A/N: Time skips! Lots of them as we're finishing off the build up to Dark Era.
Dazai POV
The Dragon Head Conflict had begun to heat more in the weeks following Odsaku's joining of the mafia, growing to the point where there were mafia casualties even as we didn't actively attempt to get involved and take over the fight. It was around day forty or so when Odasaku and I were sent out to the Yokohama Settlement's waste - disposal site to gather and clean up the fallen bodies of the Port Mafia members that had been sent to join in the gunfights. We didn't have to bury the bodies (there were too many of them for only two people to do that) but we did have to photograph the deceased so that the boss would know who was dead and who was a deserter, and we had to gather their possessions. Mori didn't want the cops taking in anything that could curb the organized crime.
Though Odasaku was sent because he is the lowest level member of the Port Mafia, a man that refuses to kill despite his proficiency with doing so, and this kept him far away from the current gunfire, for me this was just another punishment for bringing the older man. Sometimes it felt like a punishment for bothering to exist at all.
Odasaku and I walked into the mafia affiliated accounting firm with outright pockets heavy with bags of IDs, keys, phones, knives, guns, and bloodied pictures that would never again be claimed by those that truly had any right to them. There was a secret door in the firm that a desk clerk only pointed to as he watched us walk in, not so much as saying a word or even breathing at all as we walked in, the stench of rotting corpses and waste clinging desperately to us. Odasaku, ever the more polite of the pair of us, nodded his thanks to the man as I walked over to the false wall and found the hidden door.
"Could you please not get any closer? You smell," were the first words that we were met with as Odasaku and I stood just inside of the room. The disgust was evident in the stranger's voice as the older man didn't even so much as glance to see who had graced his doorway.
The man had business like brown hair, pulled back neatly so that it wouldn't get in the stranger's face as he poured over the documents before him. He was dressed in a monotone suit of dark brown, and had round glasses that looked as if they had stepped straight out of an American children's novel. He didn't look like anything special, but I knew that Mori wouldn't have engineered such a meeting if he didn't want me to do something. To learn something.
Life was always about lessons when it came to the doctor.
Just not always good ones.
Ango Sakaguchi, just what lesson are you here to teach?
Sakaguchi glanced up at the pair of us briefly before speaking with more bluntness than I heard in years from anyone inside of the mafia. "Put their belongings on my desk, then stand back. Don't open your mouths unless I ask you something," the man said harshly.
The pair of us did as we were told, but I couldn't help but wonder if the newcomer even understood who it was that he was speaking to. A glance at Odasaku told me that the older man was wondering something similar as well.
"You're the new guy right?" I asked, breaking one of the only two rules that we had been given. A part of me couldn't help but wonder just what kind of idiot joins the mafia in the middle of an active war, or if the stranger was an idiot at all for doing so. It would be so easy to slip through the cracks when so many other things are happening at such speed and with such insurmountable violence and brutality around you. "Sorry, but can I use your shower? As you said so... politely, we smell-"
"I told you to keep quiet."
My mouth fell open in surprise as I was cut off by the older man. By someone that spoke with too much authority and annoyance at being disregarded for some low ranking new hire.
We watched silently as Sakaguchi carefully looked over each of the items that we had brought to him carefully before writing something on a notepad after the times seemed to have passed his inspection of sorts.
What a funny bloke, using his ability in such a way.
"What are you doing?" Odasaku asked, his curiosity seemingly having gotten the better of him as we waited and watched aimlessly.
"How many times do I have to ask you to be quiet?" Sakaguchi all but growled. I was tempted to pipe up and say at least once more, but I wouldn't deprive Odasaku of his answer. "Isn't it obvious? I'm creating logs, of course," the other man lied guiltlessly.
"I see," the former assassin said calmly, taking the newcomer's words at face value as he did with everyone that he spoke to, even when that was the last thing that he should do.
"Tell us your name!" I insisted loudly, loud enough that I knew it would grate on the older man's nerves even more. I already knew the other man's name and I was sure that Odasaku did too, but you would put no one at ease by saying things that you shouldn't know too soon.
"Ango... Sakaguchi," the man choked out, likely knowing that we were as likely to listen to him as a bunch of school children.
A laugh ripples through my chest, something dark that seems to put off the other two men in the room as they look at me as if I've grown a second head.
"...What's with the nauseating laugh?" Sakaguchi asked once he'd seemed to have regained his voice.
"You're quite the interesting man there, Ango," I decided as Odasaku looked between the pair of us with a lost gaze. "Doing that isn't going to make the boss happy, you know. In fact, it will probably just end up costing more money and creating more work in an already strained time. It definitely won't help you move up the ranks."
Sakaguchi's eyes went wide as the man leaned back in his chair, seeming to instinctively look for more room to be placed between himself and the demon in the room. It was a good instinct to cultivate. "You mean to say that you know what I'm doing?" The man asked, his voice holding more than a hint of surprise to it.
"You're making records of the lives of the dead," I guessed, though it wasn't really much of one. "Am I right?" I asked because I knew that I was.
The way that Sakaguchi looked at me in that moment felt as if he was finally realizing that I existed at all. As if he finally was starting to understand that there was a demon that he had allowed to enter his office.
The Port Mafia is full of monsters, he should learn now how to identify them before we decide to kill him where he stands.
"When did you peek at my logbooks?" The older man asked, his eyes still wide with shock.
"I didn't," I answered coldly. "It was obvious what you were doing."
And truly it was. Looking at the man and his behavior, I was even reasonably sure as to what the stranger's ability was. I was sure about a lot of things pertaining to the newest Keebler of the Port Mafia, none of them were reasonably good, but they were all interesting enough to grasp my attention for long enough to not kill the man where he sat now.
Walking over to Sakaguchi with no regard once so ever for the man's visceral reaction to my drawing nearer, I peered down at the papers that the man was taking such care to write.
"The more violent this war becomes, the more the deceased start to just look like numbers on a page." My mind went to the bodies strewn across the streets of Manhattan, the faces of which some of them I had known for years before, but yet felt nothing of the grief that had plagued the others at Camp so immensely. "The lines begin to blur until those fighting become no more than the gun that they hold. And yet you're fighting back against that. Could you read us one?"
The man glared at me, irritation making him look even sterner than he had just before, not that this change made me take him any more seriously than I had been. Though eventually he did read out one of them, telling the lives of four mafiosos that had died only the day before.
Glancing at Odasaku, I found the man's face morphed into speechless amazement once the other man was done speaking and fought the urge to roll my eyes.
Of course he would fall for someone that could never stay. He seemed to do that a lot these days.
"Does the boss know that you're collecting and recording all of this even though it has no strategic purpose?" The redhead asked once he had learned to speak once more.
The other man nodded, something like pride flashing across his face. There and gone like any other emotion but annoyance that the government worker seemed to hold.
"I gather the files every week and shove them in the boss's hands myself," Sakaguchi explained almost smugly. "He was annoyed at first, but now he feels that this is a 'valuable source of information for truly understanding the state of the entire organization.' He has come to enjoy reading them now."
Odasaku looked proud and amazaded, but I knew better than to take such words at face value as the older men seemed to have. I knew the mind of the demon that had shaped my own these past years..
A chance to keep an eye on a spy until Mori decides just what pieces to play to dispose of him and anyone else he doesn't want among his ranks.
I suppose it's my turn to pick up the slack then.
"Fascinating isn't it, Odasaku?" I asked, patting the man with glasses on the back as he glared angrily at me. "There's nobody else in the mafia quite like him - such wasted potential," I commented cheerfully, so much so that neither of the other men seemed to realize the meaning underneath.
"You're going to make me start smelling," Sakaguchi grimaced but neither of the other men in the room listened to him.
"C'mon what's a little rotten fish smell between us?" I asked, beginning to feel the cheer that I was so duietfly faking. "Besides, it goes great with sake."
"Really?" Odasaku asked innocently.
"No!" The third man exclaimed, forgetting himself for a moment. "How could you lie about that so brazenly?" Ango asked me, his eyes wide with horror.
"But... it truly does... y'know?" I said slowly, my voice weak like a hurt child.
"I didn't mean that you should be more timid about it!"
"You know, I could really go for a drink now," Odasaku said suddenly, his eyes glued to my frame.
"God thinking. Usual place. We can even take this apprenticing accountant while we're at it."
"Perfect."
"Not perfect," Ango said sternly. "I still have things-"
"Odasaku, there is only one way to save this man from his terrible fate," I said dramatically, watching the older man hang onto my every word. "All we have to do is hug him tight from each side, covering him with mud and muck. This way, he physically won't be able to work anymore today!"
"Good point," the former assassin easily agreed.
"What are you threatening me?"
"Oh Ango," I said sadly as if speaking with a very small child. "The mafia doesn't threaten. We make promises," my voice was dark, but it immediately cleared as I addressed the other standing man. "Odasaku, take the right said, will ya?"
Ango blusted and protested but we moved anyways. It didn't strike me until much later that this was the first time that I had hugged another in a very long time.
—-
At the bar that night, the lines drawn out among the rest of the world were erased and we spoke with one another as equals about all manner of things. It was a rare sort of thing that I knew would come to an end much sooner than I ever wanted it to. I knew it wasn't something that I would be allowed to keep, that wasn't the way that the world worked, but I thought that I could cling to it for now.
—-
The conflict raged on, but two friends found solace within the walls of a bar that few knew anything of. Jazz music played quietly in the background, pleasantly filling the single me within the room.
"What will we toast to toady?" I asked, holding my cool glass as if I wasn't something made for violence but simply a teen drinking when they should not be.
"You're boy going to wait for Ango to get here?" Odasaku asked, shifting in his seat to get a better look at the boy at his side.
The jazz music continued in the background even as the conversation came to a pause, a feeling tugging in my stomach the way that it sometimes did when I knew something that I wished I did not.
So I just flashed a feral grin instead.
"I know what we could talk about. I Kaede something interesting the other day, ever heard of Apple suicide?"
"...Apple suicide?" The other man asked slowly as if he didn't quite believe the words that were being asked.
"Yeah," I confirmed, nodding in that carefree way that I found I could only do here. "Apple suicide."
I watched the other man out of the corner of my eye as Odasaku seemed to think for a long Koenig before seemingly remembering something. "Like Cinderella?"
Ice clinked soothingly against the glass as I placed it down, my brain slowing down to a slow train as it processed the words that man at my side had just spoken so surely.
"Cinderella...?" I asked slowly, rolling the name around in my mouth as if it would change it. "Not even I could have predicted that you would have said that.
"I never do get tired of talking with you, Odasaku," I tell the other honestly, glee filling my voice and I find myself believing it more and more each time that it does so. Looking at the older man, I could tell that he had no idea what he had said wrong and that only made me smile brighter, like a child.
"Allow me to explain," I decided, taking pity on the redheaded man. "Snow White is the one that was tricked into eating the apple. Not Cinderella. And it wasn't suicide."
"Oh," Odasaku said simply. "My apologies."
That was something that I found to be the most endearing about the older man, he never did truly lie. Odasaku was someone that would openly admit to any mistake that he had made. It was as if it never crossed the older man's mind to even think of lying to preserve his image. Speaking with the red head was always like a breadth of fresh air.
And he always led my mind to places that it normally wouldn't go otherwise.
"Hold on..." I muttered as my mind filled with thoughts and connections that it hadn't had previously.
Out of the corner of my good eye I could see the older man leaning forwards to watch me as I thought, but I didn't pay him any mind. The pair of us staring at one another was a normal occurrence now. Not much phased you once you've had someone walk you to their home and all but tell you that they knew something that you had hid for a very long time without saying so out loud.
"Maybe Snow White did kill herself. Maybe she bit the apple knowing that it was poisoned."
I glanced at the older man as I spoke and knew that I certainly had.
"Why would she do that?" Odasaku asked with curiosity but without any of the scorn that Dazai had found that most held when he became like this.
"Despair. Her own mother sought to poison her, she must have lost all hope then... or maybe she had just lost all hope in the world itself," I quietly mused thinking of a certain sea god and eleven others like him that had sought my death so many times. I could understand losing hope like that.
"I met the most interesting skill user the other day," I said, something sad pulling at my lips even as I laughed. "He can make people commit apple susicide. Maybe it will start catching on in Yokohama one day."
"Suicide, you mean?" Odasaku asked, and when I looked at him, there was only that everlasting calmness there, none of the horror that one ought to expect from another saying such a thing to them.
"Yeah. Wouldn't that be wonderful?"
Odasaku shook his head and took a sip of his drink as if the whole conversation had left him with more questions than answers than he had before. Maybe it had.
"You're an interesting guy. Your mind never stops working," the older man said, having no idea of the effect that his words always had. He never did seem to. Maybe that was why he gave them so freely.
"I'm not as interesting as you, Odasaku."
—-
At eighty eight days, the Dragon Head Conflict came to an end with a scream so filled with pain that Dazai couldn't help but wonder if Arahabaki truly felt no emotions at all.
The corpse of the White Quin crumpled to the ground as the younger boy stepped forward and touched the cheek of his partner before guiding both of them gently to the ground, holding the older boy as his consciousness returned to him once more.
Dazai placed Chuuya's head in his lap and kept an almost comforting hand on the boy's head until the mafia subordinates arrived to take the pair to the hospital, where Dazai stayed at the other boy's side all through the night. A soul in two bodies that he refused to let part again until he saw that the other was awake once more.
That was the night that they had earned the title Double Black.
—-
It wasn't long before Dazai found a child in the slums with eyes so terribly like his own, and a gift with enough potential that he couldn't understand why the bot was only scratching the surface of it. The boy had a little sister that, even at such a young age, was a traditional Japanese beauty.
Dazai gave the boy his coat that he had worn the day that he met Chuuya, frayed and torn in places that would make it easier for the child to manipulate as he was still learning how to. For the girl, in the back of the mafia car with only the boy and the driver to see, Dazai fashioned a mask from the spare roll of bandages that he had on him, and used a spare set of Bobby pins to fashion the girls hair into something more ambiguous and instructed the girl to always wear it on mafia territory.
He never told her why, but Dazai knew that she had formed a guess during her time training under a certain King of Assassins. But at least she would live.
She would go untouched.
—-
"Hey Odasaku," I called one night from between the two older men, identical drinks in each of our hands. "If my evil twin shoots me, is that murder or suicide?"
"Dazai," the older man said tiredly, his eyes dark from lack of sleep as his careful controlled calmness seemed to slip away with the worry weighing the man down over the children that he had taken in, and rented another room for, "that makes no sense and you know it."
"Actually, Oda, Dazai brings up a good question."
My head snapped quickly to the man on my other side, eyes wide as I took what Ango had just said in.
"Now who's enabling?" The former assassin asked grumpily, the ice in his glass clinking as he placed it down.
But the bespectacled man only waved the red head off. "I know that I'm going to regret asking this, but what brought this up, Dazai?"
I thought for a long moment about how best to tell the men on either side of me about the things that I had seen in New York a year ago now to the day, as a true age settled over me and the title of Youngest Executive was given to a false name. I shrugged.
"A year ago I was on this mission with the Hat Rack in the states," I said at last, stretching the truth just a bit. "There was this ability user that seemed to have two souls living within one body. One was that of a college student and the other was something comparable to a titan from Greek myths," I lied, keeping to the truth as best as I could.
"The later personality was running around, killing people and causing problems for the mafia, but the boy only had any sort of special powers when that personality was in control. However, the titan - like being took it too far and began to hurt those that the first cared for. In the end, the boy killed them both."
Odasaku hummed as Ango looked positively horrified by the thought. I just let them be, I didn't need to know just how fucked up they thought that my family was. I already knew well enough on my own.
—-
It was after another night at the bar when a conversation from a few months ago showed itself once more.
Dazai was drunk, the kind of drunk that one got when they wanted to drown everything else out because every memory felt like a bullet wound piercing your heart, telling you to bleed.
Oda could see it, he always could tell when the younger man began to dip into episodes like this. He knew better than to touch the other out right without warning after the first time that Dazai had gotten like this, and always approached the small boy carefully, like a caged animal that would go feral if threatened, though the man knew that the teen would never hurt him. Dazai, Oda knew, was someone unconditionally devoted to those that he chose to care for, even when he didn't admit to himself or others that he did so.
Once more they found their way to the older man's apartment as they always did, Oda went to the closer and grabbed the blanket that the younger boy had all but claimed as his own from his time here. It was soft and didn't aggravate the teen's bare skin as much as some things so often tended to.
Oda quietly unwrapped the bandages on each of the boy's arms, letting the angry red wounds on the teen's wrist and arms breathe once more as the owner dosed on the couch, his face pulled into a soft look that held none of the darkness that the boy that Oda knew did. When Dazai was like this, Odasaku could almost see another boy altogether, one who's eyes didn't shine with a pain that the former assassin knew better than to touch.
In the morning, Dazai woke to the sweet smell of hot chocolate being pressed into his hands by the other as everything else was quiet in the mid morning light. Though the picture was a pleasant one, the teen felt his mind haunted by things that happened long ago now. Like every other time they sat in silence with one another, but this time that air felt heavy with something more.
"You said that I could talk when I was ready," the younger said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper, but Oda heard it still.
"I did," the older man confirms, scooting closer to the other on the couch, their sides pressed into one another in a way that Dazai only ever allowed to happen with Chuuya and the man currently at his side.
The silence hung for a while longer, suffocatingly so, but then Dazai felt a genteel grasps guide his head down, putting it on the firm shoulder of the older man as they sat together, not a single sound passing between the pair. There were nightmares waiting for the teen everytime that he closed his eyes, one that should make this touch unbearable, but it wasn't.
That was enough.
"When I was fifteen," the boy started, feeling an all too familiar panic well up within his chest, attempting to force the boy to become silent about the topic once more. He didn't allow it to. "I was assaulted, to put it nicely." When the words finally spilled for the younger's mouth, he felt like a small child again, alone in that dark room.
He'd rather fight titans alone than go back to that room.
Dazai waited patiently for his friend to tell him that he didn't belive him, or that he was a dirty, tainted thing. These were all thoughts that the younger had already had over the years that had folowed, things that he knew to be true. Because how could he not be dirty now? How could he ever hope to be anything else?
But he received none of that.
Oda thought for a moment about what to do before slowly moving his free hand to hold the younger's in his own, moving his thumb back and forth in a smooth motion to try and sooth the startled child in his arms.
Part of him felt that he should have known, but the rest of him thought that maybe he already did. He just wanted so deeply for it to not be true that he ignored the possibility.
No, he didn't have to ask what happened. He could already see it painted across the boy's face.
The pair didn't speak again for the rest of the morning. Not even a whisper when Oda carefully moved the dozing boy into a lying position on the couch once more before he went to his own room to let the boy sleep some more. But later that day the former assail went out to the nearest department store and bought a pullout couch.
The message was clear to the bandaged teen, even though the pair never spoke of it again. Not even as they went to the shipping container that had been the teen's home for years now and cleared out the few possessions that the boy had. Not even as Oda looked as if he wanted to set the contraption on fire as the metal door clanged shut for the last time.
A/N: This marks a year since I've started writing and posting this, thank you everyone that has been for reading it for so long and for those that have joined along the way.