Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

One miscalculation.

Others would be surprised, that one error could lead to this. This as the worst case scenario. This as the end of humanity. This as in Dostoyevsky’s win.

Dazai wasn’t.

At Dostoyevsky’s win, sure. He’d been foolish enough to hope, that they had a chance. Against fate itself, all they could do was tremble. He’d said it himself, hadn’t he? Fate was wild and unpredictable. There was no way for him to manipulate chance or fight reality. The strong broke apart, the good died and it would always be one miscalculation.

It was just so bitter, because they’d won. They’d won that foolish prison break game, made it back to Yokohama, claimed the one order under the presidents authority. They’d killed Dostoyevsky cold. They’d just forgotten to compensate for one man.

Or rather, what one man could become.

Nikolai was difficult to predict, but that didn't inherently make him a threat. Dostoyevsky had been difficult to outfit, but one could assume he would always make choices in his own best interest, for the greater purpose of his aim. Nikolai had no set agenda or motivation, revelling simply in his own imprisonment from his own mind. Who could set him free from his own cage? He tried to destroy himself and others spontaneously. He set Dazai free, injected his dearest friend with poison. Nikolai played his own game, taking comfort in inflicting as much damage to the other pieces on the board as he could. A true wild card.

All of them, Nikolai included, had assumed that the death and defeat of Dostoyevsky would destroy Nikolai, distance him from human emotions as he had longed. Instead, the man snapped.

Reeling from the apathy he had craved, he flung himself to the extreme, pinning himself to the insane love, burning devotion towards his dearest friend. He found them in Yokohama and destroyed them too fast. He’d fought the majority of the agency before, but not for long enough for any of them to learn to oppose his fighting style. He’d pinned the agency in cement, and when Atsushi had broken free, desperate and brave and kind despite it all, he’d cut the boy in half, and Dazai, trapped under the wreckage of a plane that had been dropped on him was helpless to watch the were tiger scream as his legs fell apart from his body, blood pooling across the tarmac like a horrific Rorschach test.

One miscalculation. That Nikolai would respond to loss with acceptance, grief, apathy even.

Dazai should have known. The extremes of an ordinary man, faced with impossible loss.

Nikolai cackled with none of the flair a jester would expect. Something brittle and broken and pained. Like shattered glass cutting it’s way out of his jugular.

“The whole Decay of Angels! And yet it was I who would be the one to fulfil Dostoyevsky’s dreams! My dearest friend! My deadliest enemy.” A bitter shadow cast over his face and Dazai strained. His arm was pinned under a sheet of metal topped with an engine and he felt it crack in three places. Pain was less a sensation and a facet of his existence, but there was something horrific trapped within his flesh right now, and he could barely tolerate it.

He couldn’t believe it, but he prayed for Chuuya to save them. His partner had left as soon as they entered Japanese air space, kicking Dostoyevsky’s body a final time and spitefully biting out that he would kill the entire helicopter if he had to tolerate Dazai a second more, making poor Sigma flinch even in his Dostoyevsky-inflicted coma. He’d thought there was… Something, in Chuuya’s face as he looked at him, before he left out with all the grace of the god he feared becoming. Something that rang between them like a prayer.

They’d killed each other and lived after all. That wasn’t something that went unspoken, and they couldn’t expect it to. They’d been trapped at the end of the world, with nothing but they faith for each other. Even Ango, at the end had been helpless to interfere, and he thinks of his friend who has never quite lost that title, and wonders if he still checks Dazai’s heart rate, and pulses out a ‘sorry’ and ‘never your fault’ because this might literally be the end and he can’t help but think that at least one of them should die without Odasaku’s memory haunting them.

But him and Chuuya, cutting their teeth on the other, cruel and painful in their best way, and together for the whole time. It had been perfect.

He’d wondered, for a second… But no. And Chuuya couldn’t, maybe wouldn’t, save them. Yokohama, yes, but he had no reason to check up on the airport where the world had nearly ended. All Dazai could do was watch Atsushi bleed, and wish that his own death was slow and torturous to match.

He hadn’t even been able to say hello. And that was so small in the greater scheme, but he’d imagined, in the moments where Dostoyevsky was just too close for comfort, and his gaze just a little too cutting, wandering back into the office. A tray of coffee cups, every one incorrect and waltzing in, Ranpo meeting his eyes directly. Yosano not registering him, automatically nodding, before freezing in a double take and dropping her drink, hands coming up to her face in a jubilant sort of shock. He’d be able to see her smile peeking out from her hands. That would alert Kunikida, who would delay his own realisation by lecturing Yosano on staining the carpet, even if coffee was better than blood, before finding out who was truly to blame, and tidal scheduling ten minutes to fuss over Dazai and check his health before lecturing him on his missed paperwork. Kenji’s easy smile, as though he’d merely popped out for snacks, and Kyouka’s gentle touch, as she found an excuse to press against him and check he was real. The Tanizaki’s hidden sentiment as they his their genuine tears in their dramatics.

Atsushi would probably cry. Silent tears, the type that you wept because you couldn’t stop, not for attention or dramatics. He’d search for the words to say, and give up with a whimper and throw himself into Dazai’s arms, warm and real and vibrant in a way he’d be jealous of if it didn’t suit the child so well.

They were dying.

They loved him, and they were dying.

They were dying because they loved him.

Everything he loved was lost eventually after all.

Nikolai approached him, and he could only watch Kunikida try to pull his hands out of concrete. If his partner could just move-

Gogol’s palm cracked across Dazai’s face. Steel and paint stretched across his skull.

“You killed Dostoyevsky.” The usage of his full name was terrifying in a way Dazai couldn’t feel, but knew within his own logic. “You won the game.”

“I did. You’re breaking your own rules Gogol. You’re the last member of the Decay of Angels. Everyone has betrayed you. In the end, you’ve been trapped by the ideals you swore to subvert."

It wouldn’t work. He was manipulating the Nikolai of old, dedicated to anarchy in it’s purest form. This Nikolai was something new and brittle and unstable.

They’d never even met, before the prison break. Humans changed so quickly.

“True. Buy Dostoy-Kun wanted to destroy you, most of all. But nothing works.” He waved his hand and yet another sheet of metal crashed on Dazai’s pinned arm. He heard screams from his friends and wanted to plead for them to stop. The more they cared, the higher chance of death for them. Or worse.

“I can’t kill you in a way that matters, and destroying the world would be a waste of time. There’s nothing you care for, nothing you rely on. Would you even cry from the smoke of a crushed world if it didn’t sting your eyes?” A strange sort of sing-song tone before he jolted upright. “No… No, that’s it! You didn’t care about this world! You’re like us! And Dostoy-Kun knew that! Oh! My dearest friend! He told me all along!” He whirled around like a demented spinning top, a waltz for two without an accompaniment. He found Fukuchi’s corpse and pressed a kiss to his skull before taking the discarded katana and cutting his chest open. Deranged and volatile in his own love. For a second, Dazai thought he was searching for the One Order, and took comfort in the way it was exclusively coded to Fukuzawa’s voice. But then Nikolai lifted a white sheet, glinting like a flag of surrender in the sun, and even Dazai’s uncaring heart froze. The Page. The only proof they had that The Book existed. And he could see a dense furl of Russian writing covering it. And he could see a whole side, blank. Prepared for the final phase that was never to come to be.

Nikolai pressed his finger deep into the corpse, giggling. He must have been aiming for the heart. He heard the agency screaming, trying to appeal to his humanity, threaten him. Nothing would work. Nikolai appeared in front of him again, less than a heartbeat.

“Dostoy-Kun knew all along how to defeat you! I just have to follow his example! It was so simple all along!” He lifted his finger triumphantly and pressed down onto the clean side, the blood of a war hero and traitor staining as well as any pen. His strokes were steady and certain, and Dazai followed them with apprehension. “This is true freedom Dazai-Kun! Even after his death, Dostoyevsky has control over you! He’ll be the one to break you apart and burn away your final pleas! Now, isn’t this friendship at it’s finest?”

Dazai wanted to beg. Wanted to bargain. Wanted to twist apart Nikolai’s psyche and leave him a babbling mess. But all he could do was watch the words twist into being, his mind translating them even as he felt what little soul he had shatter. He hoped he was wrong. He’d thought he’d hidden it well enough. But Nikolai declared it to the world.

“Chuuya Nakahara uses corruption to destroy all he loves!” An impossible truth. Chuuya loved like possession. With certainty and diligence. With duty. He would never let corruption touch Yokohama. “Oh, Dazai-Kun, the power of the page truly! What do you think will be your partners last words as he feels Arahabaki take over? Will he know that it was your failure? Will he fear that it’s the monster he always knew he was deep inside?”

Nikolai’s head explodes. It’s a messy, sort of thing, gray matter splattering onto Dazai’s face. Idly, distant from his own thoughts, he touches the part that landed on his lips with his tongue. It’s a strange, iron flavour, not too dissimilar to blood. But it’s heavy and dark on his face, congealing in the wind and solidifying like paper mache.

Chuuya has always been beautiful. But he steps to the ground, cracking open the concrete, hand still outstretched from the bullets he’s shot through Gogol, and Dazai loves the God he’s despised ever since they let Odasaku die.

“Chuuya.” He says and it comes out like an echo. His partners mouth twists.

“What’s with that look on your face mackerel? I wouldn’t have killed the clown if I knew he made you suffer like that."

“Chuuya, no, come-” His ribs crack and he feels his lungs dislodge. Chuuya rushed forward like a magnet drawn to the pole.

“Shit, what did he-” Dazai clings to Chuuya’s ankle, desperate, like he’s pressed to the ground as a temple, the sort of submission he’d never dream of showing a god. Scared, disgusted, surprised at the sheer intimacy of the action, Chuuya kicks him off. “What the fuck Mackerel, don’t-”

“The page, he-” oxygen is evasive and he can’t quite grasp it. The airport is high up, near a teetering cliff, and he idly wonders it’s like a mountain, where you suffocate in your own atmosphere. The second time he drowned in twenty four hours. “-triggered corruption, I can’t-”

Chuuya’s face blached white and he fell forward, clinging to Dazai’s outstretched hand, cracking the fragile bones under his grip.

“Will No Longer Human work, against The Page? How long do you have to hold on to me for, what if-”

“I don’t know how long. But my ability has no exceptions Chuuya. Have you…” Gods, he can’t breathe. “Ever known…”

“I’ve never known your plans to fail.”

Chuuya finishes his sentence where he can’t even gasp, and it feels like sunlight on his skin. It should be awkward, holding hands, with Dazai pinned under at least 1.3 tonnes of plane debris and Chuuya kneeling, clinging to him like a war widow saying a final goodbye, but there’s a strange serenity in it. Besides, they know each other too well to be awkward.

Truthfully, he doesn’t know if No Longer Human will win out against the book. But he has no other options, so intense hand holding it is, while he tries to press out a plan, like squeezing water out of tofu.

The silence is broken by Chuuya.

“Do you-”

“I’m thinking slug-”

“Well think faster, I can’t-”

Chuuya’s eyes rolled back and he collapsed forwards, thankfully keeping contact with Dazai the whole time. Dazai pulled him closer, clinically taking note of his pulse and breathing rate, both regular. He tried shaking him but-

It was like the static of a radio given visual form. Something dark and glitching in the sky. It seemed to flicker over Chuuya’s skin as well. He feels his heart stop, just for a second, but it isn’t the red horror of corruption, which is gorgeous beyond measure but breaks Chuuya apart. It’s a horrific black with blue undertones, and it doesn’t writhe and twist in Arahabaki’s signature technique. If anything, it looks like a failing computer. As though he’s glitching out of existence.

‘Or’ Dazai thinks, tearing his gaze away from Chuuya to focus on the sky. ‘Like something is glitching in.’

It’s invisible to the naked eye, but you can track the shadows. There’s a figure in the centre of that roiling mass, and as the world clicks into focus as it always does, Dazai realises that he has to get up now.

Shaking Chuuya as rough as he can, relieved as the dark glitching fades from his skin, he tries to wake up his partner. But he seems truly gone from this world, so still Dazai has to press his fingers to the pulse point to remind himself that his partner is alive.

For the main threat though.

Nikolai’s final physical attack, the last sheet of metal dropped on him had dislodged some debris. The tonne of weight still pressed down on him, but it had shifted its point of gravity away, meaning he could at least move his shoulder. It was focused on his hand, not his arm. He could feel his bones crush to powder as his delicate wrists bore the full weight of the bird of the skies.

Crush injuries were dangerous. Even if he could dislodge the wreckage, it had been too long. After fifteen minutes, crush syndrome would set in, the toxic chemicals finding their way into his bloodstream and burning through him with a quick death.

But if he could…

It felt like a shred of cosmic irony, considering Dostoyevsky’s own injury. But he grabbed the serrated metal that the dislodged debris had placed within reach, and bit down on the cuff of Chuuya’s coat. He had one chance, and it depended on the precarious weight on top of him. Too fast, and he’d just main himself. Too slow and he’d just suffocate. It wouldn’t kill him though, he’d be murdered by a graviton bomb before then.

He flung the metal, attached by a cord up to leverage itself against some outcropping… Something. It’s sticking out and seems connected to a large piece of heavy junk. The pain is flickering and reaching his brain, and the novelty of feeling something is just as alarming as the pain itself. He misses twice. On the third time it hooks, but falls loose with the slightest pull. On the fourth attempt, something latches.

He’s wasted too much time. The figure has solidified now, and he can hear a screaming.

He angles the serrated metal so it’s positioned perfectly at the joint. If he does this right, he’ll be permanently maimed for life, and will probably die in less than an hour. So. Best case scenario.

This is the easiest part. From a trickle to a roar. He just has to pull enough for gravity to take over. If fate is on his side, physics will listen, and the debris will fall with enough pressure to sever his arm. Which will probably throw a normal person into shock, but it’ll give him the freedom needed to go and do the one job he will never, ever be able to delay or delegate.

He pulls. And the creaking isn’t even a noise, he feels the vibrations burn through him to his very core and thinks he hears a screaming. He’s mute to his body, an old technique perfected under Mori’s scalpels and his own blades, but he can’t force his body to move where it’s torn apart.

It happens slowly, and then all at once. The noise mutes him, and he suddenly feels very distant from himself. It isn’t unusual, this dissociation, so it doesn’t alarm him. Not much can really, in this state. He sees his arm, severed at the upper arm, and thinks that it will hurt later.

But even in this haze, he knows that Chuuya is at risk.

He almost trips over the Chuuya that passed out in front of him, but his true target is further away. It’s barely two hundred metres, but with half his body truly shattered, he wonders whether he’d be able to make it.

He doesn’t have a choice. His partner needs him.

It’s that single minded insanity that drives him forward. That one promise he will never break. He’d left Chuuya behind, attacked him, let him be tortured, demoted him, forced him loyalty.

But he would never let him die of corruption.

The glitching mass in the sky has lowered down, to where Nikolai last stood. It’s faded, leaving a small figure clear within it. It’s difficult to look at him. Not just emotionally, but literally. It’s difficult to see Chuuya like this, even if it isn’t his Chuuya. To see him pained. There’s no glory in this ultimate form. There’s despair twisted through it, not power. Arahabaki is charged, but there’s no attack. It’s like Chuuya s on fire, and he doesn’t care to cast it out. It’s impossible to keep his eye on him. He’s like a living optical illusion. Like even when Dazai is keeping his sole focus on him, he’s caught in the corner of his eye. He just feels ill suited to this world. Like he’s been pasted in, but he’s a different material.

If Dazai is right, and he very rarely isn’t, there’s a reason for that.

He can’t breathe.

He stretches his hand out, only he’s still too far. Chuuya has seen him now, fixated in that stony glare. As though he was about to strike him down with a Graviton Bomb. As though there was something he could do that would hurt him more than seeing this. Seeing his partner a stranger.

He feels his leg give way, and crashes to the ground. Pain is an existence to him, and he fights through it as he always has, because this is more important.

“Chu-uya.” He gasps, with what may well be his dying breath. “Please.”

Come back to me.

The last thing he remembers before the world turns black, is his partner stepping forward, and charging a weapon to use against him.

Chapter Text

Dazai wakes up relieved.

Because he’s woken up. Because the last thing he remembers is Chuuya charging a graviton bomb to fire in his direction, and the fact that he survived meant that they’re both okay. Beyond anything else, beyond the fate of the World, that’s the most important thing.

He’s in a bed. He has all his limbs, which is surprising, but hardly something to complain about, and he’s breathing. He’s worked with worse odds.

He opens his eyes slowly, flinching at the dim light that assaults his eyes. He breathes through the nausea, a practised series of actions. He pushes himself up, slowly, and opens his eyes.

The infirmary. The Detective Agency. Things can’t be that bad then.

He’s never built comfort in a place, has always known the futility of safety. No matter how dearly you loved a place, there was little reassurance that you wouldn’t die with your blood painting it’s floor. Nobody could predict how their life could fall apart. So, he doesn’t take comfort in the clean, crisp smell, free of the typical antibiotics that are all too common in most medical facilities. Both him and Yosano can barely tolerate that horrific scent, and it would have been intolerable for Atsushi’s enhanced senses. The fabric, soft and easily cleaned, but with that distinct static. But being here does mean that things can’t be as bad as they could possibly, so he finds a strange sort of sanctuary away from the world of contingency.

His vision focuses. The vaguely swimming colours form something in front of him, and he smiles automatically at the sight of Atsushi. head drooping as he’s clearly dozed off while watching over him. Such a kind boy.

An image flashes behind his eyes, of Atsushi’s blood smeared across tarmac like a butchers cutting board, and he suppressed the urge to throw up with old practise. Nobody lasts long in the mafia without developing a strong stomach and he’d entered more jaded than any veteran. But he indulged in the careful analysis, free of careful calculations. Atsushi was wearing unfamiliar clothes, a brown cape tucked around his shoulders. Ranpo’s cape, actually. A quiet message from the detective, that they were safe. Unfamiliar trousers too, simple black slacks replaced with loose blue joggers. Probably borrows from Tanizaki, judging by the folds. A bunny plush rested at his side, Kyouka’s little guardian in her own absence. Kunikida’s glasses, or at least one of the numerous pairs, folded neatly on the side table, undoubtedly forgotten by the man, so diligent and careful, but so lackadaisical with those lenses.

Like this, the boy is a picture of all the people who love him. Everyone is safe. Dazai has the luxury to breath, just for a second, so he can collect his humanity from where he abandons it deep inside himself.

He tilts to try and get up, only to identify footsteps outside. He would tense, but he knows that sound, more than most things in the world. Chuuya storms in, leaving a slight powdery residue in his footsteps where the pressure of his gravity laden footsteps have actually crushed stone and wood.

“Awake, huh? Shame, these have been the best three days of my life. You should have passed away in your sleep and counted that as my birthday gift.”

Dazai balances between a few possible responses ‘Passing away isn’t a double suicide with a beautiful woman, so I’m uninterested’ or ‘Chuuya’s birthday gift is already packed! It’s a brand new doggy toy for your happy mouth to bite at!’ or ‘I would never dream of letting Chuuya be happy’ but his mouth feels solid and gelatinous and so the only reposes he’s able to vocalise is “bwuh?”

Three days, he takes note. Three days he’s been out, not wholly unexpected. Yosano must have used her ability immediately, hitting that sweet spot, but she’d never risk it repeatedly, so he has to heal the long way round. Still, Chuuya looks good, in the way he always does. He’s changed into a typical suit, not quite that strange strappy waistcoat thing he typically wears, but something classically handsome. The kind of suit that whispers about wealth, rather than shouting about riches.Tasteful.

Fortunately, Chuuya picks up on the inherent insulting sentiment in his “bwuh?” and scowls at him. “That tiger of your is stupid enough to have sat by your side the whole time, tell him to shove off already. That partner of your is doing paperwork somehow. He’s found the only government official with their shit together enough to assign a bunch of forms. The rest of your whodunnit role-players are going back to rescuing stray cats or whatever. That detective has been wholly unhelpful, just refilling a bunch of snack reserves, He says that nothing’s going to happen until you wake up so there’s no reason to put in any effort. So as always, we’re waiting on your lazy ass.”

Chuuya has the harshest form of kindness, hiding the update Dazai desperately needs in a hot temper, and Dazai sees it as the gift it is. He swallows the sand congealing in his mouth.

“I’m very important don’t you know Chuuya? This whole agency relies on me.”

Chuuya opens his mouth, but Soukoku’s trademark bickering wakes up the agency’s favourite shapeshifter, and Atsushi stirs, before jolting into awareness at the realisation that Dazai’s awake.

“Dazai San!”

He hasn’t heard Atsushi’s voice in so long and it’s changed. He mourns it a little, the high pitched lilting that’s covered up with a hoarseness, but it rings the same, unabashed passion and love burnt into the soft noise. Atsushi is crying, already, and seems to flinch towards Dazai somehow, as though barely holding himself back from throwing himself into his arms.

Always uncaring of his physical state, dazai nudged his arms open slightly, a clear invitation without demanding physical attention. Carefully, compassionately, Atsushi pressed in to Dazai, a soft sort of sob bursting out of him, leaving a warm patch against Dazai’s neck, which should be uncomfortable, but the only thing Dazai could think was that Atsushi’s the first person to touch him with such unashamed kindness since before Meursalt. It shouldn’t matter, and he doesn’t let on that it does, keeping his gaze endeared and indulgent, but he feels something take root in him.

“Aiya Atsushi Kun, such a little hero and yet a blubbering mess at the sight of your mentor hmmm? Should I be flattered that my handsome face has driven you to tears?” Atsushi whined at that, heat building in his face, but didn’t let go all the same.

“I was so worried. You were gone, and we couldn’t help.” He pulled back. “I know you’re very brilliant Dazai san, but next time, if we can help, please let us. Are you feeling better now?”

There’s no defence against the boys genuine nature, but he’s glad for it. He never wants Atsushi to loose that soft glow of kindness

“Of course I am Atsushi Kun! Our Yosano Sensei’s drugs aren’t half as good as those mushrooms, but they’re no slouch.”

Wiping at his tears, Atsushi finally giggled. Then realisation dawning like a sunrise, he straightened his spine. “Oh! I need to contact the agency! We’ve all been so worried. Nakahara San, would you mind watching Dazai San for a second?”

Dazai’s “The idiot slug doesn’t need to watch me, I don’t need to be watched” clashes with Chuuya’s “Chuuya kid, I’ve told you, call me Chuuya.” Resulting in a messy sort of noise chasing Atsushi into the hallway. Dazai gazes at the back of his mentee with a facetious sort of betrayed expression.

“Can’t believe my favourite mentee has betrayed me as such, abandoning me with a filthy slug. What happened to loyalty? I brought him into the agency, with only minor manipulation and threatening and he repays me with this. What is the-”

“Oh my gosh shut up already!” Chuuya throws something metal at him, but slowly enough that he probably could have been hit and it would have barely bruised. He deflects it al; the same, like it’s a dance routine. “See, this is why I tried to convince you that you would have wanted to be put out your misery. Why is euthanasia illegal anyway?”

Dazai laughs, before feeling the atmosphere form something real in between them. They drop the laughter.

“So. The second Chuuya.”

Chuuya’s face ripples, like a pebble dropped in the ocean of his face. Chuuya’s always emotive, you can track every idle look in the flex of his cheeks, the slant of his eyebrows, but this strikes him. 

“He hasn’t said anything to us. The boss tried to take him away, keep him in a Port Mafia property but he nearly shattered the building. Refused to be parted from you. He barely talks, but he clearly can, he’s just choosing not to.”

“Wow, Chuuya being difficult? How exotic.” He mutters it, but there’s no humour. His mind runs through the possibilities. A Chuuya attached to him, without control over Corruption. Or… Perhaps too much control over corruption. He remembered the way Other Chuuya had moved, the strange power, but not the radical, unbridled destruction that corruption normally wrought. There was a strange sedentary nature to his movements. Like he and Corruption were bound to each other, tied by each other. “It was interesting, wasn’t it? Watching Arahabaki burn through you. Beautiful, I’ve always thought.”

He’s never said this much, but he’d never really needed to. Chuuya seems too afraid to answer. Dazai opens his mouth in a blank smile.

“I think it’s time for me to meet our interdimansionaol guest, don’t you think?”

“What?!”

It’s a new voice at the door, and Dazai turns, unsurprised to see Kunikida.

“You’ve just woken up, and you want to negotiate with a new operative, of which we have no history, no understanding and no information?!”

“Glad to know you’re caught up Kunikida Kun! After all, aren’t I the most wonderful and proactive member of the agency”

He wondered if Kunikida was turning blue from the implication that Dazai was proactive, or from the possibility of sending Dazai to interview Bizarro Chuuya.

“Absolutely not!”

“He’s right Kunikida.”

And there was Ranpo, perfectly on time, but never a second earlier. He’s steady and solid, the anchoring block of this agency. He still hasn’t thanked him.

“Dazai’s fully healed, and the second Chuuya has given us nothing to work with. We need him, and besides.” He smirked, something bitter and without humour. “It’s not like we can really part the infamous Soukoku can we? Do you seriously want to try?”

Dazai thinks he’s being insulted, and Chuuya bites out a “You only get to call me Nakahara fucker”, but he’s getting what he wants, so doesn’t say anything. So Chuuya falls into step and they walk together to the lower levels.

“You get half an hour. If he attacks you, we’re pulling you out.”

“No.”

Chuuya blinks, but Dazai remains firm.

“Chances are he’ll be choking me out within thirty seconds. If we seriously want to get information, you can’t stop the second he attacks.”

“So, what, we leave you alone? Let Chuuya’s doppelganger beat you to a pulp?”

“Exactly! Now you’re getting it!”

“He’s right.” Chuuya speaks out. “Chances are that this-” He gestures vaguely to the door as though there’s a brutal monster behind the wooden panelling. “-Chuuya will lay into him, and there’s not really any chance that this will contain him. If you try to pull him out, he’ll just destroy everything that comes between him and Dazai.”

“So? The alternative?”

“Trust me.” Dazai speaks to the group, but only looks at Chuuya. “Pull me out when I say. If I can’t talk I’ll tap three times. That'll be our signal.”

“I don’t like this.”

“We trust Dazai this time Kunikida.” To Dazai, directly. “Don’t you dare abuse that.”

Dazai steps in, and faces Chuuya’s mirror. It’s eerie, as though Chuuya is in two places at once. But the more he looks, the more the differences unfold, like Bizarro Chuuya is a book with the wrong cover.

Chuuya looks unkempt in a way he hadn’t even when he was on the streets. He’s dingy, like tarnished gold. Gorgeous in his grime, but unpolished. His hair is longer, but not neatly maintained, and straggly. He can read nutrient deficiency in the fingernails, split ends and pallor.

He viciously hated Nikolai. Because he’d hurt Atsushi, hurt the agency, but more than anything, he’s turned Chuuya is a stranger. Dazai can take everything else, but not this.

The way Bizarro Chuuya looks at him. That beautiful face, and every thought clear as day. Such a brute, Dazai can just trace the emotions that flicker over him. Hatred, grief, pain. Love.

The thing is, he knows, alright? Him and Chuuya burn and hurt and ache, but they always come back to each other. And they look, just a second too long, without heat, but just to settle that ache that comes when they’re away from each other. He knows. But they’ve hidden it from each other, from themselves even. But this Chuuya refuses to hide it.

“Remember me?”

Dazai can’t breathe. He doesn’t panic, hands in his coat’s pocket. Pinned on the ground, Chuuya's hands twisted like vines vines across his neck. Chuuya is snarling, like a feral dog, but his tears land in Dazai’s eyes. He wonders what it must be like, to cry, but he blinks at Chuuya through his own tears and thinks that this is the greatest metaphor for love they’ve created.

He can’t talk. Chuuya cuts off any chance, and Dazai thinks something might have broken. Bizarro Chuuya wails and presses down harder, collapsing onto Dazai’s chest. The leverage of his previous chokehold is lost with the new angle, and oxygen rushes in as an old friend. He inhales, and brings his arm up to press at Chuuya’s back as he wails into his coat.

Chuuyas running through a burning sequence of insults, something unintelligible. Hatred pours out like nectar, and Dazai revels in the sheer vivid nature of it all. Chuuya’s anger rids him of oxygen just as surely as the chokehold and he’s helpless.

At some point, hours maybe, the sobs subside with the vitriol. Chuuya rises to look him in the eyes. He looks like he’s wanting, and like Dazai falls horrifically short.

“You promised.”

He hums, with no context for the promise he supposedly threw out.

“I promise a lot.”

“To me. You promised it to me.”

“And Chuuya is so special, huh?”

He gets a punch for that, and feels a ringing in his ear.

“You meant it. I’m not that weretiger bastard, fawning over your words. I know what you are.”

Chuuya says ‘what’ like his own Chuuya says ‘who’. It doesn’t feel like an accusation.

“You promised I would be the one to kill you. You bastard, you promised.”

Oh.

Oh the tragedy of it all. Suddenly, with all the abruptness of a body hitting the ground after falling from a building, Dazai realises what most have happened.

He’s oddly disappointed in himself. How dull a death. How inconvenient.

Chuuya sobs again, and Dazai holds him close, back against the floor, thinking. He soothes like it’s a ritual. Soft movements, and Chuuya collapses, asleep.

“He hasn’t slept since you deactivated Corruption.” Two Chuuya’s in the room is two too many, and he opens his mouth but the gripe doesn’t come out right.

“I…”

“I know.”

And Chuuya does, doesn’t he? His partner refuses to look away as Dazai picks him up with a bit too much care.

“I didn’t say, when you woke up. I only came to after you deactivated Corruption. You…”

So Chuuya had seen. He’d hoped he’d been safe. Seen Dazai’s desperation in abject contrast. The way he needed Chuuya. It would be crushing if it wasn’t a relief.

He remembered the feel of Chuuya’s hand in his own still.

“Your arm is still there you know? The doctor bitch healed you and it grew back, but like… Your arm is there. I have it in a box, and I don’t know what to do with it. Like… Do we bury it?”

Okay… Not surprising that Chuuya was surprising him, that was all the boy did. But, that was the point Chuuya wanted to make? Now?

“I… Really don’t care?”

“For all your suicidal tendencies, you never thought about what would happen? Because, I was looking at the arm, and I realised, I really don’t know. You’ll die, and I don’t know what I’ll do with what’s left.”

“That-”

“I know. You don’t care.”

Chuuya kicks at his alternate world, and Dazai wonders how he’s dealing with the matter. It’s a tragedy for Dazai to see Chuuya as a stranger, but Chuuya has always been… Unmoored. He wonders if there’s anything familiar in it.

“So, what do you think? You died trying to stop Corruption, or Corruption triggered because you died.”

“The second. I didn’t know Corruption could work like that.”

“Me either.”

There’s a painful silence. Dazai wonders if a normal person should apologise here. That the one thing that’s forever solid between them isn’t a constant across all universes. For his own death.

Can he really regret it? That ever appealing promise of rest? Can he promise to stop? Can he accept this reality in their own world.

“It’s not your fault.”

That… Was not expected.

“I still hate you for it.”

That made a little more sense.

“It’s not like I didn’t know. You didn’t hide it or anything. If he wanted to kill you so bad, he should have done it earlier. And he definitely shouldn’t have put all of Yokohama in peril because of his own weakness."

It feels wrong. He feels dissatisfaction burn through. Because Corruption was his responsibility, and he would never leave Yokohama, or rather, never leave Chuuya without the absolute certainty that his partner would come back safe from him. Corruption is Chuuya’s sword, but Dazai was a wonderful blacksmith.

It hurt, that it meant so little in another life.

“You shouldn’t leave so easily. But I shouldn’t let you go.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No.” That was one thing he couldn’t bear to debate. There was no world where his death was owned by another.

“Dumbass, you really don’t understand, do you? This… This is your Corruption. And it’s on me. To drag you away from bridges and bring you back. If you failed, then so did I.”

And no. It was so wrong because that could never be what Chuuya was to him. Chuuya couldn’t take that duty on himself, to give Dazai a reason to live, because if he did-

“I only ever used Corruption because I trusted you. I… I just didn’t know I was right to do so.”

Chuuya leaves, which is good, because Dazai has no idea how to respond to that.

He looks down to the Chuuya in his arms, and for some reason, feels the bizarre urge to apologise.

Chapter Text

Bizarro Chuuya is sickeningly beautiful in this light. He’s slumped over a table, chained down in flimsy metal. Everyone knows it won’t hold him, but they also know that barely anything will. Whoever this Chuuya is, wherever he came from, he’s just as powerful.

He comes to slowly. Another difference from Dazai’s Chuuya, that is to say, the Chuuya of this universe. Chuuya was an insufferable morning person, unless of course he was plagued with a hangover. But this one is slow to rise. Whether that is due to the not inconsiderable sleep deprivation and corruption aftermath, or a genuine difference, Dazai is unsure.

As soon as Chuuya sees his face he fixates. He brings his hand up in a soft, fearful gesture, as though it will be flung away, a sort of trembling attack. Dazai doesn’t have the heart to be cruel, pulling Chuuya’s hand closer with his own, until they’re intertwined together. Chuuya’s long fingers trace his veins, creeping up to his pulse point, and Dazai inhales sharply as they creep under his bandages.

He doesn’t (can’t) say anything.

“You’re not mine, are you.”

He sounds so hopeless, and it breaks Dazai’s heart. He wants to lie, but it’s harder to tell the truth, and any Chuuya, from every world, deserves that.

“I am. But I don’t belong to your world.”

He would apologise, if it would mean anything between them.

Just those nine words seem to break Chuuya, shrivel him into something small and pained. He pulls Dazai’s hand closer, until it is brushing his face. Chuuya’s breath is warm against his cold fingers.

“I don’t care. Just. Don’t leave.”

It’s horrific in it’s implication, and all of Dazai wants to flinch away. But he needs information.

“Is that what I did in your world, huh? Leave?”

Chuuya is silent, and Dazai can’t have that.

“Answer me.”

Like it’s a reflex, like it’s been trained into him the words run away from him.

“You’re dead. Does that make you happy you bastard? You’re dead. You jumped off that fucking roof with no apology, no reason and without-”

Chuuya cut himself off, biting his tongue. He looked away, though his grip on Dazai’s wrist only tightened, as though he was trying to block his airflow.

“I thought that might have been it. Must be difficult, taking over as the leader of the Port Mafia, hmmm? Lots of people relying on you. Not a position that lets you lapse into corruption so easily.”

Chuuya snaps at him, like the feral dog he was always teased to be.

“Like hell. Just because it was your precious plan, doesn’t mean I’m going to listen to you. If you wanted me to be a leader, you should have stayed and handed it to me. I listened to you enough in life, I’m not going to continue in death.”

“Inspiring, really. So? Who’s leading the foremost crime organisation in Yokohama?”

“We don’t need a leader to start war. That Armed Detective Agency, it meant something to you, right? It had something to do with your death at least. Not like the Port Mafia can keep face if they let such a parasite exist on the face of the Earth. Your little protégée was ordered to wipe it from the face of the earth.”

He tried not to let on how much the idea of that scared him. The tripartite system that so many had laid down their lives to establish, destroyed under the thumb of a god with a grudge. He let out a low whistle.

“Impressive. No, really. Nothing more terrifying than an organisation of the foremost criminals in Yokohama tearing down a petty government organisation. But really Chuuya, did it never occur to you that this would be my plan? To incite vengeance and revenge? Bring down chaos on this city.”

Chuuya looked at him again, and it was like looking in a mirror from the past. The hollow pain, the ache. The loss of anything to live for.

“Maybe. Probably. Most people think so, that your last orders, unspoken though they may have been, were to tear down the ADA. Then… Maybe if I waste my life, it’ll be like you never died.”

He hates him. He wants to tear him apart and eat him, feel Chuuya’s heart safe behind his teeth, and press down with his jaws to feel it flutter. He wants his Chuuya, all fire and brimstone and wonder. This single minded devotion is painful to bear. Too much pressure, too much guilt.

“This isn’t what you want, Chuuya. You love this city more than anyone. It’s the only way you know how to love, with entirety. With your whole heart. I always admired that about you. You would never let Yokohama fall to dust.”

“Then maybe you didn’t know me at all.”

It was the only way they had left to hurt each other. They’d attacked each other so much, like feral dogs hunting the same prey until they were just attacking each other, unable to tell food from foe from friend. Dazai had marked all of Chuuya with his cruelty, insulting his friends, his position, his very being, but this was untouched ground.

Do what you like to my flesh, my soul, but never suggest my apathy. Never, even in your wildest cruelty suggest me to be a stranger to you.

Even Chuuya seemed to know that it was too much, mouth stretched around an apology he wouldn’t give and Dazai wouldn’t accept. All they could do was move forward.

“What did I say to you?”

Chuuya snarled. “Nothing. Like I said, you threw yourself of the building without-”

“Not then you idiot. What did I say then. The moment that echoes through your head. When you don’t quite remember the way my fingers moved, or whether I had two moles or three, there’s one moment that runs through your mind. You’re never going to be able to forget it. You don’t understand it, you’re probably terrified of it.” Dazai leaned forward, pulled to Chuuya like a compass. “Give it to me. Whatever I said to force you to stay.”

Chuuya looked transfixed. He looked lost. He looked like he wanted to forgive him.

“We were eighteen. You… You had a solo mission. Russia, I think. You came back sick, and injured.” He broke off, as though he couldn’t believe he was speaking at all. “I don’t… I don’t think it was important, I don’t know-”

“It was.” And it felt mean to manipulate Chuuya, but he was telling the truth in it as he reached out with his other hand until they’re a loop, an ouraborous eating it’s own tail, a perfect image of yin and yang without the balance. “Chuuya, if you remember it, it must be important. You’re the one who knows me best, it must mean something.”

It works, like all his plans. But the feeling of victory curdles in his stomach as Chuuya answers as though he’s under a spell.

“You were… Sick. Not just sick, you were infested. You lived in that shitty shipping container for years with not even a cold, but you were practically dead but breathing for a month. You would have these horrible hallucinations, and scream at everyone and everything. Nobody knew what to do. Hirotsu… He tried to take care of you but…” Chuuya took a breath, deep and shaken. “I snuck in to see you. I visited sometimes, but… This time I was alone. It was different. You were just. Looking. You were a frothing writhing mess whenever someone else was in the room, but when you were alone, you would just freeze. Sometimes you’d stop breathing. But you saw me, and you were silent.”

Dazai leaned forward, already putting together the puzzle of his own life.

“So? What did I say?”

Chuuya’s eyes were very young.

“You asked if I was real. I didn’t answer. You didn’t touch me, but you just…” His hand twitched around Dazai, as if he’d debated lifting it to imitate a memory, before thinking against it. “Reached. And you said, that in I was One Real Thing. In a fake world, I was the only one breathing. And… You said it like you were apologising.” He looked something like a raging child, deeply afraid and sad, but only knowing how to scream. “You were… Different after that. You were always a bastard, but just… You never let anyone know anything, not even me. You were so shit, and you were so cruel and why were you always so sad? Why did you never treat me like your partner? What did I do to loose you?”

Chuuya let go of his hands. Like they were burning, but he had pressed his hands to flames anyway. Like Dazai’s touch was a trial to be consumed through sheer force of spirit. He looked very lonely. And small.

“That would explain it then. I’ll see you later.”

He wasn’t sure if he was hoping to be stopped, but he felt something in him freeze solid when he left without Chuuya saying another word. Maybe he’d remembered too much. Ranpo and his Chuuya were waiting outside. Ranpo was looking at him. Chuuya was too, but his hat was slanted over his eyes, like that would work to hide them.

He could conjure up an image of those eyes if he’d hadn’t seen them in a thousand years.

“So. That explains a lot then.”

Ranpo sighed, that joyous flippancy nowhere to be found. “Trust you and fancy hat to make this all so much more complicated than it needs to be.”

Chuuya’s head snapped up. Dazai felt a lump in his chests. Those eyes were always bright, like Chuuya could see things nobody else could, but now they shone with tears. He’d been desperate for that sight for a long time, seeing how Chuuya broke, how to make frustration fall as tears. Desperate to wipe them away, drink them, and hold a little bit of his partner inside him. Now they just looked like they’d be bitter.

“What do you mean? All we know now is that his Dazai went insane before he did.” He punctuated parts of the sentences with a jabbing head tilt towards the room. He looked between them. “What am I missing?”

Unsurprising. Mori wouldn’t have seen the need to include him in the discussions, and Chuuya wasn’t the type to feel betrayed by omission of information. Chuuya gave loyalty, it wasn’t earned, except the first time.

Ranpo took up the burden of explaining.

“We’ve… Had theories. About how No Longer Human would interact with the power of the book. Whether it would.”

“You said.” Chuuya was talking to him, but wasn’t looking at him. “When you were pinned, you said there were no exceptions to your ability.”

“Against Corruption. Against your ability. The Book has limitations. There are logical fallouts. It is easier to pluck out a Chuuya, already burning under Corruption from a different universe rather than find a workaround for No Longer Human.”

“But this is different. We’re not talking about The Book and the commands written in it. We’re wondering about the worlds inside.”

He could see realisation flickering like a tea light in that beautiful brain. Chuuya was smarter than most would think.

“It isn’t that there are alternative universes. It’s that the book contains and connects them. And when something needs to be changed, it will borrow features from the other ones.”

“But that’s not the important thing.”

Chuuya looked up, meeting Dazai’s eyes.

“Which is?”

“Come on Chuuya, you know.”

“No, I really don’t think I do.”

Dazai sighed, a part of him disappointed. Chuuya knew, had likely figured it out. He was just too scared to even say it, like that would affect reality.

“How does No Longer Human work against the book, hmmm? It may not work like an ability, but it has the same function. The same affect.”

“But what about Lovecraft? If that wasn’t an ability-”

“Chuuya.”

He hated saying it like that. Like it was an order, Mori’s breath from his mouth. The only thing he hated more was how Chuuya listened.

“Bizarro Chuuya is from a world folded neatly inside the book. And Bizarro Dazai either triggered something, or realised something, or hell, maybe he came into contact with the book, and he realised what was happening. So-”

“So… So he chose to die?” Chuuya says it like it’s horrifying, like his Dazai hasn’t been trying to cut himself open to find a soul and pour it out.

“It’s like Mario, realising he’s nothing but computer code. He just… Chose to stop playing.”

It’s not the most apt metaphor, but isn’t it?

“And… He left everyone else behind. He didn’t say anything? He was alone?”

Typical.

“He’s nothing more than a wild beast realising he’s in a zoo, and he’s dead. All we can do is clean up after him.”

He expects the punch. He just doesn’t expect to enjoy it.

Chuuya is above him, mountainous and moving, the expression on his face the one when he’s lost someone he cares about. When he’s mourning.

“Shut up. Just. Shut up.”

“Why?”

“Because-”

“Because you don’t like it? Because it’s uncomfortable? Because you don’t want to think-”

“Because you’re sounding like the demon prodigy, and I never wanted to see you like that again you bastard .”

Chuuya was finding all of the newest ways to hurt him today.

“I’m not-”

“You were.”

Chuuya kneeled down, head close, until they were breathing the same air.

“I know. You’re alone. In all of those universes, you are completely alone. You think that doesn’t hurt me? But, here? You’re not. You have me. You have all those idiots upstairs. Just… Focus on this World first, okay?”

It seemed so simple when Chuuya said it. But Dazai couldn’t not think. About a million different versions of himself, trapped in a one player game spinning around the sun. Stuck in that hell, longing to leave.

He thought how, even amongst them, he was alone.

He couldn’t focus on this world, too big, and too known and too lonely, but he could focus on Chuuya.

Breathe until you can’t.

“You always bring out the worst of me, don’t you Chuuya.”

He’s pained enough that the terrible joke, for all that it isn’t a joke, makes Chuuya smile, and they stand up like wobbly giraffes.

“How do we send him back home? We can’t let him stay here. The Port Mafia of Bizarro Chuuya need him. Besides this universe is maxed out for slugs. Full occupancy, as the french say.”

“We’d have to figure out which universe he’s from first. Then, we can just… Write him back in.”

Ranpo pulled out a page, horrifically blank except for Nikolai’s painfully large scrawl. There were barely two lines left. They could bring down empires, crush buildings. There was infinity in that blank space, the same infinity that falls between zero and one.

It’s terrifying.

“There must be some logic. Some code or identifier to know how they slot together. And we have to figure it out, or he’ll wind up in the wrong universe.”

“I think I’ve made him suffer enough. Give it to me.”

Ranpo’s grip tightened over the page, a small tell, but a powerful one.

“Ranpo-San? Why-”

“Just… Think about it. If No Longer Human comes into contact with the book in the predominant timeline, what might happen?”

“There’s nothing to deactivate.”

“Except for your own understanding.” Ranpo, for lack of a better word looked scared. “We were wondering what lead to your counterparts self awareness. What if this was it? Coming into contact with the book?”

“Then it’s a risk worth taking!”

“That is not your call!”

Ranpo had tears in his eyes, tears that didn’t belong there.

“You’re ours. You are an indispensable part of the detective agency. So, before you leave and put yourself at risk, you need to think. You need to know that…” He hesitated, as though he wasn’t ready to say it. “That we would be destroyed without you. You just… Left for Meursalt, with Mori backing you up, and we didn’t-” He broke himself off, turning his head and glaring at the wall, leaving Dazai feeling a little unbalanced. Ranpo amongst them all was the most attached to the detective agency, but also the one who had the most faith in Dazai. He didn’t believe in micromanaging, trusting that Dazai could take care of himself. Which, truthfully, he could.

But the war had left marks on them all.

“Ranpo-San….” He reached out again with shaking fingers. “I-”

“Never mind.” Ranpo let go, letting one of the greatest artefacts of all history find its home on a dusty table. “I trust you, and it’s your decision. We need to send Wrong-Fancy-Hat home anyway.”

“Nice to know I’m something more than an afterthought to you.” Chuuya sighed. His false calm was off-put by the way he was anxiously tracking the movement of the page with his eyes. “But, and I hate to say this, but I agree. I can put a bullet in my alternate selfs head if we need, but putting you at risk isn’t an option Yokohama could afford.”

Dazai looks at him, vaguely horrified. “That feels unhealthy. Have you considered therapy?”

Chuuya very slowly turns to look at him. “Out of everyone in every universe, you are the one person least allowed to ask me that. Go fuck yourself.”

Dazai shrugs, and before Chuuya can respond, picks up the page with a deliberated casual motion.

The last thing he sees before reality crashes around him is Chuuya’s eyes, terrified, his arm still outstretched, like he wanted to stop him.

The last thing he thinks is ‘Oh. I wish I could tell him I’m sorry. This was a bad idea.’

Chapter Text

It’s dark except for the way that it isn’t and cold except for the way his flesh is boiling at him. It’s wrong except for all the ways that it’s true, and Dazai learns what it is to exist because he sees every existence fall behind his eyelids.

It’s wrong and it’s unfair, and he screams because he’s six years old and starving, eight and gorging himself, because this family says that he can eat as much as he wants and still eight but being carted away because the food was drugged and he’s being sold into some underground network of flesh and service, and there’s a boy with red hair, and life will only get so much worse, and that is one lifetime.

They know. They all know, and they all take the pain because they don’t care enough to fight it.

He’s thirteen and in love and eighteen and beaten and twenty and married and twenty and trapped. He’s hurt and he’s scared and he’s powerful enough and smart enough, but the book says this is the only route for him and the whole time anger burns like a coal in snow, quenched too fast to take root.

He sees the same faces, some curved in affectionate smiles, and some stretched into snarls and he sees them dead and dead and dead.

Odasaku, perfect and beautiful and dead except for one life where he hates Dazai and Dazai stretches for one truth where there are none because of course Odasaku is exceptional in this alone, in giving him one baseline even if it’s painful, which is that Dazai is a cancer at his life, because whenever Odasaku sees him as a child, as a friend, Odasaku dies and Dazai steals his life like a tumour. Odasaku must see him as an enemy to be happy, and he wishes it was that simple with Chuuya-

He sees the enemies, except they’re not and he remembers Fyodor’s corpse, so cold and broken and split apart and dismembered and-

Here they match. Fyodor has always been his own dark mirror, but here Dazai is a reflection and they watch Yokohama burn with the sort of apathy, except for the way that it will drive them to greater heights and this Dazai, which is still him, has always been him wonders if that will make him mean something as a man with red hair burns trying to save two orphans that will choke to death on smoke. So petty. Here Fyodor will kill him, except he doesn’t know it. It’s a fight towards the end, of which he will need to plant the seeds now, because right now they are each others. Chuuya is in this world as well, will be bold and beautiful and brave enough to turn Fyodor against him (he doesn’t blame either of them, because he betrayed them first, because he doesn’t love them enough to feel betrayed, and because he knows what it is to love either of them) and so they take of capes and watch the ashes catch the light and pretend it means something because-

And he can’t see but there’s a grip at his wrist and-

Chuuya pulls a body out of the water, checking a pulse and feeling nothing but flesh giving way. The latest tsunami to hit Yokohama was horrific, and they’d been dredging through blood tainted water for days. He’s seen anything like this in twenty years of emergency services. That should make him feel old but, shit, this guy is his age and he looks too young. He murmurs an apology, and pulls at his wallet, hoping for some name to put to the face, so he won’t be left alone in memory. It’s empty, like truly empty and Chuuya wonders if this guy was mugged before the tsunami hit because wow, talk about shitty luck, but there’s a piece of paper that reads 

‘Dear emergency services. Don’t worry. Nobody loved me and nobody will mourn me. Not telling you my name. You’d just drink shitty wine and sob over it wouldn’t you?’

It's almost more sad, knowing that this guy didn’t die on impact and yet penned out his death note with the vicious knowledge that it didn’t matter to him. It also feels fiercely personal. It’s not the wildest leap in the world, but every week Chuuya takes out a glass and pours himself his old favourite, just a few sips, and toasts to the lives lost in the week. Everyone copes in their own way.

Oda, the only guy in the unit who’s been here longer than him steps up.

“No ID?”

Chuuya tucks away the note, wanting to keep it private, illogically.

“No. Just… A goodbye.”

Oda leans over, a furrow in his brow. “I think it’s Dazai. I met him.”

“Oh… Oh shit Oda I’m-”

“No, no, we weren’t… Not in that sense. Just, he came to my favourite bar last week, said it was a recommendation, somewhere you should go before you die. Called me Odasaku, all overfamiliar and stuff, so I…” He shook his head. “I barely remember him, but he just stood out you know? Wasn’t the type of person you forget. But he just seemed… Stranded. Strangely enough, I thought it was like he knew he was going to die.”

There’s a pained silence, as they both know what they need to do. They need to tag him up in black, drop him to a mortuary tent, pray that someone can identify him. Feel the pain at nobody stepping forward.

“…Shame.”

“Shame.”

That’s a bad one, Dazai had been cold and hungry and had known the whole time that he would only meet Chuuya after his own death, hadn’t been able to do anything and he’s so close to angry-

“How dare you!” Chuuya's full of fire and rage and wine. “How dare you look at them! Is that it, huh? Is that what you want? You piece of shit I-” He throws more stuff at Dazai, drunken rages ever more common now. They're so boring in this world, accountants and consultants, but that doesn’t mean they can’t suffer.

Dazai doesn’t remember what he did. Smile at someone maybe, dream of something happier. He knows he is lucky, to be with Chuuya, who the Dazai they all remember, the real one, who is still miserable, but at least alive, who that Dazai loves, loves so much that they all feel it aching, trickling down.

But this Chuuya has turned his hurt into claws and shreds at Dazai, screaming and cutting and beating. He’s cruel, and mean and doesn’t know what it is to treat someone with gentleness. Neither did Dazai, but he’s never acted like this.

He does egg him on sometimes. Here Chuuya is shit, and he’s shit, and Chuuya will leave him and he will commit suicide, and then ten years and after a shitload of diagnosis and medication and therapy that Dazai could sort out now, except for in the way he can’t because of a fucking book, Chuuya will love again with someone who will cut his fangs and let him lay close and they will be happy together as Dazai turns into a reminder, then a bad dream. He’ll never even get to see Chuuya happy. Just lives with knowing he is a trial to be endured.

Chuuya hits him again and he dreams of another page-

No, Dazai doesn’t want to remember that life, every pained moment seeping in, because that’s not right, it’s not fair that he had everything he could dream except it’s still wrong-

He’s alone. He’ll be alone for the rest of his life, knows the exact path of his existence, the tracks of his tears, he knows everything. Odasaku is dead, hit and run. He’s not allowed to die just yet, it will take three more months. They stretch out like cloister bells. He leaves to get a coffee, a drink he hates from a location he abhors, but Chuuya will serve him with absent minded professionalism and it’ll almost be worth the energy it takes.

He feels a cracking pain in his jaw, like someone has hit him and-

The car slams to dirt, cutting his cheek open and he looks at his child. The child assigned to him by a book but the child he’s sworn to take care and protect all the same. They’ll both die here, and gods, he knows that all the pages of this book are a personal hell, but this one must be the worst. The man driving the other car (Odasaku, his name is Odasaku, and it isn’t his fault, it was a malfunction, but Dazai must pay the price) screams and Dazai dies here with Chuuya’s name on his lips because his husband will never recover, not really.

It’s a good life there, except for all that he looses and the way before meeting Chuuya he’s forced through all the pains of self destruction, the way he’s been cut apart and used for scraps until even Chuuya flinches at the warped skin, though it’s out of love, not disgust because-

“Don’t think this changes anything. I still hate you. I still want you dead. But there’s someone who I love more than anyone, and you’re the only one who can help me save him.”

Chuuya is bitter and vengeful and Dazai has been waiting for this chance all his life. He sees why the original must have loved him, the way he fascinates.

In this world they’re enemies. Not in the way that makes Chuuya smile on quiet nights, or the way that makes Chuuya giggle under covers, not the sort of enemies that was never enemies at all. Here, Chuuya will press three bullets in the back of his head once Dazai has served his purpose. Here Chuuya hates him with ice instead of fire.

It’s okay. He isn’t the Dazai that loves him. But somehow it still hurts, just a little.

He remembers, for a second in the midst of a thousand lives, that he is the Dazai that loves Chuuya, but that’s tugged away from him as-

He’s so cruel in this one, and he kills and kills and becomes a beast just to save him, and he crushes Chuuya’s love, prays that Chuuya will never think of him again, and hurts Atsushi, which doesn’t even strike the were tiger as strange because that has been his whole life, being hurt and beaten and he doesn’t know that Dazai is wrong for it.

It's a painful world, but he’s lucky to be chosen for this because Odasaku lives and is writing and-

Found it.

Dazai surfaces with a scream. It doesn’t cease. There’s no relief to it, or peace. It isn’t like surfacing from drowning, those panicked inhalations as life fills your lungs after. It’s just pain.

Like a child, crying, not because it wants, but because it can’t stop.

He was never a child.

His eyes open, and he closes them, dizzy from the whorls of light where a thousand eyes are open at once, and his ears are ringing. But touch is difficult to recall and replicate, so he focuses on that sense.

Papery material, gravity pulling  him horizontal. That smell, ever too familiar.

The infirmary. Armed Detective Agency.

He breathes, forming himself a net. A concrete crossing of facts and logics, on himself, on the universe he’s trapped in.

The name he chose is Osamu Dazai. He works at the Armed Detective Agency. He needs to save people.

This time, when he opens his eyes, the universes stay away.

This time he sees Chuuya.

Chuuya is a beam of light after days of darkness, too piercing and intense. The realities roil behind his skull, and for a second he doesn’t know if this is the Chuuya that will kill him, or beat him until he’s pleading or love him, even while he’s cruel and evil.

Maybe he’s all of them.

The memories snap into focus, and he leans on them, consuming them like a starving man.

“Chuuya.”

There’s no nicknames, no fond teasing labels. He’s too tired of things being what they aren’t.

Chuuya’s eyes are redder than his hair, and Dazai wants to reach to touch them, but he’s too nervous that reaching out to touch will do something, that he’ll break something. That Chuuya won’t stay, that Chuuya will fall under another face, that Chuuya will snap in from in front of him like a mirage.

“Please be real.”

Chuuya is sobbing and Dazai doesn’t know how to react. He’s seen this face in a hundred different lifetimes, and he never seems to get it right.

“Yes. Yes, Dazai, I’m real. You’re home, you’re back. I’m never going to let you go again, you hear me? It's you and me, and you’re safe.”

It’s all wrong. His Chuuya’s never so vulnerable, has never begged like this.

It’s new. Dazai doesn’t-

… Chuuya must have been scared.

Slowly, fighting back memories that don’t belong to him he reaches out. He doesn’t have to move much, Chuuya sees the aborted movement and supports his arm, interlocking their fingers in a vice grip. Another surge of memories are fought down, Chuuya as a medic in war, Chuuya at Dazai’s death bed, Chuuya as a vengeful enemy, whispering horrors into his ears.

Chuuya’s beautiful in this light. It falls golden on his skin, and Chuuya is never anything other than human, but here he’s divine.

It was basically midday or so when he touched the book. It feels strange that he’s been out for half a day, it feels like it’s been seconds, but assimilating a million different worlds in his head must have taken longer.

He twitches his fingers, and Chuuya meets his eyes.

Oh. He’d forgotten. Chuuya’s eyes were blue.

“Hi.”

A soft choking sound, like he’s holding back laughter.

“You jackass.” Chuuya drops a kiss carelessly on their joined wrists. “Hi.”

“Mmm… Okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, everyone’s okay. That were tiger is heartbroken, he’s basically living here. He’ll be horrified that he wasn’t here when you woke up. Well, no that’s a lie, he’s be thrilled, and then he’ll be apologetic for not bringing you out of a coma single handedly. He’s a real piece of work you know?”

Dazai smiled. Atsushi. He hadn’t wanted to hurt the kid any more than he already had.

“Shame. He’s spent… Most of the last week in here huh? Just, waiting for me to wake up.”

Speaking is hard. It’s like trying to orate underwater. He measures the vibrations in his throat and makes sure they’re level.

Chuuya is silent.

He squeezes their connected hand.

“Chuuya?”

“Dazai… How long do you think you were trapped by the book?”

“Trapped isn’t the right-”

“Just… Humour me. How long?”

Dazai looks at Chuuya, still swimming in a hazy mess.

“About… Two days or so?” He overshoots it a touch, hoping that will be met well. Chuuya’s eyes, wide and pained and so so red tell him he’s horrifically wrong.

“Dazai it… It’s been four weeks since you interrogated Bizarro Chuuya. You’ve been-”

“What?!”

He’s frozen, unable to move with the panic taking over, horrified at his own stagnancy. Who knows what could have happened, to Yokohama, to Atsushi, to Chuuya.

Distantly, he realises that his limbs are shaking, that he is full of hurt and it’s resonating.

“But I-”

It hadn’t been that long, surely?

Except, the whole world, his whole concept of fact has just been unfolded and destroyed, fused together with breath and blood, why not time as well?

“Oh… You must have been worried.”

Chuuya’s face, which had been ever so panicked fell away into something like grief.

"Still am Osamu.”

It’s an old name, and it shivers to be referred as such. Dimly, he realises that Chuuya is scared. That this is his attempt at kindness, at building something old out of new pieces.

“I…”

His voice keeps fading. His silver tongue cools to lead, and then disintegrates completely. His whole world seems very small suddenly, shrinking from a whole universe to the pressure of Chuuya’s fingers wrapped around his own.

“Mackeral? You still with me? You’re… Honestly freaking me out a little.”

Chuuya’s scared. Dazai should fix that.

What response? The harsh biting scream, that ‘who are you to be worried about me’ or the affectionate lie ‘I’m alright, truly, but your concern is sweet’ or the placid response to a stranger ‘I’m fine.’

None of them work. None of them fit. Chuuya is out of place. He’s getting his lines wrong.

“I found his world. I found all of them.” His hidden eyes in his mind open, but he holds a distance, memories playing like static. “They’re… They’re so loud.”

“Is that where you were? Trapped in the pages of the book?”

Dazai hummed, not sue how to explain what nobody could properly understand.

“They all realise the truth in the end. Sometimes it’s meeting someone, or the path of a leaf, or coming into contact with the book, but they all learn sooner or later. That their life is written and they’re a trapped performer. And they learn about me, the original. The one out of the loop.”

It’s almost funny. He tells Chuuya, but he doesn’t laugh.

“Even amongst a million versions of myself, I’m still alone.”

Chuuya’s never made that face. He’s afraid. Afraid of, for, Dazai.

Dazai can move, suddenly, figuring out how to hold eternity away from this second.

“Let’s go. I know someone who wants to talk with Bizarro Chuuya.”

He swings his legs over the hospital bed, but Chuuya holds him down. He doesn’t understand how Dazai says it doesn’t matter the state of his body. All the things Chuuya is saying, about malnutrition and dehydration and atrophy, that’s all for humans. It doesn’t matter, it isn’t relevant for Dazai, because Dazai has never been like that. Chuuya also says he should rest, but Dazai just says ‘please’ and that seems to matter.

Chuuya taps out a message to Ranpo, and tells him that Bizarro Chuuya is coming up.

“We’ve been calling him Nakahara, but he really doesn’t care. He doesn’t really like anyone but Kenji, and even then not all that much. We mostly send Atsushi down to sit with him, but it’s more like…”

“He trusts Atsushi. He doesn’t like him, but he trusts him. And he’s on enemy territory, Atsushi’s the only face he recognises. He’s an assassin in his world.”

“The tiger kid? Can’t say I’m not surprised.”

For a second it’s like they’re pouring over mission details, like they’re young and stupid. Then the second passes.

“Yeah. Found him, hungry and hurt and alone and ripped out what was left of his heart. Stabbed a collar around his neck to draw blood, told him it was for his safety. Hurt him in the ways he feared most, told him he was a monster.”

“Not in this world.”

“Mmmmm. But with the memories of it. I knew what he could become and I damned him to hell anyway. Besides, in this world I just did it to Akutagawa.”

The footsteps come down the hall, and Dazai breathes deep. He doesn’t know if he can do this, but he doesn’t really have a choice.

Nakahara opens the door, Ranpo behind him. An odd guard, but the way his eyes don’t leave Dazai makes him think that he used any excuse to see him.

“You’re awake.”

“I am. I remember too.”

He tilts his head for a chilling smile, one that sends shivers down everyones back but his.

Nakahara holds fast, eyes roaming over an old soul.

“…Boss?”

He doesn’t really laugh, doesn’t really smile, but something in that chilling tone points out that he’s impressed with the quick identification.

“My executive.”

Nakahara sinks to his knees, ever loyal, but it isn’t something subordinate. It’s like a leashed dog, wondering whether to bite.

“You… You came back?”

“Touching the page brought back old memories. All the memories. We all spent our lives with his mind at the back of ours. Seems like he’ll spend the rest of his with us hidden behind his eyes. But finally, you and I get to talk.”

Nakahara doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move. Chuuya reaches out, scared at the mask of a dead man stretched over Dazai. Dazai moves away from him, and it hurts where it shouldn’t. He kneels in front of Nakahara, something sweet in the gesture.

“It’s good to meet you.”

Nakahara flinches, understanding already.

“I’ve always wanted to talk to you, outside of that false universe. Without predetermination and fate controlling my word. It was all what I would say anyway, but the choice of it matters, doesn’t it?”

“So, it wasn’t you? In that universe, it was-”

“Me and me alone. I’m not a character Chuuya, I’m a role. I’m who the universe needs from me, I’m a focal point. Atsushi and Akutagawa will pick up where I let off, and who knows, that merry little world may turn a little longer, but you knew who I was. I just always knew who I was doomed to be as well.”

“… You never said.”

“How could I?” Dazai reaches out, something broken in the gesture. Like a believer before his God. “How could I break the One Real Thing. I was cursed to love you, you know? Because he does, of the original, because of who I am in the world, because of who you are. It would destroy you, to know how trapped we were. It would destroy you like it destroyed me.”

“You were alone.”

“And you wouldn’t have fixed that.”

“But-”

“Just… Breathe, my Chuuya.”

Chuuya does, but like it’s an order.

“You didn’t. You didn’t love me. The way you treated me, that’s to how you treat someone you love.”

Dazai tilts his head, something horrifically unbalanced in it.

“… I never said I loved you well.”

Nakahara does't cry, but there are tears falling. It’s horrifically piteous.

“I want to destroy it. All of Yokohama, that cursed world. You were alone in it, you were trapped and I won’t let it live. It can’t do that to you and breathe.”

“I don’t want that.”

“Well, you should have stayed alive if that’s what you wanted.”

“You can’t.”

It’s not a plea, but it’s not an order either. If anything, it’s a statement of fact. The sky is blue, the world is cruel and Chuuya can’t destroy Yokohama.

“The world I left behind. It’s the only one in the whole universe where he’s still alive and writing novels. I don’t want it to burn in fire. Please?”

It destroys Chuuya, this promise. Burns in him unfairly, cuts at him. Leaves open wounds in his battle scarred heart.

“I hate you for doing this to me.”

Dazai understands. He smiles, ever so soft and unfitting.

“I can tell him. That, that Odasaku guy.”

“Only three people can know this truth at a time without the universe collapsing. Atsushi and Akutagawa know, they’ll be remarkable.”

“So? I’ll kill the agency brat, tell Sakunosuke the-"

“He loves Akutagawa, his death would destroy him. It'll drive him into a murderous rage and he’ll die in it. That’s sort of how he died here actually.”

“Then Atsushi. Nakajima. The tiger”

“Chuuya.”

“What else can I do for you? Anything, just…” He presses his head to his hands. “If I follow your orders, it’s like you’re still alive.”

“… If you can do anything, protect them. The city is yours, make it something better than I could have dreamed.”

“What else?”

“Take care. Of yourself. Don’t let this turn you into me, don’t lock yourself away. Don’t be as weak as I was.”

Chuuya looks up at him, meeting his eyes with something close to shock.

“You never would have said that before.”

Dazai who isn’t quite Dazai smiles back.

“I couldn’t. Not there. Maybe that’s what this is. A chance to say goodbye.”

Nakahara wails and falls forward, desperate into Dazai’s arms, lips connecting in a biting farewell.

“You’re so unfair. I hate you.”

Dazai smiled through it with bleeding lips.

“Go home Chuuya. Be better than I was.”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“Oh Chuuya… I left you long ago.”

Dazai leaned back, something flickering in those eyes.

“You can’t stay here long. You’re not compatible with the world, it’s unstable. You’ll destroy both this and your home.”

“… So?”

“And the Chuuya I loved, the Chuuya I could never tell how much I loved him, that Chuuya, he would never let Yokohama burn.”

“So this is goodbye? I don’t even get a say? It’s just… Forever? Gone?”

Dazai smiles, something weak and fragile.

“No. Please. Please don’t do this to me, I can’t-”

“You can. I know you can.”

“I’ll miss you, forever, for the rest of my life.”

“I know.”

“Shit, I’ll hate you as well, and I’ll cut down your grave, like hell you deserve it.”

“I know.”

“… And I love you too.”

That smile. Ever so soft. Ever so sweet. It looks wrong on that face, looks broken. Dazai should never look that strange, not with the demon bubbling beneath his skin.

“Goodbye.”

Even though Chuuya was looking straight at Nakahara, it was like he’d been watching from the corner of his eye. He flickered and he was gone.

“He’s home now. Everything’s back to normal.”

Dazai was still sat there. He looked very lonely.

Chuuya looked at the man who he knew better than anyone else in the world and wondered. ‘Who are you’.

He wondered if he’d ever get an answer.

Chapter Text

Dazai slips away from Ranpo. The detective is worried, and rightfully so, but Dazai is too busy swimming in the memories that don’t rightfully belong to him to care about it.

He heads to the roof. Not of the armed detective agency, that would be too obvious. Nothing as dramatically pretentious as Mukurotoride, nowhere with memories too close to the surface. Somewhere plain and anonymous.

He’s traced all of Yokohama, bitten into every crease of this hellscape. He doesn’t love it, not the way that Mori or Chuuya do, not the way Atsushi is learning to. But he'd compensated. He didn’t love Yokohama but he knew it better than anyone, had claimed it in the only way an empty man could. Maybe that could bring him closer to humanity.

It’s harder than expected to slip away, but he wrestles himself free, faking a panic attack to lock himself in a bathroom. He’s never had a panic attack, never been so overwhelmed with emotion, but at this point, nobody is expecting anything previously determined as ‘Dazai Regular’. Even then, Ranpo had clung on a hint too long.

Chuuya had been very still. Dazai wondered when he’d lost him. Was it when he took on another face, touching the anthology of the universe with all that entailed? When he confessed to loving him, put a word to all their years of history that used to be seven and are now infinite across a million universes.

It should matter, loosing Chuuya. But instead Dazai just feels very very lonely. It feels…

Like being on the outside. Like being dead, which he remembers. Many times.

It’s an empty roof, a trapdoor leading up. It’s cold, according the thermometer, and windy, according to the barometer. Dazai watches the display of both measurements for thirty minutes, the numbers flickering. Calculated data is soothing. Difficult to argue with.

His whole life was known before he lived it. He has the memory of memory, where a million different versions of himself looked at him and his life and came away wanting. He is struck with how truly unimpressive he is.

He steps away, tossing his coat of the edge in a facsimile of rage. He’s not angry. He’s not even cold, deprived of even biological responses. He’s just bitter at it all. Bitter in a factual, petty sort of way.

He doesn’t need to wonder what will go through his mind. He knows.

This was the story of Osamu Dazai. And this is how it ends.

He balances precariously, the balls of his feet lifted so he’s hinged solely on his heels. Nice loafers, moulded to his feet. He does’t take care of many things, his body being the most evident of that, but he’s always put an unprecedented amount of sheer effort into those shoes. Carefully shined to show neither wealth or poverty. Perfectly comfortable, perfectly fitted. Perfectly balanced.

He tilts, and-

Chuuya’s grip is hot around his wrist.

It’s not like all the previous times Chuuya has pulled him away. Chuuya’s grip is loose, like he’s tempted to let go. Chuuya seems… Delicate. Like he’s playing a role.

He hadn’t expected this. It wasn’t written out. But it’s a small enough detail.

“Please don’t fall.”

Chuuya says it like a question, like he’s not sure if he wants to believe his own words or not.

Idly, Dazai watches a bullet press through his head and Chuuya fall to the ground. He twitches, a horrific post death sprawl. It’s instantaneous. Then the universe twitches back, and they’re both alive, on a roof.

Dazai smirks. His voice is echoey in his own head, but his mind has never needed to be painless to work.

“Is that so? Would Chuuya like to beat me to death instead? Poison my cup, twist my neck? Crush me with a rock, my own ability nullifying yours so it’s the perfect double suicide? I’ve seen all of them play out you know. From accident to scheme to vengeance. Whatever we were to each other, it’s been replaced. I don’t even know who you are.”

The worst thing they can say to each other, but it’ll sting more from Dazai. Chuuya may understand Dazai more than anyone else in the world, but the bar is low in that matter. But Dazai has always held his knowledge of Chuuya like a weapon. Being the only one who can utilise him. He’s found any method possible to prove his study. He knows his movements, his breathing, his stance.

But now, everything blurs under what has been and what could be.

Chuuya doesn’t even flinch, but his grip loosens. Dazai pretends that hurts more than it actually does.

“So? To what do I owe the pleasure? You want some final words? A last revenge? Send me off with a kiss? I’ve seen it all my dear, there’s nothing you can do that hasn’t played over the back of my eyes.”

More silence. It’s okay. Dazai’s played this game.

A twitch in reality and Chuuya’s in a janitorial uniform, which should look horrific except the way he’s still fascinated by the way his dearest dog moves, captivating in the most mundane way. In this one he cleans up tidily, then lingers in the camera blind spot, sparking a cigarette. He barely even notices Dazai, except to smirk something conspiratorial in this stolen moment. And again, the two of them, here. He’s getting dizzy.

“You know the worst thing? We’re not even special. Sure, there are hundreds of worlds where we are bound together, by fate, by tragedy, by chance, but there are more where you’re nothing more than ambivalent to me. A stranger. Soukoku isn’t written in the stars. Just two desperate teenagers. We… In the end, we really were just human. Or, you were, anyway.”

He pulls away, but Chuuya’s grip follows him. His foolish partner doesn’t look up, eyes fixated on the narrow arm, the place where skin meets fabric. He takes a deep breath in.

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t. The point is that-”

“No. Not whatever bullshit universe melodrama you’re thinking off, but Soukoku. What do you mean, written in the stars?”

“Exactly what I said Chuuya. What do you think, that we’re important? That because our abilities matching, because of a twist of fate we were destined? We’re nothing more than two kids trapped in the same hell-”

“Well, of course we are.”

Dazai looks at Chuuya, subtly lost. He’d known that, for all he’d never risked showing it, Soukoku had always meant more to him than Chuuya. Chuuya had always fallen in with people, be it Ane-San, the Sheep, the Flags, even the Black Lizard. Dazai had never let on that Chuuya meant as much, and Chuuya wouldn’t believe him if he knew, but he’d never imagined that Soukoku was so unimportant that Chuuya simply didn’t even care.

“We’ve never been anything else. We’re not chosen for each other. The universe didn’t assign us, wouldn’t have things been easier if we were? We’ve never been anything but two kids.”

Like his words are giving him strength, he pulls Dazai back, but Dazai doesn’t let himself move, feeling his heart beat faster. Quietly, he realises, like it's something revolutionary. His heart is beating. It feels new, like a gesture this shell of a body is unused to.

“The universe didn’t decide us. Neither did Mori, neither did you. We built Soukoku, and it’s always going to be our decision.”

“So what? You think sentiment about a dead partnership is enough to save us? You think this… This drivel is enough to, what? Convince me to live?”

“You’re not going to die. Not today, not in front of me. I’m never going to let that happen.”

“Oh shut up. Don’t act like this doesn’t matter, like you’re not terrified. Whatever you want from me, forget it. You can’t even touch me, you expect me to believe you can force me to live?”

“I’m not touching you because I didn’t know if I could stop you!”

It comes out in less than a shout but more than a yell. It comes out like how anger escapes as fear. It comes out with tears building in the corners of Chuuya’s eyes.

An old instinct surfaces in Dazai, and he wants to kiss them away. Press his lips to Chuuya’s eyes, steal away his life force, keep a little bit of him safe within Dazai’s mouth. It flickers and fades.

“I didn’t… I don't know what you're going through. And, I think a lot of the time you were trying to commit suicide, you just wanted someone to stop you. Or remind you, or prove something to you, whatever. But… Do you seriously want to die?”

‘Yes.’ Dazai wants to say. Wants to spit venom and claim death as an old friend. Before, he’d wanted to die for antithesis. There was no craving for death, just a simple ambivalence of life. Now? Now there was something all too horrifying in his understanding of the universe, and he wants to escape.

Dazai feels a heavy mass form in his throat.

“Chuuya I… You know there’s a pattern? In all the worlds I see, you know what I’ve seen? I’m not an anchor point, I’m a virus. The people around me, I cause them to suffer. I have seen every version of myself act as a blight upon others. I’ve seen Atsushi turned blue, been the one to draw blood from him. I’ve ripped you apart, made you hate me. Don’t… If you’ve ever cared for me, even a little, you won’t make me live with that. I… That’s not something I can survive.”

“That's not-”

“It’s a universal constant. That everything I long to keep will be lost. That's what all of this was really, evidence to prove a hypothesis. I just got proof.”

“Shut UP!”

Chuuya pulled him hard, the momentum crashing them both to the ground, Chuuya grunting at the heavy impact with the floor. Dazai winced as his chin bounced off of Chuuya’s chest, something reverberating through his skull.

“You don’t understand anything.”

“Don’t I? Oh, please, tell me what I’ve missed. No, tell me why I’ve missed it, hm? I have the weight of a million different realities in my head, what are you to argue against that, hmm?”

“I’m right.”

Dazai feels something bubbling inside him, vicious and swarming like a shaken cola. Chuuya’s simple certainty in the face of reality pissed him off. He opens his mouth break off their relationship, to sever those last bonds, but Chuuya presses his own hand to Dazai’s lips. Suddenly Chuuya is an enemy soldier, pressing Dazai’s mouth closed, hiding him. He’s quiet and young and scared, and he stutters out that he doesn’t want to kill anyone. He smuggles Dazai out that same day, and Dazai knows he’ll be dead by the end of the month, so he doesn’t feel guilty about stealing a thread of his military uniform, tying it around his neck until it’s dyed with blood. He blinks and reality settles. They're on the rooftop. Chuuya’s hand is warm.

He’s not wearing gloves. Dazai hadn’t noticed.

“I don’t care about Bizarro Dazai. He’s nothing like you. It doesn’t matter if they all saw our world and hated you, it doesn’t matter if you’re alone. None of that matters to us. I’m not holding the Dazai that fell from the rooftop because he wanted to keep a promise to me, I’m holding you. I’m not looking at the Dazai that tortured that tiger kid, I’m looking at you.”

“… You’ve been speaking to Bizarro Chuuya.”

Chuuya pulled Dazai down even further that Dazai felt the irrational urge to check if No Longer Human was even working. After all, it must have been the gravitational force pressing him down, pulling him into Chuuya’s orbit.

“I don't care about Bizarro Chuuya. I was ready to shoot him stone cold dead, and you know it. He’s not me, and that Dazai that stole your face wasn’t you.”

“It’s easy for you to say. You’re not seeing their nightmares in your head. You can’t understand-”

“So what? Why do I need to? Because I was wondering, if I had the right to stop you, when I didn't understand. But you gave me the right. The day you claimed me as a partner, every time you brought me back from corruption. Every time you had my back. You gave me the right to your life seven years ago, it's no longer your own. You keep your hands off it, you hear? Your life is just as much mine as your own. Understanding has nothing to do with giving someone the 'right'. Do you understand me? Why I love the Sheep, even now? Why I cry when strangers die? Why I forgave you?”

“That’s different, that’s because you’re… Chuuya.”

Because he’s human. Because he’s real. Because it’s impossible to be apathetic towards him. Because Dazai doesn’t empathise, doesn’t relate, but he still knows. He knows that the rest of the world is different to him, that they feel things he can’t, they live in a more beautiful world.

Knows that Chuuya is beyond even that.

“You can’t understand everything Dazai. But you have to live with it all the same. And you can’t leave me again.”

“You’ll be fine. I’ve seen a hundred versions of you-”

“You haven’t! You’ve seen a hundred strangers with my soul, but that’s not me!”

It must be raining. There’s water on Chuuya’s face. It must be raining because the alternative is-

“Dazai, I had four years without you. I knew you were alive, and it still killed me. And now, you were away for four weeks and I can’t.” Chuuya shakes his head like he’s clearing away cobwebs. “You don’t understand, I can’t do that again.” He presses their foreheads together, something fervent in this form of devotion. “Dazai. I watched you die.”

Oh. Chuuya does love him. He’d forgotten what that felt like.

“This is our world. It sucks, and it’s painful, but we have to protect it. Running away won’t solve anything, and neither will leaving. I won’t let you go, okay?” Chuuya’s hands are warm on Dazai’s face. “They’re just bad dreams. They’re just echoes. They’re strangers. I’m the only one who gets to hurt you like that."

Chuuya’s intoxicating like this. But the lure of death is ringing, too loud, too painful, too real.

“They’re real Chuuya. They’re real people, trapped in hell, and they all know of my existence. And… I don’t know what to do. Some of them are jealous, some furious. How am I supposed to live hating myself like this.”

“The same was you always have. And we’ll find a way to destroy the Book.”

Dazai jolts at the insane sequence of words.

“What?! Chuuya, you don’t understand, the Book is-”

“-More trouble than it’s worse. It’s hurting you, so I’m going to tear it to shreds. Do you believe me?”

There’s never been any alternative for him. Dazai looks down at his soulmate. A thousand versions of himself scream vengeance and fury and pain.

Chuuya holds him firm.

“They deserve to know what it is to be happy as well. The book is anchored in you. Let’s find a way to change fate.”

It’s ridiculous. It’s arrogant. There’s no way to know if they’ll succeed. It’s beyond an impossible endeavour.

He believes in Chuuya anyway.

Dazai presses his lips to Chuuya’s, the air hopelessly cold. He watches reality swim, doesn’t close his eyes despite how strange it feels to kiss someone like that. He can’t miss a second of it. He’s done with flickers and visions and other versions of the man he loves.

‘It’s too rude.’ He would say, if he could open his mouth. ‘Chuuya takes up too much of my brain, and now there’s no space for common sense and reason. Isn’t that just cruel?”

Chuuya might laugh at that or might tease. He might ignore Dazai, or pull out a cigarette. And the universe is still there, hidden in the palm of his hand, clamouring for attention. But Chuuya is right, and Dazai loves him, and that doesn’t mean anything, but it does matter. He ignores the other versions, because he is the Dazai that’s in love with Chuuya, but this is the Chuuya he’s involve with, and that’s just as important. Because Dazai breathes in from Chuuya’s lungs and for the first time in a long life, his brain falls into quiet.