Graveyard • Dazai x Reader

9: Scorn

Your mind stopped trying to understand what has happened to you, and slowly it began to lie to itself about your reality. You were being saved once again, you told yourself, and with the agony of you shifting opinions and moods, to place your entire faith into one idea felt liberating. Finally you could focus.

When Dazai tells you to run, you accept his suggestion as a command. The chaos around you tells you to listen, so you find your legs turning your body around and carrying you in a panicked hurry across a burning road and past the damaged car into the safety of an alleyway that would surely carry you back to the labyrinth you had killed the men in with Akutagawa. Your starting point. Before you have completely disappeared into the shadows of the cement jungle however, something compels you to stop and look back to the collision.

When you turn towards the commotion, you find a set of magenta eyes staring at you, a pretty porcelain face full of pained curiosity. You gaze back at Yosano with contempt, remembering Dazai telling you she wouldn't understand. You had originally come to her helpless and seeking for support, but now you saw her in another light. As she helps with the agitated man injured by Dazai's bullet, you label the emotions going through you at the sight of her as betrayal.

Yosano looks as though she wants to call out to you, her eyes glowing with purpose and determination, but a gust of wind causes her short, sleek hair to block her view for a moment too long and by the time she can see properly again, you've already gone and started running.

Not once did you wonder what her intentions had been in that fleeting moment.

Running now in darkness, you don't stop until you've reached stone tainted red by the violence of earlier, and once you do, for the first time since you had reached the ocean, you look up at the sky. You can see the faint outline of the moon trying to interrupt the evening with its figure, but it's barely noticeable due to the dark clouds that still hung around and barely let the sun peak. You take a deep breath in and then breathe out, closing your eyes...

"You look just as disgusting as when I saw you leave with Executive Nakahara." Akutagawa's low, haughty voice makes you jump, sudden anxiety causing tour breathing to go in uneven paces as you search the shadows for the mafia's dog. It isn't until you look behind you that you see him standing there with his hands in his black coat's pockets, calm demeanour more terrifying than his anger.

You roll your eyes in silence, trying to feign confidence despite your memories of earlier trickling in. You had insulted him, and you knew a blow to Akutagawa's pride could easily mean death. You meant nothing to him, and you had given him no reason to value you.

"If you're here to kill me, just do it now." You scoff.

"You think I'd waste my time looking for you just for something so petty? You aren't even worth that much." Akutagawa sighs, slowly walking closer to you, the dim evening light flicker across his face as he moves towards you with a broken elegance. "I'm here as ordered by Nakahara. You ran out of his car like an idiot, and did what? Did you find him?"

"Find him?"

"Dazai."

You say nothing.

"So you did. And what? Did he tell you you're dangerous? Did he introduce you to the weretiger?" Something about the way Akutagawa talks to you now makes you deeply uncomfortable, his placid temperament so uncharacteristic of him from your previous experiences. You feel as if you've walked into another reality, or you truly looked so terrible you couldn't even intimidate the man you'd spent days arguing with.

"Who's the weretiger?" You ask timidly, repeating to yourself a mantra as you continue this conversation.

He's saving me. No one else understands.

No one else could know.

"Better you find that out yourself." Akutagawa coughs, situated directly in front of you now.  You both stand still, assessing each other like you're faced with a chess board, a silence in the air so tense you swear you'd hear it snap at any moment. Your cheeks begin to burn with an unprecedented embarrassment under his mercurial gaze, and you force yourself to look away, remembering he had looked like a prince to you amongst the dead.

You had felt seen by your similarities to each other.

"I was ordered by Nakahara not to lay even a hand on you. Maybe without his wishes I would have killed you right here and now." The dark haired man abruptly says to you, and his voice sounds so harsh and repulsed that you find yourself unable to conjure a snippy reply back. Everything feels forced, and he doesn't stop. "You're pathetically hopeful, you know that? You mean nothing to Dazai, Marionette. If you meant anything at all, wouldn't he have come back?" Akutagawa suddenly grabs you by your collar, but his words shock you so that you do nothing but stare.

Dazai's saving me. No one else understands.

He's saving me. No one else understands.

"You're miserable." He repeats his insults, but something possess you in those few seconds after to raise your hand and hit him right across the face, hard and unforgiving. It's an inexplicable feeling when your hand collides with his fragile face, and you yourself flinch in horror afterwards as well. Immediately Akutagawa lets you go, sharp eyes widened with shock as he lets out a fit of horrible coughs which he covers, then raising a shaking hand to where you had hit him.

A part of you hoped this would bring him back to his usual, violent self, away from this uncomfortable calmness that scared you.

No one else understands.

No one else can understand.

They deserve it.

I'm his. I'm Dazai's.

He chose me.

Forced or not, You feel a rush of satisfaction, but it quickly ends when red flashes in front of you and a terrible pain bursts from your shoulder, Rashomon piercing through your arm and pinning you to the wall behind you. You gasp, your own blood spilling for the first time all over your clothes amongst the rest of your victims stains.

"Don't ever touch me again." Akutagawa almost yells at you, twisting his ability in your wound, causing you to let out a stifled cry. Your raise your head up to meet Akutagawa's face, wanting to beg him to stop but no words coming out. You think it's the pain stopping you, but what really holds you back is the frenzy in the rabid dog's eyes.

He's looking directly at you, and yet you aren't sure if he's truly seeing you. He looks afraid and hurt, furious and in a state of defensive panic all at once. Even with poor lighting, you can also see the mark your hand left on his cheek, and you don't expect the guilt that overwhelms you — or at least would have if your body wasn't trembling with the blood loss Rashomon was allowing.

No, he deserved it.

He couldn't understand. Dazai chose me over him.

We couldn't be more different.

Akutagawa starts speaking again, but you find that alarmingly you can't hear him, and then you realize it's because of your own screams. The mafioso had finally deactivated his ability, staggering backwards as you drop to the floor and hold your gaping wound, blood pouring over your hand the more you put pressure on your shoulder.

Why did I let him tell me to run?

Everyone else is after me...

"Shut up!" Without warning, Akutagawa forces you up and pulls you into him, covering your mouth and dragging you behind an ally wall as blaring lights of police begin to illuminate the dark where you had just been standing. "Shut up." he grumbles again as you continue to ignore him, wailing against his hands, tears streaming down your face due to your injury, the open wound rubbing against Akutagawa's trench coat.

You can hear Akutagawa muttering some curses, until he looks at you scornfully and whispers something in your ear you have no recollection of when you suddenly are hit so hard you pass out, falling limp in this hateful man's arms.