Redo at past mistakes

Chapter 6- Search and Rescue

 Getting off his feet, Dazai brushed his clothes and patted Atsushi on the back,

"Come on Atsushi, time to get to work!" Dazai commanded, flashing a devilish smile as he marched back to the Agency.

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Darkness. In a small room, hidden somewhere unknown, every corner was surrounded by it. There was a dim bulb illuminating the shadowy cell, besides that there were no other forms of light. The cell was cold. Frosty air creeped in through the gaps in the bricks. The bricks themselves dripped water from condensation. The slow repetitive drip was on a continuous loop, going on to the point it could make someone go mad. The bars of the cell were the sole thing in the cell that was maintained and appeared in a new condition. It was a shiny metal, impossible to break, and beyond its cold, hard bars was an abyss of black. The place was the perfect home for the monsters that lurked in one's nightmares, and was the ideal place to scar vulnerable kids. Anyone could tell that from one look at the place, and no one knew that better than the man who'd been sat in here for hours. Chuuya Nakahara sat in the middle of the cell on high alert, just as he'd been for all the hours that had passed.

It was deathly silent. Chuuya could hear nothing but their hushed breaths and the ongoing drip, but even then that felt too much. This place gave off an aura that silence was all that was accepted and nothing else was welcome. His body was stiffly frozen, fearing the consequences if he dared make a sound. The hairs on his body were standing upright in attention and his heartbeat was running out of control. This desolate room was bringing up memories from a childhood long forgotten... and it was forgotten for a good reason. It was a place of fear and torture, locked in a cell or locked in a lab, with experiments constantly performed. They were memories he much preferred hidden away, to never be seen again, yet when trapped in a location that all but mirrored one of his nightmares, it was terribly hard to ignore those dreams. However, Chuuya knew he didn't have the privilege to succumb to fear. He had to get control of his emotions in order to ensure his safety. He's done it before. Back then he was just sixteen and still didn't manage to avoid torture but he managed to free himself. This time he wouldn't let it go that far, not just because he doesn't want it to but because he can't allow it. This time he wasn't the only one at risk of harm.

Laying beside him, even now unconscious, was the still fourteen year old Akutagawa. The poor boy was thrown in here not long after him but was still yet to wake. Perhaps, in a bitter turn of fate, this was for the better. If maybe Akutagawa had been hit so hard he'd been knocked into a coma that wouldn't necessarily be terrible, because it meant he wouldn't have to face the reality of their situation. Waking up in an unknown place, where their safety wasn't confirmed, wasn't ideal for any child, but for a kid from the slums who finally got a taste of comfort and safety, for all that to suddenly be thrown away and, to make matters worse, end up in a harsher place, the pain that brought was a pain Chuuya never desired for the young teen to experience. Akutagawa had already had one life changing truth to face, he didn't need another on top of that. A dangerous turn of events is never a reality a child should wake up to. Sadly, that was what they had been given and Chuuya could only pray Akutagawa would be saved for even a minute longer.

As the seconds passed and Akutagawa remained asleep, Chuuya tried his best to protect the defenseless child. The redhead had gathered the boy onto his lap and was gently running his fingers through his hair. Comforting the boy through nightmares and lulling him back to sleep at any signs of wakefulness, in order to latch onto that small moment of ignorance, just so he can stay safe in his dreams. Perhaps it was cruel to deprive him of the truth but it wasn't a reality anyone deserved to face. The longer Akutagawa remained ignorant in dreamland the better, so he continued to caress the boy and rock him to sleep. Chuuya wished he could do more than the bare minimum but stuck in a cramped cell, in horrid conditions, whilst having no energy to move more than an inch, made doing anything else practically impossible. It was clear to him that whoever took them had injected him with something, whatever its purpose he was unsure of, but Chuuya was at least aware it had a side effect of draining his energy. He was reduced to nothing more than a drowsy mess, completely useless.