Chapter Text
Atsushi wasn’t sure when he’d pulled his knees to his chest, and pressed the heels of his hands onto his eyes. Sea-salt and rust lingered in his nostrils, on his tongue, and in his thoughts. Everything had been so loud . The crash of sea against hull, the slash of Fukuchi’s sword, and the sound of his and Akutagawa's thundering hearts and then—complete silence. And now he was alone, again.
(He hadn’t thought Akutagawa would——)
With a hard thud, he snapped his head against the wall, imagining the dull pain was the sting of Dazai’s palm against his cheek instead. With a shuddering exhale, he opened his eyes again, blinking bursts from his vision. His fingers ached faintly, knuckles white around a black coat.
'No claws,' he registered distantly.
At least he hadn't shredded through them—it—or whatever the hell Rashomon was. Had been. The urge to throw it out was maddening. He stared unblinkingly at the fabric until his eyes began to sting. The beginnings of a headache had just begun to knot between his brows when harsh static tore through the silence.
“Atsushi?”
A beat of silence.
“Atsu—”
“I'm here. Ango."
A sound that might have been a sigh of relief warbled through the intercom. “I’ll be waiting for you at the shore. Do you—”
“Fukuchi is Kamui," Atsushi murmured, opening his eyes halfway, as though waking up from a dream. He stared at nothing for a lingering second before he repeated, louder now: "Fukuchi is Kamui." His face twitched.
He wasn't sure what expression he was making or what expression he should be making and what exactly it would mean even if he did know. There was neither easy relief nor heavy grief. There was nothing. Only him, his questions, and utter silence.
“I see. Thank you.”
“And Ak—" Atsushi swallowed, " and Akutagawa—"
“Akutagawa?”
“Yes. I...I was alone. Then he showed up and I wasn't and now he’s—gone.” It was as though all the air in his lungs was punched out of him along with the words. He heaved, the words rushing out his throat like bile. “He—he sacrificed himself for me. And he smiled? Like, like he was at peace . And Fukuchi had wanted him to kill me, would have spared him, maybe, if he had and I—I thought he would, but he didn’t. He didn’t. And then there was this man—Fukuchi had this sword, it could, God, it could cut through time and—we had him, Ango-san, we had him, but he…he cut up that outcome with it? He would have this one too if it weren’t for this man Akutagawa had spared, a security guard. I...We had a deal. In six months we were supposed to fight—to, to kill each other. And in exchange Akutagawa wouldn’t kill until then.” Atushi took a large lungful of air and huffed out a laugh. “Though I suppose I don’t have to worry about that now.”
A tense quiet suffused the conversation. The buzz of the submarine seemed too, too loud as his eyes traced over the pipes and rivets of the ceiling. Quietly, Atsushi asked, “Does it mean anything, Ango-san? I don’t understand. Why did this happen?”
The lull on Ango's end had stretched for long enough that, wryly, Atsushi wondered if he'd put the communicator down. Finally, voice nearly drowned out by the static, Ango answered: “I don’t either, Atsushi.”
The communicator clicked off with the finality of a boot against his chest, the last stomp after a beating. He pulled his knees closer to his chest in an all too familiar attempt to make himself scarce, trying to ignore how the enclosing metal walls of the submarine seemed to overlap with gray stone. Eyes dry and gaze far, he stared at the coat for the rest of the trip.
* * *
Sunlight flooded his vision and the sea roared in his ears.
Ango was a fuzzy outline against the glare of sunset as Atsushi rubbed sunspots from his vision. As he opened them again, it was with a nauseatingly slow realization that he saw it: the sea, the sun, and the skies, and the grayness of it all.