No one really had a good story about joining the mafia, and if such a person did exist, Akutagawa hadn't met them.
Akutagawa was fourteen when he joined the mafia. He'd joined after watching essentially all of his friends being brutally murdered by strangers, murdered because he hadn't been able to save them. It was a small miracle that his sister had survived the attack, but other than her, there had been no one.
It was no wonder that Akutagawa had gotten attached to Dazai, the first person to show him that he had a chance at something outside of scrounging through dumpsters and sleeping on cardboard. He hadn't realized how desperately he wanted an identity until he'd met someone with as (seemingly) strong of a sense of self as Dazai. It had been the last push he needed to finally, finally make something of himself.
The years that he'd spent training under Dazai were…excruciating? No, that would imply that they were always painful, and they weren't always painful. Granted they were most times, but sometimes Dazai would give him a smile (no, it was a smirk. It was a condescending smirk but Akutagawa would live in denial until he died there) when he learned a new way to handle his ability, and he would send him back to his dorm without punishment.
Grueling would work in most cases, but sometimes Gin would find him when he'd just gotten out of a training session and the two of them would sneak to the top floor of the headquarters building to watch the sunset. Neither of them were very talkative so there wasn't much conversation happening up there, but it was peaceful. They existed in a kind of limbo with each other, not quite ready to face the reality that they had been thrust into but understanding that they needed each other if they were going to survive.
The one word that Akutagawa could never use to describe his years in the Port Mafia, though, was easy. He could find instances of every adjective of his years of training and fighting and killing, but he could never find a time that was easy. Rest days were empty, walks around the city were spent on edge, and nothing was ever easy .
But for the first few months that he spent there, Akutagawa didn't really think that he ever wanted to leave. It was hard, true, but it was his . It was his life, and he was perfectly capable of lying to himself and saying that he could leave if he truly did want to. But he didn't want to, and so he didn't.
He didn't want to leave when Dazai wrapped a hand around his throat and stuffed a packet of C4 in his mouth, threatening to detonate it if he couldn't push him off. He didn't want to leave when a hailstorm of bullets ripped through his skin before he learned to rip them apart first. He didn't when he coughed so hard that blood clots formed a puddle at his feet, and Mori told him that he would likely kill himself if he kept up the way that he was living.
He didn't leave when he bled, he didn't leave when he passed out, he didn't leave when there was a wide open door in front of him that screamed just look, just look and see what's out there at the very least .
Because what would there be to leave for? Everything that Akutagawa had ever made for himself was there, in the Port Mafia. With his sister, and Dazai, and a handful of other people whose names he probably should have learned but weren't relevant enough to his life to acknowledge with more than a nod. They were nobodies, they were weak, they were nothing like him.
But no one ever had a good story about joining the Port Mafia. They all shared that.
---
Akutagawa was fourteen the first time that he found Dazai after a suicide attempt. He'd been out on an assignment late at night, one of his first on his own, when he made it back to the Port Mafia's dorm rooms. He was covered in blood, some of it was probably his but most of it definitely wasn't. He'd tried to wipe the blood on his face off at one point but only succeeded in smearing more onto it. And he was shaking too, although the night wasn't actually that cold. Why had he been shaking again?
Whatever had happened on the mission stopped mattering when Akutagawa walked into a bathroom to try and scrub some of the blood off of his skin. They didn't have private bathrooms in the dorms, only public ones. There was probably some psychological reason behind it and how no one in the Port Mafia was truly entitled to anything, not even their own privacy, but Akutagawa mostly just did what he had to and left. He didn't linger, didn't think too hard, he couldn't afford to.
In and out wasn't what happened that day, though.
Akutagawa had stepped into one of the showers, bracing himself to feel the inevitable coldness of the coming water, when he heard a soft thud come from one of the shower stalls nearby. It shouldn't have been important, probably just some clumsy low-level slipping on the slick floor, but alarm bells dinged in the back of Akutagawa's head. Not loudly, but loudly enough that he couldn't ignore them.
As quickly as he could, Akutagawa had re-dressed and begun slowly walking down the row of showers. It was late enough that essentially everyone in the dorms was already asleep, only those with late assignments were ever up late anyways. Those in the Port Mafia understood that you needed to grasp on to every second of sleep you could get, because you never knew when the next one would come.
He'd walked slowly, goosebumps on his skin for reasons that he couldn't quite figure out. Akutagawa hadn't even seen anything wrong yet, so why did everything feel so off?
It was the last stall in the row of showers that made Akutagaw freeze. Because there, peeking out from underneath the bottom of the stall, was the edge of a pool of blood.
If he were thinking with a clearer mind, Akutagawa would have probably realized that ripping a door off of its hinges wasn't the smartest idea. But it was late, and he was tired, and he'd just killed and mained only god knows how many people. Whatever was behind that door, he needed to know, and he needed to know instantly .
He found out very quickly that he wished he hadn't.
There was a pool of blood on the floor, a large one. And that pool of blood was coming from one arm, no wait, two arms. And those two arms were attached to a body, which was attached to a head, which had Dazai's face on it.
Akutagawa was well aware of the fight or flight instinct, but he'd always associated himself with fight . And he never ran, never.
But he'd also never frozen, and that's exactly what he'd done in the door of that shower stall.
Dazai's body was slumped in the corner as blood oozed lazily out of long cuts on his wrist. They were clean, efficient, everything that Dazai was summed up in a gory display for only one person to see.
And after he was done freezing, after Akutagawa's mind overcame the haze of panic and confusion and a hundred different feelings that all culminated in his face feeling like static and his stomach ceasing to exist, his instincts switched back to fight.
There were no thoughts in Akutagawa's mind as he sprinted back to his shower stall to grab a towel, only a torrent of Dazai Dazai blood faster Dazai blood dead blood Dazai blood faster DEAD-
The towel turned red quickly. Akutagawa didn't spend time staring at himself or others when they were injured. After all, a set of eyes wouldn't stitch up a gouge from a knife in someone's jugular. But as he pressed the towel to Dazai's wrists, not quite sure if he was putting pressure on the wounds or opening them further, he stared .
Dazai's face was peaceful, more peaceful than he had ever seen it. His features were softened, and all of the tension was gone from his body. For the first time, he looked like a normal boy, not the Demon Prodigy that he had been turned into. Dazai never looked like that when he looked at Akutagawa
God, how messed up was that? That Akutagawa wanted Dazai to look how he did when he had just tried to kill himself more often.
It was only at that second that it really sunk in with Akutagawa what he was witnessing. This wasn't an attack, this wasn't a mission gone wrong, this was a suicide attempt. Brave, unshakable, emotionless Dazai was laying motionless in a public shower where he had just tried to kill himself. And if Akutagawa hadn't been there to save him, he would have been dead.
Akutagawa knew that it had happened before, there wasn't a person in the Port Mafia that didn't. The sun rises, you breathe oxygen, and Dazai tries to kill himself, those were just the facts of life. But it had always seemed so distant before, like just a story.
Now, playing out before Akutagawa's eyes, it was a nightmare come true.
He heaved in a shaky breath, trying his very best not to hurl his guts onto Dazai's prone body (because Dazai was unconscious, and he needed help, and Akutagawa couldn't afford to fail now) when the man's eyes flickered open ever so slightly.
"Dazai?" Akutagawa whispered, and he wasn't quite sure if he'd actually said the words or if he'd just mouthed them.
Dazai just blinked. Slowly, as though his eyelids were made of concrete. "Are you here to free me?" he asked with slurred words and a groggy voice before his eyes slipped closed once more.
Akutagawa didn't move after that. He stayed still, didn't think, didn't breathe. He wasn't a doctor, he didn't know if Dazai would bleed out if he stopped putting pressure on his wrists or not. There was no phone for him to call for help with, close enough to hear if he screamed for help. All he could do was wait.
It was more than an hour (although maybe longer, Akutagawa was sure his mind blacked out certain sections of time) before someone came into the bathroom. Akutagawa almost hadn't heard them, too focused on keeping pressure and not blacking out to be aware of anything else.
He didn't know the name of the man that came in, and he never learned it after. All he knew was that when help came and Dazai was carted off to the infirmary, Akutagawa had thrown up so hard that he passed out.
There were a solid three days after the incident where Akutagawa had very little memory. He remembered falling down on the floor of his dorm room, the blood that he had gone to wash off still stuck to his skin. More had been added to what had already been there. He wasn't sure he'd ever be able to wash Dazai's blood from his hands.
How? How did this happen? Was he not working hard enough, not showing Dazai that there were enough things to live for? Dazai had a purpose in life, he was something that the world truly needed, and Akutagawa wasn't. If Dazai couldn't see a reason for himself to live, how was Akutagawa ever supposed to find one?
He would do better, be better. Even if it wasn't his fault (although it somehow felt like it was), Akutagawa would find a way to make things better.
For the first time, Akutagawa thought about why Dazai had joined the Port Mafia in the first place. He was larger than life, gifted with a strong ability and a brilliant mind. He could have done anything, been anyone, and yet he was here. Trying to kill himself in a dingy shower stall that anyone could have walked into.
And no one was going to help him, because that's how things worked in the Port Mafia. You got injured, you recovered (physically, only ever physically), and you went right back out again. Rinse and repeat until you are too old or too broken to be useful anymore.
It was the first time any flicker of doubt crossed Akutagawa's mind about what he was becoming. Was this…really it for him? Was he destined to end up just like Dazai, trying to kill himself for some form of relief?
No , he scolded himself, you'll find a reason to live, you'll prove that you're worthy. And once you're strong and revered, then you can be happy .
Akutagawa wouldn't leave the Port Mafia, not in life and not in death. This was where he was meant to be, and it was where he would stay. There was nowhere else in the world for Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, so there was no point in trying to find anywhere else, not even if Dazai was trying to find some semblance of an escape.
Are you here to set me free , Dazai had asked, but he had no reason to. They were both free already. After all, what else were they supposed to be doing with their lives?
At least that's what he thinks he told himself. He couldn't remember very much, after all.
---
The day that Dazai came back was one of the most terrifying of Akutagawa's life.
He wasn't sure what he'd expected from Dazai's return. In the time that Akutagawa had been in the Port Mafia, Dazai had only gotten close enough to suicide to be hospitalized once, and the training after that had been rough, but nothing that Akutagawa couldn't handle.
This time, though, Akutagawa was the one that had stopped him. Akutagawa was the one that was responsible for keeping Dazai from the release of death that he seemed to crave so dearly, and Dazai was anything but happy about it.
"If you knew what was good for you, you would have left me there," Dazai had said as he landed yet another kick solidly on Akutagawa's ribs. The force of it vibrated through his entire skeleton, and stars danced before his eyes as he squeezed them shut tightly, "My life is mine to do with as I see fit, do you understand?"
"Yes, Dazai," Akutagawa choked, trying to push himself back up. Three of his fingers had already been broken, and one of them was bent so awkwardly that he wasn't sure if Mori would be able to fix it or not.
Dazai didn't seem to hear him as he grabbed a handful of Akutagawa's hair and slammed his head back into the ground. "If you ever interfere with something I've done again, I won't be the one that they're trying to bring back from the brink of death, are we clear?"
Akutagawa tried to nod, but his head was pinned too hard for him to move it. He settled for a garbled I understand and prayed that Dazai could hear what he said.
Dazai stood up once more, dusting off the new set of white bandages that now adorned his wrists. They were pristine, not a hint of red on them, but all that Akutagawa could see when he saw them now was blood and flayed skin and the image of a dirty shower stall.
"We're going to push you to your limits today," Dazai said, refusing to meet Akutagawa's eyes, "There won't be any stopping until you've passed out, and when you wake up we're going to do it all over again."
"Of course, Dazai," Akutagawa said, moving slowly to his feet. He should have expected nothing less.
---
It really shouldn't have come as a surprise when Dazai left the Mafia. It hurt, fuck it stung like nothing that Akutagawa had ever experienced before, but it wasn't a surprise.
Dazai had always been meant for bigger things. He was meant to be a star in the spotlight, not hidden away in the shadows with the stray dogs of society. That's what Akutagawa started telling himself a few months after Dazai's defection.
The months before that though were anything but pretty.
Akutagawa had training with Dazai the day before he disappeared seemingly for good. It had started off like normal training, and Akutagawa got his ass handed to him like he usually did. It was fine, because it was routine. As long as Akutagawa knew what to expect, he firmly believed he could handle anything.
What he wasn't ready for, though, was when Dazai started talking.
"Do you think that you could handle yourself on your own?" Dazai had asked, essentially out of nowhere. Aktuagawa was lying on the floor, desperately trying to catch his breath from Dazai's last barrage of attacks. He hardly understood the words that were being aimed at him, too busy trying to regain his composure and block out the bruises that would surely start forming any moment.
"Of course I can," he'd sneered through bloodied lips, "I handle myself on my own every day."
Dazai rolled his eyes, not bothering to help Akutagawa up but not shoving him down either. It was like they were caught in some sort of void that Akutagawa didn't know how to escape from. Dazai had never paused training, not even for a second. Any second that he wasn't attacking Akutagawa he was instructing him. They had a routine, and this wasn't it.
"I don't mean for brief periods of time," Dazai said. He didn't pace, but he lingered. It wasn't a very Dazai thing to do, but Akutagawa had never been the best at picking up the subtleties of the people around him, "I mean if you were to be alone, with no one guiding you or telling you what to do for months or years, would you be able to handle it?"
Whatever kind of test this was, Akutagawa was going to pass it. Clearly Dazai had a point that he was getting at, and even though Akutagawa wasn't entirely sure what it was yet, he would figure it out.
"I'd be fine," he snapped back, "I'm not an idiot, I'm perfectly capable of handling being alone."
Dazai was silent for a second. It was so weird to watch, because even when Dazai wasn't speaking or moving, it never felt like he was quiet. You could tell that he was thinking that he was doing something up in his head at the very least. But Dazai just seemed to exist in that moment, and nothing more.
It only took a second for Dazai to click himself back into place, hardening his eyes and tightening his fists. This Akutagawa understood. Fighting and bloodshed was practically his second language, his first when it came to Dazai. And yet Akutagawa felt like he was just learning the basics of it in their final fight, like Dazai was speaking a completely different language than he was.
When Mori announced to the entire Mafia the next day that Dazai was gone, and Akutagawa realized that what Dazai had been saying wasn't a test after all, Akutagawa had trained himself into the ground. For hours he locked himself in a warehouse and tore apart everything in sight, giving himself endurance drills and strengthening drills and repeating every part of his training regime that didn't require Dazai to be there.
But it wasn't their routine, and no matter how hard Akutagawa pushed himself, it didn't feel like enough. Nothing would ever feel like it was enough again.
It had taken two weeks for Gin to convince Akutagawa that he needed a day off, that his body physically couldn't sustain the amount of strain that he was putting on it. Even Mori had started giving him concerned looks when they passed each other, and although Akutagawa put on his best scowl when he looked at the man, he knew the hollowness in his cheeks wasn't conveying a very convincing message of I'm fine.
The day that Akutagawa took off was spent mostly sleeping. The second that his body was given a second to process it took full advantage, sending him into as close to a coma as he could get. He slept for almost eight hours on top of his normal night of sleep, waking up just around dinner time.
He didn't leave his room for another two hours either. Akutagawa still felt tired , and he wasn't sure that any amount of sleep was ever going to fix that. Because his reason for going on, the thing that he was aiming for, was gone.
Akutagawa had once heard one of the grunt workers of the Port Mafia talking about how when her sister had died she didn't know what to do with herself. At the time Akutagawa had thought that was ridiculous, because what you were supposed to do was obvious. You picked yourself back up and kept on moving. There was no way of going back in time, so there was no use in dwelling on the past.
But the longer that Akutagawa sat in his bed, the more that he realized how wrong he had been. Because he just didn't know what he was supposed to do. And it terrified him .
For the longest time, Akutagawa aspired for one thing and one thing only: a reason to live. It was so strange, because he could see the reasons that the people around him had for living. Dazai, Gin, Mori, Chuuya, they all had reasons to go on. They were important, they had people who would miss them and things that didn't work without them.
But Akutagawa had none of that. There was no hole that would need to be filled if he left, no one that would speak about how valued he was at his funeral. The only feat of his that would be remembered would be being named "The Rabid Dog of the Port Mafia," and as much as he lied to himself, he wanted to be remembered as a human being.
And Dazai had given him that. He had been Dazai's subordinate, his project, his apprentice. Akutagawa's existence may have been tied to that of another, but it had at least been tied to something. Now he was just floating aimlessly, a person without a direction.
If you were to be alone, with no one guiding you or telling you what to do for months or years, would you be able to handle it?
I failed you, Dazai, Akutagawa thought to himself as he sat motionless in his bed. Your last question for me, and I lied to you .
Akutagawa understood terrifyingly well why Dazai had done what he'd done in the shower stall at that moment. Are you here to set me free ? Is what he'd asked Akutagawa. Akutagawa wanted to be free too, but he was already as free as he could get. There was nothing more for him to obtain.
Gin took him to the rooftop of the Port Mafia headquarters when he finally came out of his room. They hadn't been there since Akutagawa was fourteen, not since he had seen Dazai's attempt. He'd dedicated almost every moment he had from that day forward to trying to convince Dazai that he needed to stay around for something, for Akutagawa .
And look how well that turned out.
The two stayed silent for a long time. It felt like the old days, a little bit, when they were both still foolish enough to think that they could be happy if they just tried hard enough. That their break was just around the corner and they just had to look a little bit harder. When they had the time to relax and enjoy the sunset.
"You can't go on like this," Gin said finally, breaking the delicate peace that had been established.
Akutagawa bristled. "I can go on however I please."
"No, you can't," Gin pressed on, "You're going to lose yourself if you let yourself keep sinking in this, Ryuunosuke, and I can't afford to lose you."
Akutagawa knew that, in reality, he was important to his sister. They were the only constant in each other's lives, the only thing that never wavered. Even when they had nothing, they had each other. They were survivors, after all.
A cloud passed over the sun just as it started to set behind the horizon. It was a large cloud, the kind that looked like it stretched on for miles. It wouldn't pass before the sunset ended.
"There's nothing of me to lose," Akutagawa said, and his tongue felt numb as he spoke, "There was nothing of me to start with."
Gin shook her head. "Don't say that. I know that Dazai leaving hurts, but you can't let it ruin you, okay? You can't , because I can't lose my older brother like this."
Akutagawa did his very best to ignore the waver in her voice, but he'd always been a weak boy. He let his eyes flick over to where she sat the same way he did, hunched over her knees and hugging them to her chest. There were tears prickling in her eyes, and for the first time in years, Akutagawa felt the same in his.
"I don't want to lose myself," he admitted, and he was ashamed of the way that his voice wobbled as he said the words, "But I don't-" he took in a stuttering breath, which turned into a torrent of coughs, "-there's nothing else for me to be ."
Akutagawa left the roof before Gin could stop him.
---It didn't take long for Akutagawa to start hating Dazai. He hated everything about that man, from the way that he spoke to the way that he looked.
The only thing of Dazai's that Akutagawa kept around was his jacket, everything else was disposed of. The first chance he got he burned the room that Dazai used to train him in. He felt no relief as he watched all of the contents go up in flames, but he felt a little satisfaction nonetheless.
Akutagawa wasn't sure when he started getting angrier, but he knew that he didn't have as many conversations as he used to. Which was fine , he didn't need to talk to people to live. All he needed was food, water, a place to sleep, and to get stronger. Because if he couldn't prove himself to Dazai, he could at least be better than him.
Dazai was weak. Dazai had given up on the Port Mafia and everyone within it, but Akutagawa wouldn't be like him. Even if Akutagawa wasn't good enough for Dazai when he'd left, that didn't mean he couldn't become better .
It took six months for Mori to put a wrench in his plans for success. Terminal diagnosis , he said. Lucky if you live to see twenty five , he said.
Akutagawa had never been someone that was entirely fond of living. Living meant suffering, and disappointment, and unfulfilled promises.
But through everything, through the pain and exhaustion, Akutagawa had always had the promise of another day. He'd always had the knowledge that even if all else failed, he could try again. Nothing was ever set in stone, everything could be changed. But this? This was inevitable.
Because now, Akutagawa had a deadline. He had concrete knowledge that his time was limited, and that it would be entirely too easy for him to die as a nothing. Unknown to the world and unwanted by everyone, including himself.
He would be better. He needed to be better.
---
When Kyouka was brought to the Port Mafia, Akutagawa's first thought was she's going to die here . Because that's what everyone who joined the Port Mafia did, they died there. Unless you were Dazai, of course, and you left a wake of destruction and misery behind you.
His second thought was I'm going to make something of you . Because Akutagawa may have been a failure, and he may not have been enough to keep Dazai around, but he could make something of this girl. He could give her a reason to go on, even if she didn't see a purpose for her life. He could make sure that she didn't end up like him.
It was only logical that the first step for that was training. She needed to know how to fight, and how to fight properly. Demon snow would have been a good ability if it weren't for that phone, but that contingency made things complicated. It didn't matter though, because Akutagawa had learned to fight from the best. His body might not have been weak enough to sustain the training it had received from Dazai, but that didn't mean he couldn't pass it on.
Akutagawa pretended he didn't notice that Gin didn't look him in the eye when Kyouka was around. Because she just didn't understand . He was helping her, helping her so that she didn't end up like him. Kyouka could still be something, she had potential even if she didn't realize it. She could be something in the Port Mafia.
He didn't train her violently, he wasn't like Dazai. He told her what she had to do, and maybe his words were a bit harsh when she didn't follow orders, but that's because it was the only way to get her to listen. It was necessary , and it was good . Akutagawa was a good mentor, better than he ever was.
(Sometimes, when it was late enough that Akutagawa could hardly think straight, he wondered if Dazai used to think the same way.)
It's approaching the three year mark of Dazai's defection when Kyouka started getting restless. Akutagawa knows first hand how grueling it is working for the Port Mafia. He knows that it takes you and breaks you and makes you into something that you never wanted to be but were always destined to become.
Akutagawa was as patient as he knew how to be, which isn't very patient, but he gave it his best. But then it was the day of Dazai's defection, and Kyouka was refusing to go on a mission, and he snapped.
"What do you mean no ?" Akutagawa seethed, doing his best not to bite straight through his tongue, " No isn't in your vocabulary when you speak to me."
"I won't do it," Kyouka whispered. She was always so quiet, like raising her voice would kill her. Maybe she thought that it would. "I won't end the lives of any more people."
Akutagawa clenched his fists hard enough that he could feel his fingernails puncture through his palms. Because she didn't get it . He could have punched her, kicked her, stabbed her a thousand times over but he hadn't . He'd been so generous, but all she'd done was make things more complicated.
Before he could even think about the consequences, Akutagawa could feel himself ordering Rashomon towards Kyouka, its enormous jaws clamping into her shoulder. She screamed, at least that's what it looked like. Akutagawa couldn't actually hear her over the ringing in his ears, but the image of Rashomon clamping onto Kyouka would be ingrained into his mind forever.
He took a wobbly step back as Rashomon retreated back into his coat, eyes wide as he stared at the girl in front of him. She wasn't crying, she didn't cry. But her eyes were wide and watery from the pain.
"Training is over."
Akutagawa stumbled back, walking as quickly as he could to the bathroom on his dorm floor. The bathrooms were still public, there were people in them, so he couldn't go to the sink and splash water on his face. Instead, he walked to the very end of the row of showers, entered the last stall, and locked the door.
He didn't move for a very long time.
---
Dazai was back and the world was ending.
When Akutagawa was told the words Dazai is in the basement, he laughed. Because how else was he supposed to react? Smile and say "gee, thanks for letting me know?" No, he had laughed because surely it was a lie. Dazai was gone, and he was gone for good. No take backs.
But then Akutagawa, stupidly, went down to the basement. Not because he wanted to talk to the man, or even because he believed he was really there, but because…just because.
And there he had been. Chained up to the wall, shifting around like his biggest problem at the moment was that his wrists were chaffing from the cuffs.
Akutagawa didn't go down the first time. He poked his head down just enough that he could confirm that it was Dazai in the basement, and then he promptly sprinted to the nearest toilet and hurled his guts out. Because no , Dazai couldn't be there. Akutagawa hadn't spent the last four years of his life hating his own mind, pushing himself to move on, just for Dazai to make a surprise visit.
It would have been in his best interest to just let the man rot down there. It was no less than he deserved, and Dazai was probably just waiting for Akutagawa to come and make an appearance. But there was a little voice in Akutagawa's head that sounded suspiciously like a fourteen year old boy that told him he needed to go down there, for closure at the very least.
(He knew he wasn't going to get closure, he wasn't that stupid. But that little fourteen year old boy was yet to have all of the optimism beaten out of him.)
The stairs echoed with the sound of his footsteps as Akutagawa made his way down. There was no sneaking, no silence, only Akutagawa doing his best to not bolt back up the stairs before he made it to the bottom.
He did his best to be nonchalant. To act like speaking with Dazai wasn't reawakening a part of his brain that he thought that he'd killed long ago, but then Dazai said it .
" My new apprentice is superior to you in every way imaginable ."
And Akutagawa had snapped. It was the exact thing that Dazai probably wanted, hell the bastard was probably going to go back to the Agency and tell them all about how "The Rabid Dog of the Port Mafia" had lost his mind, but he did it anyway. And it probably looked bad from the outside, but inside it was even worse.
Inside, Akutagawa was fourteen, pressing a bloodied towel to Dazai's wrists as he tried to keep him from bleeding out.
He was fifteen, following training regimens that left him confused, and bloody, and trying to show a man that hated him that he needed to push on.
He was sixteen, debating whether or not he really had a reason to keep living.
He was seventeen, learning he was going to die young, eighteen forgetting who he was supposed to be, nineteen trying to be better than the man before him.
And now he was twenty, falling apart and starting over again.
After everything, after all the blood and sweat (not tears, Akutagawa hadn't cried in a long, long time) poured into becoming something worthy of the man in front of him, it had taken what, three weeks for Dazai to decide that the weretiger was better than him? Three weeks, and he had already made an impression that Akutagawa had failed to make in two years.
Somehow, Dazai had made something of himself in the light. He'd moved past everything that he'd done in the Port Mafia, everything he'd done to Akutagawa , like it was nothing. Did he even care about the carnage that he had left in his wake?
(Had he ever cared about Akutagawa at all?)
Dazai was smiling when Akutagawa left the room. His fists hurt, he hadn't needed to use them in a fight in years. He had let himself get sloppy in Dazai's absence, apparently, and he would need to rectify that.
If it were an actual fight, Akutagawa would have clearly been the winner. After all, Dazai hadn't gotten one shot in on him, and Akutagawa had pretty much hit him with everything he had. But somehow, it still felt like Dazai had won.
And so Akutagawa decided he needed to go on a walk. There was somewhere he needed to visit.
Akutagawa had burned everything inside of the room that Dazai had trained him in, but the room itself was still standing. He'd vowed never to go back a long time ago, to never be the weak person he had been inside of that room again. But it was still there. Charred, but standing. Somehow, after all these years, there were still bits of ash dancing around in the air, not yet settled. It sent Akutagawa into a coughing fit.
"I thought you were never coming back here?"
Akutagawa whipped around to see Chuuya standing in the doorway, batting some of the ash away from his face.
"I'm just looking," Akutagawa said before dissolving into another fit of coughs.
Chuuya sighed, grabbing Akutagawa by the shoulder and pulling him from the room. His grip was firm, giving room for any struggling. Akutagawa wouldn't have struggled anyways.
"You went down to see him, right?" Chuuya asked, guiding Akutagawa away from that room. "Is he still as ugly as he was before?"
Akutagawa scoffed, a little grateful that Chuuya wasn't going to make him explain himself any further. "Even uglier, somehow."
Chuuya laughed in return, and the two walked in comfortable silence for a bit. They didn't really have a place to go, but there wasn't anywhere that Akutagawa really wanted to be. He just wanted to get Dazai's face out of his mind for once.
Akutagawa and Chuuya's relationship had always been odd. Before Dazai had left, they'd hardly known each other. Akutagawa had known that Dazai and Chuuya were partners, but he'd never been allowed access to that part of Dazai's life. Although sometimes he would see the two of them walking together, laughing like they were ordinary teens.
Dazai and Chuuya had essentially always come together in the same sentence, so it made sense that Chuuya took it hard when Dazai left. Not that he showed it though. Chuuya got mad, got reckless. He had to be sat out from missions for the month following Dazai's desertion because the damage he was causing was bringing too much attention.
"I'm sending a message," Akutagawa had heard Chuuya say once, "People need to know not to mess with us like he did."
It was only when Akutagawa had found Chuuya drunk, stumbling around the dorms looking for his room that the two had started to understand each other. Just how badly the other person had gotten screwed over by Dazai, just how much was actually going on when everyone else seemed to be acting like everything was normal.
Akutagawa had told Chuuya about his conversation with Gin on the roof, about the night in the bathroom that he still couldn't quite remember in its entirety. He told him about broken fingers and bleeding lungs, about how he couldn't sleep more than two hours at a time before his body told him he needed to do something or he would be useless.
Chuuya told him about inside jokes and arcade machines. How at some point it felt like the word partner had taken a second meaning that neither of them knew how to face, and how he was glad that neither of them ever did anything about it (they both knew he was a liar).
Deep down, Akutagawa thought that they both wished to be in the other's position. Because Chuuya had lost someone who had cared, but Akutagawa had lost someone who he knew never had and never would. They couldn't decide which was worse.
"You're not going back on our deal, right?" Chuuya asked.
Akutagawa schooled his face. "Never."
Way back then, back when their wounds were still too fresh for either of them to be able to pull themselves together fully, Akutagawa and Chuuya had made a deal, one that they agreed to never break.
They would never forgive Dazai.
Even if he came back with his silver tongue whispering in their ears, even if he promised to be Akutagawa's mentor again or Chuuya's something more, they wouldn't forgive him. There was nothing he could ever do to hold the same value that he once had to them.
If either of them were to be completely honest, they probably would have forgiven Dazai on their own if he came back. Akutagawa would excuse all the pain that Dazai put him through for his approval, and Chuuya would do the same for his companionship.
But they had each other's stories now. Chuuya knew about the pain that Dazai had inflicted on Akutagawa, and Akutagawa knew the same. Going back on their promise would be a betrayal to the other, and they wouldn't do that to each other, they just wouldn't.
"I'm going to talk to him," Chuuya said quietly as they started walking closer and closer to where Dazai was being held, "Don't say a word to anyone about it or I'll kill you."
Akutagawa had simply nodded. He understood, he'd done the same thing. And he would do the same thing again and again, given the chance, even if he was aware of how stupid it was.
The cycle really did never end.
---
Kyouka left.
Kyouka was scooped up by the ADA's loving arms and given a place where she could be safe , and in the light , and rehabilitated .
They didn't care about all the people that she'd killed, because clearly she had been manipulated by the Port Mafia. Obviously Akutagawa had gotten into her head and convinced her to do this, when all he'd done was be the best teacher that he could.
When the weretiger came back for her on the sinking ship, Akutagawa did his best to shake it off. Because Nakajima Atsushi was wrong , he understood that people needed to know that they were worthy of living. He'd known that his entire life, he'd geared himself toward that statement for as long as he could remember. But no , it only mattered in regards to Kyouka.
He saw the way that the Agency looked at him. Akutagawa saw the way that Atsushi glanced between him and Kyouka, looking at Akutagawa like he was some sort of monster. But he'd been as gentle as he could be with her. He didn't hit, didn't punch, didn't shoot or try to light her on fire. The one time that he'd messed that philosophy up he'd ended up in a shower stall, regretting every decision he'd ever made.
All the training that he'd ever done had been necessary .
When Akutagawa woke up from his coma after the ship, flopping himself down on his dorm room bed, there was nothing to do but think. He was too exhausted to move, to eat, or to shower. He just wanted to lay there, but doing nothing meant getting trapped in his thoughts, and that was always dangerous.
Was what he had done to Kyouka really that wrong? It was the Port Mafia, people started young because they had to. If they started old then they wouldn't be useful long enough for their training to be justified. Ability users were usually in their primes from their mid teens to their mid thirties, so the earlier they learned the better.
So what if she was thirteen when she joined the Port Mafia? Akutagawa had been fourteen and no one had ever shown him any sympathy. He'd had to claw his way to a position where he wasn't being beaten down every single day, and even that was only because Dazai had left. He'd given Kyouka peace on a silver platter.
It wasn't like he'd ever forced her to do anything. He'd threatened her with assignments, with what would happen to her life if she didn't listen, maybe he'd held her happiness above her head like a toy that she could never quite reach, but he didn't hurt her, not directly.
The ADA was wrong, clearly. Kyouka was fine, because Akutagawa was definitely fine, and if Akutagawa was fine then so was Kyouka.
(In his innermost traitorous thoughts, Akutagawa asked himself why she deserved to be saved and he didn't. Maybe it didn't matter what Dazai had done to him, maybe he just didn't deserve to see the light.)
---
Nakajima Atsushi was the bane of Akutagawa's existence. He was kind, and a fast learner, and he was everything that Akutagawa knew Dazai wished that he was.
But still, Akutagawa couldn't understand what Dazai saw in the boy, he just couldn't . Because Dazai had always pushed him to be stronger, always worked him to the bone and then some. And yet when Dazai and Atsushi talked to each other, they used soft words and gentle expressions. They touched each other without fighting, made eye contact without glaring.
Atsushi was an orphan, just like him. He too had been beaten, abandoned, thrown away like the scum of the earth with nothing to hold onto. And yet they were kind to each other, him and Dazai. Dazai cared about him. Akutagawa vomited more than once about it.
Atsushi had managed to earn the kindness and respect from Dazai that Akutagawa could only ever hope to dream of in a fraction of the time. He was nothing, but he was everything . Apparently all it took to be good enough was to not be Akutagawa.
How wonderful.
How Akutagawa got roped into working with Atsushi, he couldn't understand. They worked well together, sure, but that didn't mean that they were compatible with each other personality wise. Akutagawa intended to keep their relationship strictly work. Which meant no conversations about anything other than their missions, period, and they both followed that rule.
So when Atsushi started talking about something else, Akutagawa was startled to say the least.
"Kyouka is doing well at the agency," Atsushi said. The two were waiting in the ADA office to give their report on a recent mission. No one else was there, just the two of them, and the president had requested that they wait there so they could give their mission report directly to him. The mission had gone off without a hitch, save for their bickering over tactics. Atsushi was too stuck in his head to be decisive, but he kept on claiming that Akutagawa was trying to rush in. It was infuriating.
Akutagawa bristled. "How wonderful. Should I get her a card?"
Atsushi looked at him with a barely masked scowl. "You could at least pretend to be happy for her, you know. She's come a long way since the Port Mafia and you . She's stronger than she ever was before."
Akutagawa didn't respond to that, just sent a glare Atsushi's way and continued looking forward. They didn't do this, they didn't talk . Akutagawa didn't have conversations with people unless they were either necessary or with a select few. Atsushi was not one of those select few.
Atsushi snapped his fingers in front of Akutagawa's face. "Hey, I'm not done here."
Quick as a flash, Rashomon grabbed Atsushi's hand and pinned it to his chair. Atsushi yelped, struggling in the coat's grip.
"I have no interest in this conversation," Akutagawa said, trying to restrain himself from breaking the weretigers hand. Although restraint had never been his strong suit. "If you want to keep your teeth in your mouth then you'll keep it shut."
"What, are you mad that you're getting called out?" Atsushi shot back, "How does it feel to know that you traumatized a homeless orphan? She was thirteen when she joined the Port Mafia, Akutagawa, thirteen! You don't just do that to a kid. And what's even worse? You're not even sorry about it. You've seen her at least a dozen times since she left the Port Mafia, and you still haven't apologized. Hell, you could even say it to me and I'd pass the message along! But you haven't."
Akutagawa stayed silent at that. Not because he didn't want to respond, but because he was…confused, for a lack of better words. Because what was Atsushi talking about? Why would Akutagawa be apologizing to Kyouka? He'd given her all the training that she'd needed, she wouldn't have made it into the ADA or even survived without him. Why would he apologize?
(He knew what he had done was wrong, he knew that he shouldn't have treated her like that. But what Dazai had done to him had been needed, absolutely necessary, and it was too difficult to try and figure out where one event ended and the other started.)
"Why would I apologize for something that was necessary?" Akutagawa replied, and it may have come off a bit snarky, but he meant it genuinely.
Atsushi stared at him blankly at those words. "You really don't get it do you?"
Akutagawa didn't know why those words ricocheted in his brain the way that they did. Maybe it's because Atsushi meant so much to Dazai, or maybe it's because Atsushi said those words with a tone that he would have also used while saying that Akutagawa didn't understand the ramifications of nuking an entire country into oblivion. Maybe it hurt so much because he was right.
It sounded so much like you're stupid . So much like you're a lost cause, I don't know why I even bother with you .
The president walked in soon after, and Akutagawa never got to respond. But he really did want to ask Atsushi what it was that he didn't get.
---
"What do you mean you're going on a mission with Dazai?" Akutagawa snapped as he watched Chuuya shuffle through a stack of papers, each labeled in bright red with the world confidential .
"Bosses orders," Chuuya replied as he organized the stack, setting his hat on his head and beginning to tie his shoes, "Apparently he wants to get a sort of off-the-books truce going with the Agency, and he thinks that reviving Dazai and I's old partnership is going to be the first step to that."
Akutuagawa grit his teeth. He didn't like this, not one bit. Even if Dazai and Chuuya had been indestructible back in their day, that didn't mean that they had to be put together again now . Akutagawa and Chuuya had a deal, after all, one that Akutagawa had no intention of letting either of them break.
"So you're going," Akutagawa said flatly, doing his best to glare daggers into Chuuya's eyes.
Chuuya didn't seem bothered though, he just sighed and stood up. "It's the boss's orders, Akutagawa, I can't exactly say 'no, I don't feel like it.' Besides, we both know that he's right."
Yeah, Mori was right. He was dead right that putting Dazai and Chuuya together and having them work as a team was a brilliant way to build an alliance because what Dazai and Chuuya had was something special . They had been made for eachother, in every way that two people could be.
And that was what was so terrible. Because if Dazai and Chuuya were put together again, would Chuuya go back on their promise?
No, he won't , Akutagawa told himself, have a little bit of faith in the asshole.
"If he gets out of line, kick his ass," Akutagawa said as Chuuya left, and Chuuya laughed.
"I'll call you up and you can help me."
But the call that Akutagawa got from Chuuya wasn't to come and help him beat up a bandaged maniac, no. It was a call from the middle of a field where Chuuya had apparently used corruption, and was laying half unconscious in the dirt where Dazai had left him.
Akutagawa had a sinking feeling in his gut at the phone call. Because Chuuya didn't sound angry. Every time that the two of them had talked about Dazai directly in the past, one of them had gotten angry. It was just their thing, they talked about Dazai, and it turned into a shouting match about how terrible the bastard was.
But Chuuya sounded…calm. He didn't sound like he had just gotten done putting his body through hell to destroy what he had described to be 'an eldritch space monster,' he sounded like he was at peace.
Like he'd finally come to terms with something.
Akutagawa had gotten there as fast as he could, breaking only god knows how many road laws to get there. Chuuya had started to regain his lucidity, but he was still out of it enough that not everything he was saying made sense.
"...he took the doll," Chuuya muttered as Akutagawa helped him put on his coat, "...insurance policy, I think. It's all…fuzzy."
"Not surprising," Akutagawa said, saying a silent prayer that Chuuya would be able to walk back to the car that he'd taken to come and get him, "He coerced you into using corruption, that disgusting bastard ."
But Chuuya had shaken his head, and even though his eyes seemed hazy, something in them looked like it had cleared, if only for a moment. "No, he didn't make me. I…he let me choose. And I trusted him."
Akutagawa bit the inside of his cheek hard to keep himself from saying what he wanted to say. Because even if CHuuya was more lucid than he had been at the beginning, he was still exhausted and in pain. Akutagawa wasn't a particularly good person, but that didn't make him a sadist.
"Did you?" is what he asked instead.
Chuuya nodded, and he blinked harshly a few times. "It was stupid of me. He left me here alone."
Akutagawa breathed a silent sigh of relief. He'd been worried there, for a second, that Chuuya had gone back on their promise.
"But I think I would do it again," Chuuya said softly, and Akutagawa died inside.
"You would?" Akutagawa asked, and he hated the tone that the words came out in. It was angry, and accusatory, and every bit as spiteful as he felt bit it was…sad. Just a little bit too quiet.
Chuuya nodded again, stumbling slightly as he walked and Akutagawa had to reach out to keep him from falling. "I don't know what's different about him now, but he's not the same person he was back then. He's changed."
No , Akutagawa wanted to beg, no no no you're lying to me .
Because the two of them had a promise. They'd sworn that no matter what, no matter what Dazai did, they wouldn't forgive him.
And maybe Chuuya wasn't saying it outright. Maybe he wasn't screaming from the rooftops that he was letting Dazai back into his life and that he was accepting what had happened in the past as a by-gone. He wasn't outright stating that he was going back on what the two of them had sworn to so long ago.
But he was willing to put his life in Dazai's hands, to trust him. And that might have been worse.
Akutagawa had thought that when he'd finally told Chuuya everything, about all the hell that Dazai had put him through and how he'd somehow managed to make him be grateful for it, that Chuuya would never go back. That he would hate Dazai just as vehemently as Akutagawa (definitely) did forever. He'd thought that they understood each other.
"What do you mean 'different?'" Akutagawa asked, biting his tongue hard enough that he tasted blood to keep himself from lashing out.
Chuuya didn't answer for a long while. He looked so focused on taking steady steps that Akutagawa was almost convinced that he hadn't heard him. And then Chuuya responded.
"He's gotten better now. I trust him."
Akutagawa swallowed the bile that rose in his throat and he didn't look at Chuuya for the rest of their walk back. Because this was the end of their silent alliance, even if Chuuya didn't realize it yet. He hadn't said it, but Chuuya had forgiven Dazai.
It wasn't fair . It wasn't that Chuuya got to be trusting and see the good in Dazai even after everything he had gone through. It wasn't fair that Chuuya got to have his partner back after four years of abandonment while Akutagawa still had a hole where his mentor had once been. Chuuya's trust got him his past back, and Akutagawa's did the same. But their results differed wildly.
Chuuya knew everything. He knew everything that Dazai had done, everything that Akutagawa had suffered and he forgave him. All it had taken was one night.
When they got back to the car, neither of them spoke. All Akutagawa could think about was if Chuuya had ever really been mad at Dazai, or if he had just pretended so that Akutagawa wouldn't feel alone.
Neither of them ever spoke about it out loud, but both of them understood that something between them had changed. Whatever silent alliance Akutagawa and Chuuya had once had no longer existed.
---
Somewhere that Akutagawa couldn't quite discern, the line between rivals and friends got a bit blurry between himself and Atsushi. They still argued like there was no tomorrow, and they still didn't like each other enough to do anything outside of missions, but they talked more. Actual, genuine conversations that shocked Akutagawa to his core every time he realized that they were having one.
Atsushi had been talking for the past few minutes about how he had first discovered what Yosano's ability was, how he had thought that the doctor was quite literally about to murder him before he was brought back by a whirlwind of butterflies. And throughout the story, Akutagawa hadn't wanted to murder him once. It was weird, to say the least.
"All I could think was 'wow, there's much easier ways to kill me than to pull this whole stunt,' but then again I was kinda out of it, so I wasn't thinking the clearest," Atsushi rambled, "But also the tiger's healing makes it so that I don't have to see her that often, so I got luckier than the rest of the team. Is it bad to say that they're faces are funny when they leave from her treatment? I feel like that's a bad thing to say."
Akutagawa merely shrugged. The two were on a low stakes surveillance mission for a potentially dangerous ability user. It was likely that they wouldn't even have to do any fighting, but the ability user they were on the lookout for was strong, and it was better to keep good fighters on standby than to take the risk of something bad happening.
They'd been holed up in a car for hours. The first hour or two had been awkward silence, like they usually had between them, but somewhere in there Atsushi had breached the awkwardness and the two had started talking. It was…nice.
"What do you do at the Port Mafia when you get injured?" Atsushi asked, "I'd imagine you have some sort of healing ability on your side."
If it were anyone else, Akutagawa would have assumed that they were trying to get information out of him, but this was Atsushi. He was just genuinely curious. It was strange, being around someone that was so earnest after being around Port Mafia members for so long.
"If you're one of the higher ups you go to Mori," Akutagawa said, shuddering slightly at the memories of the times he'd have to go see the Port Mafia boss after an especially rough mission, "Otherwise we just have general doctors."
Atsushi's eyebrows shot up comically high. It was oddly endu-It was odd, end of sentence. "Wait, so you don't have a healing ability or anything? I'd have thought that the Port Mafia of all places would have something like that."
"Sorry to disappoint, but we have to heal like normal people," Akutagawa said, shifting where he sat in his car seat. "If we had a healing ability on our hands, do you really think I would have been in a coma after our altercation on the cargo ship?"
"You were what?!" Atsushi asked, suddenly extremely alarmed, "I put you into a coma?"
Akutagawa blinked. Why was he getting so worked up about this? "It's not like it's the first time I was in a coma, you aren't special, weretiger."
"When else were you in a coma?" Atsushi asked.
It was clearly another innocent question, clearly Atsushi wasn't trying to pry or anything, but Akutagawa found himself oddly uncomfortable in his own skin at the words. Because yeah, they talked to each other, but not about things like this. This was the kind of story that held meaning , this was personal . They didn't do personal .
Akutagawa mentally shook himself off, because no it wasn't personal. It was an injury story, everyone had them. Atsushi probably would tell him about the stories of his past injuries, so why should Akutagawa hold back? He wasn't going to let the weretiger get one up on him by making him uncomfortable.
"Four years ago I went on a mission to take down a cartel that had started selling drugs to lower level members of the Port Mafia," Akutagawa started, swallowing down the bile that was climbing up his throat. God, why couldn't he just speak like a normal person? "We weren't sure if it was a deliberate scheme to damage us or if they just happened to attract the wrong customers, but they needed to be dealt with."
"It turned out that it was a deliberate scheme after all, and the cartel was ready for an attack. We hadn't known that, and I'd gone in without any backup. Apparently one of the members of the cartel had an actual ability that involved the production of drugs." Akutagawa snorted at that. Dazai had been trying to teach Akutagawa strategy and told him that the mission was to be organized completely by him. It was also how they'd learned that strategy was nowhere in Akutagawa's skillset, because it had gone so terribly wrong.
"The man got the jump on me, released some sort of toxin in my face that left me unconscious for days in the field where we had fought. I woke up there a few days later, so I'm assuming that I was in a coma, although I don't know for sure."
It had been such a weird experience at the time. If Akutagawa thought hard enough, he was sure that he could remember hearing the things that had gone on around him while he was unconscious. He knew for a fact that he remembered one of the people he had fought poking at his chest to see if he fought back.
Atsushi's eyes widened, staring at Akutagawa in a mix of shock and confusion. "Wow, that assignment must have gone way off the rails if the Port Mafia couldn't even find you after."
Akutagawa cocked his head. "What do you mean you couldn't find me?"
"You know, for evacuation?" Atsushi said, looking at Akutagawa like he was stupid, although that was a pretty common occurrence as it was.
"There was no evacuation," Akutagawa, returning the you're an idiot look in full force, "I had been left in charge of planning the mission, and I didn't think I would need to plan that far." He scowled. "If I'd done a better job of planning, I wouldn't have needed an evacuation in the first place."
Atsushi paused for a second, seeming to think to himself before speaking again. Akutagawa didn't like it when people went silent while talking to him, it was never a good sign. "How long ago did you say this was again?"
"Four years ago."
"And how old are you now?"
"Twenty."
Atsushi's face scrunched up, and he ran a hand down it to smooth out the wrinkles that he had just formed. "So the Port Mafia not only had a sixteen year old planning a mission, but let him go out without backup or evacuation plans ?"
"Dazai has been doing it since he was fifteen ," Akutagawa shot back. He never let him live it down either. After that day, Dazai never failed to bring up how Akutagawa couldn't do something that he had been doing since he was a year younger.
The fact that the mission had gone wrong had been entirely Akutagawa's fault. Dazai had told him that he should have planned an evacuation, but Akutagawa had been too thick-skilled to listen. Dazai had also told him that if something went wrong, he wouldn't send help. It was no surprise that he had followed up on his word.
Atsushi shook his head. "That doesn't make it any better. If I went rogue and abandoned the Agency, and they found out that I had gotten into trouble somehow, they would still send people out to try and help me."
But that's different , Akutagawa thought to himself, they need you, you have a purpose with them. They want you there.
"You're not me," was what Akutagawa said instead, "And things were different then."
Atsushi just shrugged, leaning back in his seat. "If I'd known you then, I'd have gone back for you."
Akutagawa didn't respond to that. He knew it was a lie. No one ever went back for him. But his traitorous heart wanted to believe Atsushi so badly .
---
Akutagawa had come running pathetically fast when Dazai had asked him to meet where they had first met.
Lung disease and frail body be damned, Akutagawa had bolted as fast as his legs had carried him to get to that godforsaken tree. Maybe he was a hypocrite, and maybe it went against everything that he thought he'd begun to stand for, but Akutagawa may have just been a little desperate to know what Dazai had called him back for.
He shouldn't have been surprised when he got his answer.
It was everything that Akutagawa had hoped Dazai wasn't going to ask for. Putting his life on the line for the dream Dazai had once dangled above his head ( still dangled above his head if he was being honest with himself) was something that Akutagawa had sworn he would never do again.
Dazai laid out the plan, how he needed Akutagawa to wait and observe Atsushi until he was given his signal, and then go in and fight with his life, even if it killed him.
And, like the idiot that he was, Akutagawa had said yes. Because what else was he supposed to say? Akutagawa was a weak, weak man when it came down to it. At his heart, he was still fourteen years old, waiting for Dazai to come to their training room and teach him how to not be useless anymore. It was pathetic.
"I'm finally giving you what you asked for, Akutagawa," Dazai said when he finished laying out the plan, "This is your reason to live now."
Akutagawa just stared blankly in return. This wasn't what he had wanted and they both knew it. What Dazai wanted him to do didn't give him a reason to live, it gave him a reason to die. It gave him a reason to sacrifice himself and be remembered as a martyr, which was probably better than how he would be remembered if he died any other way, but it wasn't what he wanted.
"So let me get this straight," Akutagawa said, clearing his throat, "You want me to go out there and spend weeks of my, frankly limited, life doing nothing but watching and waiting until I inevitably have to risk my life and likely die for the weretiger?"
Akutagawa cared about Atsushi. He could accept that they were friends and that when it came down to it, he would be willing to lay his life down for the other man to survive. But this was different, because Dazai was asking-- telling him to go and die for him.
"Are you telling me you won't do it?" Dazai asked, cocking his head. "You can't lie to me Akutagawa, I know time has passed but I can read you just as well as I did before."
And that's my own fault , Akutagawa thought to himself, I should have changed more since then .
Akutagawa should have said no, if not because he wanted to live then because he wanted to spite Dazai. He should have fought, and screamed, and said that he was never going to listen to anything that that stupid man had to say ever again. Because how dare he assume that he could just throw himself back into Akutagawa's life like nothing had ever happened?
But like always, Dazai was right. Akutagawa agreed to Dazai's plan.
He didn't realize that his last conversation with Dazai was going to be his former idol giving him a death sentence.
Akutagawa shouldn't have even been that surprise. After all, Dazai had been very transparent that Akutagawa had a very real chance of dying if they went through with the plan, and Akutagawa had said yes anyway. He'd followed the plan to the T, maybe for the first time in his life.
He'd fallen right back onto old habits, and he'd died for it. It felt like an oddly fitting end for Akutagawa Ryuunosuke. He would forever and always end up right back where he started while everyone else kept moving forward.
Are you here to set me free ?
Maybe. Maybe Akutagawa could set someone else free from their pain and suffering. But he would never be free himself.
---
When Akutagawa became a vampire, he remembered everything.
It was the most terrifying thing that he'd ever experienced, because it wasn't as though he were locked in his mind as his body did things against his will. No, it was that when an order came his way, he wanted it. He knew that it was bad and a terrible idea, but he wanted to do it with his entire being.
When Akutagawa attacked the Port Mafia, he was fully aware of what he was doing and how he was tearing apart what shred of a home still remained for him. Because it wasn't perfect, but it was all that he had. And it was all falling apart because of him.
The fact that he was the first vampire made things even worse. A small (no, an enormous) part of Akutagawa told him that it was all his fault. If he had just been stronger, if he hadn't let Fukuchi get the best of him in their fight, then none of it would have ever happened. The fighting, the killing, it all could have been avoided if Akutagawa had just been a little bit stronger, just a little bit faster, a little better .
He'd been given one job, to observe and only step in when necessary, and he'd somehow messed it up anyways.
When Akutagawa came back to his senses in that airport, he was frozen where he stood. He was perfectly aware that he could move as freely as he wanted, but he didn't want to move. He wanted to stand there and process whatever the hell had just happened to him, and then he wanted to pass out and hopefully never face the world again.
The first thing that Akutagawa did when finally convinced himself that he needed to move his limbs was make his way to his dorm room and pass out. No one stopped him, they were too busy congratulating each other on a job well done. And they deserved to do that, the Agency had just saved the world after all. The world that he had almost just succeeded in ending because he was such an idiot .
Akutagawa knew that he needed to face Gin at some point, she had probably been worried sick about him after his "death." But what he needed in that moment was just a little bit of peace, just a few seconds for him to recalibrate his mind and remind himself that his will was his own.
Would the people around him ever look at him the same? Knowing that both his body and will were weak enough that he could be overtaken so easily?
It was humiliating that the first place his mind turned to was Atsushi in that car so long ago. I'd have gone back for you , he had said. Atsushi had believed in Akutagawa's humanity even at one of his lowest moments, and what had Akutagawa done in return? Torn off his arm and his leg. Granted he'd become a vampire after protecting him in the first place, but did that really mean anything if he was going to turn around and hurt him later on?
Realistically, Aktuagawa knew that Atsushi wouldn't blame him for what had happened. He vaguely recalled Atsushi saying something about him keeping his promise while he was a vampire, which sure, Akutagawa had done when he didn't actually kill anyone, but that was the bare fucking minimum.
He'd attacked Atsushi, who may have been one of the first people outside of the Port Mafia that he was starting to trust. One of the first people that he had become close with on his own, that he liked without it being because of power or success.
And then he ruined it. He was a mess of a person.
There was no one for him to turn to with this. Chuuya was still MIA, and he couldn't face Gin, not yet. Akutagawa had always known that his list of close companions was small, but he didn't really think of it as a problem until then. He didn't need someone to rant, or someone to solve his problems. He just needed someone to be there, to ground him a bit. To take the edge off of the thoughts that were racing through his mind.
He stayed in his room for a few days. Akutagawa didn't want to eat or drink much after the amount of blood that had graced his tongue in the past few weeks. He was sure that anything he put in his mouth would taste metallic, and there was no way that anything would stay in his stomach.
Gin came by at one point, the day after his isolation had begun. She'd knocked on the door (pounded, more like), and told him that he needed to come out. She'd begged, pleaded, said more words in the hour that she spent outside that door than Akutagawa thought he'd heard her say in the past year combined.
"I'm fine," was all Akutagawa could muster himself up to say after all the effort that Gin put in, although he never did open the door.
Gin had gone quiet at that. Maybe she was glad that he was at least willing to respond, or maybe she was surprised that he was still alive there. "Please," she whispered, barely audible through the flimsy plywood of the door, "I can't lose you."
Akutagawa wished that they could be having that conversation on the rooftop again. Because even though the last time they talked like this, his life had been falling apart, he at least had something left to cling onto. He could at least grit his teeth and dedicate himself to becoming better, becoming worthy .
But that hadn't turned out so well for him.