To See You Again (Chuuya Nakahara x Reader x Dazai Osamu)

Chapter Fifteen

Chuuya had had other strange interactions with Y/n, but none like the one after that mission. There had been something vulnerable about the hug, something soft. It only furthered the thoughts he had already been having: Y/n needed out. 

The girl was harsh, and cold. She was a machine made to cause harm, but she had asked for a hug because she couldn't remember what one felt like.

"Agathokakological." he whispered to the emptiness of his office.

It was the word that always came to mind when he thought about her these days. Comprised of both a good thing, the greek agathos, and an evil one, kakos. 

He knew what he had to do and god, did he hate it. It didn't change the fact that it was the only plan he could think of and he pulled his phone from his pocket, resigning himself to it.

That was how Chuuya found himself sitting at a bar with the man he swore he hated more than anyone in the world.

"Hat rack!" Dazai cheerfully called, as he took his seat, "What an entirely unpleasant surprise!"

"Yeah yeah. Look, this is serious."

"Isn't everything with you?"

Dazai moved to call the barkeep over but Chuuya quickly stopped him from doing so.

"It's about Y/n."

A tension fell between them and Dazai lowered his hand.

"I'm listening."

"I... god I can't believe I'm saying this, I need you to help her get out of the Mafia."

Dazai raised his eyebrows.

"Did she ask you to do this?"

Chuuya shook his head no.

"She told me you've been trying to recruit her for a while though."

"What, is she too much of a hassle for you to deal with?" Dazai teased, elbowing Chuuya who glared at him.

"She's in trouble. If she doesn't get out now, I don't know if she will ever have the chance to again."

"You know, I thought she was going to die too once. I thought she was dead, for years actually. She is tougher than you think."

"This is serious Dazai." Chuuya repeated, and the use of his true name rather than an insult showed Dazai he meant what he was saying, "That place isn't good for her. She needs out."

"Mori seems rather set on her retaining her position." Dazai noted, "What would I get out of all this except more trouble?"

His tone was light but there was a threat lying in wait beneath it. Chuuya had heard it a thousand times before.

"Y/n said you've been hounding her to join. Isn't that enough?"

Dazai hummed in response and Chuuya knew he was just mimicking the action of thought. Already knowing what he wanted, Dazai lay in wait.

"I know you planted the idea in her head about growing something in her head."

"She certainly tells you a lot."

"It worked."

"Well, isn't that interesting."

"Dazai, she deserves a chance."

"A chance for what exactly? She's been back at the Mafia for several months now. Who says this isn't just some half thought out ploy to infiltrate the Agency?" Dazai had dropped his playful act, "Why else would you come to me of all people."

"Because you're the only one I trust to keep her safe."

A plan set and his heart heavy, Chuuya returned to the Mafia. As soon as he reached his rooms, without even bothering to take his coat off, he poured himself a heavy glass of wine. Falling into a nearby armchair, he took a long sip.

This was the only plan he could come up with. He wasn't clever and conniving like Dazai, he couldn't snap his fingers and have the pattern of the world change as a result like Y/n. He was a god of rage and chaos, a god trapped in the body of a man. He was simultaneously inhuman, superhuman, and deeply, devotionally, only a man.

Not knowing whether to pray for forgiveness or to Luck, he felt hopeless and final. He hadn't felt this way in a long time, not since Dazai himself had defected.

And here I thought you'd learned your lesson after everything that happened with Dazai. The Mafia is no place for feelings.

Mori's words whirled around his head. He had known the risks in becoming friends with the strange girl, he had seen the potential for ruin, had held it in his hands before. It didn't make any of this easier.

He had asked her once, soon after they had met, if someone had betrayed her somewhere along the way. She had kept herself much more carefully around him and those days, responded with some flippant answer that was neither a yes nor a no. Now, knowing what he knew, Chuuya wondered if Y/n felt betrayed by the very world itself.

The thought felt wrong in his mind. Although it would make sense for anyone else, it didn't for Y/n. Her answers to his questions about changing the past made that clear. She never would have thought for anyone to be there for her. No one had every betrayed the Port Mafia's newest executive, because she had never expected anything else. Any action someone different would see as a defining moment, the reaching out of a hand for it to meet empty air where someone was supposed to be, never would have happened. She never would have reached out in the first place. No one was ever there. This would be her first true taste.

Conjuring an image of her in his head, he remembered the way the light from the sunset had washed over her just a few weeks before. When she had hugged him, when he had had her physically in his arms, he had felt her heart beating against his chest. It had been soft, fluttering like a bird's. Dazai's had never felt like that when he held him. He would put his ear to the taller boys chest and listen to the steadiness of his heart on occasion.

It had always confused Dazai, he had never understood the way something as small as a heartbeat can ground one in another person. Dazai didn't feel the need for grounding. Chuuya couldn't help himself from wondering if Dazai had even been sad when he had left Chuuya without so much as a note or if his heartbeat had just continued on with the same, steady pace.

I wonder what all those books she read taught her. 

Chuuya thought to himself as he took another deep drink from his glass. They had both been so young when everything had happened between them. A true teenage love affair. Y/n had never had the chance for anything like that, he knew. She had spent the time when he'd been running off with Dazai locked in a room, only brought out when the Boss needed her for violence. She claimed that violence was all she was, but if she was inhuman than that meant he must be as well because he had never seen someone be so genuine as when he had told her that she was never meant to be alone.

I wonder what she knows about love.

---

A/N

Yes, we're confirming that they were together when they were kids in this chapter. If you don't like that, go cry.