his silence. “I’ll take that as a no, allow me to refresh you.”

“Eight years ago, a coup was staged against your grandfather’s regime,” Mori says, and Dazai feels like he’s being studied under a microscope. All eyes are on him now—even yours, but now, he can’t bring himself to look at you. He doesn’t know what he’ll find, and he’s scared it’s going to be something he doesn’t like. “Your grandfather was mad, killing civilians and mafiosos indiscriminately, something had to be done, and nobody was willing to do it, so we did.”

“We had to wipe out the whole family, and any loyalists. I was fourteen when I killed someone for the first time. She was a girl my age—the previous boss’s grandaughter…”

Dazai’s gaze drags over to you. You’re staring ahead now, gaze listless and expression eerily blank like you’re slowly starting to realize what this means. Dazai hasn’t come to terms with it yet, because if even a little of what Mori is saying is true then…

“We wiped out the whole bloodline and as many loyalists as we could,” Mori continues, “or we thought we did, at least. My dear hime was who I sent to kill the heirs, I trusted in her to make it quick and painless. We didn’t realize one of the grandchildren were missing until it was too late—he wasn’t in his bedroom, apparently liked to wander around at night because he couldn’t sleep. His mother was able to swoop in and get him out of the estate before our men took over the building… Tsushima Shuji, the youngest of the previous boss’s grandsons. Does this sound familiar yet, Shuji-kun?”

He has the best view of the night sky from an alcove on the fourth floor of the estate—his grandfather’s floor. It’s where he likes to go when he can’t sleep at night, and ever since his cousins and siblings started fighting over their grandfather’s legacy, that’s been just about every night: half because of fear now that things have started escalating to violence, half because he’s not even sure why he’s still here.

His knees are tucked tight to his chest, arms wrapped around them and head resting against the cool glass as he looks up at the stars. He hears a commotion happening somewhere downstairs, but there’s always a commotion happening at the estate, so he thinks nothing of it. He submerges himself in the darkness instead, letting his mind float away as he stares up at the sky—it’s the only time he’s able to relax, escape from the shadows of his own mind.

He’s not sure how long he sits there admiring the night, time passes immeasurably when he’s lost in the stars—he’s only snapped out of it when he hears feet slamming against the ground in his direction. He stiffens, eyes wide, wondering if another one of his cousins has finally turned to bloodshed as the way to inherit their grandfather’s legacy, but instead his mother turns the corner, her smooth face contorted in a type of panic he’s never seen on her before.

“Mothe…” he starts to say, confused, but he doesn’t even get a chance to finish the word, gasping as his mother grabs his wrist and yanks him off the cushioned seat in the alcove.

“Shuji, we have to go,” she gasps, “we need to get out of here. It’s not safe.”

He stumbles after his mother, struggling to keep up with her quick pace and longer legs. Her grip was painful, nails digging into the bandages around his wrists, right into the fresh wounds they covered. He grimaces in pain, breathing heavy as he follows his mother down the hall, assumingly toward the steps near his grandfather’s room.

“What’s going on?” he asks. “What about Bunji? Akane? T-”

His mother chokes over what sounds like a sob and his eyes widen—he’s never heard his mother cry before.

“There’s no time,” she chokes out, “we have to leave without them. We-”

They turn a hall, she skids to a stop and-

“It seems that it does… Allow me to continue then,” Mori hums, drawing Dazai out of the memory. He sounds unbearably amused, and Dazai would be angry if he wasn’t so shaken. He pulls his hands off of the table to rest them in his lap to hide the way his fingers are trembling. “Your mother was able to hide you from us for half a year, I warned her that she wouldn’t be able to for long and since she didn’t share your grandfather’s blood, promised to spare her life if she gave you up to us, but she refused. She tried to take you out of the Kanagawa Prefecture, but our men were catching up to her, and she took… drastic measures to ensure we couldn’t track you down. That I’m sure you remember.”

“Mother,” he whispered, staring up at the rope, her limp body, gaze trailing down to the kicked over chair. “Mother, I don’t… why did you…”

He takes a step closer. A step back. Another step closer. He reaches out, fingers brushing the white nightgown she’d worn the night before while getting him settled in bed, but he snatches them back instantly like he’d been burned, clutching his hand to his chest.

He’s not breathing, he realizes when his lungs start to burn. His eyes sting painfully, unable to draw his eyes away—unable to even blink—is it a nightmare? Is he hallucinating? She sways—sways like when she used to distract him when he was settling into a depressive episode by putting on music and forcing him to spin with her in the kitchen, sways like the wind chimes she keeps outside because the house doesn’t feel homely enough without him, sways-

“Shuji! Shuji, get away from there!” The voice that calls to him is familiar—Aunt Kiye? Why is she here? “God, I tried to get here earlier. Nee-san, forgive me.”

Aunt Kiye grabs his wrist, yanking him away from his mother, dragging him out of her bedroom and down the hall. His voice is hoarse as he screams, he doesn’t know what he’s screaming, if he’s even screaming anything intelligible. He doesn’t stop until he’s out of the house and she’s kneeling in front of him, shaking him out of his panic.

“Enough, Shuji! We have to go, we can’t stay here, they’ll be here soon,” Aunt Kiye shouts at him, expression twisted and eyes pooling with tears that she doesn’t let spill over. “We need to go, and we-we need to change your name, change everything. I promised I would hide you, I-”

“We can’t leave her there,” he argues, voice shrill. “I don’t understand, why did she do that? What did I do? It was my fault, It was my fault, wasn’t it? It-”

Aunt Kiye doesn’t answer his question. She looks bitter, angry, hateful. “We have no time. We have to leave,” she whispers, dragging him to the car despite his protests. She continues talking, more to herself than to him, but the words make his chest cave in. “I told her not to get involved with that family. Their blood is black, cursed. Everyone knows nothing good comes from associating with those people.”

His fault, he realizes, breath becoming thin and shallow. It’s his fault, his blood, his fault that his mother-

“Yes, quite the unfortunate scene we walked into,” Mori says dismissively. “She was smart for it though, she never would’ve survived a night with our sweet hime interrogating her. You should see what she did to that despicable journalist. Of course, she wasn’t as fine-tuned with her ability back then, but that would’ve been at your mother’s expense—her first few attempts at conditioning were quite… unfortunate for her test sub-”

“Enough,” you spit out, interrupting him. Dazai wants to believe that it’s because you can see how uncomfortable he’s getting, but he’s not even sure that you care. He’s not even sure you remember he’s in the room. “Get to the point. You think he’s the Tsushima kid we missed—that doesn’t prove shit. It doesn’t mean-”

You don’t finish what you’re going to say, but you do look at him, and Dazai’s breath catches when his gaze finally meets yours again. He can’t tell what you’re thinking—the expression on your face is entirely indecipherable, something caught between being accusatory and guilty. Dazai doesn’t know if he’s going to make it out of this room alive. Even if by some miracle, you decide to believe him, there’s a good chance that Mori will order his death anyway, and he’s not sure if you’ll pick him over the Port Mafia.

That being said, Dazai doesn’t even know if he wants to make it out of here alive. His brain is fogged with memories that he locked so deep within him that they never should’ve resurfaced—every time Mori speaks, Dazai’s recalling something new, something awful, something that proves that he’s every bit the freak people have always claimed him to be. Every bit as bad. Every bit as wrong. Not like other people. A monster whose mother killed herself because of him, a monster who's been cursed since the day he was born.

“... blood is black, cursed… nothing good comes from associating with those people.”

More than that, he doesn’t see how the two of you are going to be able to come back from this, and that scares him more than anything. You’re the only good thing left in his life, and he doesn’t think he’ll make it without you, but he doesn’t think that after all of this things are just going to work out. You killed his siblings. His cousins. And yeah, Dazai was never close to them—they thought he was too quiet, too strange, all of the things that the other students at school whispered, his family was the first to—but… they were still his family, and if Dazai had been in his room that night, he would’ve been just as dead at your hands as the rest of them.

You killed his family. You would have killed him. The Port Mafia is the reason his mother killed herself, the reason why he walked into her bedroom and saw her hanging from a fan. The Port Mafia is the reason his aunt hated him so much that she couldn’t even bear looking at him, the reason why he was left to die in Suribachi City.

Would you ever be able to get over the guilt of that? Would Dazai be able to accept it? You had a heavy hand in ruining his life, is it enough that you saved him years later? He doesn’t know, he’s hardly even processed it, he just knows that he has to cling to what little he has left, dig his nails in and not let go even if it makes you choke on guilt, even if it makes him sick with shame. He won’t let go.

“So impatient,” Mori sighs. “Your aunt hid you for almost another half a year, but she wasn’t able to move out of the Yokohama area. She did well though, I’ll give her that. We had our best trying to find you, but she was very careful. It was partially our own fault that we didn’t get our hands on you back then—some loyalists to your grandfather snuck under our radar, told her when we were closing in on the two of you. She got rid of you before we got to her… but we did get to her. Kouyou-kun was the one who handled her, if I recall it got quite… messy. I can’t imagine how it must feel knowing that your mother and aunt sacrificed themselves to protect you only for you to throw it all away in an arrogant attempt to reclaim your grandfather’s legacy.”

Dazai doesn’t even zero in on the last bit of what Mori says because he’s too busy trying to wrap his head around the rest of it. Aunt Kiye didn’t… die for him. Aunt Kiye hated him. He remembers that clear enough—he remembers how she could hardly stand to look at him, he remembers the way she was always so cold and rough with him, he remembers-

“You have to go, Osamu.” Aunt Kiye is shouting at him, and he’s sitting in the passenger seat of her car. He doesn’t move, he thinks maybe if he sits still enough, she won’t see him there and won’t make him leave. “Osamu, get out of the car and go, we don’t have time! They’ve found us.”

The name is still unfamiliar—he’s not used to it, and he doesn’t know if he likes it, but Aunt Kiye insists that Tsushima Shuji is dead and that name can never be uttered again. She gets mad when he doesn’t immediately answer to it, tells him not to let his mother’s death be in vain, and that’s usually enough to get him to stop being stubborn over it.

“Osamu, go!” She grabs his bicep hard to try to get his attention, but he flinches and squirms out of her grip, still not responding to her. He can’t remember the last time he’s spoken—he thinks maybe since they left the cabin that morning. “You-”

Aunt Kiye sounds angry now, but he can’t bring himself to look at her. It’s only when he hears her unbuckle and feels her start reaching over him that he starts to panic. He reaches up to grab her bicep, trying to stop her from grabbing the handle of the door to open it, but she’s stronger than him. He’s hardly been eating lately, and he’s never been particularly strong—he was always the smallest among his siblings.

It takes no effort for her to bat his hands away, pushing open the door and unbuckling his seatbelt. He struggles against her as she tries to push him out of the car, and she’s still speaking—shouting at him, begging him, he thinks she might be crying too, but he can’t even tell. His mind is fogged with panic and fear—he doesn’t want to be alone in Suribachi City, he doesn’t want to be alone at all. He wants to stay with Aunt Kiye even if she hates him because he doesn’t want to be alone.

Eventually, Aunt Kiye wins the fight—even with him fighting tooth and nail, she manages to push him out of the car. He hits the ground hard, gasping when he lands poorly on his elbow. He’s stunned for a moment by the shock and pain, and Aunt Kiye takes the chance to toss out a backpack from the back seat and close the door behind him, locking it quickly.

“No!” His voice is raspy from lack of use over the past few months. He scrambles to his feet and tries to pry the door open but can’t. Aunt Kiye won’t even look at him, she stares ahead as she switches the car into gear and he slams his hands against the window. “Aunt Kiye! Aunt Kiye, don’t leave me here! Don’t leave me here, please, I’ll be better, I’ll do better, just don’t-”

He stumbles back as she pulls the car away, falling when he trips over the backpack onto the asphalt, scraping up his hands and forearms. He’s not sure how long he sits there staring after where the car disappeared waiting for her to come back for him.

She doesn’t.

She didn’t die for him, Dazai thinks again, nails digging crescents into his palm. She didn’t die for him, she couldn’t have. Dazai won’t believe it. Aunt Kiye hated him, she abandoned him in Suribachi—none of this can be true. It can’t. His mother killed herself to be free of him, not to protect him; and Aunt Kiye abandoned him because she hated him, not to save him.

That’s the truth. It has to be. They couldn’t have died for him—for him. It doesn’t make any sense. He doesn’t want to remember all of this—he was better off thinking that they hated him, that they wanted to be free of him.

He can feel you looking at him now, but Dazai is back to being unable to look at you. He’s staring down at the glass table looking at his reflection, his eyes are wide and dark and far too black—he looks warped, inhuman almost. His expression is blank, none of the turmoil within him is reflected on it, and he doesn’t even understand why. He thinks it’s probably just making him seem more guilty.

“We figured she left you somewhere in Suribachi City, but we weren’t able to track you down,” Mori says flippantly. Dazai wants him to stop talking, but he has a sick feeling things are only going to get worse from here. “Not until you ended up with Oda Sakunosuke, at least, we…”

Dazai’s ears ring at his old friend’s name. Mori is still talking, but his words become a distant buzz. Everything starts coming back to him at once—his time alone in Suribachi City, the weeks he spent rationing the little food he had, getting the shit kicked out of him by some low rung gang who stole his mother’s ring from him. He remembers giving up, questioning the point of his own existence with a detached logic that left him with only one answer—there was no point to his existence, so he was as good dead as he was alive.

He remembers seeing on a sign that it was the eve of his fifteenth birthday, and he remembers dropping himself in the bay during a storm, hoping that the tide dragged him so far beneath the surface that he’d never see the light of day again.

He remembers waking up the next morning to an unfamiliar face at his bedside, brows knit in disapproval and lips turned down, and he distinctly remembers feeling put out by a stranger looking at him that way.

“What’s your name, kid?”

Dazai couldn’t remember anything but the name Aunt Kiye had drilled into him over and over again the past few months.

“Dazai Osamu.”

“Hm. Oda Sakunosuke. You got a family, Dazai?

Odasaku brought him in.

Odasaku saved him.

The doctors said he’d been dead for almost three minutes when Odasaku found him washed up on the beach—said his memory might return over time, but it might not—but Dazai didn’t even care, because Odasaku brought him in. He gave him a roof over his head, food to eat, and a reason to live. He sent him to school so he could feel like a normal kid his age. He played board games with him and didn’t even care when Dazai was a sore loser and quit mid-game when he realized he wouldn’t win. He humored Dazai when he faked being sick because he didn’t want to go to school. When Dazai was going through bad depressive episodes, Odasaku would sit with him silently and write his book so Dazai never felt alone. Odasaku introduced him to Ango and they were-

They were his friends.

Family, maybe.

They were all he had, and they were all he needed.

And then-

“We were the ones who killed him.”

Dazai’s gaze drags up from the table to focus on Mori. The man’s lips are curved into a cruel smile, his eyes are sharp, and Dazai is moving before he can stop himself. He lunges across the table, but Mori doesn’t even flinch because Nakahara Chuuya grabs the back of his shirt and yanks him back down into his seat.

“You-” Dazai spits, voice raspy and angry.

“Don’t look at me like that, we were trying to get to you,” Mori says casually as if the words don’t shatter Dazai’s entire world. “We would’ve loved to have Oda Sakunosuke amongst our ranks. His death was unfortunate. Collateral damage. He was an assassin for a long time—one of the best in the world. He was pretty much unkillable, his ability allowed him to see six seconds into the future. I never understood how our sniper managed to get him that day, but now I do. He saw you getting shot with his foresight and tried to pull you out of the way, but your ability is nullification, so when he touched you to save you, he damned himself. In those split seconds when he was pulling you to safety, he couldn’t see the future, and couldn’t see the bullets aimed for you that lodged into his chest instead.”

Dazai can’t do this anymore. He tries to push himself up to his feet but his legs are numb and uncooperative, and he can’t move his hands or arms. Mori’s lips part to continue speaking but Dazai can’t do this, he can’t hear anymore of this. He’d always known in his heart that Odasaku’s death was his fault even if he couldn’t remember much about his mother and Aunt Kiye and their desperate attempts to hide him from the Port Mafia. He’d known, but hearing it-hearing the confirmation, it’s too much for him.

Before Mori can say anything, Dazai is startled from his spiraling thoughts when you stand up so abruptly that your chair goes flying back. Your expression is haunted and you’re not looking at him again, but Dazai is glad for it, because he thinks he’s about to throw up.

“I… I need a minute. I just need a minute,” you say shakily before fleeing the room into Mori’s office so quickly that you almost trip over the chair you knocked over.

The room is silent in your wake, and after a few impossibly long moments, Mori stands to follow you into the other room. The three Port Mafia executives left in the room don’t say anything for a moment, and Dazai is just trying to breathe. He’s trying to breathe and process what Mori just said, but he’s failing miserably at it.

It’s the woman, Kouyou, who speaks first.

“She’s going to kill me for knowing about this,” she says simply, sparing a glance down at the dead body on her opposite side. “I’ve never seen her like this before. Even when Chuuya-kun went missing for a few days, this…”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have conspired against her,” Piano Man sings, looking entirely unperturbed. “I mean honestly, after what the previous boss did to you, I would’ve thought you’d be more sympathetic. Silly me to think you aren’t a cold-hearted bitch.”

Dazai tries to pay attention to what they’re saying, he tries to ground himself with the conversation happening so he can forget the feeling of Odasaku’s blood all over his hands, staining his clothes, smeared on his face. He tries to replace Mori’s echoing words with what they’re saying but he can’t.

“We were trying to get to you.”

“It has nothing to do with sympathy,” Kouyou snaps, but she does look ashamed. “It’s a security threat, it’s bigger than love. This boy could spell the end of everything we’ve built.”

“She won’t kill you, Ane-san,” Chuuya finally speaks up, his knuckles are tight around the armrest of the chair he’s sitting in. “I’ll talk to her, I just-”

“When he touched you to save you, he damned himself.”

“Chuuya-kun, she almost killed you,” Kouyou says so dryly that the words almost don’t even register to Dazai, but when they do, they’re the only thing that effectively draws him from his spiraling thoughts. He looks at Chuuya sharply to see if what Kouyou said was true, and his eyes widen when he only grimaces and looks down. “You and Piano Man. She didn’t even hesitate before pulling the trigger on Ace. She’s unstable right now, there’s no talking to her.”

“But she didn’t,” Chuuya says tightly. “I’ll talk to her, but first��”

Chuuya looks at Dazai so suddenly that he almost wants to snap his head away and ignore him, but he can’t. The ginger studies Dazai so intensely that it makes him want to crawl out of his own skin.

“Did you know?” Chuuya asks, voice low. He’s angry, Dazai can tell from the way a dark red color starts to flicker around his hands, but he’s trying to keep it together. “Tell me. Did you know who she was and use her to get closer to the Mafia for revenge? I’ll spare her the pain of having to put a bullet through your fucking head and kill you myself right now. Did you know who she was and purposely-”

“No,” Dazai interrupts, voice hoarse. “No. I didn’t-I didn’t know.”

Chuuya stares at him for a few seconds, studying him like he doesn’t know if he actually believes him, but after what feels like an eternity, he finally shakes his head and looks away, rubbing his face with his hands.

“Fuck, this is such a mess,” Chuuya breathes out, voice strained. “Fuck. She-”

Chuuya doesn’t finish his sentence because the door to Mori’s office reopens and you step back into the room, Mori at your heels. Your eyes are red, but your expression is withdrawn now, void of the tumultuous emotions that had been raging across it just a few minutes before. You settle back in your seat. Your eyes flit over Dazai like he’s not even there before focusing on Mori.

Dazai suddenly has a bad feeling.

“I’m not quite sure how you escaped us after that,” Mori continues where he left off, and Dazai is so sick of the man’s voice that he almost wants to rip his own ears off. “Probably Sakaguchi-san from the SDUP, I recall him and Oda-san being close… but that brings us to the present, doesn’t it? Four years later, you stumble into our lovely hime… Come, dear, let me tell you my running theory, and you tell me how accurate I am, yeah?”

Mori is looking at you now, eyes glittering as he waits for your response. Dazai has his own serious issues with the man, but he thinks it’s sick the way he’s enjoying your clear discomfort and increasing distress. Your jaw tightens a bit, but you nod, signaling for Mori to speak. Dazai’s nails dig into his pants as he waits for Mori to continue. Neither of you look at him, and Dazai’s lips part to speak so he can preemptively deny whatever Mori is about to accuse him of, but he can’t push a single word out.

“Your first meeting with him wasn’t by chance. A cafe, maybe… a bar?” Mori offers, watching your face carefully for a reason. You look away at the second option, and the man’s lips curve up. “A bar, then. One you frequent, I bet. The one in Hodogaya-ku, perhaps? Your first meeting, but not Shuji-kun’s first time seeing you. Ui Koutarou—his journalism professor at YNU—wrote his first article implicating the Mori Corporation’s connection with the Port Mafia in February of this year, around a month before rising fourth year students register for classes. Shuji-kun, naturally, has been following anything related to the Port Mafia closely, so when he sees a class being offered in the fall by the same man who has been openly targeting the Port Mafia, he sees an opportunity and signs up for the class.”

No, Dazai tries to say. His lips form the word, but the sound doesn’t come from his lips. No. No, no, no, no. You look haunted suddenly, and Dazai remembers the argument he had with you during the government event in Tokyo. How cold and withdrawn you’d become. How when he confronted you next, you accused him of working with Ui Koutarou and blackmailing you for money. Mori is reigniting all of the initial fears you once had.

“Ui-san has had his sights set on you for quite a while, dear. You don’t need me to tell you that, you’re very well aware of the man’s hatred of you… When Shuji-kun started classes in the fall, Ui-san roped him into his plans, and you became his project. That wretched man had many documents on you. I had the Black Lizards raid his apartment after we captured him—most were harmless, detailing places you frequented and people seen around you, but when Shuji-kun became involved, he started using that information to manufacture meetings between you. I imagine that after you met him that first time, he started appearing around you rather regularly. Bump-ins at that cafe you like in Minami-ku, on the streets—he even started renting an apartment on property that we own after he realized the opportunity he had with Ui… he’s only been living there since the summer, you know?”

His last apartment wasn’t close enough to the school, Dazai wants to argue desperately. He’d been lucky that a cheap apartment opened up in Hodogaya-ku before the semester started—he’s been trying to get one since his first year. It has nothing to do with-

Dazai suddenly feels nauseous again, everything is spinning around him—he still hears Aunt Kiye screaming at him, he still hears the creaking of the rope his mother hung himself on, he still hears Mori’s confirming that Odasaku’s death was his fault. And now this, and you’re not looking at him again, and he’s not saying anything, why isn’t he saying anything? Why isn’t he denying this?

“He attached himself to you quickly, didn’t he?” Mori asks rhetorically. “Too quickly, I’m sure you had doubts—not even your ability makes people reliant on you as swift as he became. How long did it take for him to start prying for information? Trying to make you slip up and implicate yourself with the Mafia? Confess yourself as an ability user?”

The night of the earthquake when you showed up at his apartment, he remembers dizzily. He started pressing you on your political opinion because he remembered Ui saying that all of the criminal syndicates in Japan are going to do whatever it takes to prevent the military bill from passing. But he wasn’t… doing it to prove anything? He just wanted to know more about you, he was curious, he was finally putting the mystery that you are together. It wasn’t malicious—he just wanted to know you. That’s all it ever was, he’s only ever wanted to know you.

“When did you tell him about your ability? More about our organization? Around when the Guild started making their move in Yokohama, I’m sure. He never told you about his ability until his hand was forced. In fact, I’m willing to bet he lied and said he didn’t know he had one, but tell me, do you really think an assassin of the caliber of Oda Sakunosuke would not realize his ward had an ability that negated his own? That he wouldn’t be trained in how to use it… Most importantly, if all of this wasn’t a scheme of revenge—if he really did love you—then why did he never get rid of the flash drive that contained the proof that his journalism house published? The proof that got you thrown in prison?”

You’re crying.

Dazai’s throat swells when he sees the tears silently tracking over your cheeks. At once, he realizes that he’s never seen you cry before; he itches to reach over to you, to grab your hand or wipe away the tears. He doesn’t—partially because he doesn’t think he could move if he tried, but mostly because he knows that he’s the reason you’re crying.

He wants to assure you that none of this is true. He had nothing to do with the Guild—they kidnapped him for fuck’s sake. He didn’t know about his ability, he didn’t even know Odasaku was an assassin. And he was just… careless with the flash drive, and he shouldn’t have been, but there was always so much going on, and he was so new to having someone in his life that really loved him that he was quick to bask in it and forget everything else.

He doesn’t assure you of anything, instead he watches as Mori reaches out to do what Dazai wants to do. He brushes away your tears and turns your face to look at him, a disgustingly sympathetic look on his face.

“I know you were eager to believe that someone could love you without your ability at work influencing them, dear,” Mori murmurs, “but people like us will never find a love that pure. There will always be other factors at work sullying it—wealth, revenge, threats. You understand now what this was, don’t you?”

No, Dazai wants to scream at you. He does love you, this wasn’t some ridiculous revenge plot for family he hardly remembered until this meeting, that-

“I do.”

Dazai finally is able to make a noise when those two words leave your lips. It’s weak—something caught between a wheeze and a whimper that sounds too loud in the silent room. He feels eyes on him—Chuuya and Kouyou’s in particular. Not yours. You stare down at the table.

“Ogai-dono,” Kouyou clears her throat. “If I may… perhaps we could… send the boy away. Abroad. Ensure he never comes back to Japan so we don’t have to risk him coming back and disrupting things.”

“We could give him a seat at the table,” Chuuya interrupts, ignoring the wide-eyed look both Kouyou and Piano Man give him because of the radical idea. “We’re down an executive anyway. We tell people who he is, that he supports the new regime. It’s what you wanted to begin with, right, boss? You wanted one of the grandchildren to legitimize the passing of power. We could make it work.”

“It’s too risky.” Mori isn’t the one to speak, Piano Man is, but he doesn’t look happy to do it. “Maybe back then it could’ve worked, but the Port Mafia killed his friends and family, and hunted him down. Too much has happened, he’s an unpredictable variable that we can’t risk. We can’t trust that he’ll just accept it all, that he won’t work behind the scenes to take us down. Giving him any leverage in the organization is the last thing we should do, but what Kouyou-”

“Leave him alive and we risk everything we’ve built falling apart—a civil war igniting, Yokohama being caught in the crossfires and all of our foreign enemies crawling into the city to reap the benefits of our fall. It’s one life or hundreds—thousands, even,” Mori interrupts, voice cool. He turns his gaze onto you. “I trust you know what has to be done, dear.”

Your expression is resolved, a heavy emotion in your eyes that tells him your answer before you even speak. “Yeah, I know.”

You stand up, and Dazai knows that it’s over. When you look down at him, it’s with a type of apathy that makes his stomach twist—he’d rather hate than nothing. His lips part to speak but he pauses when you shake your head slightly, so subtly that he almost doesn’t even notice it.

“Get up,” you say flatly, and then glance at Chuuya. “Chuuya, will you…?”

“Yeah,” Chuuya replies without you even needing to finish the question. His voice is hoarse, he looks more than a little disturbed. “Yeah. Of course.”

Chuuya rises to his feet and then grabs Dazai’s bicep to pull him up to his feet too. Dazai doesn’t even have the heart to give him a dirty look in response, following along as he leads him out of the conference room and into the hallway.

For a split second, Dazai really believes that maybe you’re just trying to fool Mori, you made him think you were taking Dazai to have him killed so that you can get him out of here safely, but even once you’re out of the conference room without Mori’s eyes carefully watching you, you don’t look at him.

“Get one of the clean up crews up here,” you tell one of the guards waiting in the hall instead as you frown at your phone, typing out a quick text to someone. You pointedly ignore how alarmed they are by the offhand comment to click on the button to the elevator.

When you look back at the two of them, it’s not to look at Dazai—it’s to look at Chuuya. The two of you are having a conversation, Dazai can tell that much, and he thinks that maybe he should be putting in the effort to figure out what’s going on, what you have planned, but he’s just… tired. He’s not even sure if he cares what happens to him anymore, and he figures the worst case scenario is that he dies at your hands, and of all of the ways he could go, he thinks that would be the most preferable, because at least you would be the last thing he saw.

He doesn’t try to speak again until the three of you are in the elevator and the doors have closed.

“I-”

“Stop.”

Dazai is startled by the sharpness in your voice. He looks at you, but you’re still not looking at him, your lips are curved down as you stare at your phone, typing furiously. He glances up into the left corner of the elevator, noticing the cameras—maybe that’s why, he thinks a bit unsurely, deciding to stay quiet until out of the building.

When the elevator doors open, it’s Chuuya that urges him to keep walking by nudging his shoulder. You don’t touch him, don’t look at him. There’s nobody in the main entrance of the building, which Dazai thinks is a bit odd, but he bites back any comments he might have when he sees a black car waiting outside the building.

The doors to the building open at your approach, and Dazai inhales the crisp, fresh air greedily, not even having realized how stifled he’d felt in that room with Mori, you, and the other Port Mafia executives. He thinks maybe that you’ll sit in the backseat with him and he’ll finally be able to talk to you, but you don’t. You open the door to the passenger seat and sit there without even sparing him a glance.

Dazai’s throat starts to swell again, stopping in his tracks as he stares at where you disappeared behind the car door. Chuuya pushes him forward, not letting him linger for long—he opens the door to the backseat and pretty much manhandles Dazai into the car before taking a seat next to him.

He recognizes the person at the wheel—Albatross, your friend. He’s driven you and Dazai around before, every time Dazai gets in the car with him, he makes a sharp comment aimed to embarrass you in some manner. This time, he doesn’t even look at Dazai through the rearview mirror. He just puts the car in gear and starts driving.

A pit starts to form in Dazai’s stomach. Dazai tries to initiate conversation with you again now that you’re outside of the Port Mafia headquarters within closed quarters, nails scraping against his pants as he decides what he wants to say.

“I d-”

“Stop.”

When you cut him off now, Dazai’s stomach flips. He stares at the side of your face, trying to understand why you won’t even listen to him. You can’t actually believe what Mori was saying, you can’t. You were faking him out, tricking him into thinking you fell for it—you had to be, you have to be. You can’t possibly believe him.

“You won’t… even hear me out?” Dazai asks you quietly.

“There’s nothing left to say.”

Oh, Dazai thinks to himself, withdrawing. He stares at you for a moment before turning away stiffly, expression tight and strained as he stares out the window, watching the buildings pass by as they get closer and closer to the ports.

You believe it, he realizes dully. You believe that it was all just a scheme. You believe that everything was manufactured, that he used you for some fantastical revenge plan, that he never loved you. You believe it.

But it doesn’t make sense, he thinks desperately. He doesn’t understand how you’re not seeing through it, and if you are, why aren’t you at least giving him some hint? He should try to say something again—he knows that, but he finds himself unable to. He’s a smooth-talker, quick on his feet, but never when it comes to you—since the day he met you, he’s been fumbling over words awkwardly, but now it’s costing him everything. He finds ash in his mouth preventing him from salvaging anything he might’ve had with you.

Dig your nails in and cling, he reminds himself, but his nails have become rounded out and blunted from how long he was scratching at his pants and skin while remembering all those memories he locked away. He tries to dig his nails in and cling, but his voice fails him and his nails can’t even find purchase on your skin, you slip out of his hands as easily as an eel.

He’s going to lose you. He might’ve lost you already.

Dazai thinks that’s worse than the realization that he really might be about to die.

The car comes to a stop much quicker than Dazai had hoped, and he stiffens when you waste no time before getting out of the car. He makes no move to join you outside, and Chuuya sighs next to him.

“Get out,” Chuuya says flatly. When Dazai doesn’t budge again, Chuuya snaps, “Get out of the car-”

“-and go, we don’t have time! They’ve found us.”

Dazai draws his knees to his chest, breath becoming a bit labored as his aunt’s voice echoes in his ears. He doesn’t even realize that Chuuya has gotten out of the car until Dazai’s car door is pried open. For a split second, he confuses the executive with his aunt as he’s yanked out of the car—he’s fourteen again and being abandoned by the only person he has left, and he can just barely bite back the “don’t leave me here!” that almost spills from his lips as his knees hit the ground hard.

Dazai is instantly hit with a thick scent that makes him gag. It’s noxious, almost entirely unbearable, clogs his throat to the point he almost struggles to breathe—a blend of rot, acrid chemicals, and something he doesn’t recognize, but it’s sickeningly sweet. As he pushes himself to his feet, he notices you pass your gun over to Chuuya, but in that moment, Dazai is more concerned with figuring out where he is, and when he does, his stomach drops.

The dumping grounds by ports stretch endlessly under the heavy, overcast sky. Mounds of trash rose like grotesque hills patched with scraps of torn plastic and suspicious lumps that Dazai doesn’t have to get close to know what they are. The ground is uneven and treacherous—a mix of sticky mud and sharp shards of discarded glass and plastic, and pools of murky water shimmering with oil slicks.

It’s disgusting, and Dazai has a feeling it might be his final resting place.

He trails over to the side of the road and his gaze tracks down to the ground directly below him. It’s not a far drop, hardly a foot or two, and certainly less gross than some of the other parts of the area, but that’s a low bar to meet. He tears his eyes away from the scenery around him to look back at you, lips parted to speak but he doesn’t say anything.

You’re leaning against the front of the car, watching him with an expression that Dazai can’t describe. Sad, maybe, resigned. Chuuya is back in the car, from what Dazai can tell, he's still fiddling with your gun—he wonders if this is his way of letting the two of you say goodbye in private.

“I do love you,” Dazai says. His voice cracks over the words. “No ulterior motives. No schemes. I just loved you. Love you.”

You don’t say anything for a moment, eyes drawing from him somewhere over to the side like you’re looking for something, but after a moment, you look back at him, your face a little softer than it was before.

“I know,” you tell him quietly. “I know, Osamu.”

Dazai’s lips part to say something back—he doesn’t even know what he wants to say, because confusion fogs his mind. If you know, then why-

Why are you doing this?

He doesn’t get the chance to ask. The car door opens and Chuuya steps back out, he passes your gun back to you and Dazai sees you subtly slide something into his hand too, but he can’t tell what it is. You sigh as you look down at the gun before looking back up at him again, he holds his breath as you make your way closer to him.

His lashes flutter shut, expecting to feel the cool barrel of the gun against his forehead, but his breath hitches when he instead feels the familiar warmth of your hand cradling his cheek. Your fingertips are flaked with Ace’s dried blood, but Dazai still leans into your touch, eyes sliding back open to look at you.

Up close, your expression is twisted with regret and… is that fear? Dazai can’t tell, he doesn’t care, he’s more preoccupied with memorizing the image of you before he runs out of time to.

“Forgive me,” you whisper so faintly that Dazai almost doesn’t hear you.

“I do,” he replies just as softly.

Your face crumbles as you look away. You take a step away from him, and your hand drops down from his face. Dazai instantly mourns the loss. You let out a heavy, shaky breath, sparing one last look down at the gun in your hand, one to Chuuya who stands half a step behind you, and then you look at Dazai again.

“Forgive me,” you say again, this time as you lift the gun—your voice is raspy, breath uneven.

Your fingers tremble so violently that the whole gun is unsteady, but Dazai doesn’t even care to look at it, gaze focused on your face instead.

“I do,” Dazai repeats.

You pull the trigger.

#dazai x reader #dazai x you #bsd x reader #bsd x you #bungo stray dogs x reader #bungo stray dogs x you

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