Chapter Text
You damn fool...hurry up and go.
Ango doesn’t look at him. Doesn’t answer. Why, why why why. Why me, why him, why this? And there are more questions, farther down his throat, that he doesn’t dare voice:
Did Dazai-san plan this? Did he know this was going to happen? Does he even care?
And there are more still, stuck in his lungs, hitching on every breath and flooding his throat:
Why did he save me? Why did he let me escape? Why me, why not him? Why did he sacrifice—
“We’re here.”
Atsushi doesn’t look at him, doesn’t say anything, but he follows Ango off the boat. Ranpo is there waiting for them, with Kyouka and Poe. Atsushi can’t look any of them in the eye. He can feel their stares, he can hear what they would say: why did you come back alone, why did you fail, why did you let him die, why—
“Why are you wearing that coat?” Kyouka’s voice is small, and shaky, and it pierces right through Atsushi’s heart. He looks up.
She’s scared. Because
Because
Because he’s still wearing Akutagawa’s coat. It’s limp, wet and lifeless, around him, somehow heavier and lighter at the same time. It’s quiet, no longer thrumming with Akutagawa’s ability, with Rashoumon. The wind pulls at the collar, but there’s no response.
And what should he tell her?
Because he’s dead, because I failed, because I wasn’t strong enough to save us, it’s his most precious possession and he gave it to me, because he trusted me and I killed him, I killed him, I watched him die and I feel so—
“I—” He grabs at the sleeves, clutching at them like it’ll bring him back, like they aren’t his own arms around him, like if he closes his eyes and wishes hard enough, Akutagawa will come from behind a corner, scolding him — Atsushi could almost hear him, knew what he would say:
You bastard! Learn how to keep up. Stop being so weak, Jinko. If you can’t even do this, you’re not worthy of living. Give me my damn coat back.
“I don’t know.”
“Ehhhhh? Atsushi-kun, isn’t that Mr. Grumpy Face’s coat? Did you steal it from him?” Ranpo laughs. “Naughty Atsushi-kun!”
“No, no, I— he gave it to me, when we— when I—” the words are trying to crawl up his throat, cold and slimy, but they pull each other down like crabs in a bucket and instead he just stares at some distant point, mouth opening and closing like a fish and
And he feels so distant, like he’s outside of his body, like he’s watching from somewhere else — watching someone else. Watching someone else control his body, someone else flounder pathetically while everyone stares at them. He can’t hear what anyone’s saying. The words flow over him like waves and he doesn’t know what they’re saying, but he follows them anyways.
He watches someone else take his body through the concrete halls, forgetting the twists and turns as easily as he remembers Akutagawa’s smile, how soft his voice had been in that last moment, how quickly the deck stained red beneath his still body, how he’s still there. How he’s still there and how Atsushi wishes (deep in his heart, too deep to admit) that he was there next to him.
It’s selfish, he knows. Akutagawa would’ve yelled at him (you bastard, your stupid hero complex killed us both! How will they know who he is? You’ve wasted Dazai-san’s hard work!) but the hollowness in his chest is proof enough that part of him is there, next to him, so Akutagawa isn’t alone. He knows Akutagawa said he wasn’t afraid of death, but Atsushi can’t bear the thought of him dying alone.
(Part of Atsushi wonders what they did with him, if he's still lying in a puddle of his own blood, if they burned him to hide the evidence, if they threw him overboard, if Atsushi will ever see his face in anything but blurry photographs, if he’ll be like Dazai-san with his back to a gravestone with Akutagawa’s name carved in it and staring up at the sky trying to remember, trying to forget, how long it’ll take for him to forget what color his eyes were or the sound of his voice or how easy it’ll be to remember the spread of blood on a ship deck and a white shirt and the feeling of Rashoumon dying around him and the sight of Akutagawa falling—)
“Atsushi-kuuuuuun~”
He jumps back, away from the hand in his face, away from the table he was apparently sitting at. The sound of metal against concrete rings in the silence. His lungs are burning, his eyes are burning, his face is burning—
“You need to tell us what happened.” Kyouka is next to him, looking away. Her voice is quiet and there’s something underneath it that Atsushi doesn’t have the time or ability to decipher right now.
Ranpo is looking at him, actually looking at him, and Atsushi feels naked, feels seen. Anxiety writhes in his stomach, like it thinks Ranpo can read his thoughts, like it thinks Ranpo knows what his heart is saying.
“Atsushi-kun. Tell us what happened.” Ranpo continues to stare at him. Atsushi nods.
“Fukuchi. It’s Fukuchi. He has the page. And he—” Atsushi chokes on it. He hasn’t said it yet, not out loud. And it’s stuck in his throat, refusing to leave, crying and screaming to stay in the safety of his lungs, to not see the light of day, because if he says it that means it’s real, it happened, and—
“He was too powerful. His ability. We couldn’t— it didn’t matter what we did. There’s no way to stop him. Twelve seconds doesn’t seem long but in a fight— he...he knows his ability too well. He has too much experience. There’s nothing we can do.”
“How did you escape?” Kyouka still isn’t looking at him.
“I—” I don’t want to say it, please, “Kyouka-chan, please don’t—”
“Say it!” Atsushi flinches back. Her eyes are wide, desperate. “Say it.”
“He— Akutagawa— sacrificed— so I could— Fukuchi killed— He told me to run, and so I—” Atsushi gasps, hot tears spilling over his lips. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe.
He sees it again: how time had seemed to slow, how Akutagawa had smiled, how his voice should’ve been too quiet to hear, how it rang in his head over and over and over again, his white shirt dyed red, the still of Rashoumon around his skin, how she stopped humming, stopped moving, how the coat fell limp and lifeless, how Akutagawa fell limp and lifeless—
“You left him there?” Ranpo’s eyes are cold. He’s still staring at Atsushi and—
And he needs to leave.
He needs to get out.
He doesn’t remember how he does it, but one moment he’s against the wall and the next he’s out the door, running down the hallways, stumbling around corners, collapsing against a wall far enough away from everyone else.
Atsushi isn’t worthy. He doesn’t deserve Akutagawa’s sacrifice. It should’ve been him. It should’ve been him. Akutagawa is better suited for this, would get results, wouldn’t fail. But Atsushi will, already has—
“Dazai gave him that coat.” Atsushi stops. Looks up. Nakahara Chuuya is standing against the wall, watching Atsushi. “When he joined the Port Mafia. It’s tradition.” Atsushi looks down at the coat. It’s almost too small for him, was made for someone slimmer, now that Rashoumon has left it. “He never let it out of his sight. Never took it off.”
“He...he gave it to me.”
“I figured. You don’t seem the type of brat to steal or keep trophies.”
Atsushi feels numb. There’s a buzz just under his skin, like his edges are blurry. He feels hollow, like the words he’s saying are just bouncing around inside him, echoing. He’s someone else again and he doesn’t know which one he prefers. “Fukuchi killed him. He killed Akutagawa. And I just left him there. I should’ve tried to save him. I should’ve died with him. I should’ve died instead. It’s my fault. It’s my fault he’s dead.”
“Naw. He was gonna get himself killed sooner or later. He always bit off more than he could chew. This time it was just too much.”
“No….no, he— he sacrificed himself. So I could escape. He trusted me. He gave me Rashoumon. He let Fukuchi kill him. He should’ve killed me. Fukuchi gave him the option. Kill me and he’d make Akutagawa his pupil. But he refused. His last action...was to give me a way to escape. And I just left him there.”
Chuuya squats, meeting Atsushi eye-to-eye. “Listen to me. Akutagawa-kun gave his life so you could stop Fukuchi. You’re disgracing his name and his sacrifice by saying that. You have to keep living. He tusted you to do so.”
Did he? Did he do this because he wanted to save Atsushi or did he do it because Dazai-san told him to? Dazai-san, Dazai-san, Dazai-san. All Akutagawa ever cared about was Dazai-san.
Atsushi grabs at his own chest, as if it’ll bring him back, as if it’ll fill the hollowness in him, as if it’ll stop this spreading ache in his bones, as if it’ll give him any answers. “But why...why does it hurt so much? Chuuya-san, please...why do I feel like this? Why did it have to end like this?”
Chuuya sighs, lowering himself fully to the floor. “I don’t know. I don’t know how you feel. But I can guess.” He puts his hand to his chest. “It hurts, in here. It feels hollow, it feels like it’s burning and cold at the same time. It feels like someone’s punched you straight through to the other side. It feels heavy, like you’re being crushed under the weight of it.”
“Yes.” Atsushi breathes it out, like it’s being squeezed out of him.
“Yeah...I know what you’re feeling.”
“What? What is it?”
“Grief, kid. You’re grieving him.”
Atsushi feels cold. He’s grieving Akutagawa. But why? Why? Why? “Will it ever stop?”
“...No,” Chuuya sighs. He takes off his hat, staring at the inside of it. “It’ll get easier. It’ll find its place and you’ll be able to deal with it most days. But there’ll be days when you remember too much, too clearly, and it’ll feel just like this. Like you’ve lost him all over again.” His voice gets quiet, the kind of quiet Atsushi only heard people use in the confessional. “This is the price of loving someone. When they leave, it feels like a part of you leaves with them. Sometimes I wonder if it was worth it. I don’t know if that’s right or wrong, but such a feeling persists anyway.”
Love?
Love?
Yes, he
He could have.
“Chuuya-san...you loved someone?”
“Once. A long time ago. Maybe still. It’s...complicated.”
“I think...I could’ve loved him.”
Chuuya looks at him, really looks at him. He’s quiet for a long time, before he grimaces. “Maybe. In another world, another life. If you’d had more time. If someone else found him first. If, if, if. Love is a tricky thing; it finds us when we least expect it and leaves just as quickly.”
But it didn’t leave. Akutagawa is dead.
He’s dead, and Atsushi has just now realized he could’ve loved him. They’d had so much time. He thought they’d have more. More time to realize on his own, to get closer, to understand Akutagawa on a deeper level, to know him, to wish Akutagawa felt the same. He had hoped, had started to believe he could live a more normal life, had the things he never could, had started to believe he could be a good person. Had started to believe Akutagawa could be a good person.
It didn’t leave. It’s still there — nestled behind his heart, crushed by the weight of grief, but still there.
But Akutagawa is dead.
He looks to Chuuya, willing him to understand the storm raging in Atsushi’s mind. “What do I do?”
Nakahara Chuuya stands, putting his hat back on. “You keep living.”