twisted devotion || Yandere!DAZAI/READER

[24] Betrayal

What was the saying again, what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger?

It felt more like, what doesn't kill you, leaves you broken instead.

You felt yourself falling apart, like water in a shattered jug, just by lying down on the infirmary bed, staring up at the ceiling in deafening silence. You felt paralysed by your own thoughts. Loud voices behind that quiet mask of yours, another sleepless nap, a fissure in your mind that only grief and madness rushed through; a river on its path to the ocean. Thoughts that ran through your head like a wild conflagration, triggered by questions upon questions, your throat throbbing with each breath, worsening at intervals, lessening in seconds.

"You were lucky the bullet didn't graze any arteries," Yosano had said, "You would have died had it not been—"

"Don't say his name," You want to roll over and curl into a ball, turn your back on her, "Don't."

"What is up with you two?" She snaps. Your eyes water and she sighs, "Look, I don't know what's between you two, but—"

"Remember when I said I wasn't from this world? That I'm not from here?"

"Yes?"

"I'm not from this reality," You say, biting back tears at the revelation, "This sounds all like a paranoid delusion, but it's true. You told me your secret of being in the Port Mafia, and now it's my turn to return the favour."

"What?" She blinks in disbelief.

"I'm not from this reality," You say, finally turning your head to face the doctor. And there is something unsettling about your gaze, like there was something missing from your eyes, like something less infinitely emphatic than blood was running through the sockets behind them: Two abysses staring back at her, as though drilling into her own eyes; piercing, "There is a blood moon: I am that moon. I was brought here by another ability user."

She sits in silence, with bated breath, waiting for more words to spill out.

"I was brought to replace your version of (first name). I am not the (first name) you know. I was never in the Port Mafia. Ask me anything about the mafia and I will not know. I do not know you, I do not know Dazai, I do not know anything about this world."

She checks your forehead for a fever: lukewarm. Normal.

"I am being dead serious when I say this: I am another (First name)."

"Was that why you were so shocked when I said, thought, you were in the Port Mafia?"

"It confirmed my suspicions that there is another me," You turn your head back to the ceiling, "Why I was brought here, I don't know. But Yosano, you must believe me; I am not the (first name) you know."

She pauses, hesitates. "I believe you."

Relief floods you. "Thank you."

There's a knocking at the door, with a faint calling of your name. The two of you stare at each other, before Yosano sighs, "It must be Dazai. I'll tell him you're still unconscious."

"Has he been asking?"

"Ever since you were brought here, yes."

She closes the white curtains around your bed, an enclosure, and approaches the door. You can hear muffled conversations.

"She's still not awake."

"I can't wait by her side? Look here, I brought flowers and offerings."

"She's in a sensitive space right now; I'll take them and give it to her when she wakes."