you can take my Soul, but never my Heart (omegaverse)

Chapter 18: overflow and discharge

Dazai gets the honor of spending one more night in the surgical recovery ward before he's moved to a smaller room in the regular inpatient ward for another bland breakfast. They deny him coffee and take him off of the morphine once he's there, replacing it with horse-sized pills, which means he's in a particularly sour mood. But the sourness of his mood only lasts briefly until there's a knock on his door and, of all people, Kunikida enters.

"Good morning, Dazai."

And he's carrying Koko.

"Mama!"

Kunikida fumbles her as she tries to break out of his arms, putting her down with a huff as she sprints for Dazai's bed.

"Careful-!" the alpha warns, but he's too late.

Koko stubbornly climbs onto the bed, but Dazai reaches to carefully maneuver her so he doesn't get a toddler sized knee directly to his suture. He pulls her up onto his chest instead, and she all too happily tucks up against his unbandaged throat to nuzzle deep against his scent gland.

(The nurse refused to waste the bandages for it or his arms; the scars are healed, so there's no reason for them. No one had thought to pack bandages in his bag for him, but at least there's a long sleeved shirt in there he was able to change into to hide his scarred arms from himself. It still makes him so horribly aware of the marks when they aren't covered, outside of the privacy of his own nest.)

He scents his daughter as she whimpers against him, stroking her back lightly as he watches Kunikida move his duffel bag to the floor so he can pull the chair over and take a seat next to the bed. And he sits heavily, looking dead on his feet, and if it wasn't for the hospital mandated blockers on his throat, Dazai is willing to bet he would smell like a pile of books going up in flame.

He tucks Koko against his shoulder, resting a hand over her other ear. When he speaks, he keeps his voice low. "What happened?"

Kunikida crosses his knees, then his arms. He's incredibly tense, and Dazai is about to tease him for it until he speaks up, voice short and clipped. "The president was attacked last night."

Fukuzawa has been fighting off assassins for days, if not weeks by this point. It's nothing new, but the way Kunikida says it means that the attack actually succeeded. Unfortunately, Dazai predicted as much. He had spoken to him briefly last night to try to lay a trap for one specific little rat, and even if Dostoevsky never knew about it, he would try to make a move against Fukuzawa sooner rather than later. It was just a matter of who struck first.

"Was it Dostoevsky?"

"No. It was that masked assassin that's been going around."

The agency has heard about them, and after the discussion he had with Dostoevsky, he knows exactly who it is. It must be the missing priest from the Guild, if not another outlier they haven't heard of yet. They're targeting gifted individuals. It's slow going towards Dostoevsky's goal, of course, but it's sowing seeds of fear, and that will only make things easier for Dostoevsky down the road. It's lighting a fire under the Port Mafia, too; they're at the most risk if one of their own were to fall victim. He wouldn't be surprised if the Port Mafia has already found the suspect and acted on it, honestly. That was why the agency hadn't done anything about them; why waste the time when the mafia would do it for them?

"He's unconscious with unknown symptoms, and Yosano's ability couldn't help. Turns out, there's a gift at fault for his state."

"What gift?"

Kunikida shifts, pulling his notebook from his breast pocket, but not opening it. He stares at the cover, at Ideals, as if he can find answers there. "It came with a warning. The gift itself is draining his life like it's some kind of poison. He's in another wing of the hospital right now; one that's more secure. There's nothing we can do, but you-"