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Dazai fears that his guilt might be tangible, seeping out from under the bandages, apologising for what he hasn't done yet. It climbs up his throat like a mass of bugs and infects him. It leaves trails of blood dripping off his hands. No matter how many times he scrubs them. No matter how many times he tries to scrape it off. Guilt that used to be absent has buried itself into him, and Dazai wonders when he lets himself drink this poison.
The knife tucked into his pocket feels like a noose. He's waiting, watching, for his prey to come just that bit closer so he can sink his teeth deep into their necks.
He doesn't want to be the executioner.
Manami and Danjuro sit across from Dazai. The room has a sort of staleness to it, meaning that neither of them could spare enough time this morning to air it out. A pile of tissues in the kitchen is like a crime scene. Danjuro is frowning a deep sort of frown, one that tugs at his eyes and makes for a rather unflattering image. Manami looks tired. Just - tired. Dazai's head pounds from the alcohol last night, mouth dry and dehydrated.
The blade digs into his skin as he brings his knees up to his chest. It sinks, slowly. He feels his skin weep like a crying child. It's slick against the bandages, wet and warm, and mildly comforting to him. It's disgusting - he's disgusting.
The baby from two streets down begins to bawl again unapologetically loud.
Static fills his ears like an old broken TV. He feels exceptionally calm, which is to say, he feels nothing at all. His hands are uncomfortably still, no tremor to see, and his heart beats a steady rhythm like a ticking clock.
Danjuro places a steaming cup of tea across from Dazai in that stupid fucking mug that Oda's kids made for him. It's made just as he likes it - milk and no sugar. Strong. Dazai can't even remember when he brought it over to their house. He's overcome with the urge to smash it to the floor so it shatters into a million shards. Because of the mug or tea, he's not sure, but he wants it to hurt.
"Would you rather Tsushima or Dazai?" Danjuro ventures, and settles down with his own mug. He wets his bitten lips, fresh with bitten indents. Dazai picks at his bandages. They've been less thick as of late.
"I don't care," he replies, a certain fogginess to his words.
"Alright then," Danjuro sighs. He runs a hand through his unusually messy hair. "Alright. Dazai it is."
He smiles blandly. Dazai doesn't. It's only truly silent when the baby abruptly stops its cries, plunging the room into a certain stillness. That's how it's been as of late - slow like molasses, so sweet that it somehow became bitter along the way. Lazy, he thinks, it's been lazy.
"I'm really mad," Manami expresses, her eyes staring fiercely into Dazai's own. "Mad that you took advantage of Gentle's kindness and deceived him. You've built everything on a pile of lies."
Danjuro nods minutely and places an encouraging hand on her shoulder. It looks like he wants to say something - but he doesn't.
"Kick me out, then," Dazai challenges her, hand curled tightly around the mug. It feels like it's going to shatter under the pressure.
He's ready for a fight. Tense, his other hand curls around the knife in his pocket. Waiting like a starved animal.
"That's not how you fix a problem, Dazai," Danjuro chides. "I just... find myself struggling to understand the situation. We want to understand what happened so we can decide how to move forward. I don't think you're a villain, but it is evident that you're wrapped up in something nasty."
Danjuro's eyes are caring, but not soft. His words have a sort of firmness to them that tells Dazai that he won't hesitate to fight if he has to. But Dazai knows - he knows what he's like, what he's always been like. He'll always be a liar. It's easier this way, he tells himself, if he just tells them.
What happens after will depend on their response. His hand sweats around the warm handle.
"I was the one who killed that man at Kamino," Dazai reveals. His fingers meet the blade, and they feel slick with blood within seconds. "Buried a scalpel into his neck."
It's all over if they run to the police. He can't get out of this now, with it only being a matter of time before Manami finds something out. If they want a fight, Dazai will have to give it to them. He's prepared himself for their betrayal.
"Why?" she asks quietly, her eyes blown open wide. They surely knew about the Kamino incident - everyone did, these days.
"Because I was ordered to. It's as simple as that," he replies, even if it might not be that simple. Mori never directly ordered him to do it, but like a loyal dog, Dazai had sniffed out his intentions.
Nobody knew that Dazai Osamu had chased after that powerful man for six long years in the back of his mind, and nobody would find out if it were up to him. It was just another piece of evidence of his ruin. The only thing stopping him from leaving behind the incident was the single fact that Garaki Kyudai still lives and Dazai Osamu still remembers.
"I'm a callous person. I bite," Dazai snarls like a warning, like a bright stop sign.
Danjuro and Manami don't have an opportunity to reply, as a brick flies through one of the windows in the house, past Dazai's head and into a vase that shatters into millions of pieces. He feels the wind kiss his cheeks as his hair flies back.
The tea in his mug ripples. The house through the broken window explodes like the vase does, raining its remains onto the perfectly groomed grass and cracked sidewalks. Manami drops under the table, hands squeezed over her ears. Danjuro stumbles out of his chair and creates an air wall in front of the window.
Smoke begins to rise steadily as the sound of fighting makes itself known like an orchestra. Dazai just watches with a pounding head, the loud noises striking the static in his head dead. A pair stands in front of the ruins, and swarms of heroes and police officers emerge out of parked cars, their faces set into determined frowns with hands curled around weapons.
Dazai slides the knife out of his pocket, handle and blade slicked in his own blood. It drips onto Danjuro's perfectly purple tablecloth and he does not feel bad at all. Dazai wonders if he's been found out, for a second, and quickly discards that thought.
Four figures emerge out of the ruins of the house, clad in black and grey and dark blue. If they're bleeding, it's difficult to tell. They engage the heroes in combat, with quirks flying everywhere that Dazai can't tell what is what. Something crashes into Danjuro's house on the second floor, a scraping sort of sound. He watches his fascination as the floorboards above Manami, who is still curled up in a ball, creak and bend under the weight.
Dazai's body moves on its own.
He lunges under the table, scraping his knees in the process, and throws the knife to the floor as he uses both hands to shove Manami out of the way. She tumbles to the ground in a rather ungraceful manner, pigtails flopping around. The floorboards snap as he tries to get himself out of the spot where she was only a few seconds ago. His heart pounds wildly. His fingers struggle to get a good grip. He's buried in a pile of old wood and carpet and something else, and it's dark. A sharp pain makes itself known in Dazai's ankle. It's not broken - he knows what those feel like - but likely fractured. His body throbs with a dull sort of pain, more irritating than it is urgent.
"Shit!" Danjuro exclaims, and Dazai feels a pair of hands on his arm, tugging at them. He coughs at the dust piling up in his lungs, coating his hair and catching in his bandages. It's not that bad, he thinks, better him who can deal with this sort of stuff than Manami. Dazai finds himself wondering when he got to know these two so well - how Danjuro prefers the floral notes of Earl Grey to English breakfast's bitterness, or how Manami loves to tie her hair with white ribbons when gets the opportunity.
Light fills Dazai's eyes, so bright for a second that he has to close them. Danjuro and Manami both kneel in front of him with matching frowns. It amuses him slightly at how in sync their movements are, clawing at the wood and rubble covering Dazai's body.
"You're not hurt, are you?" Manami asks panicked, big eyes widening at the sight of blood in Dazai's thigh. It's just from the knife, he wants to say, but ends up breaking out into a coughing fit. It hacks at his lungs like an axe in between his ribs.
Battle still rages on outside, so loud that his voice is drowned out. He glances out the window to see only two people of the likely criminal group fighting a few heroes. Police officers mill around the building, pulling out objects of interest and loading them back into the cars. A tree nearby is uprooted. It is almost completely snapped out of the ground.
Dazai realises, with a great panic that knocks the air out of his already heaving lungs, that Oda's mug is not with him anymore.
"My mug - " he heaves, crawling out of the rubble, choking. "Where is it?"
Voice hoarse and struggling to be heard over the noise outside, Danjuro leans closer to him. Dazai observes the sweat stuck to his forehead as he turns more of the surfaces of the house elastic.
"The yellow one with the rabbit on it?" Danjuro asks, and his brows furrowing at the odd request, his eyes immediately begin to scan the room.
"The one I was just drinking out of, yes," Dazai stresses and begins to dig through the splintered table. The rough pieces catch on his cut-up fingers as he does so, staining a few lucky ones a barely visible red - more of a burgundy due to the deep colour of the wood.
That stupid, ugly cup cannot be broken.
Dazai had never really cherished it until Oda died. After he did, it was like every object held some sort of awful sentimentality that was clearly absent before. He hates it in a way he struggles to understand - Dazai Osamu, cold and calculating. Dazai Osamu, controlled by a single object. It terrifies him to think about which side of him is real, and what is merely an illusion conjured up by his sick mind.
"Here," Danjuro says softly, breaking Dazai out of his trace-like searching. His knees hurt through his pants, scratched up and littered with fabric burns. The older man holds the ceramic out to him.
The handle is broken cleanly off it.
"It's broken," Dazai utters defeatedly, slumping onto the floor. He cradles the two pieces so lightly, like he's afraid his touch will create another crack.
Outside, the fighting has slowed down significantly. He hears arguing voices far off and the buzzing of cicadas.
The mug is broken into just two pieces. In Dazai's mind, it had fractured into a million unfixable shards. Just like the vase, or the house, or the friendship that he held with Oda and Ango at Bar Lupin.
Danjuro kneels down in front of him.
"We can fix it, Dazai, with a bit of glue," he assures him with a hand over Dazai's cupped palms.
"No, it's broken," he insists hazily, pulling his hands closer to himself in some skewed attempt to protect the cup. He mumbles under his breath, "It's unfixable."
Danjuro gives him a considering look, his eyes trailing Dazai's form.
"Of course it isn't, young man. It's just a matter of perspective."
Two curt knocks on the door interrupt the tense air of the room. Manami, being the closest to it, walks to the entrance area to answer it.
He can't see the knocker from where he is on the floor, but Dazai freezes when he hears the familiar gruff voice. As if he's been dunked in ice-cold water, he shivers, and for some odd reason, wants to march out there and greet the man. Or maybe give him a handshake, a bow, or even a hug.
He hadn't heard Aizawa's voice in only a month or so, though it felt like an indiscernibly longer time to Dazai.
"I am Pro Hero Eraserhead, here investigating a case of drug trafficking. I have reason to suspect that one of the villains that escaped earlier could be within your property," he says, then tacks on much more casually, "It would be good for me if you cooperated."
"Uh, um!" Manami stutters, and looks back to Danjuro and Dazai with a sort of plea in her eyes.
Dazai tries to find his knife, but it's been buried too far under everything to grasp. He watches helplessly, stuck in one place, as dread begins to simmer in his stomach. They'll report him, Dazai realises. Manami is about to turn back around and tell Aizawa that sure, he can come in, and by the way, Dazai Osamu is in their living room holding them hostage and they want to turn him in. Even if they don't, any Pro Hero on the lookout for him will recognise him immediately. Manami knows this. Danjuro does, too.
Manami doesn't do what Dazai expects her to do, and instead sends him a look with wide, urging eyes, before turning back to Aizawa.
"Yes?" he asks with a bored tone.
"Can I see your hero ID? I don't... really believe you," she announces weakly, hands on her hips. Dazai hears Aizawa mutter something, but it's too quiet to hear.
"Go!" Danjuro whispers, shaking Dazai's shoulders. His eyes are blown wide.
Dazai realises then, that for some illogical reason, Manami and Danjuro have decided to give him an escape so he can avoid the Heroes.
But how badly Dazai does want to see Aizawa, some weak part of him that genuinely enjoyed his company when they were playing pretend. He's just in reach too, as he listens to the sound of Aizawa's gravelly voice, his flat tone, so familiar that he can imagine the way his arms would be crossed and he'd have an apathetic expression gracing his face.
Aizawa is so close - so close that Dazai could take maybe two steps and he'd be in sight of the man. Dazai admits to himself that he misses the fondness, misses being able to tease someone without consequence. Aizawa saw Dazai as normal, and he was probably the first one to do so.
Dazai nods at Danjuro, and flees through the back. He runs far too much to be comfortable - through long grass and weeds and even a dying dandelion field, under the cloudy sky, until he finds a hole in the tall fence and slips into the old military base. Dazai approaches the landing strip, weeds sprouting out of cracks and birds pecking at some growing grains.
Graffiti stains shockingly little of the available surface. Some sort of wild animal howls in the distance.
It feels almost apocalyptic, a run-down grassland in the midst of populated Japan. This area isn't even rural - just ten or twenty minutes from a work district. It's just so quiet. Looking up, Dazai realises it's going to rain soon, with all the dark clouds gathering above the area.
The actual military base is mostly grey, with two stories that are rapidly crumbling. It has a rusting emblem that Dazai can barely make out, just some mixture of metals, and a torn-up flag caught on a rock. He steps over all of it and inside the base.
Numerous lockers are scattered around, some toppled over and bent, disregarding any contents that used to be in there. A ripped map on the wall catches Dazai's attention. It's a yellowing colour, with red markings indicating enemy lines. From what he can gather, it had been abandoned slightly over a decade ago, confirming his initial assessment of it weeks ago from a distance; it was built in relation to the Great War. Of course, with the era of peace it was, there was no need for such places anymore.
So it was left to rot. Too expensive to destroy, too expensive to maintain. Dazai sighs, using a pen from the ground to play a game of tic tac toe with himself in a corner of the paper. It almost dissolves under his skin.
He wins, obviously, considering he is his only opponent. He also loses.
With a great deal of effort, Dazai hauls himself to the roof through a well-placed hole. The cloudy sky only leaves chilly shadows for him, like someone decided that every single cloud should be piled above Dazai's head. Maybe it'll rain comically and he'll have a little stormcloud following over his head.
At some point, the silence gets too loud. Too prominent to ignore the previous events, the ones that he had to run through weeds and grass to avoid like the coward he is. Dazai lets himself lie down on the hard concrete and picks up all the dust and whatever else has been sitting on there. He lets himself think as he waits.
Danjuro and Manami had saved him. They had done it when Dazai had been so sure they wouldn't've. Even after finding out that he's a filthy murderer. That he's an awful person. The fact that they can put so much belief into him, more than he could put into himself, is frightening. They must be wrong, or delusional, or sick -
But Dazai recalls Aizawa's words, buried under all gin and whisky and the desire for just one more cigarette.
He said something similar, he told him that he saw some good in him. He saw what Manami and Danjuro saw, he saw what Chuuya saw. How could they all see what Oda couldn't? Aizawa had looked at him with eyes that were too difficult to meet and said,
And I'm sorry that nobody protected you when you were younger.
It was the first time he had confronted that sentiment - people didn't just grow into being someone like Dazai. They were inherently flawed from the start and raised to cultivate it or bury it so deep inside that it was impossible for it to be ripped out. Mori had chosen the first option, and by God, he did it well. There had been no greater weapon to the Port Mafia than the Demon Prodigy.
And yet, multiple people had accepted him for who he was. Chuuya, who saw his worst, and still told him he was human. Aizawa, whom he told the biggest lie to, told him he wasn't a monster.
All of his teacher's words had been shoved away into a small little box in his mind when faced with the overwhelming death of Oda Sakunosuke almost two months ago and only now he was truly making sense of them.
Dazai finds himself wondering, for what might be the first time ever, if he had been saved when he was younger, could he have turned out normal? The thought makes him sadder than he could have predicted it would, for some weird reason, and he feels his chest constrict as he thinks about it.
And if all these people - people who he cares about to some extent - tell him that he can be good, that he can at least pretend, then maybe he should be trusting them for once.
Danjuro and Manami have already shown him that they are on his side. Although he thinks that it might be a foolish decision, ultimately, he's grateful.
Two pairs of footsteps approach - one heavy and one light in a sort of timed sync that came with knowing someone like the back of your hand.
They come to a stop on either side of Dazai, who is still sprawled across the roof and watching the clouds. Danjuro sits down first, legs crossed neatly, and Manami follows with her knees tucked under her chin. Her pigtails have been taken out, leaving her long hair to flow past her and collect on the roof. An umbrella sits in Danjuro's palms. A raindrop splatters right next to Dazai's face, turning the grey of the concrete a slightly darker colour. It looks like a blood splatter.
"I lied to you earlier," Dazai confesses, reaching his hand up to the clouds. "I mostly killed that man out of plain revenge. I hated him. I hated him so much," he's whispering by the end, words leaving his mouth far too soft than intended.
Vulnerability was something he had always hated; it leaves a bad sort of taste in his mouth and a rock in his stomach. He hates that it allows other people to lord control over him. To the Port Mafia, vulnerability was a weakness. To Mori, it was a tool to take advantage of. To his parents, whom he rarely thought of these days, it was a nuisance.
"Is that related to why you're running around, pretending to be some eighteen-year-old artist with some random name?" Manami questions, twirling a stray piece of hair around her finger. With her hair down, she looks older. Wiser, even. Another raindrop lands on her cheek. It slides off and lands on her skirt a few moments later.
"I'm still picking up the pieces of Kamino. The man who created all the Nomu has been running away for far too long," Dazai replies honestly with an almost formal tone to it, like he's reciting a report. He sits up slowly and feels his bones creak under the pressure. "I've been tracking him down, but I'm simultaneously being hunted by both the Hero Commission and a group from Yokohama that isn't happy with me."
It is not lost on either Danjuro or Manami that he's choosing not to reveal the Port Mafia. They exchange a quick glance that Dazai struggles to interpret, looking between the two. After a moment or two, Danjuro nods.
"Are you going to kill him?" His voice is grave, but not particularly judgemental. "Like you did with All for One."
Two more raindrops land on either side of Dazai. He watches the wild birds in the distance take cover under a thicket of trees and wonders if he should be doing the same. Maybe, he'll let the storm take him.
"I don't know. I shouldn't, though, I know that," Dazai says. He knows it's not the answer they're looking for, but it's the plain and awful truth.
Danjuro smiles at Dazai. It's a closed one, not quite as large as his usual delighted ones.
"You're a better person than you think you are," he says, finally, in response to Dazai's answer. "Not many people can divert their courses like that. And, you saved Manami when you didn't have to."
"I guess so." He shrugs, leaning back to observe the sky again. A raindrop splatters onto his cheek, and another on his hand.
"He's serious," Manami scolds and pokes her finger right between Dazai's eyes. "I could've been injured, so thank you, Dazai. It was really scary. I still haven't fully forgiven you, though."
Quietness settles over the military base once again. Dazai watches the tall grass dance in the wind and some squirrel-looking animals run back to their burrow.
"I feel old," Dazai sighs loudly after a while, pouting as he kicks his feet into the air.
"What does that make me?" Danjuro replies, shaking his head fondly.
It begins to pour soon after.