𝓒𝓱𝓲𝓵𝓭𝓻𝓮𝓷 𝓸𝓯 𝓓𝓪𝓻𝓴𝓷𝓮𝓼𝓼 | 𝘥𝘢𝘻𝘢𝘪 𝘰𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘶

𝒳𝒱𝐼. 𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝑀𝑜𝓇𝓇𝒾𝑔𝒶𝓃

"What does it matter now, Nightshade?" Dazai asks, his tone airy to create the impression that nothing is wrong, but his hand twitches like he's reaching for something and she slips her hand into his, watching him turn to her.

There is the usual flash of blue that sparks every time they touch, and the shadows fall silent and leave her space as her control over them is canceled. Dazai's attention is drawn by the light and he blinks at it like he's trying to prolong the time before he has to meet her gaze.

He finds himself chuckling at the fact that he has grown unused to the rawness in him that (Y/n) draws out. It is a part of him that he has hidden away to protect himself. A part that has always belonged to her, and one that he has become accustomed to shying away from because it is darker than the façade he puts up for his current colleagues.

They are at such different places in life than they were four years ago, but there is a part of him that will forever be stuck in the moment he first saw (Y/n) and understood that darkness was a type of beautiful too, when he had first wondered what it would feel like to be destroyed by her and how her hands would feel in his own.

He has answered those questions by now, because he had been destroyed by her when they'd said goodbye on the bridge and he has also repeatedly been saved with every breath they have shared. He has answered those questions but he cannot quite get enough of the feeling of watching and wanting that only she has ever managed to bring out.

"I learned what it takes to destroy oneself without anyone else having to," he says after a long moment has passed.

She inclines her head. "And what does it take?"

Dazai smiles, a warped and broken smile he hasn't worn in years. "Alcohol, loneliness and heartbreak," he answers, thinking back to all the time he spent alone in bars when he had nowhere else to go because, without his quite realizing, his home had begun to look a lot like a person he'd left behind, one who had traversed too far out of his reach.

"Heartbreak," she repeats. There is silence between them as they cross the street and head to wherever it is he is taking her.

Her companion tugs her closer to him. "I called you poison before, but I had no idea what you would do to me. Or rather, what your absence would do," he says, looking at her from the corner of his eye and finding that she is looking at him in a way she hasn't since she waltzed back into his life.

He has managed to surprise her, and like it always does, it leaves him feeling oddly triumphant.

After all, his Nightshade knows him better than anyone else. Not entirely. He doesn't know all there is to know about her either, since they were both brought up to detest vulnerability and protect themselves, but they know more than anyone else who has come into their lives since then.

(Y/n) has always been more perceptive than him. At first, he had thought it to be sensitivity-- something entirely unexpected from any assassin, let alone one that is the sole survivor of one of the greatest assassin organizations the world has known. He has learned since then, however, that she is simply a lot more humane than him. As long as her direct survival is not threatened, there is rarely any intent to her destruction other than orders that require it of her or because there is something more she wishes to protect.

Being forced to subdue her innate compassion-- the quality that makes humans, well, human-- had convinced her and everyone around her that she was a monster.

And, maybe, four years ago, she was. They both were.

The difference now is that she is healing and rebuilding herself after tearing down the monster she had been called, and he is merely pretending to never have been one at all.