#buraiha supremacy | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sword-dad-fukuzawa · 4 years

Text

absolution, a oneshot

Yeah, not my usual content, but I wrote this a while ago and I figured it was short enough that I crosspost it from Ao3 to tumblr. ‘Twas inspired by a Dead Apple prompt on the Chaos Cult Discord server: What if when Dazai died (for a little bit ofc) he got to see Oda again one last time and Oda got to see who Dazai became? -- -- -- --

In the top floor of a tall, abandoned building, there are three figures all wearing white in some strange facsimile of purity and innocence. Innocence, for these three, is as far away a dream (a nightmare?) as flight is for a dog. They exist somewhere out of time, displaced entirely.

The demon, the sinner, and a corpse. The demon is smiling as he fingers the knife in his pocket, hidden from view. He knows that his plans are unlikely to bear any fruit, but he bites from the apple of knowledge anyway and revels in the taste. He is God, after all. What was forbidden for Adam and Eve is his to create and his to take.

The sinner looks on with a cold, dead gaze, because he is not surprised. He is never surprised. The world ticks on, every second that passes takes him closer to his story’s inevitable conclusion. Perhaps he has forgotten where he came from, but he could never forget where he is going. After all, he lives on borrowed time.

How funny that the man who considered himself least human, of the three, is the one with the most humanity.

“How could you?” Dazai asks, his eyes starting to close, but the question is entirely rhetorical. He has expected this ever since he made his last move, sitting in a bar surrounded by ghosts. His plans are out of his hands now, and it’s not up to him anymore. All he can do is trust, but if he dies here, it will have been worth it.

Odasaku, was I a good man?

The roaring in his ears is getting louder but he can barely feel the knife in his back. The floor presses into his cheek, and it’s as cold and unforgiving as the darkness that sweeps over him. He murmurs what he knows might be his last words.

“This feels great.”

He is smiling.

—

Dazai is sitting in a dimly lit bar. The amber paneling of the walls are dusty and scarred, but in the end, it contributes to the overall aesthetic. The bartender is in the corner as he usually is, wiping absently at a glass in his hand. The air is dry and still.

He looks at the clock on the wall. The time is 10:32, and the hands of the clock are not moving. He realizes that he’s wearing his tan coat, and the bandages wrapped around his wrists are a familiar comfort. Something about this feels wrong. Shouldn’t he be in white?

What an odd thought. He never wears white. He’s at the Bar Lupin, so he should be in black. Why isn’t he in black, and why has the clock stopped ticking?

“Dazai.”

He whips his head around to the right, and his eyes widen. “Odasaku,” he says, smiling. His colleague is sitting a couple stools away from him, wearing his usual beige blazer and dark button down. He has a glass of whiskey in his hand and he swirls it gently. He takes a sip.

There is a matching glass of whiskey in front of him, Dazai realizes. Has it always been there? He feels slow and stupid, as if his brain is moving through molasses. It’s an uncomfortable thought. “Ango’s late,” he finds himself saying, and Odasaku sets his drink down. He stares at something far away.

“Ango’s not coming.”

The words echo strangely in Dazai’s ears, and he lifts his glass of whiskey. The light refracting through the amber and the cut glass casts liquid shadows on the bar top. “I see,” he says, though he really doesn’t. He wants to ask why Ango isn’t coming, and why the clock has stopped ticking, and where his black coat has gone. But something stops him, and there is an odd feeling rising in his chest. His mouth suddenly tastes like fear. He puts his glass down, the bottom of the glass making a hollow noise against the bar.

Instead of asking any of the questions on his tongue, he makes a humming noise and drums his fingers against the bar. His fingertips make small pattering noises against the wood.

His hand is covered in blood.

No, it isn’t. Dazai blinks down at his hand, and it looks normal again. He turns to Odasaku, who is sipping at his whiskey. “Where’s Ango?” he asks finally, and while Odasaku’s face doesn’t change, he imagines that something in it becomes sadder. “I figured you’d ask that,” he says, and Dazai turns toward him.

“The clock,” he says. “The clock and my coat and Ango.”

Odasaku nods. For a moment, he isn’t wearing his usual work uniform. Instead, he has his pistol holsters hanging empty at his sides. There is blood on his clothes, and somehow, Dazai knows it’s his own.

“You remember, don’t you?” he asks, and Dazai does. His hand fists uselessly on the bar top, and he looks away. There is a well of directionless fury inside of him and he does not know what to do with it. “I remember,” he replies. Something makes him open his mouth again. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he can’t remember the last time he said that to anyone. But hasn’t Odasaku seen the worst of him already?

He remembers stained glass, a sunset, and a deep river of loss to drown in.

“Don’t be,” says Odasaku, and Dazai lifts his head to look at his coworker—no, his friend—in surprise. He is smiling, quiet and fond. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

“You died,” Dazai says, and it takes all of his considerable willpower to keep his voice from shaking. He feels eighteen again, irresponsibly young and so, so stupid. Stupid enough to believe that Odasaku would be spared. That the optimal solution Mori found didn’t involve getting rid of an annoying mafia member, one with something as foolish as principles. His hands are covered in Oda’s blood because Dazai should have protected him.

“So did you,” Odasaku points out mildly, and suddenly Dazai remembers why he should be wearing white.

His hand twitches. He wants to grab at his back, pull out the knife whose ghost he can still feel, but it’s a phantom pain. Here, in the bar with its dim lighting and still air, there is no fruit knife. There is no demon with flashing eyes. There is no Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, whose pain and misery can be felt just by occupying the same room as him.

There is only the bartender, Odasaku, and himself.

He takes a sip of his whiskey to give his hands and mouth something to do. He hates the taste and the burn of the alcohol as it goes down, hates the feeling of glass between his teeth. It’s why he’s always refused to drink anything he ordered when he went out drinking with Ango and Odasaku. That, and alcohol makes him slow.

Back then, he couldn’t afford to be slow. He can’t even afford to be slow now, but something about this place forces stillness upon him. The bar calms his ever-whirring mind and beating heart, as quick as the flutter of a hummingbird’s wings, to something more normal. More human.

Dazai hates the irony.

“Did I fail, then?” he asks, turning to Odasaku. “Has Yokohama burned to the ground?”

Odasaku takes another sip and makes a negative sound. “Not yet, at least,” he adds, and the revelation causes panic to rise inside him.

“Then what am I doing here?” he demands, and he’d forgotten how grating it is to be the petitioner. Dazai doesn’t make a habit of being the one asking, instead of the one answering. The loss of control is almost enough to make him shatter his whiskey glass. He can’t remember the last time he had let himself just be carried along by the currents of someone else’s agenda.

No, he could. A reminder of the consequences was sitting two seats down from him, drinking his whiskey as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

“You’re dead,” Odasaku reminds him, and something in his face softens. “For now, anyway.”

Dazai nods. While he had suspected as much, there had been enough uncertainty to throw his entire thought process into disarray. With that out of the way, the storm inside him quieted momentarily.

“Nakahara-san, was it?” Odasaku murmurs. “He’ll come through.”

Dazai smiles a little. “He always does,” he says, and Odasaku smiles back at him.

The two of them sip at their whiskey in companionable silence. It’s almost comforting until, after what could have been minutes or hours, Dazai feels a tug. As if a small child has latched onto the hem of his coat and is pulling at it to get his attention. He looks down, but there is nobody there.

“Your time’s up, Dazai,” says Odasaku, and the simple phrase hits him with the force of a sledgehammer. He lifts his head to look at his friend, and Odasaku is still smiling. It’s not even a sad smile, like Dazai expected. Is that...pride?

“I do check on you, every now and again,” Odasaku admits. “Because I��m curious, and it can get boring here.”

Dazai can’t speak around the lump in his throat, and he doesn’t even try. Odasaku gets up from his stool and walks over, hands in his pockets, before reaching out. He ruffles Dazai’s hair. “The answer to your question,” Odasaku says, “is yes.”

That single word is absolution and penitence and everything he has been running towards since he threw off his black coat. Dazai opens his mouth to say something, anything, but he is ripped away from the bar and back to the living world with a punch to the jaw that sends him reeling. He is wearing white, and he is floating. Above him, Chuuya floats with his fist outstretched and a savage snarl twisting his face. Part of him is disappointed, and the other part of him is relieved.

He can still feel the wound in his back, which throbs with every passing second, but he also sees the droplets of blood hanging suspended in the air like tears. He lifts up a hand then, even though it hurts, and touches Chuuya’s cheek. The activation of his ability feels like a cool wind rushing through him.

“You used Corruption, believing in me?” he asks, though it’s a herculean effort to speak. His tongue feels like lead and his head is still spinning from being yanked unceremoniously back to consciousness. But he has enough energy to smile wryly and say, “How beautiful.”

“Yeah, I did,” says Chuuya, as blunt as he always is. “I believed in your disgusting vitality and craftiness.”

The words sting a little, but it’s nothing more than he deserves. It is, after all, his disgusting vitality and craftiness that keeps him from drinking whiskey with Odasaku, in a bar removed from time. The thought doesn’t depress him like it should.

Because it will annoy Chuuya, he widens his smile. “That was a somewhat violent way of waking Snow White.”

There is violence in the tension of Chuuya’s shoulders and his narrowed eyes, but he just used Corruption. Dazai figures he can barely speak in his current state, let alone move. His jaw throbs anyway, because Chuuya hadn’t pulled his last punch at all.

When he gets to the ground, with Chuuya collapsed on his thigh, Dazai allows himself to close his eyes for slightly longer than a blink. He leans against the rubble and tilts his head up to the sky. His hand is on Chuuya’s head, fingers resting lightly on his hair. He’s exhausted, but he cards his fingers gently through Chuuya’s hair anyway.

“Ne, Odasaku,” he murmurs, and fancies that wherever he is, his friend can hear him. “You were right. You always were.”

With his face still tipped up to the sky and fingers still combing through Chuuya’s hair, he smiles. “I even forgot to say thank you.”

—

“Be on the side that saves people. If both sides are the same, become a good man. Save the weak, and protect the orphans. Neither good nor evil means much to you, I know…but that'd make you at least a little bit better…”

“How do you know?”

“Of course I know. I know better than anyone. Because…I am your friend.”

-- -- -- -- A link if you want to join the server: https://discord.gg/wGfPdaV

62 notes · View notes