twisted devotion || Yandere!DAZAI/READER

[23] Dream

The streets are dark, murky with water-like shadows, the amber lamp posts doing nothing to reprieve the oppressive darkness of the lights; it only made the darkness more poignant, more sharply contrast against the light, only made the darkness darker. An occasional cat or dog lurks in the dark, their paws making clicking noises against the pavement, before breaking out into a run against the dirt clad puddles collected on the floor.

You're amongst the cats and dogs. You're walking through the darkness with a metaphorical candelabrum in your chest, guiding you through the crushed velvet black; the night groans under the Herculean weight of dreams dreamt by those asleep; groans under the weight of its own oppression.

There's intuition brimming in your fingertips.

Then you see him: Dazai Osamu. But this time, he's wearing a dark black coat, camouflaging him against the darkness. He turns around and there's bandages wrapped over his right eye, rodents swarming in the slight smile on his face: This is not the man you know. This is a poor replica of the man you know. The way someone comes to you, but only in a dream. He had a proclivity, you assumed, to look through someone: and that was what made him scary. There was nothing you could hide under the slight scrutinization that he beweld like a weapon.

In the mafia, a weakness is a gaping wound. Rats are easy weapons: they look for openings.

You try to run. But the world around you shatters like broken glass. There are shadow clones of you, all reflecting back the wild bewilderment on your face. You are alone in this world with this man, in a world of poor imitations of what you think comprises you of you.

"Come here, (first name)." His voice is gentle, like the weight of a common sparrow on a twig. He calls out to you, quietly, and suddenly, your hand twitches as though aching to hold his, but inside you know, you know, that this is not the man who you think it is.

"Stay away from me." Your voice is strong.

The dark man in the dreams is a sign of weakness: creativity for the artists and the poets, but for the normal person, it is a sign of pain, a sign of coming trouble, like a curling tornado about to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting village.

"I'm sorry," He apologises, and draws his hand back into his coat. There is a red, red as the moon, scarf hanging off his neck like a loose noose. It looks more like a torrent of blood hanging down his neck, like a trophy, "But I knew there was another you in another world."

"So I was right."

"Yes you were," He drawls out, like a slow applaud, "You were a bit slow to the recognition, but you still found your origin. Your purpose."

A feeling of dread that crawls up you, "My purpose?"

"The world you inhabit now has a Dazai, far different, far luckier than me, but has no (First name), has no Oda; it has no you that he desires."

"Oda?"

"A dear friend. One that hates me in this world," He looks up at the shining stars, gleaming and cozily knitted against the fabric of the night sky, "And one that is dead in the other."

"There are two of me in that world."

"One that he detests," The Dazai says, with a tone that gives away a slow laughter. His movements were languid, almost sensual and lewd, in the sliding darkness, "One that he failed to get."

"So I'm her replacement," You say bitterly.

"You can think of it that way," He tilts his head, "Or, you can think of it alternatively: He craved you, specifically you, even in a world that can't be proved by metaphysics and theoretical quantum physics. He desired for you past human knowledge."