Graveyard • Dazai x Reader

20. Thou Shall Not Die

Akutagawa had done as you asked. It had made perfect sense to him then, and the way to get away with it wasn't impossible. You had pleaded him to give you a purpose through death, and Akutagawa felt too much the violent echoes of needing to mean something.

He had held you briefly, as your eyes searched instinctively for someone, something, anything at all to latch on to as all the pain that knotted itself within you become one before being released with a breath. The mafioso did not speak or assist you in understanding he was there. He let go of your hand after he squeezed it, but he did not let your body drop. As blood soaked your clothes, tainting his own pale hands and the ground under you, Akutagawa lay you down gently facing the direction of the sea.

Perhaps if someone came to clean up the mess, they'd give you the kindness of leaving you in the depths of the port, where many have tried to flee for a kinder life.

Or perhaps, if he was right and there was someone close by, they'd be smart and keep you hidden. Or dead, at the very least.

On the cold of the road with the salty, port air mixing in with the horrible stench of blood, your body twitched in unforgivable pain. Your skin was brushed with the glow of the night, and you looked like a tragic fairytale waiting to be buried or kissed awake. Neither of those things happened.

Instead, an angel had heard your pleads and recognized the shadow death left behind. On a walk to calm her own mind, she who sometimes woke up to the moon of darker days haunting her own dreams understood your end and your wishes for death were the consequences of worshipping demons. After all, she herself had been an angel of death once.

Yosano did not see Akutagawa depart. She didn't need to. She understood the precision of all the puncture wounds left in you was an attempted kindness from only one other person that could possibly understand or involve themselves in this particular situation of yours. Either way, it didn't matter. The doctor also understood she had a role now, whether you would thank her or not.

Running to your side, humid winds hinting at possible rain ruffling her sleek dark hair, Yosano immediately kneels next to you and places two fingers to your neck checking for your pulse.

Fading.

And then gone.

The doctor smiles.

"I wish you valued your life more. I wish you didn't let these men define it and define where it ends."

•••

You woke up to the rising sun in an unfamiliar room on a mattress, filthy but alive.

Alive.

You gasp and sit up, feeling all over your body in a panic until all the memories come back to you.

This was not the first time you had woken up.

You had registered the first time as nothing but a final dream in which an angel with determined, magenta eyes carried you to safety in what you had hoped was death. You remember reaching out to her, your eyes trying to concentrate on the face of the woman you'd mistaken for an angel. You remembered hazily doing these same motions towards the demon that had fulfilled your wish in fear and regret, in a hope he understood your own feelings towards him in those moments. You don't know what Akutagawa had done in the end, but you do remember Yosano whispering to you and trying to get you to rest while she helped you up, deciding to carry you in the end; you do remember Yosano holding your hand and making sure you knew she was there.

You understood this encounter had something to do with her ability, and then you'd gone to sleep, exhausted by the way your own heart had given up emotionally and then physically.