Archive of Our Own ^beta

The hands were all over him. Layers of clothes stripped off, like skin being peeled off an orange. Easily, casually. Atsushi wanted to scream, but his tongue wouldn't respond, his throat wouldn't respond, his lungs wouldn't respond.

His body felt more like a doll than a human being. Pushed around. Hoisted up. Legs spread in an obscene way when he was pushed against the leather chair. Like a circus animal. Like something lesser than a mere circus animal.

In the last of his desperation, a remnant of lucidity, he tried to call upon the tiger, but she wouldn't answer, almost as if whatever drug they injected him with got her first. Out of the two of them, she was always the strong one, the one who pulled him through and lent him the strength when things seemed hopeless. But now she was gone and with the same drug making him feel like a prisoner inside his own body, he got the chance to realize just how weak he was.

There was nothing he could do. Absolutely nothing.

What was supposed to be a simple mission, catching a few smugglers that should be easy with his tiger-given strength, ended with him stripped down until he was completely naked, his clothes carelessly torn and scattered across the ground of the abandoned storagehouse he was kept in, and the communicator that kept him connected with Dazai and Kunikida broken outside the door.

There was no saving for him.

Not without the tiger. Her absence more visceral than ever. She was something that he had ever since he could remember, something that never left him. Now even she was gone, almost as if to highlight how hopeless his situation was.

He couldn't even scream, cry or plead for mercy. As if he was locked inside his body.

The anti-gifted drug the group had in their disposition was no joke and even the tiger couldn't heal its effects. It just worked too fast.

And now everything that was happening in front of his eyes felt like a really bad movie and he couldn't even switch the channel.

"Hey, Mizuhiro, want a round with the Tigerboy? I'm sure you're also wondering whether he feels more like a human or an animal on the inside," one of the men said, his voice gruff, but his words swimming in and out of Atsushi's head as if they had no meaning.

Until he realized just what the man was saying, but at the time, he was still finding it too hard to move to defend himself. To do anything.

Even when weirdly slick fingers traced a shape on the inside of his thigh.

Panic rose in his chest, exploding through his veins, but it was useless. Completely useless.

And then something black flashed before his eyes and he could smell nothing but the sharp stench of blood filling the room, overpowering his numbed senses. The screams died before they turned into meaningful sounds, drowned by the characteristic thump of human bodies falling to the floor.

Dead.

Just from the sound, Atsushi knew that they were dead.

His eyes sluggisly turned towards the door, now nothing but splinters, and…

15 minutes earlier

Akutagawa was never a heavy sleeper. Like a mark or a curse left on his mind by the experiences from the Slums, he remained vigilant even in his sleep, ready to be woken up by the subtlest sounds in his surroundings.

This is why a phone call at the break of dawn felt as loud as the alarm clock, ringing through his skull as he was violently yanked out of his sleep. He shook his head and quickly took in everything in the room, almost as if a phantom of a stray dog could sneak in waiting for its revenge.

But it was just his phone, buzzing on the floor next to his futon.

He squinted, looking at the screen almost as if he was struggling to read the caller ID. Or maybe rather as if he couldn't believe the name on the screen.

Of course, if he could really put his past behind him, he would have rejected the call, but it was the last chain keeping him shackled to his shameful past. One that he couldn't break no matter how much he had tried, so with a bitter taste rising in the back of his throat, he picked up.

"Oh, Akutagawa, who would expect you'd be awake at this ungodly hour?" Dazai said from the other side, his voice buried underneath a painfully fake veneer of nonchalance.

Akutagawa felt his stomach burn with anger, because Dazai had to be aware that he had woken him up. But also, his old master, the master that discarded him, had to have a reason to call and the mere prospect of that, made him spring to his feet.

"What do you need me for?" he asked, because he knew his master better than to expect this call to be filled with pointless courtesies.

"Ah, you see, do you still live in this apartment near the docks? One I got for you and Gin?"

"Yes," Akutagawa answers, not a second of hesitation, just a single word soaking with eagerness.

"That's great!" Dazai says in the last moment of enthusiasm before his voice shifts into something familiar, something cold, "Do you know the abandoned warehouse next to the old fishing equipment store? I've lost contact with Atsushi around there. I need you to check up on him. Prepare for the fight?"

Akutagawa let out a huff and threw an angry glance at his unmade bed.

"Why would I help the Weretiger?"

Dazai's breath made him sound as if he was holding back a chuckle for a split second.

"You know exactly why. Now go."

Dazai ended the call, and if Akutagawa was any smarter, any better at not letting himself get swayed by his emotions, he would have returned to the bed and allowed himself an hour or two of sleep more.

But he was not, so he didn't even bother with wearing his usual clothes, instead rushing out of his apartment in his coat thrown over a rather conservative set of plain, black pajamas. Akutagawa was never a fan of clothing that let more than necessary show.

He knew the place Dazai was talking about well. Eight or so minutes if he was going to run.

Of course, running all the way there had been bad for his lungs and would harm his performance once he got there, but for once he didn't care. Almost as if the beast that made its home inside his cold, dead heart was now scratching at the walls of the muscle.

And so Akutagawa ran.

Something about the stillness on the outside of the old warehouse made his stomach twist with something that would remind him of worry if he had an idea how to feel anything. He was too weak to allow himself for such a rare privilege as feelings.

His stomach twisted when he saw remnants of the communicator smashed near the door. Even by its sorry remnants, he could tell that it was the model the Armed Detective Agency used.

He tried to push everything aside and focus on the goal Dazai gave him. After all, if he managed to defeat the enemies that bested the Weretiger, he would prove himself superior without needing to wait the remaining time until their promised rematch.

Rashoumon broke through the door with ease, leaving nothing but splinters in its path, but then Akutagawa's insides felt as if they were burned through with acid. As if somebody had gutted him right there, in this doorway.

The entire world stopped for a split second, all the sounds drowned out by the blood rushing through his ears as the image in front of him burned into his mind.

The Weretiger, his replacement, his rival, limply sat on the chair, naked, with his head limply hanging to the side and drool dripping from the side of his slightly parted lips. Like a grotesque doll with glassy eyes. His legs, spread by a man holding a small bottle, a brand of lubricant that Akutagawa was familiar with, as another one watched from the side.

At least for a split second, because then the world started to move again. Two pairs of dark eyes turned towards him, but Akutagawa's mind was nothing, but an animal. A silent mad dog once again behind the wheel.

He knew that he promised not to kill, but suddenly that promise didn't matter at all. Suddenly, he needed blood. He needed the men in front of him dead. Because of Atsushi. He avoided killing because of Atsushi, but now he needed to kill and it still was because of Atsushi.

Rashoumon flared up, spilling in front of him like an inky wave, pulling forward like blood-thirsty black hounds, sinking into the necks of both of the men in an instant, not giving him a chance to do anything but convulse as their lives slipped out of their bodies, dripping red onto the floor, before falling limply to the floor.

Dead. Dead as they should be.

And then he looked at Atsushi, still limply sitting on the faux-leather chair, still with the same glassy eyes. Akutagawa blinked twice, almost as if he wasn't sure whether he was supposed to keep looking at him or give him some decency. And what the fuck was he even supposed to say in a situation like that.

He looked down and noticed the remains of the Weretiger's clothes scattered across the tiles, torn before Akutagawa even stepped into the building, and now also stained with blood.

He looked up at him. Maybe he knew what to say.

"Your clothes are beyond saving," he said coldly, and the Weretiger just nodded, dim-wittedly.

Akutagawa let out a sigh and took off his coat, wrapping it around Atsushi's naked body to no reaction.

"You can't walk, can you?"

No reaction once again, just Atsushi swaying a little back and forth. Akutagawa let out a sigh and picked him up. The Weretiger was too heavy for him, but in that moment that didn't seem to matter at all. He pressed his body against his own and carried him out into the cold morning air.

"Relax, you fool. It's just me."

He started to slowly walk towards the Armed Detective Agency's office, fresh blood still staining his face, even more pale than it usually was to the point the looked more like a ghost than a man.

Akutagawa, for the life of him, couldn’t justify why he chose to stay in the Armed Detective Agency’s office, but he did, spending an hour looking at the infirmary door, ignored by everyone in the building, which at the time included the president in the safety of his office, the dark-haired detective he was sure he had never met before, and two clerks he had never seen before.

They didn't seem distressed by his presence at all, almost as if he wasn't an infamous mafioso, sitting in their workplace, still covered in blood from the kill that he had made. And pajamas, but that shouldn't matter that much. His coat was handed to the Agency's doctor together with the Weretiger, as if that could help him mantain some semblance of decency.

But Akutagawa knew better.

After an hour or two (or forever, he lost track of time a long time ago), the doctor emerged, her face dead serious.

"Atsushi woke up. He asked about you."

Akutagawa straightened his back and pressed himself into the chair that he was sitting on, the one that was starting to feel as if it was becoming a part of his body.

"Shouldn't Dazai or any member of your organization be informed first?" he asked, trying to keep his voice cold in spite of his heart drumming away in his chest.

"There's plenty of time for that. And you were the one who found him and brought him here," she said, pushing her glasses up with a single finger, "And it was his choice."

Akutagawa nodded and gotten up passing her in the doorway and remaining unflinching at the sound of the door shutting behind him.

"Akutagawa, you-"

"You were drugged and assaulted," he cut him off, tone completely devoid of emotions because that was the only way in which he could bring himself to speak, but Atsushi, now apparently feeling better, because his eyes looked as if there was someone behind them and he managed to keep himself in a semi-sitting position.

"You killed them, didn't you? Despite the promise."

Suddenly, the reality of everything that happened in that warehouse came back to him. The blood, the Rashoumon piercing through the necks, as if it was an old habit.

"I've seen what they were doing to you and couldn't stop myself."

Atsushi looked at him, blinking, almost as if surprise. Or maybe in fear. Suddenly, Akutagawa couldn't tell.

"Are you saying you did it because of me?"

Akutagawa took two steps forward and kneeled next to Atsushi's cot.

"No, Weretiger, I'm saying I did it for you."