Chapter Text
It is four in the morning and Yokohama does not breathe.
Atsushi can't say he's unsettled. This type of quiet is familiar to him—it's a sacred kind of quiet, whittling down the sounds in the air until what remains is the waning moonlight and the crackle of a page turning. It settles over his shoulders like a shawl, sheer and rough, a light thing that blocks sense. There is nothing left but the morning and the fear.
Then, the sound of footsteps. They clang.
“Nakajima,” greets Akutagawa.
Atsushi almost doesn't reply. “You're early.”
They meet like this, sometimes. Neither of them ever plan on being accompanied on their excursions, not by each other or anyone else, but running into each other has become enough of a common occurrence that they just let it happen. Sometimes they talk. Often, they just sit in silence and let dawn wash over them, intertwining hands with the past.
Akutagawa sits down beside him. There are ripples in the water from where his shoes pick at the surface. “Not as early as you.”
Ah. It's a talking night, then.
Atsushi stares at the water like something's dying in it before he finds something to say. “What do you think of tonight?”
It’s a question worn with the familiarity of being asked a dozen times. The first question Atsushi ever asked, after everything happened. It carries with it the wisps of all the nights before, when they were something to guard against.
Akutagawa considers the question all the same. “It’s somewhat too cold to be forgivable,” he responds wryly, like he isn't also asking a question. Atsushi feels humor spark in his chest. For all the differences in their circumstances, he and Akutagawa have always been comfortingly similar.
“I can forgive the cold just fine,” says Atsushi. He fiddles with his sweater. “Give me something else.”
“Am I to give you something truly unforgivable?”
“Yes," Atsushi says. "I’ve been in a somber mood. Try it.”
“There are a lot of things one can forgive.”
Atsushi huffs. On any other person, it would be a laugh. “And there are things I cannot forgive. I'll ask you to try again.”
“Because you are so predictable,” says Akutagawa off-handedly, but it’s clear that he is thinking. And because he is Akutagawa, and he and Atsushi are similar, he answers correctly: “Death, then. The entire concept of it.”
Atsushi had not told him much, in the month after the raid, but he had told him enough.
“I suppose,” Atsushi says, "that would be an unforgivable thing for some, wouldn’t it?”
In a perfect world—in a forgivable world—Atsushi would not be a murderer. Death would not have swallowed him whole. Or, perhaps, he would have run the natural course of beasts and murderers—unattached to duty or fear. In the many universes that exist, there must be one where "Nakajima Atsushi" is not allowed to continue living.
The real questions burn on his tongue. Do you believe that I am capable of it? He doesn’t want to ask. Even the concept of forgiveness, is that something I deserve, after what I’ve done?
Akutagawa doesn’t so much as shift his line of sight, but Atsushi senses he’s being watched. “Is there a death you forgive?”
Atsushi doesn’t pause. “That's not a question to ask a murderer.” His eyes flick to Akutagawa, but all he can make out is the light outline of his coat and an expression like a brick wall.
“No,” says Akutagawa, after a moment. “No, I suppose not.” He covers his mouth with his hand for a cough that doesn't come. It has the shape of an apology. Something in Atsushi gives.
He says it. He says the word.
“Dazai-san.”
It tastes like a festering wound.
“What?”
“Dazai-san,” he says, again, like saying it faster will rip him free. “His death. I forgive him.” He lets his eyelids screw shut and tries not to see what’s behind them. “I know how you feel about it. I know you think it's unfair. I don't even know if forgiving him is something I have the right to do, but..." Akutagawa is watching him. "I can't blame him, you know. He just.”
“Wanted to die?”
Atsushi, desperately, doesn’t respond.
“If I were you, I would have hated him.” Atsushi opens his eyes long enough to see Akutagawa clenching his fist. “He left you with reality and a fear of death the likes of which you cannot overcome, and then he left you himself.”
Cannot overcome. What an interesting phrase. As if what Dazai-san had left behind was something that could be walked over. A question of ability instead of topography. Like it is not the all of him.
“Dazai-san has his reasons," Atsushi says, instead of—
“Had,” Akutagawa points out.
“Huh?”
Akutagawa has so many interesting expressions. Atsushi wants to count all of them, and see how many turn up sorrowful instead of angry. “You said ‘has his reasons'. He is dead.”
Atsushi doesn't spare a moment to think about it. “No.”
“No?”
“He is not dead,” says Atsushi. Emotionless.
Maybe he shouldn't have said that. Akutagawa looks about ready to jump. His shoulders are raised with tension and Rashoumon bubbles under the surface of his coat. “He's alive?”
Atsushi resists the urge to close his eyes. The world is pressing down on them. “No. I simply mean he is dying.”
Akutagawa is trying to spear Atsushi's thoughts through with his eyes, but Atsushi is busy. He looks at the black port and tries to clear Dazai's fall from the water. It doesn't leave, and his neck crawls.
The Tiger doesn’t do anything.
Akutagawa probably wants an explanation. Atsushi only has one to give. “Sometimes I see things,” he begins, with a weight not unlike confession, if he were even capable, and absently wonders if he has ever shown Akutagawa a face that has not been afraid. “No, I suppose they aren't things. They are people. People that the White Reaper of the Port Mafia have brought out of existence. They watch me as if I can give them their lives back."
"Do you see them often?" Akutagawa's voice is steady, but Atsushi is still looking at the water.
"Yes. I remember them, each and every one of them, but somehow,” and here Atsushi pauses to laugh, “they have all stopped watching me, and instead... I see himfalling every day, from every building, every ledge—he is dying, Akutagawa. And yet he will never die.”
“...I see,” says Akutagawa. He doesn't. Not really. No one can, save for Atsushi and the ghosts strung to his collar. “Then… does it give you guilt?”
Atsushi wants to laugh for real now. Does what give him guilt? Not knowing? Not stopping him? Agreeing? Being alive? His betrayal of all the people he has killed and has sworn to redeem himself for, or his betrayal of the man he watched die? The betrayal of the man he watched die?
Akutagawa is motionless in his inexplicability. Dazai's falling form stares at them, mouthing words Atsushi will never hear.
“Of course,” says Atsushi softly, tiredly. “There is nothing these hands regret and fear more than death, and yet that is all I have used them for. What right does someone like me have to feel this guilt? I can't possibly atone.”
Akutagawa is watching him.
Once, Akutagawa told Atsushi that he liked to look for the colors of things; things, their inherent existence, to compare against the circumstances they’d found themselves in. Atsushi hadn't understood it at the time, but he'd never forgotten. Akutagawa is searching for a color within Atsushi’s soul to compare against the daybreak. Picking him apart. It must be impossible—he has hidden himself in a place so dark only God could find him—but he lauds Akutagawa for the attempt. There is no color within him but the bleach of the moon. The color of fear, after all, has hidden in the sea.
Then he stands, not abruptly at all, with a languid grace he doesn’t feel. “Good talk. Goodbye, Akutagawa.”
“Nakajima.”
Atsushi turns his head. Akutagawa still sits there, eyes locked into something sharp and unreadable. If Atsushi looks just right, away from the sea and the black, he thinks he can count enough colors in those eyes to reflect the whole city.
“That guilt is valuable,” Akutagawa says. “As long as you have that wrongness inside you, there exists a way to right it. For all the people you see fall, there is an equal amount of people you can hold on to. Perhaps you will never see forgiveness in this lifetime. But you may use your hands for that purpose.”
Atsushi can't bear to look at Akutagawa anymore. The longer he's under that piercing stare, the more he starts to think he's found something like faith.
“You think too highly of me, my friend,” he whispers, long after Akutagawa has left earshot.
Despite myself…
I think I would like to try.
He walks back to his apartment alone.
Atsushi’s place isn't fancy by any means.
His paycheck as a raid squad leader is more than passable and his sparse spending habits should be able to afford him something far more high-end, but if he were really given a choice, he would have just gotten a holding cell. Kyouka had tried bullying him into a real one, but the apartment holds too much of Dazai-san for Atsushi to let it go just yet. This place was prepared specifically for his use, after all.
Perhaps one day, when he is not afraid of being worth something, he will leave.
The building is tall, and he is on one of the lower floors, for ease of deployment. There is a closet, a table, a kitchen, and a bathroom. The windows are boarded up to let in as little light as possible and he's forgotten what color the walls are supposed to be, though he’s sure at one point they must have been as white as his hair. He had cancelled the installation of a bed, so at the center of the tatami lies a slightly ripped futon and an assortment of medical supplies. He has extras; Kyouka got him extras, but they have been shelved away.
Not for the first time, he wishes Kyouka were here. He wishes he could see her in his mind's eye now: staring pleadingly at the bare state of his fridge and his empty shelves for just long enough to make him uncomfortable, getting him groceries, telling him off for being so reckless with his well-being. That time before her betrayal, and the time before that, always feels too close whenever he’s in his apartment.
But Kyouka passed the Agency test a month ago.
She should have been there sooner. She should have never come back for him. Atsushi could line up a thousand ‘should haves’ and still not have them be enough, because what Kyouka deserves is a ‘will never be hurt’, ‘will never be discontent’, ‘will never lack in forgiveness’. Kyouka is a person who deserves everything the world can give and more, because Kyouka is capable of the same.
But she has killed, too.
It doesn't matter.
Dazai's mouth moves. She is atoning.
She is atoning, and what are you doing?
Atsushi watches Dazai smile at him from the corner of the room as he gets ready for bed. He stands quietly. There is no forgiveness to be found there. Not there, nor in any other life.
“Shut up, Dazai-san,” Atsushi whispers. His hands have found their way to his collar without him noticing, somehow. “Keep falling.”
Atsushi lies down and, selfishly, terribly, despite himself and all of his convictions, entertains the words of a dying man. Entertains the concept that one day, when his scars heal, he will complete his marching orders and head to the Agency building, and there he will find… perhaps not redemption, perhaps never atonement, never forgiveness, but a strength. Something that will make him tick, when the watch he keeps in his closet stops.
He thinks about Nakahara Chuuya. The transition from Dazai to the new boss was alarmingly efficient and uncontested, with seemingly everything prepared for him to step in. Chuuya-san raged against the position at first, raged enough to shake the whole city—but Atsushi knows that nobody knows duty as well as Chuuya-san, and Atsushi also knows nobody knows Chuuya-san as well as Dazai does. He was proven right when the man immediately took to resuming operations.
For a granted definition of operations. When previously he’d been wary of Atsushi as a threat to the boss, now that Chuuya-san is the boss, he’s been treating Atsushi strangely. These past few months he’s been placed on fewer and fewer missions, even though he’s completed all of them flawlessly (according to what he knows to be Dazai’s standards), and not even a cursory inspection went into whether he was wearing the collar or not (not that there'd ever been any), or what the Tiger was doing. Nakahara Chuuya had cemented the strangeness the other day by inputting his personal contact into Atsushi’s phone, like he was an executive instead of a beast on a leash. Chuuya-san, he’d written. Not Boss.
Would Chuuya-san understand? He knows the fear Atsushi holds within his heart like a ticking clock, knows it better than he knows Atsushi's own face.
And he knows Dazai-san well. If there was anyone in the Mafia that would approve of Atsushi leaving, it would be him.
Dazai-san had told him about something, hadn't he? The man he would do anything for, the man he said he’d never even met. Everything becomes muted.
If there is a world out there with a me that did not commit my sins, unstained with guilt… what would that world be like, I wonder?
The sound of a wind he doesn't hear haunts him to sleep.
“—can't be—”
“—watch?—”
“—doesn't—if he wakes up—”
“—shh, he's—”
“Too loud,” groans Atsushi, which turns out to be a spectacularly unwise decision because wow he hurts. There's a dull ache doing a number on his bones and there's a numbness in his extremities that makes it hard to focus. The blankets stick to his skin with sweat. Familiar sensations. Something missing.
The Tiger is angry, he decides. Too angry. But not dangerous yet.
A vaguely recognizable voice grates against his ears. “Hey, are you awake?”
“Awake and reporting,” Atsushi tries to say, but it comes out more like “Ohwhgenrppertuhghk”. He is beyond caring. The voice probably isn't even real. No one ever dares to come visit him, much less drag him onto… wait a moment.
A bed…?
Atsushi pats the mattress with a shaking hand and is vaguely dumbfounded by what he finds. He doesn't even own a bed.
Someone took me from my apartment. Someone was watching me fall asleep. Someone was watching me. Someone's watching me. Right now. Right now? No, how aware am I? How secure? What—?
He lifts a hand to his neck. Finds it bare.
No, no, nononononono. Atsushi paralyses his thoughts with a steel borne of long years enduring a beast living through his skin. No panic. No emotion. Not just yet. He can’t afford—he doesn’t know anything about his situation. How could his captors just leave him uncollared like that? Are they fools? But— just in case—
“Kyouka-chan?” he croaks.
It’s some godforsaken attempt to reassure himself. There’s no reason for Kyouka to be here. He’s probably been kidnapped, shipped off to some prison where he’ll be dissected by the enemies of the Port Mafia. Him! Hilarious! A bargaining chip with no use. What a good end for him to find, he thinks hysterically. Where are his shackles? Do they want him to go beserk? Why the hospitality? It’s a trap. Of course it’s a trap, nothing ever goes right for him—no, stop thinking, stop fucking thinking —
Then, a small, confident voice. Stronger than he’s ever recalled it being. The blurry shape of a red kimono (it looks good, who bought it for her?) and dark hair, and a small hand around his arm that he barely feels. A warmth.
Kyouka says, “Here,” and the panic that was raw against his throat just a moment ago fades.
Atsushi collapses in whole-hearted relief, and hisses at the visceral soreness in his muscles—tears, most probably. He hadn't even realized he was half sitting up, or that the tiger was too preoccupied to actually ignore his healing instead of just messing with Atsushi’s nervous system for some perceived slight. (Or for the hell of it. Who knows with that thing.) It's been ignoring him a lot recently, seemingly entirely uninterested in taking over, but Atsushi still keeps the collar on at all times just in case. But Kyouka's here, so she probably took it off of him. He doesn’t have the presence of mind to go looking for it just yet.
Belatedly, Atsushi realizes he is at the Agency. This is the Agency infirmary. And something decided to make him into bricks while he was asleep. What on Earth happened to him?
“Atsushi-kun, are you alright?”
That is a funny question for all of two seconds before he registers the name. Atsushi-kun.
He almost chokes on his own spit. The Agency people stare at him in concern, like they're confused to see him unwell, when he’s definitely attacked them before. His senses are in overdrive. The infirmary has three possible exits and he has a clear view of all of them—he's cornered in which isn't the best for movement but good for sight—and then he moves on to an attack plan because no one calls him Atsushi-kun except for Dazai, and the man staring back at him is definitely not Dazai.
The infirmary holds three people besides him: Kyouka, then a plain-looking woman with brown hair, dressed like a secretary, and a young man around his age with messy orange hair.
Wait.
This is the man who held Demon Snow hostage.
“You,” he whispers. Atsushi remembers now how he had melted the scenery to his favor during the raid that changed Atsushi’s life. Creating the illusion of an infirmary should be well within his capabilities—but as far as he knows, the ability only goes as far as projecting scenery, and cannot replicate the true presence of a person. Only hide them. And Kyouka touched him on the arm.
The detective (who he still hasn’t forgiven, despite Akutagawa introducing them) smiles in confusion. “Atsushi-kun?”
That name again. His hackles rise. His eyes flick over to Kyouka for reassurance, who doesn't seem to note anything wrong or particularly threatening about the exchange. She actually looks…extremely confused, instead of offended or defensive. Therefore, presumably, nothing is wrong and he can relax and the detective is just some weirdo who likes to get overfamiliar with people his co-workers know.
Atsushi does not relax.
Instead, he wills some emotion into his voice and face in some misguided attempt to be personable, and asks, “Why am I here?”
The Agency member—Tanizaki, he remembers now—doesn't miss a beat, despite the awkwardness. Atsushi has to give him some credit. “Ah, you collapsed earlier, so we brought you to the infirmary to recuperate, since Ranpo-san took the couch…” He sheepishly scratches the back of his head. “It was weird, though. It was like you were having this super intense fever, which… can't be right at all.”
Atsushi sets aside the information to process for later, when he a) has access to the private database and b) is not being held by the Agency. “Why so?” As in, what the fuck?
“Don't tell me you forgot about your Ability, Atsushi-kun,” says Tanizaki jokingly. Strange, because Atsushi is not anywhere within the vicinity of joking, and this guy shouldn't be, either. It takes all of the self-control in his body not to take him by his loose collar and shake the confidence with which he says Atsushi's name out of him. “Yosano-sensei said your fever was out of her jurisdiction, since you weren't missing any limbs or anything, but she did offer to heal you. We distracted her before anything could happen, though." Then, said like an afterthought: "Kenji-kun's taking your fall, so you should take him out for beef later.”
Yosano-san. Kenji-kun. Names Akutagawa had most definitely impressed upon him when they talked, if only for his fear (and respect) of the former and respect (and fear) of the latter. Agency detectives.
More importantly, Agency detectives who… he has definitely never met before, and who he definitely does not owe anything to, and who definitely do not owe anything to him, except maybe the duty of protecting Kyouka.
He looks to Kyouka, so she can decipher what the hell kind of game this guy is playing. Kyouka just makes him even more confused when she says, “He is right. We were worried.”
The secretary woman concernedly adjusts her red glasses, peering at Atsushi like something's wrong and she would very much like to know the answer so she can file it. “Are you sure you're okay? You haven't been overworking again, have you?”
Fuck this.
“Why are you acting as if I work here?”
There's a beat of cold quiet. The kind that shuffles into your lungs and doesn't leave until you suffocate. Atsushi breathes in it, like home, and waits for someone to give him an explanation.
Instead, Kyouka’s eyes widen in surprise, which is exactly the kind of expression Atsushi never wants to see ever again. Atsushi scrambles for damage control.
"...Have I offended you?" he offers, very carefully. The shock of the Agency people does not let up. In fact, it just seems to get worse. Oh no. Kyouka must have set this all up for him and he's called her bluff without even asking. The first time he’s seen her in forever, and… "I apologize,” he coughs, keenly feeling like some sort of discount Akutagawa. “I am just. Not sure why I am here in this building, if at all. I was hoping Kyouka-chan would have an answer...?"
Kyouka shakes her head minutely. "You remember me, but not…?”
But not what?
“Kyouka-chan,” says Atsushi, mildly worried, “if you wanted to recruit me into the Detective Agency, you could have just asked and I would have come. You know I don’t…” You know I don’t love anything there anymore. You know I... “You didn’t need to… kidnap me… in the middle of…”
He spares a brief glance outside, at the window. It’s noon. Did he sleep the whole morning? Did Akutagawa follow him back to his apartment and sedate him??
Kyouka and Tanizaki exchange a series of looks that immediately raise flags in Atsushi’s mind. It's not a unique or specially powerful feat of teamwork, but there’s an implicit trust in it, and. Atsushi doesn't know how to feel about it. On one hand, Kyouka deserves to find people she can trust, but on the other hand, this person Kyouka trusts is the same raving lunatic who took her hostage and who currently thinks he can treat Atsushi like his coworker. Then again, if he can reconcile with Akutagawa, Kyouka can most certainly do similar.
A more currently concerning question: why are they looking at Atsushi like that?
"I..." Kyouka swallows. He looks at her intently, willing to wait, but then Tanizaki speaks up.
“Atsushi-kun..."
That tone. His self-control fizzles out before he can stop it. “Atsushi-kun again.”
Tanizaki freezes. “What?”
“You keep calling me Atsushi-kun," he says. He keeps out all of the goodwill in his voice, this time, and he feels the temperature drop in the room. He thinks he must sound just as dead to the people he kills. "I was willing to put up with it to save face for Kyouka-chan's sake, but no one else is allowed that level of familiarity with me anymore—not my subordinates, not my superiors, not my enemies. Who are you to use it, detective?”
“What?”
Kyouka looks deathly. Tanizaki stares at him disbelievingly, a pallor starting to crawl up his face. It lasts for several seconds, each passing moment more confused than the last, like he’s waiting for Atsushi to drop the punch-line. This is not how a trained combat operative should judge a threat.
And then he realizes: there are only two people with him in the infirmary, now. The woman left while he was discombobulated. As all his hackles raise, he's greeted with the sight of someone else coming in through the door.
And then he notices: there is something very very wrong.
“Good morning~! Are you awake, Atsushi-kun?”
He feels like everything is going too fast. Like the moment has turned into sand, and any breath he takes will disrupt the image, will disrupt the entire fabric of his being. Atsushi’s breath does not come up short. Suddenly, it is as if Atsushi is not breathing at all.
There is no description for the maelstrom that is caught beneath his tongue, beneath his rib cage. There is no definition for the emotion that rips through him, as if there is anything left of him to rend—there can be no definition, for this is not relief, and this is not mourning, and this is not fear. He sees many ghosts. But he has never spoken to him before. He has never been more than a silent specter, grinning at him from ledges, suspended in glass, mouthing taunts. He has never been so alive.
“Atsushi-kun?”
“Dazai-san, Ats— this guy is…”
"No," he whispers. He's dreaming. He's dreaming, the last thing he remembers is falling asleep, this is a nightmare, and he needs to wake up. “No, no, no, you’re dead, I’m not—”
He will be the first person to tell you his mindset is like that of a child’s. Children are afraid of and cannot handle many things. And children tend to have very simple responses to things they are afraid of and cannot handle.
Atsushi extricates himself from the bed with all the grace of a collapsed building, and bolts.